Laid Up

People’s experiences of pregnancy are vastly different. Some women think it’s the most awesome thing ever. Others can’t wait to get it over with. Most people fall somewhere in the middle.  For me it’s been like trying to live my normal life while being sick for months and months. It’s not exactly been the most magical experience of my life. For example, I have never before done quite so much sitting as I’ve done in the past four months.

For a while there was even doctor-mandated sitting. In bed. I was really, really bored. I am a very active person, always wanting to DO something or MAKE something or GO somewhere. My to do lists are legendary. But there I was, faced with days of 12 hours and almost no activity permitted. That’s when I created the box you see above. It’s my constant companion, filled with enough yarn for about six projects. I figured I’d just dive into the eighties shows on Hulu and my crochet hooks for a while. And I did. I’ve now watched every episode of Simon and Simon, and am almost done with season 2 of Remington Steele.

One weekend after the first trimester was over I actually felt pretty good, so I finally did my tie-dying project. My kid IS being born in Berkelely after all, so what could be more apropos than tie-dye? I bought the cheapest packs of white onesies I could find and a kit. It took a couple of hours, which is just about all the energy I have at one shot these days. For a first-time attempt and some serious clumsiness with rubber bands, I think the project turned out quite well. It was quite satisfyingly messy. I kept forgetting gloves, so I dyed my fingers a few times too.

The colors faded more than I would have liked after washing, but meh! They’re cute. I let them sit for 8 hours, so that was about as much color intensity as I was going to get out of it. I tried doing a couple of patterns with stencils, but the dye ran too much, so I’m going to try again with some fabric paint. Also, perhaps a few iron-ons for little shirts.

As a crafty person, the urge to make stuff for your new small person is quite overwhelming. Actually, as a crafty person the urge to mark every life event by crafting is overwhelming. I’m not really energetic enough to get into some of my time-and-motion-intensive sewing (hence my poor, languishing quilt), but there are lots of things I can do with my hands.

All I can do is hope not to overdo the child-crafting entirely.

Review – Simplicity Bias Tape Maker

Although I find the process of making bias tape frustrating, I find uses for it all the time. If you’ve seen any of the small quilts I’ve made or my recent kitchen project, you’ll see that bias tape figures into all of them in some way, and often extensively. This is why I had the Simplicity Bias Tape Maker on my wish list last holiday season, and my MIL was kind enough to get one for me. Now that I’ve used it quite a bit, here’s my review.

The Summary: I would buy this again, because it has saved me time and fiddly work. However, it’s frustrating to use, particularly for narrower widths, and I think Simplicity could have easily made a number of improvements that would ease the process and upgrade the end result. A great idea in need of some design help.

The Basics: The bias tape machine retails for $100 and is easy to find. It runs on electricity (no batteries) and has single-fold bias tape attachments for sizes 3/8″, 1/2″, 3/4″, 7/8″, 1″, 1-1/4″ as well as two special quilt binding tips in 1-1/8″ and 1-1/4″ sizes. There are accessories – extra bobbins, a tape insertion tool, storage bin, a winder. Simplicity is the main sewing gadget maker out there (aside from machines), or as they call it, their “small machines and accessories” collection. This is my crappy home movie of the thing working (it’s noisy!):

The Review: As a lover of both sewing and gadgets, a bias tape maker appealed to me. But as a long-time gadget user in areas other than sewing, I tend to be disappointed by Simplicity’s machines, because they just aren’t as cool as I know they could be.  I really wish Simplicity would hire me so I could tell them what they ought to be doing with their gadget collection. Are you listening, Simplicity? I’d love to help you out.

Here’s a diagram so you’ll know which bits I’m talking about, or I found a video showing the process.

Step Zero: Turn it on and adjust your heat setting. Wait for the green light to give you a go. It heats up very fast.

Step One: Wind the cut fabric onto the bobbin. Not a problem. There is a metal pin that holds the start of the fabric on. Adjust the fabric guide to the proper width (their guides are simple but effective) and lay the fabric across it.

Step Two: Remove the bias tip and insert your fabric, then reattach the tip. I’d suggest working with long strips of bias. Sometimes even when I need short strips, inserting the fabric is annoying enough that I sew it together then rip apart after the ironing is done. Simplicity sells a thing to help insert fabric, but it’s easy enough to use something like a small pair of scissors.

Step Three: Remove the iron cover and draw fabric through the tip and across the metal plate and feeder. Despite the ease that the video I linked to portrays, this can be an awkward phase. Fabric doesn’t WANT to stay folded, so it’s easy to lose the folds of your not-yet-ironed bias tape before you can get the feeder started. Sometimes I iron the folded fabric end with the side of my scissors on the metal plate just to get a fold started. The narrower your bias tape is, the worse this problem is. To fix:

• Simplicity should move the bias tip closer to the heating element.
• Add an adjustable guide to the left of the heating element to encourage the fabric to stay folded, probably a part of the feeder.

Step Four: Turn on the feeder. You’ll want to assist the tape out, just gently guide as it feeds through. Problems that arise:

• Feeds WAY too fast. It needs a variable speed adjustment in the worst way (which Simplicity put on their Deluxe Piping & Bias Machine).Going that fast means you don’t get a crisp edge and it tends to jam the feeder. I understand the want to not scorch the fabric, but you can adjust the heat.
• The feeder jams with tape unless you’re helping it along. There are easy fixes for this. Overall, I think their feed solution was really cheap and sloppy all around. This could be so much better.
• The heat settings need improvement, and the heating element itself should be an inch longer, since as I’ve noted, the ironed edges aren’t so crisp as I’d like.
• Tape tends to get hung up in the bias tip when there is a seam, you can tug a bit to get it to go through, or stop the feed and help it along.  Ironing your seams flat and starching them helps. Sometimes.
• After a seam, sometimes the tape is no longer folded. I have to stop and reverse the fabric, and make sure that when it goes over the heating element it’s actually folded.  This is more of a problem with narrower bias tape, and is a nightmare for the 3/8″ size.

Step Five: Something to wind finished tape on would be nice. I roll it up or wind it around a piece of cardboard, but a winder is something I think should come with it.

Storage: You store the bobbin and guide in the top of the case – a nice touch, the all-one-piece design is tidy. But … where’s the place to store the cord?

I think the product is overall a good idea. However, the execution was on the side of cheap and not entirely well-thought-out. Several improvements could be made that wouldn’t result in a cost increase for it overall. The wider the tape, the easier – as you get down toward the 3/8″ size you will have more problems.

Still, when you have to create a football-field length amount of bias tape, just getting the folds started (even if you have to go over them with your regular iron too) can be a real time-saver. And for the wider widths it works pretty well, actually. I’ll definitely keep using mine, and just hope that Simplicity calls me and asks me to consult, so I can have an even better version!

Cushion + Pillow Win

That’s pretty much my story for the end of March. As you can see …. TADA!

I finished the bench cushions last Sunday, and I’m terribly pleased by them! This afternoon I also finished the four pillows in celadon and lemon that coordinate with the benches.  All are made from heavy natural linen on the sides/backs/bottom alongside various coordinating fabrics from Kate Spain’s Fandango collection.

Can we talk PIPING? If I’d left off the piping this project would have taken half the time and about 1/3 less fabric than it did. I think that I had to make 54 feet of 2.5″ bias tape, then pin that to cording, then sew it, then trim it down to .5″, then pin and sew it onto the cushions and pillows. It is my hope that the projects look more crisp and more professional as a result. I think it makes a big difference, myself, and now that it’s over with I’m glad I went to the extra trouble and time. Plus, piping is a new thing for me – another sewing skill CONQUERED. HA.

So can we talk zippers next? Again, a sewing accomplishment, at least for me, because until now I’ve found zippers intimidating. No more. I installed 6 hidden zippers using a pattern I came up with myself. I find it quite tidy to have removable washable covers via hidden zippers. I was thinking I might do a how-to for my hidden zipper pattern, but … um. No. Just getting it all sewn up was enough of a travail for one lifetime.

I have 3 more small things to finish up, but for the most part that’s the end of this enormous project. All of this kitchen stuff together means that this February/March project is arguably the largest craft project I’ve ever taken on. I think that it took more than 40 hours to put all of this together so far, some of which my brother and Jeff did. The sewing by itself has taken a lot of time. For each of the four rounds of cushion sewing with the piping it took 2 hours to pin and then sew. If I haven’t posted much lately it’s because I’ve actually been really busy working on this project, and also because sewing this much totally screwed up my back. I had to take some time off.

Luckily, our resident opportunist assures me that it was all worth it.