A Small Squee of Delight

When I was little, I thought sewing machines were the most amazing things ever. I loved threading, how the thread got wound around the machine all over the place. I used to pretend I was threading a sewing machine by winding yarn around all the knobs on my dresser. I could never quite understand, though, how the little needles managed to make so many stitches so fast.

Then I found this description of how the mechanisms of sewing machines work on How Stuff Works and literally sat there and stared at the little Flash movies for half an hour. So that’s how it does it! [the picture below is a pause of one of the Flash movies]. The whole article is just interesting, if you’re a fan of figuring out how stuff works. Finally knowing how my machine works is FABULOUS. I’m incredibly thrilled by this, and the next page in this shows the internal gears.  You can tell it really bothers me when I’m not sure how things are doing what they’re doing!

While I’m blathering on about learning how stuff works, I thought I might also mention these lovely pieces of knowledge as well, for minds of neverending curiosity.

In honor of putting in a zipper: the Glue-Set Zipper for a skirt from Sew, Mama, Sew; sewing a zippered pocket into a bag lining from U-Hanbag; a flat fly-front zipper for clothes video with Sandra Betzina on Threads (really the clearest of these tutorials, but maybe that’s the video); various other zipper types (lapped, invisible) also from Threads.  And the one I’ll be hopefully using this week or next, a concealed bag zipper with casing also from U-Handbag.

How dress forms are made -  I always thought seeing your shape via dress form was probably the best way to figure out how a piece of clothing will work on you. Well, this is a video about the process of professional dress form construction. I find it odd they start out as a base of wet cardboard.

Just noticed Margaret Wertheim’s TED talk on coral reefs and hyberbolic geometry, as modeled by crochet. It still seems funny to me that something as simple as crochet increases could so easily model a mathematical concept as difficult to conceptualize as hyberbolic space.

I’ll leave you with this: speaking of crochet, still one of my favorite explanations of how stuff works is the structural/sculptural possibilities of crochet as demonstrated by Jessica Polka of Wunderkammer for a class she taught. One day, I will make one of these. It’s not only useful, it’s pretty!

Bits & Bags 1: Elastic Wrist Straps and A Fear of Zippers

Working my way through Organizational Items A-F (actually it’s now A-H), but here are five of my completed items.

First up: Button Pincushions! These are not fancy pincushions–not cute animals or stuck into teacups or some such–but they are functional. My intent was to just make the wrist pincushions, but I had extra fabric, so I whipped up a third fat little guy.

I’ve loved wrist pincushions since I first discovered my mom’s when I was a kid – I thought it was genius and stole it regularly. I now have one of the standard Dritz wrist pincushions ones too, but these days the shine is off. I think it’s ugly, too thin, and I don’t like the plastic wrist band. My wrist pincushions are a take-off of a Keyka Lou free pattern. I sewed mine with 2 fabric layers and iron-on fleece, while hers are made of 3 layers of fabric. Also, mine have a comfy elastic wrist strap which I came up with all by my lonesome.

Not sure what happened, but the green one is a tad malformed … I must have stuffed it funny. These little guys will save me from sticking my pins and needles into random cushions on the couch or into my clothing while embroidering … a practice which I’m sure will one day become tragic if I continue.

Second: FEAR OF ZIPPER. These two items mean that I’ve now sewn a zipper into three items in my entire sewing life. I decided my irrational fear of sewing in zippers must end. It’s not that hard. At some point I became petrified of zippers to the point of avoiding them like they are months-old moldy cheese. So here I am facing sewing fears–I’m sure some past therapist is very proud. I’m not going to pretend my zippers are at a professional level, but they’re definitely functional and not bad-looking, I think.

Plus it never hurts to distract everyone by adding cute cat charms

I messed about with quilting for these bags … each side of the bags is quilted using thin fleece. One bag has straight line patterns, the other curvy free-form sewing. Quilting makes for thick sturdy bags, which is useful because I intend to keep sharp pointy objects in bags like these – an awl and scissors to start – and thick sides mean the sharp pointy things have less of a chance of poking me when I reach for the bags.

I’m plowing through these now at a great rate of speed, should be ready to post a couple more items soon!!

A few updatey type things

It’s been rather rainy and chilly here lately, which I’m enjoying very much, although it seems like everyone else just wants warm, sunny weather. Despite the frostiness, spring is soon to arrive. As evidenced the pictures gracing this post, which I took while walking to work one day after a night when it froze and even snowed. Leaves were damaged, but the flowers were undeterred.

I think it’s worth noting that I actually sat down and messed with the stuff (sidebar, pages, settings, etc.) on this blog the other night. I think some things hadn’t been futzed with since June 2007 when I started this blog, and others have stayed static since the redesign in October 2007.  I’d love to do another redesign, and restart the Index of Indie, but that will have to wait for available time, so I thought some tidying was in order. My blog’s making me feel a bit claustrophobic, it needs trimming. But I did like that I put the projects I’m working on in there.

Wesley graduated from the first round of obedience training last Monday. He is now an occasionally obedient dog. I’ve gotten mixed reactions about dog training – you all can rest assured, obedience training does not turn your dog into an automaton and there aren’t any choke collars involved. Our trainer Tara and co-trainer Amanda have been great, they love dogs, and they actually specialize in difficult, aggressive dogs, which Wesley is not. I love people who love animals, and don’t give up on them. Anyway, Wesley is still very much puppy-like and doggy. Just the other day he ate my wallet and license, the plastic on Jeff’s new tea mug, part of my shoe, the cheese crackers from a friend’s purse and an entire box of Kleenex. We are doing intermediate obedience training because Wesley enjoyed the classes so very, very much, him being an intelligent dog who likes people, activity and treats. I enjoy that he’s not chasing the poor cat as much, and that he’s ceased trying to dislocate my shoulder on walks.

I have sadly suffered cooking fail twice this week already, and it’s only Wednesday. On Valentine’s Day I did my usual and cooked Jeff dinner. The baked vegetable baklava turned out well, as did the saffron rice, however I … sort of melted the falafel. I used a recipe. I shouldn’t use recipes. The last time I made falafel I just invented it as I went and it turned out beautifully. Then tonight I tried to make red beans and rice – another recipe! – and burned the ever loving hell out of a dish I’m eminently familiar with and is only rice and beans, after all. I must be tired or something. I’m off my game.

I’ve been working really hard on my stack of crafting organizational items, and am proceeding quite satisfactorily. I’ll have some show-and-tell once I have some acceptable lighting. I am enjoying the time sewing very much. I should do this more often!