Holiday Market 2013

The Lincoln Square Holiday Market opens this Saturday (8am-1pm) and runs for 7 weeks. Vendors of all types will sell gifts, food and plants. I will have these folded fabric ornaments along with pouches, baskets and do-dads for organizing, gift-giving and display. Come visit!

Weekend with Friends

A lady I met at the Market at the Square is preparing to enjoy a weekend away in New York City with friends, and she's bringing favors. A little piecing of fabric and a custom bead from the Community Fab Lab personalize small essentials bags to be filled with gum, a little lotion, hand sanitizer and whatnot needed for an early fall adventure. Have fun!

School Supplies

Though we had a great summer, I am excited to see the kids return to school. The daily routine again allows for blocks of time in my sewing room to work on items for the Urbana Market at the Square and the upcoming Lincoln Square Holiday Market. So, while the kids returned to school with colored pencils, p.e. shoes, graph paper and thumb drives, I stocked up on back-to-school fabric. The four patterns across the top are laminated cotton for small and large cosmetic/travel bags. The other patterns just appealed to me.

Eclectic Sale

Besides the occasional Market at the Square Saturdays this summer, I am selling pouches and whatnot at Eclectic on Main Street in Urbana. Today through Saturday, Eclectic is holding their annual $10 Original Art Days sale. Member artists and crafters have donated items to the store for the sale. Everything costs $10. Check them out on Facebook to see some of the things on offer. https://www.facebook.com/eclecticartistcoop This is what I took in:

Stampin' Up! Fabric

My friend Nancy of http://nancysniftynotes.com and http://www.etsy.com/shop/NancysNiftyNotes makes cards. She primarily uses the Stampin' Up! card making line of stamps, inks and papers. It turns out, the company also has a line of fabric. In preparation for a Stampin' Up! convention, Nancy asked me to make a purse and pouches using some of their prints. I was free to mix and match, piece and cut, as long as the Stampin' Up! fabric remained the star and I used as much of the fabric as possible. The result is a pile of items, both large and small. I'm pleased with the coordinated result, and now Nancy has enough of this and that to store her everyday items with gifts for her card class participants, besides.

USS Indianapolis Reunion

One of my customers at Urbana's Market at the Square is organizing this year's reunion of the survivors and family of the World War II ship the USS Indianapolis. Among the get-together's events is a tea for survivor wives and widows. These red, white and blue pouches with zipper pull beads personalized at the Fab Lab are meant to be the favor. A basic strip of complementing fabric across the top of each pouch opened up mix-and-match fun. I enjoyed sewing a large number of pouches in a limited color scheme. I appreciate the opportunity to insert my crafts in this celebratory event to honor and thank the sailors and families of the Indianapolis. You can visit the reunion web site here http://ussindyreunion.com/

Saturday Season Opener

My first date for the Urbana Market at the Square is this Saturday from 7am to noon. I'm stocked up with a winter's worth of pouches, purses and baskets in both old fabric and new. This will be my 5th summer at the market, and I look forward to the fun of people watching, chatting about fabric and divesting myself of projects so I'll have motivation to make more.

5 of My 15 Minutes Used Up

The live tv studio of ciLiving was full of guests and cameras and activity, and really an interesting experience. Arriving 15 minutes before the show, there was little time to get nervous. As Monday's Work From Home segment feature, I was directed to the kitchen table corner of the studio to set up my wares. Then I took a seat at the table and watched the other segments. My reference photo is blurry, but you can still appreciate how large the cameras are. Mid-way through the show, host Heather Roberts rotated over to the table and we chatted about zippered pouches for about 5 minutes. Then, it was on to a song and more weather. It's clear I'm not made for tv; since my goal was to avoid catastrophe, it was a good day. Judge for yourself: http://illinoishomepage.net/fulltext/?nxd_id=499872

Live TV

I've spent some time this afternoon rummaging through my bins of completed items for the Urbana Market at the Square. Tomorrow I've been invited to show my things on WCIA's ciLiving show. I'll spend about 5 minutes chatting with Heather Roberts, one of the hosts of the show. This is great timing, in that my first summer market is coming up. June 22nd I'll open my 2013 craft-selling season. I have plenty of new fabrics, a few new types of items and some re-working of old patterns. Now to finish up the ampersand pillow cover shown above and stash the lot in bins for tomorrow.

Reverse Appliqué Tutorial

My friends J and D have been asking for hints on reverse appliqué. It's basically a process by which a hole in your background fabric reveals another fabric in whatever shape you like. Traditional appliqué neatly mounts fabric shapes on top of background fabric. This method is a little less bulky, and gives a slightly different look. The best book on the topic is called Reverse Applique With No Brakez by Jan Mullen. I have followed her basic ideas, but added the cheat of a hidden layer to help turn seams more quickly and neatly. Start with a piece of background fabric larger than your finished needs by at least 1.5 inches on all sides. Cut also a larger-than-needed piece of shape fabric and a piece of hidden fabric. I used for my hidden fabric woven fusible web. Next I center the fusible web fuse-side-up on the background fabric and trace my shape. In this case, it's an ampersand. I will only trace the outside outline and ignore the two inner ovals for now. Sew on the traced line with a sewing machine set to a slightly short stitch. Carefully cut away the hidden layer of fabric/stabilizer and the background fabric. Leave a scant 1/4 inch inside the sewn line. Trim off places the shape points in. Clip curves up to the sewn line. Cut into corners an an angle. The point is to prepare the shape for turning. Taking your time, fold the hidden layer though the hole of the shape and to the back of the background fabric. Use a hot iron to work the opening into a crisp version of what you want. Take out a point-turner for peninsula-type areas. If your hidden layer is fusible, you are sure to get sharp edges as long as you only iron the layers down when you mean it. Now you have a top layer to put in front of the fabric you choose for the shape. You can blind-stitch the two layers together without worry that frayed edges will flip to the front. It's good appliqué results without tiny stitches and hard-earned experience! To finish this design, I put the background fabric face-to-face with the hidden fabric and trace the two ovals for the middle of the ampersand. I sew around them with my machine and then slit the hidden layer enough to neatly fold it back. These last two inner parts of the ampersand will be appliquéd on top of the whole piece. (You could always repeat the reverse applique step and sink them behind the whole shebang. If you do, let me see, because it is sure to be impressive.) Here's a completed version in another fabric combination. Future study: You could use this method and topstitch layers together with colored embroidery floss instead of a blind stitch. You could affix layers with a topstitch on the sewing machine. You could piece the back shape in multiple fabrics before you position it behind the hole in your background fabric. You could use a colored "hidden" fabric layer and then turn it to the back of your background shape with a little accent lip showing, and thereby frame the shape you intend for the focus. What do you think of the overview J and D? Show me what you make, or tell me what you plan to make. I'll do the same for you!

You Can't Make Me Learn to Thumb Type

I learned to touch-type in middle school. A strict, no-nonsense typing teacher perched on a tall stool and verbally commanded the sequence of home row keys we were to type. The bells of a room full of manual typewriters rang together to signal the end of each line, and we all returned our carriages with firm swipes of the right hand. At the end of class, the teacher praised polite young men who carried their typewriters back to the storage area and then returned to transport the machines of the young ladies. My friends and I thought this was very funny because we all knew we could certainly hoist our own machines. Looking back, the typing class stands out for its usefulness. I type all the time. But, I just can't get the hang of thumb typing. Entering a note or calendar item on my phone using the minuscule pop-up keyboard and my thumbs is beyond laborious. I really would rather write it down with pencil and paper. I've covered small notebooks with fabric before and sold them as stocking stuffers. Now I'm trying larger notebooks. These composition books have the potential to show off larger or pieced prints. Inside I included an open pocket for receipts or random scraps of information. My mother suggested a ribbon in the top seam for a bookmark.

Pieced Playing

I have spent time recently revisiting my construction methods for various items I've sold before at the Market at the Square and elsewhere. As an example, I am now stabilizing the larger fabric baskets good for stashing toys or mittens or dog leashes or whatnot with two layers of craft fuse instead of one. This way the baskets stand stiffer, but the top can still be folded down for a cuffed look. Piecing a strip of patterned fabric into a longer length of canvas on the outside of a basket still looks patterned, but requires less focus fabric and helps a basket blend in to a room filled with other colors and patterns. Then again, a pieced-in panel could be pieced itself. These baskets showcase coordinating fabrics in a quilt-block style. I like the results and will think about what other pieced inserts could complement existing products.