A Lemonade Break?!?!

When life hands you lemonade,

don't try to make lemons. 

~ Vince Gutherie

I've got a tried-and-true (TNT) pattern for a work-appropriate A-Line skirt and I have made it three times with cotton prints:  

Now what I really want is a TNT pattern for a casual, comfy, yet still work-acceptable, top - one that I can wear with these skirts or with blue jeans - depending on my mood and the day of the week.  

I have been hoping that this pattern will meet the bill:  

The version that I like is the v-neck with short sleeves.  

I bought these three, light weight knit fabrics to, hopefully, make in this pattern:  

Luckily, my memory is bad enough that I don't have to embarrass myself by telling you how long I've had this pattern and these fabrics sitting in my stash, but over the weekend I finally made some time to start on one.  

My first impression?

Hmmmm...  Shall we say that the pattern is a bit pleat heavy?  ;)

There are 10 pleats on the front, 6 pleats on the back and 3 pleats on each sleeve - for a grand total of 22 pleats!  

I used scissor snips to make the outer point of each pleat and pins to make the inner most point of each pleat and then connected the dots to re-create the pleat lines on the fabric.  

The waist pleats get folded up and the bust pleats get folded down.  

I had put in all the pleats, added the v-neck facing, stitched the side seams - all without problems.  

Then I spent quite a bit of time puzzling over some instructions to begin inserting the sleeves.  I finally got them sorted out and was feeling quite proud, when I turned the page over and came across this:  

What?!?  The instructions are actually telling me to take a lemonade break!?!?  And they are warning me that the next few bits are going to be complicated?  Yikes!!!  

So, I took their advice and called it quits for the day.  Here's what I've got so far:  

The sleeves are only connected part-way - they are still open at the neckline.  Also, they don't connect at the underarm - part of the underarm is formed by the front and back of the top, I guess...  

I am pretty happy with how my v-neck came out - you can see the facing, but it isn't stretched or distorted in any way.  :)

The pleats in half their glory - 5 in front, 3 in back and 3 on the sleeves.  The top is much too big for the dressmaker's dummy.  Hopefully it will hang more nicely on my body.  

I guess it's time to read the instructions three times and then see if I can make it work!  ;)

Wish me luck!  

The Weaving Class!

The mediocre teacher tells.

The good teacher explains.

The superior teacher demonstrates.

The great teacher inspires.

~ William Arthur Ward

The two and a half day workshop on Andean Pebble Weave was absolutely awesome!  Laverne Waddington is an amazing teacher - possibly because of the way that she had to learn backstrap weaving...

Her first "teachers" were a mother-daughter team whose idea of "teaching" was to let her watch while they wove .

They barely spoke to her - it was actually a couple of days before she even realized that the daughter spoke Spanish!  But even though the daughter could speak Spanish, they both refused to answer any of her questions or to slow down their fingers so that she could see what they were doing...

It's amazing that she picked anything up at all!

But she did learn how to weave and she also learned how to teach backstrap weaving!  ;)

She started out by inspiring us by showing us lots of gorgeous samples:

Aren't these beautiful?  

Next, she was SO organized - you should have seen all the supplies she brought for each student!  We each had a little plastic tub with rubber bands, small wooden swords, small dowels to form cross sticks, an un-pick tool to remove all our mistakes - you name it!  

She even prepared two warps for each of us!  

Of course, her real skill was in her ability to demonstrate the techniques and explain the structure of pebble weave.  She used these square magnets - rearranging them as necessary - to illustrate how plain pebble weave is formed, and then how certain rows are changed to create beautiful patterns.  

Once we understood the basic structure, she taught us how to read simple pattern charts.  

Here is the basic set-up - minus the weaver!  ;)

We used C-clamps on tables to hold one end of our warps and dowels and backstraps to hold the other end to our bodies.  

So, on to my efforts!  

Here is the first sample band I wove in pebble weave - it is a pattern of X's and O's:  

When I first started, Laverne thought I was putting the warp under too much tension and beating my weft too hard, so I focused on easing up on everything while I worked on this design.  

For my second band, I tried weaving hearts.  The bottom heart in this picture is one of mine.  Laverne thought that now I wasn't beating hard enough!  She wove the middle heart to show me what it should look like.  I wove the third, top heart - I think I got it, don't you?  ;)

(And I barely grumbled at all about the fact that the day before she had told me that my weaving was too tight!)  ;)

Here are a few more patterns on the second warp - a scroll and some "ojitos" (or little eyes):  

The tricky bit about the ojitos is that they include horizontal lines, which require a bit of extra manipulation of the warp...  

At this point, we had used the two warps that Laverne prepared for us, and so we learned how to prepare our own warps.  Using my own warp, for my third band, I tried the meandering river with islands pattern:  

On Sunday morning, I prepared a fourth warp, but I didn't get to work on it until I got home.  Luckily, once home, Oliver took over Laverne's job and kept a close eye on my tension:  

I tried a vine and leaf motif, and I am pretty happy with how it came out!  

Since then, I moved on to the design that I've been wanting to weave since I first saw it - a llama!  Check it out!  :)

Is it adorable, or what?  I am so happy with it!  

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!  :)

My Reward

If you do one good deed your reward usually is

to be set to do another and harder and better one.

~ C. S. Lewis

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog lately - I had a couple of extremely stressful weeks at work.  As my friends and I used to say when we were children, it was h-e-double-toothpicks!  ;)

But I survived and, over the weekend, I had my reward!  A two and a half day workshop on Andean Pebble Weave - a technique in backstrap weaving - with the guru (gur-ess?) of backstrap weaving, Laverne Waddington!

It was intense and amazing!  But let me back up a little bit.

The weekend was the Florida Tropical Weaver Guild's Annual Conference, held at the Lake Yale Baptist Center in Leesburg, Florida.

The conference went from Thursday afternoon through Sunday afternoon.  We stayed in hotel/dormitory rooms on the property:

The conference itself was held in a church building on the lake.  The vendors set up in the sanctuary - and we had our evening events there too.  

Most of the vendors were selling yarn of some sort - from pre-spun wool to hand-dyed yarn.  The hall was a riot of bright colors!

There were also a couple of vendors selling (fair trade) traditional hand made pieces from indigenous people around the world.  

Meals were served cafeteria style and the food was satisfactory.  Nothing to rave about, but there were plenty of options and it was filling.  :)

Evening activities included a fashion show and a business meeting.  As you might imagine, the business meeting was a bit boring, but I did learn something interesting.  Do you have any idea how much it costs to pull off an event like this?  Turns out it's a bit over $25,000!  And they need approximately 90 attendees to break even (their goal).

So, it's a relatively small conference compared to some of the sewing conventions I've attended...  Yikes - can you even imagine how much one of those costs to organize and hold?

Okay, I'm going to save the weaving shots for a second post, so I'll wrap up this post with a couple of pictures of the lake itself, at sunrise on Saturday.

Friends and eFriends

If you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky.

If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky.

~ S. E. Hinton

My 10-year-old sewing friend originally wanted to jump directly from sewing a tote bag to sewing a quinceanera dress (think wedding dress for a 15 year old!) and I tried to steer her towards a simpler project, like an elastic-waist skirt...  ;)

She rejected the simple skirt idea, and went instead for slippers.  So, over the weekend, we made her these beautiful bedroom booties:  

Hopefully it's obvious that she picked the fabric!  ;)

She also did most of the sewing herself and maintained focus and attention for probably close to 3 hours!  Not bad for a 10-year-old, right?  

I did finish off the final bits - mainly inserting the soles.  

She loves them!  She didn't want to take them off...  

That is one young woman who knows her own mind - 

I can't wait to see what she wants to do next!  :)

-----------------------

On the weaving front, I sent a picture of my weaving to an e-friend and she figured out what I had done wrong with my guitar strap pattern.  Not only that, but she was able to "reach" from Bolivia, through the computer to Florida, and show me how to fix it.  ;)

I finished the guitar strap on Sunday night - just in time to take it to work on Monday and give it to my friend!  

I'm am so happy with how it came out!  :)

And he loved it!  :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful sewing weekend!  :)