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!  :)

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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!  :)

Our Little Secret...

If you want to keep a secret,

you must also hide it from yourself.

~ George Orwell

I decided to do one more weaving project before I returned to working on the panels to cover my weaving bench seat cushion - a guitar strap for a friend of mine.  He asked for red and black.  

I played with an online pattern generator (here) to come up with this plan:  

I set up a warp to do this pattern, and discovered that it was too narrow - so I added some extra red and black warps on either side of this pattern.  

Then, I started weaving!  

Here's how it is coming out:  

I guess you could say that it bears some resemblance to my plan, in that it does contain red, black and white yarn...  ;)

Here's the thing - I think that my best bet at this point, is to just not show anyone else what my original plan looked like...  

So, can it be our little secret?  ;)

Weaving AND Sewing!

Everybody has to leave,

everybody has to leave their home and come back

so they can love it again for all new reasons.

~ Donald Miller

Well, I've completed three more key fobs AND I even snuck in some sewing over the weekend!  

First, the fobs:

I tried to go for a fancy, "comb" pattern with my second fob:

I like the colors, but the pattern just didn't work for me - it feels static - kind of like a ladder...  

So, for my third fob, I pretty much copied a pattern from someone else participating in the weave-along (WAL):  

And I LOVE it!  I think it came our really, really cool!  :)

Finally, for my fourth fob, I decided to focus on my weaving technique, rather than the color pattern.  I just did a series of stripes, with each narrower than the one to its left.  

I didn't love it at first, but it is growing on me...  ;)

The key fobs were a blast - each one only takes a couple of hours, I learned a lot about design and I was able to practice my technique!    

That being said, I've decided to move on from the WAL - I owe a friend a guitar strap and, of course, I have two more of those major panels to do, in order to make a cover for the cushion on my weaving bench.  

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As for the sewing, remember when my 10-year-old friend and I made a tote bag (here)?  

Not surprisingly, many of her friends and her mother's friends clamored for one of their own.  One such friend, Mayra, actually made arrangements to come over so that I could help her sew one to carry her workout clothes and shoes to the gym each week.  

We started with a quick trip to Joann's for some fabric.  She liked lots of the fabrics as we wandered up and down the aisles of bolts, but I kept waiting for that moment when she fell in love...  ;)

Then it happened - she was totally smitten by a brown cotton with multi-colored Spirograph-like flowers and designs. 

I've seen that look in the eyes of so many people - I love it when it happens and I can SO relate to it!  

I walked her through the steps of sewing up this tote bag - she used a green canvas to reinforce (& decorate) the bottom and to make the straps.  

We lined it with a cream-colored canvas.  

And she loves it!   

She told me that she kept touching it, because she couldn't believe that it was real and that she had made it herself!  :)

The whole morning made me miss sewing, and I browsed through my waiting projects and picked out two fabrics to make two versions of the same, A-Line skirt (a TNT for me).  

I finished one and got half-way through the other. I'll post pictures later this week.  It felt so good to be back on my sewing machine!  Like coming home...  :)

I hope everyone had a good sewing weekend!  :)

Little Colored Pieces of Love

Hold fast to whatever fragments of love that exist,

for sometimes a mosaic is more beautiful than an unbroken pattern.

~ Dawn Powell

Our ex-foster teen is here visiting and we spent Saturday morning at a local make-your-own-mosaic shop doing art work together.  

Here is Carolyn (13) with her "Be Free" dove:  

Mariana (10) made a cross for me:  

(She is such a sweetie!)  

Our ex-foster teen (19) made a Valentine's Day present for her boyfriend:  

And Mariana's art teacher (her age? let's just say that there was a death threat involved here...) made a wall decoration for her baby's room (a daughter, due in June):  

It was a lot of fun to make the mosaics...

But the best part was being together!  :)

What?  You want to see my mosaic?  

Oh, okay...  ;)

I made a decoration for my sewing room.  :)

Fob, Fob, Fobbing Along...

Wherever you are in that lake,

whether fighting to keep your head above water

in those horrible first waves,

or whether you're somewhere along

the more gently bobbing ones,

just keep your eye on the shore and know

that you are a little closer to it today

than you were yesterday. 

~ Liberty Forest

Well, despite the best efforts of my lungs to leave me, strike off on their own and make a new life for themselves, I have managed to convince them to stay and I have even gotten some weaving done!  

First, I finished my second, 47 inch long fabric panel!  Here are the two panels, side by side, on the bench cushion that they will eventually be covering:  

A closer view:  

It's a bit busy (you think?) - design is something that I need to learn about and work on - but it is still progress towards a goal.  :)

And, remember that Key Fob Weave Along (WAL) that I joined?  You know, the one with all the complicated rules?  ;)

I actually wove a key fob last weekend too!  

Here's the warp:  

My loom set up:  

Close-up:  

Some progress:  

Houston, we have a fob!  

Close-up:

I am really happy with this design - I kind of copied it off someone else's fob - but the colors and color sequencing are all mine.  :)

Boy, it's a nice change of pace to do a 1-inch wide, 6-inch long project, after two, 7-inch wide, 47-inch long projects!!  

I've already got a plan for my next one - as usual, I jumped right from simple to insanely complicated and the design could easily crash and burn...  Wish me luck!  ;)

London and Limited Options

London - a place you go to get bronchitis.  

~ Fran Lebowitz

And I didn't even get to go to London...  :(

What's up with that?!?   :(

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Man, I've got to say that, when you are searching the internet for cute clip art and silly (OR meaningful - I'm nothing if not flexible) quotes about bronchitis, your options are seriously limited!  

What's up with that?!?   :(

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Don't worry, I'll be better soon...  

Heck, I'd better be, or else the doctor who ordered me that painful shot in my tush is in big trouble!  ;)

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P.S. - my weekend pretty much sucked - I hope yours was better!