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kareinaI was inspired to sew last weekend, and, sensibly, opted to finish a UFO before undertaking the new idea. The UFO in question was a t-shirt I had started three years ago. Shortly after I moved in with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lord_kjar he and I went through his closet and made a pile of things he never wears to get rid of, so that there would be room in the closet for my things, too. One of the things he wasn't wearing was a blue ribbed-fabric T-shirt with a collar in a very lovely shade of blue. I couldn't resist the colour, and so that evening (or the next day?) I carefully cut it to pieces in a way that would give me a fitted tunic-style T-shirt that didn't include the logo or whatever it was on the right breast. I did this in part because, at that point, I had only the clothes in the suitcase I had brought with me, and additional clothing would have been welcome.
However, we were also busy with lots of other things, and I didn't have time to sew them together on the day they were cut. As luck would have it, about the same time, there was a clothing swap at the University--bring in a bag of clothes you never wear, get a coupon for each, and a couple of days later return to the Uni to go through the displays of donated clothing and take with you as many items as you have coupons for. At that swap we found a couple of items that he would wear, and lots that fit me, so I no longer needed that new shirt in progress as urgently, and it went into the UFO pile. Where it sat for three full years.
So Saturday morning I pulled it out, opened up the treadle sewing machine, and went to work. Just over three hours later I had a comfy new t-shirt, cut like a tunic, complete with two small side gores at the hips, and fitted in the waist and upper body, in a lovely shade of blue. I think will be one of my favourite shirts.
Then, when that was done, I felt free to start a new project, and finally begun the cutting of my new wool Viking style tunic for my Viking boy-clothes (I don't care to wear the broaches and beads that go with the woman's clothing from that era, so opted to make myself more masculine clothing). Saturday was enough time to cut out the fabric (all except for the back center gore, which I didn't want to cut till I knew exactly how long it would need to be, and for that I want to put on the tunic and see exactly where it falls on my body and thus where the top of the point should sit), sew together the two half-side gores to make one full side gore, and sew most of the linen facing to the inside of the neck opening (this was just over 5.5 hours of work, all by hand, of course, because this one is for Medieval clothing--sewing machines, even non-electric ones, are ok for fantasy costumes, Folk Dance costumes, and modern clothes, but I can't bring myself to use them for important stuff like SCA garb).
On Sunday I was too busy to sew for most of the day, but we managed to make it to the Folk Music session in the afternoon for the first time in ages (like we haven't been since we bought the house a year and a bit a go), so I managed to get in another two hours of sewing there, while listening to truly beautiful music made by a bunch of violins, a few nyckleharpas, and one each clarinet, guitar, and accordions. Such fun!
This also meant that we were on time for Swedish Folk dancing, which is in the same location, starting immediately after the music session. All too many Sundays in the past year we have been working on projects at home right up to the point where it was time to leave for dance, which meant that we were arriving after she had already started the warm-up music. It was good to be dancing for the full warm-up this time!
However, this week has been busy enough that I haven't made time for sewing on that project. Monday evening I was doing stuff on the computer. Tuesday was choir, and while I did sew whilst we sang (of course!), I opted for a tiny project--hemming some silk scrap into a set of three hair ribbons joined at one end, for braiding into my hair, which I completed shortly before choir ended.
As a side note--I am liking having silk hair ribbons for braiding into my hair--by making the silk longer than my hair I can braid them into my hair and keep braiding the silk even after the hair runs out, and then, when I reach the end I can take one of the three strands of ribbon and tie it in a simple overhand knot over the other two strands, which is plenty to keep the braid from unraveling, and I am not tying an elastic band around my hair at any point, so it is less likely to break. Another nice side effect is that I finally have that dark blue hair I wanted so much as a child, just by using blue silk--my braids are mostly brown at the top, with a hint of the blue ribbon showing through, and, as the braids lengthen they become gradually more and more blue as there are fewer and fewer strands of my hair that reach that length, till, at the bottom, it is all blue. It will be interesting to see if my hair gets a little longer doing this thanks to not breaking it off with pony tail holders.
Wednesday (yesterday) I could have had time to sew on the tunic. I opted not to joinlord_kjar at the weekly Jodo session, since the muscle in the back of my leg that hurt after the session two weeks ago is still bothering me now and again, so I thought I wouldn't repeat the movement that triggered it (never mind that I am still walking back and forth to uni fairly often, it was still a good excuse to stay home).
The first thing I did after he left was to go outside and try out my sledding hill. I had done a bit of sledding back in mid-December when we had a bit of snow, and before the next spell of warm/melting weather, but on that occasion I managed to wear away the snow on part of the hill to bare dirt, so, rather than scratching up the bottom of my sled and wearing away even more snow, I went inside, and have been waiting, hopefully, ever since for enough snow to go sledding again.
We got some snow on the weekend, (not much, the change in elevation from the walkway to the un-shoveled snow beside it is still only about 10 to 15 centimeters high), so when I was shoveling the walkways I also shoveled a path to the sledding hill and dumped a few shovel-fulls to the top and down the side, in hopes of adding enough that I could go sledding without wearing the hill back down to dirt again. (Literally dirt--this is a pilelord_kjar dumped here before giving the tractor back to his dad, with the express purpose of giving me a bit of a hill for sledding this winter, and also having it close and convenient when we return to building the earth cellar next summer, for use in filling in the space between the walls and the part of the hill that didn't get dug away.
I am pleased to report that the sledding hill is now working! It has been warm the last few days (around -1 C), so that fresh snow from the weekend has a bit of a thin icy crust on top, which resulted in the first few times down the hill breaking through that crust and sending snow powder into my face (and down the collar of my jacket). However, once I did a few runs to pack the snow into the slope I started getting more and more distance--eventually sliding well past where my path to the lake (shortcut to uni) goes.
For playing on the hill I don't use my nice wool coat and nålbinded gloves because snow will stick to them due to the slightly fuzzy texture. Instead I wear my old down coat from when I lived in Fairbanks, and I put on the pretty leather mittens I bought at last year's Jokkmokk Winter Market. When I bought those mittens I was looking for an extra layer to wear over my nice nålbinded gloves, so I forgave the fact that the lining the mittens came with was polyester, since I didn't plan to actually touch that part with my bare skin.
However, as mentioned above, it was too warm yesterday to wear the mittens over wool gloves, so I took only the mittens. Ick, polyester! And the texture of the cuff was a very fuzzy, which meant that I kept getting snow sticking to the cuffs.
So I went in and rummaged through the scrap wool collection and found a chunk of very thick dark green wool that was soft and pleasant to the touch--perfect mitten liners. I then proceeded to spend the next 1.5 hours making paper patterns for the mittens and trying lots of different configurations to see if the fabric piece was large enough. Eventually I hit on a way to get all the pieces to fit, and cut them out and moved on to cutting the fur scrap for the cuffs (another 0.5 hours).
Then, since it was getting late I sensibly did my yoga and went to bed without sewing more than one tiny seam (17 minutes ) to join two bits of fur to create one full bit of the cuff--since I am using scrap from making my hood and muff I had only two chunks big enough to cut the full half-cuff, and the other two half-cuffs need to be pieced together from two chunks of fur. It made sense to stitch one set of them together straight away, so I didn't forget which set of small pieces go together.
So now I have two projects in progress, and one completed to replace the single UFO I managed to finish on Saturday...
lord_kjar he and I went through his closet and made a pile of things he never wears to get rid of, so that there would be room in the closet for my things, too. One of the things he wasn't wearing was a blue ribbed-fabric T-shirt with a collar in a very lovely shade of blue. I couldn't resist the colour, and so that evening (or the next day?) I carefully cut it to pieces in a way that would give me a fitted tunic-style T-shirt that didn't include the logo or whatever it was on the right breast. I did this in part because, at that point, I had only the clothes in the suitcase I had brought with me, and additional clothing would have been welcome.However, we were also busy with lots of other things, and I didn't have time to sew them together on the day they were cut. As luck would have it, about the same time, there was a clothing swap at the University--bring in a bag of clothes you never wear, get a coupon for each, and a couple of days later return to the Uni to go through the displays of donated clothing and take with you as many items as you have coupons for. At that swap we found a couple of items that he would wear, and lots that fit me, so I no longer needed that new shirt in progress as urgently, and it went into the UFO pile. Where it sat for three full years.
So Saturday morning I pulled it out, opened up the treadle sewing machine, and went to work. Just over three hours later I had a comfy new t-shirt, cut like a tunic, complete with two small side gores at the hips, and fitted in the waist and upper body, in a lovely shade of blue. I think will be one of my favourite shirts.
Then, when that was done, I felt free to start a new project, and finally begun the cutting of my new wool Viking style tunic for my Viking boy-clothes (I don't care to wear the broaches and beads that go with the woman's clothing from that era, so opted to make myself more masculine clothing). Saturday was enough time to cut out the fabric (all except for the back center gore, which I didn't want to cut till I knew exactly how long it would need to be, and for that I want to put on the tunic and see exactly where it falls on my body and thus where the top of the point should sit), sew together the two half-side gores to make one full side gore, and sew most of the linen facing to the inside of the neck opening (this was just over 5.5 hours of work, all by hand, of course, because this one is for Medieval clothing--sewing machines, even non-electric ones, are ok for fantasy costumes, Folk Dance costumes, and modern clothes, but I can't bring myself to use them for important stuff like SCA garb).
On Sunday I was too busy to sew for most of the day, but we managed to make it to the Folk Music session in the afternoon for the first time in ages (like we haven't been since we bought the house a year and a bit a go), so I managed to get in another two hours of sewing there, while listening to truly beautiful music made by a bunch of violins, a few nyckleharpas, and one each clarinet, guitar, and accordions. Such fun!
This also meant that we were on time for Swedish Folk dancing, which is in the same location, starting immediately after the music session. All too many Sundays in the past year we have been working on projects at home right up to the point where it was time to leave for dance, which meant that we were arriving after she had already started the warm-up music. It was good to be dancing for the full warm-up this time!
However, this week has been busy enough that I haven't made time for sewing on that project. Monday evening I was doing stuff on the computer. Tuesday was choir, and while I did sew whilst we sang (of course!), I opted for a tiny project--hemming some silk scrap into a set of three hair ribbons joined at one end, for braiding into my hair, which I completed shortly before choir ended.
As a side note--I am liking having silk hair ribbons for braiding into my hair--by making the silk longer than my hair I can braid them into my hair and keep braiding the silk even after the hair runs out, and then, when I reach the end I can take one of the three strands of ribbon and tie it in a simple overhand knot over the other two strands, which is plenty to keep the braid from unraveling, and I am not tying an elastic band around my hair at any point, so it is less likely to break. Another nice side effect is that I finally have that dark blue hair I wanted so much as a child, just by using blue silk--my braids are mostly brown at the top, with a hint of the blue ribbon showing through, and, as the braids lengthen they become gradually more and more blue as there are fewer and fewer strands of my hair that reach that length, till, at the bottom, it is all blue. It will be interesting to see if my hair gets a little longer doing this thanks to not breaking it off with pony tail holders.
Wednesday (yesterday) I could have had time to sew on the tunic. I opted not to join
lord_kjar at the weekly Jodo session, since the muscle in the back of my leg that hurt after the session two weeks ago is still bothering me now and again, so I thought I wouldn't repeat the movement that triggered it (never mind that I am still walking back and forth to uni fairly often, it was still a good excuse to stay home).The first thing I did after he left was to go outside and try out my sledding hill. I had done a bit of sledding back in mid-December when we had a bit of snow, and before the next spell of warm/melting weather, but on that occasion I managed to wear away the snow on part of the hill to bare dirt, so, rather than scratching up the bottom of my sled and wearing away even more snow, I went inside, and have been waiting, hopefully, ever since for enough snow to go sledding again.
We got some snow on the weekend, (not much, the change in elevation from the walkway to the un-shoveled snow beside it is still only about 10 to 15 centimeters high), so when I was shoveling the walkways I also shoveled a path to the sledding hill and dumped a few shovel-fulls to the top and down the side, in hopes of adding enough that I could go sledding without wearing the hill back down to dirt again. (Literally dirt--this is a pile
lord_kjar dumped here before giving the tractor back to his dad, with the express purpose of giving me a bit of a hill for sledding this winter, and also having it close and convenient when we return to building the earth cellar next summer, for use in filling in the space between the walls and the part of the hill that didn't get dug away.I am pleased to report that the sledding hill is now working! It has been warm the last few days (around -1 C), so that fresh snow from the weekend has a bit of a thin icy crust on top, which resulted in the first few times down the hill breaking through that crust and sending snow powder into my face (and down the collar of my jacket). However, once I did a few runs to pack the snow into the slope I started getting more and more distance--eventually sliding well past where my path to the lake (shortcut to uni) goes.
For playing on the hill I don't use my nice wool coat and nålbinded gloves because snow will stick to them due to the slightly fuzzy texture. Instead I wear my old down coat from when I lived in Fairbanks, and I put on the pretty leather mittens I bought at last year's Jokkmokk Winter Market. When I bought those mittens I was looking for an extra layer to wear over my nice nålbinded gloves, so I forgave the fact that the lining the mittens came with was polyester, since I didn't plan to actually touch that part with my bare skin.
However, as mentioned above, it was too warm yesterday to wear the mittens over wool gloves, so I took only the mittens. Ick, polyester! And the texture of the cuff was a very fuzzy, which meant that I kept getting snow sticking to the cuffs.
So I went in and rummaged through the scrap wool collection and found a chunk of very thick dark green wool that was soft and pleasant to the touch--perfect mitten liners. I then proceeded to spend the next 1.5 hours making paper patterns for the mittens and trying lots of different configurations to see if the fabric piece was large enough. Eventually I hit on a way to get all the pieces to fit, and cut them out and moved on to cutting the fur scrap for the cuffs (another 0.5 hours).
Then, since it was getting late I sensibly did my yoga and went to bed without sewing more than one tiny seam (17 minutes ) to join two bits of fur to create one full bit of the cuff--since I am using scrap from making my hood and muff I had only two chunks big enough to cut the full half-cuff, and the other two half-cuffs need to be pieced together from two chunks of fur. It made sense to stitch one set of them together straight away, so I didn't forget which set of small pieces go together.
So now I have two projects in progress, and one completed to replace the single UFO I managed to finish on Saturday...