A Heart-warming Moment

I mentioned earlier that my kids weren’t initially happy with my newly-awakened sewing obsession. They were my primary focus for over a decade, and were used to me being there at all times. When I started spending a lot of time sewing and creating earlier in the school year, things changed. In order to free some time for art-making I now needed to limit the time I spent on other things. That definitely affected the kids’ lives, and required a lot of negotiations over the last few months, not to mention a lot of adjustments on everyone’s behalf. Even now, when the school year is nearing its end, it’s still very much a work in progress.

But every now and then there are little moments that show me the kids are accepting my renewed connection to art. The other day, for example, my son, a first-grader, came home from school very excited. “You won’t believe this, mom,” he said. “I have this boy in my class, poor fellow, his mom can't even sew!”.

(I just love this beautiful collaborative piece my son made with other classmates).

Pink Everywhere!

A couple of weeks ago I cut the fabrics for my new spring collection. The ready-to-sew bags were waiting in my studio while I was busy with other life-related tasks or attempted to finished other, previously-embarked-upon projects. All those bright pinks and lime greens kept calling at me, though, so when dark clouds gathered and drenching rain turned my yard into a rain forest, I decided it was time for some spirit-lifting sewing.

I spent the weekend sewing, turning, ironing, pinning and cutting.

The result--the first two out of seven spring bags!

The Scrap Project: Notebook Loops

One of the things that rekindled my artistic passion several months ago was my strong desire to give new life to beautiful-yet-no-longer-wanted pieces of designer home-decor and upholstery fabrics. I’ve been an ardent recycler for many years, always making sure to sort all our household recyclables into the right bins. I also have a small compost pail on my kitchen counter, which I religiously empty into two large compost bins in the yard. Whenever I find a stray yogurt tub or banana peel in the garbage, I make sure to fish them out and put them where they belong. This little obsession served me well as a quilter, for in quilting even the smallest piece of cotton fabric can often be used.

These days I try to make useful items out of rescued fabrics, but after cutting bags or notebook covers or anything else I always find myself left with leftover scraps. From the very beginning I’ve been using the biggest pieces to make inside pockets for new bags:

Or outside pockets for totes:

But many of the pieces are too small for that. I haven’t had the heart to throw these away, and so I’ve been collecting them and storing them in a box.

A few weeks ago I went over this trove and sorted my scraps by approximate size.

I decided to challenge myself to find use even for smaller pieces, and to make that a habit going forward. I started ANY Texture, after all, out of a strong desire to reduce waste and save beautiful, unique things from going to the landfill. So now, instead of cutting fresh straps to make my notebook loops, for example, I use leftover straps of lining.

This piece, for example, left over after cutting lining for one of my still-under construction spring collection, would have been tossed away earlier:

Instead, I ironed it and sewed it:

And then made a beautiful loop out of it, for which I found the perfect notebook cover:

It works great!

Finally organized!

It took a while, but I am happy to report that my new fabric cabinets are finally finished!

We set them up, and they fit perfectly into our guest-room’s alcove. Since I put them together stair-like, they don’t feel bulky, and don’t suffocate the narrow entrance. Their light color matches the other furniture in the room, and helps keep the space airy and bright-feeling.

I spent a couple of days loading them up with all my sewing stuff. My different-sized pieces all fit in nicely, as if the cabinets were made to order just for them:

I couldn’t be happier!! Thank you, IKEA! Finally, a well-organized studio :-)

Now, Knowing myself, I’m sure the room won’t be tidy for long--I need too many things all at once, and there is no better place than the carpet to lay out work-in-progress. But at least I will not have to move everything out once guests come again. One hour of tidying up should do it.

Inspiration: Spring

The place I live in is not artistically inspiring. I am usually drawn to things with a history, a past; to things that show the revenge of time; to weathered walls and peeling paint. But although the area I reside in offers a great quality of life, it is too new, too clean, too modern and too suburban to inspire creativity. Thus I usually have to rely on other things to trigger my artistic juices.

This year spring has arrived early in California. We had summer-like temperatures starting in February. And after four years of a severe drought, we also got some rain--not enough to solve our problems, but more than we did in any of the previous four winters. The combination of warm weather and plentiful water did magic. My neighborhood suddenly transformed--from a depressing sprawl of brown gardens and dying trees it swiftly burst into colorful life. Lawns that looked dead resumed their natural green. Plants that hardly dared bloom in previous years are now covered in red, yellow, pink, white or purple blossoms.

I find this gush of life contagious. I’ve been taking long walks in my neighborhood amidst the plentiful blooms, and for the first time ever found inspiration close to home. This led me to choose atypical colors for my spring collection. Not the usual dark, in-between colors I am often drawn to, but bright pinks, magentas, purples and greens--the colors of spring.

I chose my fabrics a few weeks ago, but only this week finally found time to cut them:

These are some of my spring fabrics, in the colors of an awakening world:

Here are the first few I cut:

And then the rest, sprouting like a garden on my living-room floor:

Here are some of the real flowers that currently surround me, and which inspired my new, upcoming bags:

Enjoy spring, everyone!

More Totes!

About three weeks ago, inspired by the success of my own tote pair (and family and friends' subsequent enthusiasm), I started working on seven new extra-large totes. I realized that it’ll be easier for me to work on several simultaneously rather than tackle them one by one. Not because it takes less time, but because it eliminates the need to constantly think of what to do next, and also because this way I can do all my cutting and ironing at the same time, thus avoiding setting everything up over and over again (well, I guess in that regard making a few at a time DOES save some time…).

I finished about half of them this morning:

These totes were my main project for the last three weeks, although I did work on a few other things in bits and pieces in-between. It took three weeks because my sewing time is rather limited.

A tote starts with me choosing fabric for the outer layer, both for the “walls” and bottom of the tote, and for the outside pockets. I also choose straps in a matching color.

Once the fabrics are matched, I cut them all to size and sew them together. This is a picture of about half of my new totes after I finished sewing the outside pieces together and attached the handles.

Once that is done, I choose fabric for the lining.

Then I cut the lining to size. For these totes it took a couple of hours to cut all the lining pieces and make them the exact right size, since not all the totes were the same size, and so I had to measure each one and make sure I cut the lining accurately.

After that comes the ironing stage. In this case it was a LOT of ironing. In fact, two or three entire work-days of it! It’s funny, because normally I hate ironing, and postpone it as much as possible. I’m ashamed to say that our Thanksgiving tablecloth is still waiting to be ironed (and it’s March already!!). But somehow when it comes to sewing projects I don’t mind it as much…

For these totes, because they are so big and since I want them to carry heavy weights and last a long time, I first had to iron heavy interfacing onto the backside of each outside layer. I tried two different brands, but found that heavy fusible interfacing just doesn’t stick that well, regardless of the manufacturer. It takes twice as long as what the label recommends, but even then the interfacing often peels off after a while, requiring yet more ironing… So I stood there for hours. Once that was done I had to iron all the lining pieces again. That went much faster!

This is how the two layers looked once all the ironing was done:

After the lining is nicely pressed, I choose a matching-colored zipper and sew it on. Here is an example:

I then sew the inner pocket, sew the lining and sew the outer layer. I turn the outer layer right-side out and place it inside the lining:

Then I stitch the opening, turn the tote in and top-stitch the opening shut. And that is it! It takes a long time, but it feels really good once everything is finished, and even better after people start using it and enjoying it!

Almost There...

We really need rain here in drought-stricken California, and it was great to get a few days of good precipitation last week. The plants in my garden are happier than I’ve seen them in years! Still, it was nice to have a break over the weekend. My cabinets were already put together, so I was able to take advantage of the dry weekend to take them outside and paint them with three layers of a transparent coating.

I was worried to leave them out overnight, but in the morning there were only a couple of Kamikaze-bugs glued to the veneer. I managed to scrape them off without causing too much damage :-)