Official Fall

I don't care about the season right now. I know it's still 90 degrees in the house (our A/C is broken), and I know the days are still pretty long. But that first official marker of fall has come about. That first glorious day, which parents everywhere await with held breath and whispered giggles.


School starts today.  Wheeeeeeeeee!

Weekend Drive

Gorgeous drive today. Just decided to explore and we'd never been to Garden of the Gods, outside Colorado Springs.

Instead of going the boring way, and heading straight down I-25, we decided to head out Hwy. 85 and go through Sedalia, Palmer Lakes, and Monument before hopping back on 25 just N of Colorado Springs. Beautiful!

Saw 2 coyotes hanging out in a field, buffalo, many many horses and cows, and just pretty foothills views.

Garden of the Gods was a lot of fun, and very pretty to walk around. Doing it again, I'd go in the middle of the week and first thing in the morning to avoid some of the crowds and get more idea of the wildlife there. Saw many swifts and pigeons as well as one or two prairie falcons.

Decided to be adventurous on the way back, and instead of just retracing or going up 25, we headed out 24 through Manitou and then caught 67 North in Woodland Park. More wonderful driving, and a happy stop in Decker for truly delicious ice cream. It was amusing to get 100 mpg in the Prius coming down the mountain.

Followed the South Platte back, watching the fly fishers and the people tubing along the way. We thought about staying on 67, but decided that was too twisty and dirt road for the Prius and caught 40 to head back over the ridge and connect back to Sedalia. 40 is also dirt road, lots of washboard, but not to bad on the car and no real sharp hairpins.

All in all a terrific day, and we're already planning the next excursion. Possibly back down to Cave of the Winds, or maybe all the way down to Royal Gorge.

July

The season of fluff has passed. Yay!

It's 100°F out.  Boo!

Our A/C is dead (it's the original to the house and has no freon, thus has a leak which is impossible to find).  Mega-Boo!!

Think everyone's sleeping in the basement tonight.

Skirt Part Two

I promised pictures of the pre-ironed bias tubes -

It's a whole pile of wondering whether the whole thing will work out, if the stuff will stick, if you're going to iron it down in the wrong spot, and which one was supposed to go under? I found that laying it out on my project table and then slipping a cutting mat underneath the panel and transferring it carefully to the ironing board worked the best. Nothing moved, and I had a firm surface to press against while fiddling the bits into place.

The first panel took 2 hours from start of placement to sewn finish. Each one after that to 40 minutes or so, depending on how temperamental the thread decided to be during sewing.

Finally, all were knotted and ready for the rest of the skirt.

And it was time to start putting on the panel frames:

It was at this point that I made a critical decision: to top-stitch or not to top-stitch. I decided that if I was going to this much effort to make the knots that I would top-stitch everything. So, sew 6 bottom edges on, then go back and top stitch them. Sew the side edges on; top-stitch. Sew a couple panels together, and then top-stitch. More than doubles the sewing time, what with fiddling with the settings and switching the feet around on the machine, but is more than worth it.

Half the skirt done:

I'll cut to the chase. Let's just say that there is an underskirt made of muslin - 6 panels only with fully enclosed seams so there will be no raveling. The inner and the outer skirt are then sewn to the same waistband. Separate hems for the inner and the outer skirt.

The final product:

It has been declared incredibly comfortable.

And, at the Festival this past weekend:

One of my favorite things about it is how it hangs. The frames of the panels fall to the inside, and the centers of the panels bow out. Since I did a pointed hem on purpose it just makes a cool shape when worn.

It has been washed now, just like all other clothes she has, and with a light ironing looks just beautiful.

I'm already making plans for the next bit of Celtic appliqué work. I've been dreaming of a very cool bodice for a while, and now I think it might even work.

Trying Out a New Skill

I've had this wonderful book for a while now, drooling over the pictures, and figuring what I could do with it. I'm not a quilter, so I dream instead of appliqué on clothing or bags.

I finally decided on something to do with it. The Anti-Craft, in their book, has a great pattern for a Wheel of the Year skirt. I used the general idea for a quick, non-appliqué skirt for myself last year and it works great. This time, I decided to try to make something for my daughter, who loves long, full skirts.

Their skirt uses 8 panels, but that's too full for her to wear comfortably. So I modified it and recalculated for a 6 panel skirt. I found a motif that I really liked in Williams' book, and it just so happens it's designed for a repeat of 6. Hooray!

The combination of these two things, along with some creative redrawing and rescaling of the knot work to make it fit the panel gives this:

Yep. Those are going to be the colors. Dark brown for the main body of the skirt. Orange for the appliqué. And bright red for the divisions between the panels, the hem, and the waistband. Hey, look here!

The orange really is that eye-searing. I love it, but I have blue trails on my eyeballs after working with it for a while.

Construction has begun, first with the creation of a lot of little 3/8" wide bias tubes from the orange fabric -

- followed by tracing the knotwork design from my template onto the brown fabric. Normally I would attach the fabric to my window over the pattern and use sunlight. With brown fabric I needed to get creative. Hmmm, the window panel is removable -

.... and I have a small fluorescent light ...

So, yesterday was spent tracing and tracing and tracing, to give me all 6 panels traced and ready for the next step.

Today's task was to finally try the applique. It uses a product called Steam-a-Seam 2, which is basically a double-stick tape which is re-positionable until it is ironed down. After ironing it can be washed or dry cleaned without the appliqué coming up - supposedly. The technique in the book calls for sticking, ironing, then sewing down all the edges so there's no chance at all of things coming loose.

I'll spare you all the agony, for the moment, of the sticking process and how utterly hopeless it looks until it's ironed down. Mostly I just forgot to take a picture of that step - I'll get one later. For reference, Steam-a-Seam 2 seems to have a shelf-life. The original package I had was probably 2 years old, and would not stick at all - to anything. I went and got a couple "new" packages, and they stick somewhat. Some places would stick very well, others had no hope at all until they were ironed in place.

Here's what it looks like after it's ironed down.

See where there's still some shadow underneath the orange, as in the bottom left corner? That's why it still needs to be sewn. These are tubes, not flat pieces, so they have a puffy upward dimension until properly squished by sewing.

Top thread is transparent mono-filament thread. Bottom thread is all-purpose thread which closely matches the orange of the applique.

Using a small zig-zag stitch, every single edge of the design is anchored down, jumping over the crosses of the knot as appropriate.

And when it's all done, and gently ironed, I think it looks pretty darn close to the sketch that started it all.

Only 5 more to go. This one panel took me 2 full hours to complete, but then I've never ever done the technique before. I'm hoping that this will have taught me the sticking points, and that the next will go a little better.

Either that, or it's going to be a very, very long week.

Better

Much better today. Things have actually been crossed off the list. TSTWNE is living up to its name, but at least it has both sleeves now, and is neatly packed into a basket for finishing later.

The more critical project is completing Lil'Rogue's outfit for next weekend's trip to the Colorado Renaissance Festival. It is massively unlikely I'll get a new bodice in time, unless somehow there get to be 48 hours in every day and I can live solely on coffee. Heck, I may just cash out some of the money I earned earlier this year with freelance writing and buy myself something pretty. Or just repair my green bodice and get one more year out of it.

Further details as progress is made. I have a whole lot of bias tubes to make.

Planning, meet Reality

What I needed to get done today:

1) Get the second discussion problem done and submitted for my class.
2) Start a draft of the paper that's due on Sunday.
3) Clean up the still-wet tiles in the basement, so it can stop smelling like mold down there and actually dry.
4) Finish the second shoulder seaming on The Sweater That Will Not End.
5) Keep the kiddo entertained, since it's summer.


What has actually gotten done so far today:

1) Listen to kiddo whine that she never gets to do anything fun - just because she was asked to go do her completely normal morning jobs.
2) Got the tiles pulled up from the basement, and washed that part of the sub-floor with bleach. Set the tiles out in the sun to dry completely.
3) Get yelled at some more by the kiddo because, no, sorry, we don't have a kite available right at this particular second.
4) Start the laundry of the nasty towels used to clean up the flood in the basement and the doll clothing that got slimed.
5) Take kiddo out for a bike ride.
6) Have small snack.
7) Read a little bit with kiddo.
8) Clean the kitchen floor and the lower cabinets on my hands and knees because both are repulsive.
9) Get whined at by kiddo that she's bored and can we paint?
10) Make deal to be allowed to finish the floor.
11) Get supplies.
12) Paint with kiddo.
13) Kiddo wanders off "to take a nap", having cleaned up 2 items out of our painting festival.
14) Clean up the rest of the painting stuff.
15) Bring the tiles back inside, brushing off all the *##@& cottonwood fluff I knew would adhere to them, but I had no choice, it's how they had to dry.
16) Prepare a snack, since I had no lunch.
17) Find out kiddo didn't take a nap, but was just reading, and as soon as I sit down to eat my snack, she comes down to ask for something else.


Summer break is only 2 weeks old. I may not survive the rest of the month.

I still have to get this next problem and paper draft for my ethics class done today, since I refuse to work on them over the weekend. At this rate, there's no way kiddo's getting her new skirt for renaissance festival next weekend. So I guess it'll be another night where I'm up until midnight studying or trying to finish a project.

And kiddo wonders why I don't have a lot of patience right now. Mommy needs just a bit more than 5 hours of sleep a night, kiddo. And possibly some time during the day that doesn't involve the demands of other people literally every 5 minutes, with constant sentence interruptions.