homage to Miyazaki

in which our plucky heroine takes a break...


Can you see how I double-stamped the kodama heads? I can hear that odd little sound they make when I look at that. Unlike my usual block print shenanigans, these new tiny hand-carved stamps are not intended for any sort of historical clothing trim. I have some cunning plans to use them this holiday season, and I also think that they will be a fun way to embellish my next-year-journal, where I am going to experiment with the bullet journal concept a bit more than I have so far. My pals who bullet journal have really found it to be useful, so I'm going to try documenting sketches, plans, and progress in a more structured way 

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December SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	brown linen blouse	GM enamel	extra tartlets**
2	jingle bell	brown blouse cuffs	bag of fabric scraps
3	indigo batik dress	x	-
4	miyazaki stamps	x	-
5	x	x	-
6	x	x	-
7	x	x	-
8	x	x	-
9	x	x	-
10	x	x	-
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

Tuesday tidbits

in which our plucky heroine is blue, but not sad...

Its gingerbread season, but I've never made cuneiform gingerbread... or for that matter, stamped cookies like the ones that Reannag Teine creates amazing stamps for...

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New dress, made from indigo dyed batik cotton stripe, using the revised button front bias cut bodice pattern. There are still a few subtle adjustments I want to make, but overall am pretty happy with how it turned out. Most of the time, everyday dresses are worn underneath a pinafore, like this:

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My bias front bodice pattern is drafted a bit more closely fitted than the straight grain bodice... so it needs a pleated back yoke to help with freedom of movement, like when I ride my bike. But there are some fabrics that look weird if the printed design is on a diagonal, so having two different bodice options is a good thing.

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After the winter holidays, in January I plan on participating in the "Sólbein Steek-along" hosted over at Fringe and Friends. I love sweaters made from Icelandic yarn, and the pattern motif on Sólbein is simple and subtle, and my chosen yarns are all denim-y indigo:

BUT... I don't want to knit the sweater top down, for two reasons - 1. I do most of my knitting while riding transit. A top down sweater gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and is not at all modular. A bottom up sweater is modular for at least half or more of the process, until the two separate sleeves and lower body are united. And 2. I think that knitted decreases look much tidier than knitted increases. So, I have been gradually trying to suss out how to transform the top-down pattern into a bottom-up pattern. It is rather like a word problem in arithmetic.

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December SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	brown linen blouse	GM enamel	extra tartlets**
2	jingle bell	brown blouse cuffs	-
3	indigo batik dress	x	-
4	x	x	-
5	x	x	-
6	x	x	-
7	x	x	-
8	x	x	-
9	x	x	-
10	x	x	-
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

some sewing snippets

in which our plucky heroine stitches away like a madwoman...

The sleeve cuffs on my new blouse were really bugging me, 16" being much too large in diameter. So, I decided to just remove them and replace them with smaller cuffs, which would also allow me to test if my replacement measurement was closer to what I wanted... Short answer is yes, that sleeve cuffs of 12" on my 3/4 sleeves work much better, still large enough to push up out of the way.

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Additional sewing machine bobbins were acquired; with all the sewing projects underway, having bobbins ready to go will speed my sewing!

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Figured out what I want to make for my Sekrit Santa Swap pal... Am tempted to carve a block instead of cutting a stencil.

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Finished my striped indigo batik dress for the "Pre SWAP 2019 Dress Challenge". Somehow I had forgotten that the fabric is a true indigo dye, and so despite pre-washing the fabric I have to keep Washing My Hands, which keep turning blue as I handle it. No photos til that is dealt with!

I was quite unhappy to realise that I didn't have obviously suitable buttons on hand for this dress, (which also makes me think I need must check the button box for the other blouses I plan on making for SWAP 2019) The two button options I found for this dress each had issues, so I took the unprecedented for me step of making sample buttonholes to try them out. The clear winner was the wee little 7/16" porcelain buttons from the pottery guild sale years ago, as they look much better with the fabric.

The modification I did to the collar draft seems to be doing exactly what it is supposed to; I cut the undercollar 1/8" smaller than the outer collar to encourage turn of the cloth. The modification I did to the lower end of the sleeves mostly worked, but I need to shift the curve I added a bit closer to the underarm seam, though it is already an improvement on the initial toile.

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December SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	brown linen blouse	GM enamel	extra tartlets**
2	jingle bell	brown blouse cuffs	-
3	indigo batik dress	x	-
4	x	x	-
5	x	x	-
6	x	x	-
7	x	x	-
8	x	x	-
9	x	x	-
10	x	x	-
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x