Friday fragments

Finished my pompom pillbox hat, just in time for the rain to come back... right pleased with how it turned out. Wool melton cloth trimmed with jaquard ribbon, blue/grey bias ikat, and just for fun,  chocolate-color pompoms around the edge of the brim! The way the colors of the hat and my clothes echo the colors of my hair and eyes is entirely intentional.

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There will be time spent this weekend in the workshop, as there are a few enameled holiday gifts that have been commissioned for either Christmas or 12th Night. Shop work is very welcome these days. I had a fun time looking at pictures of snowy owls for one of the orders, and came up with four different possible designs for them to choose between, some more naturalistic and some more stylised.  The finished pendant will be about 1" in diameter...

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Long years ago, when I wasn't even twenty and went away to college the first time, back in the 70's, one of the authors I remember reading was Alan Watts. I was surprised to find this sweet animated bit, "Life and Music" was done to one of his recordings. Enjoy...

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The downside of going to the dental school for care is that it takes a lot longer timewise for various procedures (goodside being that care there is more affordable, helpful indeed when times are hard but teeth need help) Our plucky heroine has decided that one upside of only working part time is that there is no need to fret about such things, after all getting to sit in a comfy chair with my feet up is not part of my usual scene.

For some reason I have a foolishly insanely hard time with novocaine injections in my mouth, so much so that it is usually one of my two benchmarks for 9 to 10 pain (the other one, I wrote about here)... but today I was treated to one that was not excruciatingly painful, a first for me... Not only did my dental student use twice the amount of pina colada numbing gel, but he then was very careful to not insert the needle faster than the novocaine was working. Apparently this means going really slowly, which most places dentists are in too much of a hurry to do, but it meant that the novocaine pain I had been dreading so much that there was almost no sleep last night... didn't happen! Whoo HOO! After that, the rest of the afternoon in the dental chair was a snap. I made a point of letting the supervising dentist know how happy I was with what "dental boy" had done, because positive feedback is always a good thing.

pom pom progress

...I have added a band of the jacquard trim around the brim of my pompom hat, and am edging it with some indigo/grey ikat bias strips, folded and couch-stitched down. This edging was inspired by my pal K, who suggested that some kind of raised cord would be an interesting addition. The diagonal bias stripe sort of puffs up between each stitch, which adds an almost beaded texture dimension to the border. So far have only partially stitched trim border on the top edge, bottom edge still needs border added.

The jacquard ribbon trim has both floral motifs and random bands of woven chenille in assorted coordinated colors. 'Twould be difficult to find a more perfect trim for my purposes, and it was surprisingly inexpensive. It appears to be simply serged strips of a very unusual fabric, and while it is useable as is, I felt that the serged edges needed to be enclosed somehow, hence the diagonally stripey bits, which also let me add in just a touch of my beloved indigo. This color combination looks very japanese to me, and the finished hat will coordinate with pretty much my whole cool weather wardrobe.

pom pom piping

our plucky heroine always has more projects on the list than time to do, so having more than one set up as a "kit" means that small fragments of spare time end up being useful. While currently my non-spare time is full of actual prep work for commissions (+ med foo, sigh), I am also working on some new ideas for holiday gifts, and a new style of whimsical hat. The wardrobe projects* occupy my mind in a soothing almost obsessive way...

My thought is to try some new-to-me detail of construction or style on many if not all of the 21 remaining garments. The next up, while I wait for the arrival of a copy of the missing misplaced pattern piece (thank you kindly Meg for being willing to trace and send), is a TNT longsleeve t-shirt - two layers, indigo over black, with pinked reverse applique. My original inspiration is this shirt, the fabric has such unique textural patterning, and, of course, just my colors...

 I am amused at the idea of translating a 16th century decorative technique into a 21st century garment. Back in time, some garments were slashed and pinked: had decorative cuts made in the main fabric to allow the inner layer to show through. I found one interpretation here, though her version is a different style of t-shirt. As there is time, my plan is to mark lines on the doubled pieces and stitch them lengthwise with running stitch, which should allow the completed top to still stretch widthwise when being worn...

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...our plucky heroine was inspired to make up a new cozy whimsical hat, after seeing the pom pom cowl, initially posted here, and interpreted here by Sandra. There are many pieces of dense soft wool melton cloth that B&K donated to my stash, offcuts from the back room at Mill Ends. To coordinate with my wintertime sewing, a medium grey seemed ideal, combined with chocolate brown small pompom trim. Once the hat pieces were stitched together, it was apparent that a bit more stitching was needful to keep the layers of dense wool neatly aligned, so added a bit of pick-stitching with black pearl cotton along the brim edge, and where the crown of the hat joined the top. I do think this needs just a bit more embellishment, and if memory serves, there is some black/brown/grey/cream abstract jaquard ribbon floating around somewhere; will have to track that down and try it for around the brim just below the pompoms and running pickstitch... (better pictures tomorrow, when there is daylight)

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* SWAP and 6PAC