Alison Sews Here

Our clay guild had Ellen Marshall as a guest last month, and I was gratified to hear that she used acrylic mediums in her surface treatments - I’ve been playing with them and trying to see how they do with clay. With that in mind, I saw a post on IKEA hacker where fabric was applied with acrylic medium that inspired me to make these:

What I did was cut two pieces of fabric into equal squares. I rolled out gold Fimo to about a 4 thickness on my Makin’s pasta machine, brushed it with Soft Gel Gloss Acrylic Medium, and laid the fabric on top. I cut the clay around the edges of the fabric, let it dry for about an hour, then painted more medium on top. I formed the curves, pressed the top together, and suspended the earrings on bamboo toothpicks put into a block of scrap clay. I let it dry for an hour that way, and then baked. I followed this with several coats of medium, each dried, baked, and lightly sanded.

I’ll be trying this again, with a little more attention to detail. I’m thinking that using the Varathane Diamond Finish on top of the fabric instead of more acrylic medium for a more lacquer-like finish, and some forms to hold the clay in place while it’s baking. A simpler shape would be easier to sand, but I love the contrast here of folds and straight edges.

Now, I also had a couple of ideas in mind, and while I was making these earrings, I started mixing clay to get the color I wanted. I keep forgetting that colors in clay don’t work like colors in paint or dyes, and ended up with nothing but scrap. Well, like the fox and the grapes, I decided that Fimo wouldn’t work for this piece, anyway, and that I’d try Premo instead. Now, I don’t know whether or not I like working with Premo, all I know is that the translucent was the most translucent and the most flexible of the translucent clays I’d tested. So all I bought was white, black, burn umber, yellow, red, and blue. My color failure from before inspired me to do a take on Maggie Maggio’s Smashing Color Tutorial.. I made much smaller samples, and tinted each with white, black, and burnt umber. I’m not quite finished with blue and red, but here’s yellow and blue:

I just made them into little balls, sprayed my glass surface and piece of lucite with water to release, and smushed them down into discs. I put them in order on a piece of glass that fits my convection toaster oven, baked, then glued them onto vellum texture bristol board with E6000 glue. As you can see, I also tried to make a little grid for them, but let enthusiasm overrule good planning. Oh, well. I put numbers on either side of each disc to remind me of the proportions of each color. I’m hoping this will mean a lot less wasted clay in the future.

I toldja I made something. This is McCall’s 2933, view A

It was pretty plain and utilitarian, so I added some pockets:

I actually need to plan this out better, because I could have used a couple more, or maybe I’ll put together an insert that can hold the rest of my stuff and transfer from bag to bag. I love having a purse with a light color interior, and having the pockets for my wallet and phone on the side that’s up against my hip makes it easy to get them in and out. I can get my keys out of their pocket without even opening up the flap.

I’m going to make a few more alterations to the pattern, too. There’s a lot of notch cutting that could be eliminated, and the thickness on certain seams was just unnecessary. In fact, the timing on my machine is now a mess - it has to go in for repair, but that’s OK because it’s years overdue for maintenance anyway. The next version of this, though, will be assembled on the old Singer that was saved from someone’s trash. Just in case.

OK, I’ve been really busy lately, not so interested in posting after I’m done with this - just reading and responding to other blogs, wouldn’t ya know. . . but I’m going to show you a couple of things I’ve been using that I think are marvelous.

I’ve been doing some sewing, but my sewing room is also for mending and such, so sometimes I end up not interested in sewing by the time I’ve made room for it. One of the time-consuming things is a few of hubby’s shirts. (BTW, when they tell you a high cotton count shirt is “wrinkle free”, they’re lying.) I don’t mind doing them, I put on the TV and zone out, but it just takes hours to do all of them - and I forget to iron until I have all of them. So when I got an e-mail from Atlanta Thread (see links in sidebar) with a discount coupon, I splurged on a couple of things.

This is a Reliable Home Ironing Board. It’s heavy and sturdy, doesn’t rock around like your average board, AND it has a heating element and a fan that will blow upwards or downwards to help move steam and heat through the fabric. The foot pedal turns the fan on and controls the speed, and not only does it help in getting the wrinkles out (and not putting new ones in) but it also keeps things in place that might otherwise slip off the board. Only bad thing is that it’s way more powerful than my Iron now, so I might have to upgrade that, too. Heh.

I also got this massive sleeve/pants board. I can finally do the cuffs and the pleats above the cuffs. I do sleeves first, then the rest of the shirt, because the shirt gets kind of twisty while I’m ironing the sleeves.

Now, normally I’m not a big fan of Sylvania lightbulbs, but this one is great. It’s a full-spectrum halogen for sewing and crafting that fits in a regular fixture. Is it as good as an Ott Light? No, but it’s darn close and a heck of a lot cheaper. I have my Ott bulb on the right and this on the left, and I can see everything as I sew.

So there you go. Merchandise that gets my seal of approval. Buy with confidence. Heh.

OK, so we’re using the new studio space in the garage, even though we’re not done with it. Hubby put up the shelves, I’ve been moving the art stuff in out of my sewing area, and I made a few clay things.

When I made the raiders cane, I had a lot of black and silver left over, so I twisted it up and rolled it out.

I was also experimenting with Golden Acrylic Medium. This was medium weight gloss, and I found that thinning it with water dulled the gloss, so I applied it full thickness horizontally, to enhance the horizontal color pattern. This stuff adheres to polymer clay pretty well, especially if you bake it on. I’m going to do more experiments with it to see the various effects, baked and unbaked. Updates to follow. I made the jump rings myself, and still need more practice on that. I think these are pretty cool, though.

These earrings were a last resort. I have a lot to learn about wire work.

I had a different piece of clay than the triangles, but I kept breaking it while I was twisting. Oh, well. At least I learned how to make an earwire. I have a bunch of pieces in the same color scheme through its various mutations, I’ll put up pictures when they’re finished.

My sewing table is still a multi-purpose catch-all thing, especially since we’ve been prepping and painting the now finished garage studio, hubby’s office, and the living room. My decorating theme this summer is modern american drop cloth. I will get to things when I have the space and the time, but right now I’m lucky I can make room to iron. *sigh*

OK, so I found my fabric, and picked my pattern:

The daisy/ladybug fabric will be for View B, and I think I’ll use a ladybug red for edge binding. The lemon and daisy and plain daisy prints will be for View A. This is going to take some doing, though. My shoulders still need an 8/10 size, but my waist is almost 6 inches bigger than the waist on the 10. In addition, I’m going to have to adjust the dart for a C cup (in case you didn’t know, all commercial patterns assume you’re a B. . .), and the front is a single piece , so the dart is in the center of the fabric. I’ll take pics as I go along.

We’re going to be converting our garage into a family art studio, which means I can move the messy projects off my sewing area and actually sew. We decided to rearrange the family room so that all the sewing stuff could be moved into the sewing area, as well. (Wow! What an idea! Everything in the same place. . .?!?!?) We reassembled the industrial racks I had purchased from an online supplier (sorry, I don’t remember which one, but these doubles, made of galvanized steel and having lovely large wheels on the stand assembly were $89 apiece back when I bought them, and well worth it) and hung up all the fabric. Voila:

It’s double depth, but not a problem because the racks are very easy to move, even with all that fabric, and I just pull the floor lamp in between the racks to light up the back row. In my old sewing room, I had the fabric arranged by fabric type and then by color. I’ll do that again at some point, but right now just having it out of boxes and visible is enough. The skirt hangers came from Atlanta Thread and Supply, which I linked to in the last post, and run about fifty cents apiece. Again, well worth it. I have a couple that are holding almost ten yards of cotton twill, and as long as I don’t yank on them, they’re staying put. Having it hanging like this makes it easier to take out, put away, or add to.

There is still a bit of fabric left. When I get the ironing done, there’ll be more rack space for it, and small pieces are being put in open baskets that will fit on the floor under the hanging fabric, folded so I can see each piece. I buy and save small bits because they come in handy for trim, for pieced projects, and for practicing new ideas and techniques. Yeah, they sometimes go into quilts, too.

The whole idea is being able to see what I have. It’s the fabric that inspires me, so if it’s put away, my motivation level is dramatically decreased. You know the Eskimo rock carvings? I watched a show about them once, and the narrator asked one of the artists how he decided what to carve. He responded that he waited for the rock to tell him what it wanted to be. That’s what my fabric does. When it tells me what it wants to be, it’s time to cut into it and start sewing. If it’s in a box or shelved under its companions, I can’t hear what it’s saying.

I’ve been busybusybusy, and in my spare time I’ve been playing with polymer clay. There will be more sewing stuff soon, I promise.

OK, I am absolutely the last person in the world you should be listening to when it comes to organization advice. Even if I weren’t ADD, I am a spotty housekeeper, known to hide things in unlikely places and straighten up the various piles o’ stuff around the house when company’s coming. However, this makes it even more important for me to organize my sewing stuff. We recently moved, and so I was able to go through things, throw away excess and useless items, and re-organize from scratch. There’s still a fair amount of chaos, of course, but here’s my system.

This is the side of my table that I generally work from. The stuff I need at hand to copy, draft, and alter patterns, measure, cut, and mark fabric, and all my patterns are here. It’s 8 Trofast units from IKEA, attached together, with a combination of the small and medium slide-in boxes and a few shelves. As you can see, they’re the perfect size for pattern boxes.

This is my most used drawer, at the top right where I can reach everything. An adjustable drawer insert holds the most-used tools.

Hubby and I finally worked this one out. We took a wooden closet rod, cut it to fit, slid on the roll of butcher paper I use for tracing patterns (about $12 a roll at Costco), and screwed it on to two pieces of masonite. This just fits into the trofast unit and rests on a shelf. I can now pull out a length of paper from the roll and cut the size I need. Yes, it means that when I run out I have to take off the duct tape that keeps it from pulling off the shelf, and unscrew the masonite from one end to replace the roll, but it’s a small price to pay for the daily convenience. The duct tape was also used to edge the plywood that serves as a top. The plywood is screwed into several of the Trofast units, and topped off with a Mega Mat Sew/Fit pinnable cutting mat, purchased and very quickly delivered from Atlanta Thread and Supply (1-800-847-1001).

Version 2

The initial site was just not working, so it’s time to redo it.

This is a work in progress — suggestions are welcome!