An Artists Palette

An artist develops her (I will use the feminine pronoun in this piece not to be exclusive, but to be brief) palette by mixing colors. She uses the paint either sparingly or liberaly to create the exact boldness or subtlty that
the creation dictates. A little touch of red, a smudge of blue, dull it with some black or ochre, and you get the look that you want.

A fiber artist has a more challenging road to develop palette. For one thing, she cannot (or most do not) create her own fabric colors. She relies on retailers to sell the fabric that meets her needs. For most fiber creations, getting something in the correct color range is adequate to creating as she wants. I think this works well for clothing. Quilters get much more particular when they are creating their quilts. If one goes into any store that caters to quilters, you will see quadruple the amount of fabric to choose from, because quilters use color matching as their key to what they purchase.

So in creating my Joseph coat of many colors, I needed to have a broad palette! Here is some of it as raw materials.



Creating the coat has been a challenge, because sometimes concepts and actual fabric choices are elusive in putting them together. One of my palette days required 100 miles of travel to 7 different fabric stores to complete the quest for just the right fabric. Last summer, I had a concept for Oklahoma. I wanted purple gingham for the dress for Laurey, and a sheer purple gingham for Dream Laurey's dress. I was so lucky, because as soon as I walked into the fabric store 1 mile from my house, there my fabrics were, right on the first table! This year, I've had to travel far and wide to put together my palette.

And then there is the expense of the palette. What if it doesn't work out? Then someone is out the money for the purchase of the fabric that doesn't turn out to work. This last palette choice was like that, it cost me $80 to purchase what I needed. I sure hope this one works out. Here is the concept.

I made the basic coat part last week, and have been conceptualizing (mostly at night when I'm trying to get to sleep) what the rest of the coat will look like. I purchased the lame pieces this week, mainly because they had all the colors together on one table (not on sale, darn it!) I'm going to make this concept somehow work. I'll show you the results when it gets finished.

Evolve Disolve

I had my new Evolve exactly one week. It sewed very nicely. The lure of the exotic stitches it would do got to me on Friday night, after a day of sewing peasant blouses for the play. I needed to play!

In the play Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the coat is the main object of affection throughout the whole show. It starts off as a gift from father to favorite son. It causes green hideous envy among the brothers, who rip it off their brother and sell him into slavery. Joseph finally emerges at the end of the play, victorious, loved by all, and resplendent in the coat of many colors.

This is why I wanted to costume this play, just so I could make the coat! So, I was working on it Friday night, making the sleeves of many colors. The cover stitch that the Evolve does worked perfectly. I bought some very pricey multicolored serger thread, and sewed lines of rainbow colors across the sleeve parts, which are made of three colors and patches of contrasting colors. The sleeves were working out very well, and looked good.

On my second sleeve, the Evolve disolved!

It just wouldn't move. Something was causing the mechanism to just lock up, and nothing moved. I panicked! I have only about 30 days to go on my costuming, about 100 pieces to sew, and my new serger won't move!

So, I tried to remain cool, glancing at the forlorn 17 year old Eclipse sitting on the table for the helper. Well, I guess I could use that one.

Took the broken Evolve back to the dealer the next day, and they very nicely offered to let me have a loaner while mine went to the shop. The saleslady was very meticulous in off-loading all my tools out of the tool bin in my Evolve, and also doing the same with the loaner.

Here lies the rub. The needles go in the Evolve using a very specific set screw, with a very specific allen wrench provided to tighten the screw. The saleslady was so careful to get that out of my machine. However, she was also very careful to FORGET TO GIVE IT TO ME! So I got home with a loaner machine which has no needles and no way to put them in.

Thank heaven for that old machine. I sewed 10 peasant skirts today, and it worked great. Maybe even better than the Evolve.

It is forlorn no more! Saved the day. Sews great after its tune up 2 months ago? Why did I bother buying a new machine?
Relegated to the floor, no place of honor for this piece of useless junk!

Snuggle time at Grandma's

As a grandmother, there is no finer moment than when a sleepy grandchild is snuggled in your arms, drowsy and quiet, who finally falls asleep, and you see the cares of the world drop away as they fall deeper and deeper into sleep. When they are babies, and are all warm and snuggly, sweet smelling of baby powder and warm milk, it is nothing short of heaven. But then they grow, and those times get fewer and farther between.

My M & M's are almost 4 and just turned 5. The incredible energy that those little bodies have in them is breath-taking, literally, when one wants you to play with them in the bed room, and the other wants you downstairs! Try to make that work without an aerobic stairstep workout--it is really a workout! So the "sleepy snuggle time" at Grandma's hasn't happened much lately.

Last night, they came over for a visit. We had our favorite Chinese take out (mom states that it was the third time in as many days, but they still went for it). After dinner, the evening's activities were planned. It was "everybody downstairs" for a play session with building materials. It worked out rather well. Lincoln Logs and a trip down memory lane for little boy M and grandma, and the new Magnetix (now that they are old enough) for little girl M and mom. And peace rather reigned for about 20 minutes, because little girl M was content to build, and could do it. Her usualy mode up to this time has been to get frustrated easily, and then just break whatever was being built apart. (They called her M the destroyer when she was a little toddler, because she always destroyed the brother's buildings, and with great delight as she did it! Luckily, he is patient with her, most of the time.)

Then it was snuggle time. Grandma had just completed new snuggle blankets for them both, with new themes. Gone are Dora the Explorer, and now we are in love with the princesses. Banished to the back of the closet is Lightning McQueen, and one of the new superhero characters is now #1. So Spiderman and Cinderella will cuddle them for a while!

Little Girl M dragged out the Wizard of Oz movie for us to watch while under our snuggle blankets. She lasted until Dorothy "followed the yellow brick road" then her eyelids drooped and she fell into that sweet sleep of a young child. Little Boy M lasted through the entire movie, asking "why" at every turn of events. This is hard to explain why they did that back in 1939 when they made the movie. It was probably the first time I watched absolutely every moment of the movie, and had to rationalize every action, so now I know the movie very well. I even know the lines, like "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!" He laughed when I did the Wicked Witch of the West imitation so very well!

He wanted to snuggle, too, along with jumping on the couch as he watched. As he gets older, his times of closeness get fewer and farther between. But he still wanted to hold my hand, loved to have his back rubbed, and let Grandma have one more snuggle time with him, as he was cuddled by Spiderman.

Joyful, Joyful....it lifts my heart for these special moments!

Evolution

I have evolved!

You see the name on this machine it is called "Evolve". It is the top of the line Baby Lock serger, now sitting on my sewing table downstairs. You can say I've evolved, from my first Baby Lock serger purchased about 20 years ago. This is my fourth one.

It all started back in the early 90's when I started making jackets from those ubiquitous throws that every one was buying. The jackets were warm, cute, easy to make, and once I wore one to my place of employment, every one wanted one, or two, or 5. I made them at night and sold every one of them before the bell rang the next day. I counted all the jackets I made in that year, and it was 175! That's a lot of jackets.

The first one took me five hours to do on a regular sewing machine. I didn't try many more before I purchased my first serger. Then they took me about 45 minutes to make! I could make 5 in an evening!

I wore that serger out, and one day in a frenzy of pre-Christmas sewing, I broke something vital on it. It would be two weeks before it could be fixed, and I was desperate. So I traded the broken one in OVER THE PHONE, got half the money back that it cost me new towards a used Baby Lock, which ECLIPSED the old one by having many more desirable features!

The ECLIPSE was so wonderful because of two features--one, it had a remarkable "air delivery" system for threading the two lower loopers (sergers use 3-4 sources of thread to do their stitch), because threading sergers without this system is a royal pain in the A_ _ ! So this was so superior of a feature I was totally in love. And this serger sewed a very fine narrow rolled hem, and with a flick of a switch!

I worked this little thing to it's near death. I sewed more jackets, fleece of every sort, and garments, garments, garments. It got a little out of whack after about 10 years of hard use, so I decided it needed a replacement. But, I kept it as a back up, just in case things got hot and heavy in the sewing room! They weren't going to be so generous in trade ins with this, so I just kept it.

I purchased my third serger, a Baby Lock of course, it was called IMAGINE. It was a floor model. I was in the process of moving from the country to the city when I purchased this, and as a result,it sat in the box for about 5 months before I actually started using it. Bad move, because it needed some tweaking and sending back to the factory to be tweaked, and then I only had half a year to get this all accomplished. This one seemed to be star-crossed, because I never could feel confident that it would do what it was supposed to do. In a blog in April, I told about how it just locked up and wouldn't move after a particularly heavy bout of usage. Good thing for me I kept the old one, because I needed it.

I got the IMAGINE serviced, and it continued with its wayward ways. With the big sewing jobs I had ahead of me, I needed something sturdy, and dependable. So, as a result, I EVOLVED! I traded the IMAGINE and got half my money back AGAIN. Now I'm happy, this one will do everything but make the day longer so I can sew on it more!

Wish me luck! As you can see, it uses up to 8 sources of thread. That will be a learning curve that I'll have to deal with at a later date! Until then, I'll give it a mighty whirl, and hope this one brings me to "serger Nirvana!"

The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat takes shape

The coat of many colors is taking shape.


This is for the play Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The main reason I wanted to costume this play is because I wanted a chance to design the dreamcoat. This is the beginning of the project. This took me 4 days to complete, with several days spent in their entirety down in the sewing room.

As you can see, it is far from finished. But I took it to the practice last night, let "Joseph" try it on (it fit him spectacularly). And it seemed to energize both the cast and the crew to see what the final piece-de-resistance might be.

I have to make a second coat, one that will be "torn apart" on stage. I took all of the squares I had left over from the patchwork on this coat and made rainbow strips of cloth out of them, then connected them together to make a piece of fabric for the bodice of this.

I'm using a Elizabethan doublet pattern for the basic pattern. It was made longer for the decorated coat, now I have to figure out what I can cut off to put the bottom on it. I hate to cut any of it! More figuring, and brainstorming! It is a lot of fun to creat this!

Keep watching, more pictures will be coming soon!

The BOX

Here it is, soon to become an international traveler. The UPS man will take it tomorrow and send it on its way to Korea.


This is the leftovers from my roommate of the last 4 months' stay in St. Louis. She was a Youth for Understanding student at my college, and in February, she suddenly was in need of a host family. I'm a poor excuse for a family, but I did have an extra bed or two.

We got to know each other. In many ways, we were opposite in our life styles. She like to stay up late and sleep late, and I needed to go to bed early because I got up early. She liked to cook and eat in, and I hate to cook and like to eat out. She liked raw fish, and I wasn't so sure about that. When we went shopping, she came out of the stores with a little tiny bag or nothing, and I was overloaded with packages. But we both like shoes!

She was visiting here for a complete school year. So, she had been away from home for a long time. Her mom had mailed some care packages from home with things she liked that she could only get in Korea. When she came to my house in February, she had 2 big suitcases and three (or more) boxes full of personal items, plus a book bag, drawing implements for her drawing class, a computer and more treasures! I wondered how it all got here, and how it was all going to get back to Korea.

That is what is in the BOX!

She packed and repacked that box. She started on it weeks ago. She got most of it packed, using Space Bags (they are fabulous), trashing some things, leaving some things for me, and packing and repacking. The biggest issue is that overweight bags going on International flights are terribly expensive, so sometimes it's better to trash it here, and rebuy it in Korea than to pay to have it shipped home.

She went to New York, Boston and DC for a couple of weeks to visit with family. That box sat in the room for three weeks, and I wondered if it would ever make the weight limit, size limit and if ordinary tape would hold it all in. I went to the UPS store on the day she returned from NY for a couple more rolls of heavy duty tape. The original plan was for someone to pick it up on the afternoon she returned from NY. This left a very narrow window of opportunity for her to pack it all up. So the man is coming tomorrow.

This morning, I sadly took her to the airport for her journey home. I know she has been looking forward to going back to Korea for a while. This morning, she told me she had been looking forward to this day for a long time.

I've never done international travel, unless you consider a trip to Tiajuana for dinner international travel. Oh, I've been to Canada a few times, but never overseas. I can just imagine how lonely one must get for home after being gone for months. You make friends while you are here, meet interesting people, but, my darling Korean friend, as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home...."

I will miss you my dear. I know your mom and dad missed you while you were gone. Good luck in the future, and write to me!

P.S. Your favorite slippers and your alarm clock are still in the room. That means you'll be coming back! Whenever you leave something important at someone's house, that means you intend to return. They will be my reminder of our 4 months together, which were very enjoyable indeed.

Updates

Update #1--we had over 2" of rain this morning. While I was at work, getting ready to teach my 10 a.m. class, I swore I was working at night school, it was SOOOOOOOO dark outside. It looked like you were underwater when you looked out the window.

So, naturally my thoughts went to THE WINDOW-WELL! There wasn't a thing I could do about it, just hope the new work that we had done really was our solution. When I came home, I checked things in the room down below, and everything was dry as a bone. So, it seems that our solution to the drainage problem has been effective

Update #2--things came crashing down in the middle of the night AGAIN last night. At least this time I knew it was the klutzy cat knocking the glass into the sink again--thanks, Al, for the 2 a.m. wake up call.

Update #3--one of the noisy neighbors was on top of the telephone pole again this evening, dining! This time, through the binoculars, I spotted a bird foot as it was being consumed--yuck! So now I know what was for dinner! Not hassenpfeffer, but fowl.