Due to personal commitments I was unable to join in the fun on Saturday but I have it on good authority that there was much sewing and socialising.
One of our regulars assures us that the red dress she was working on last month has been completed with much assistance with the facings from a video tutorial. This Saturday, she was optimistically planning for a winter this year (hard to think there might be an end to this long hot summer) as she has started the construction of flannelette nighties for her lucky daughters. Again she is utilising an online pattern but found the narrower flannelette somewhat challenging when it came to pattern layout. The combined creative efforts of our resident-expert-in-all-things-textile and our productive-sewer extraordinaire overcame the difficulties and eventually the pieces were cut out and ready for assembly.
Our prodigiously prolific yo-yo producer is persisting with this project. To ensure the yo-yo flowers stay firmly together she prefers to use dental floss rather than cotton as it 'Never breaks!'. She also proffered this sewing tip: 'Use dental floss to sew buttons on jeans and other robust garments if you want the buttons to stay on!'
Our regular Social Sewer who is determined to make her winter skirt, met with yet another obstacle. Sewers need to be made of very stern stuff! She has decided to use elastic in the waist of her skirt lining to move the project along a bit but unfortunately she needed wider non-roll elastic to make the skirt fit firmly and sit well. This set-back was disappointing especially as the project is developing a history of hiccoughs. Stoically she dug out some mending so all was not lost. It seems there is another visit to the drapers for wider elastic in the offing.
Our long-stitcher extraordinaire continues to bring out the colours of the Great Barrier Reef in her project. Long-stitching is rather therapeutic as one is able to cover more space more quickly than say with cross-stitch or traditional tapestry, and yet still be presented with various mental challenges.
We have a couple of quilters in our mix. One is currently joining over a hundred blue, lavender and green diamonds together as a king-size quilt is brought into existence. Trying to get the colour mix right is certainly yet another painstaking step of the project and requires some unpicking here and there, as well as re-placing this diamond with that and re-edging this one with this colour rather than that, time and time again as the quilt begins to take shape. Keeping the diamond points sharp is another challenge altogether. Patchwork is certainly not for the faint-hearted!
Another of our quilters is delving into her stash of Bali batiks and starting to cut the pieces for quilt pattern which she downloaded from the
Robert Kaufman website. It certainly looks a brilliant quilt and we look forward to seeing it come together in reality. It is wonderful how traditional techniques and skills can be supported by modern computer technologies.
Another social sewer is working on a colourful baby rug made from a collection of bright granny squares which she is currently crocheting. Granny squares are a great way to use up your stash of wool and is also a craft that is very portable.
April is a bonus month for SSS as we will meet again on Saturday 30 April at 1.00pm to stitch and socialise some more! Looking forward to seeing how everyone's projects are progressing!
