Projects, projects everywhere!

It's amazing how a tiny drop in the temperature encourages the flow of the creative juices! We had nine people happily engaged in a whole range of  creative pursuits.

One of our quilters is currently patiently searching for the right shade for the backing for her current quilting project so being stalled on that project, she is looking forward and planning the next. She had the pattern in hand but interpreting that pattern is a skill in itself. There was a bit of squinting and head scratching as well as serious discussion with other social sewers as to which would be the best way forward. Quilting which uses imperial measurements certainly gives our brains an arithmetic work-out! We look forward to seeing how both of these quilting projects progress.

Another of our quilters has wisely chosen an owl pot-holder project. She had a finished one to show us how all the different pieces were going to go together. She was working on the assembly of quite a number of these cute owls, so was cutting out quite a number of pieces in a variety of shades. She has included as part of the wadding a heat-proof product which increases the safety aspect of the potholders. Their eyes certainly added to their cuteness. Her lucky friends and relatives are in for a delightful treat.

One of our very productive social sewers wore one of her previous SSS projects; a cheerful red summery dress which fitted perfectly and looked absolutely fabulous! This week she was sewing a winter nightie for one of her daughter's friends who has a birthday fast approaching. Apparently this lucky young lass's favourite colour is pink so in her birthday bundle is going to be a cosy pink nightie.

A friend had asked one of our crafters to produce a crochet quilt from granny squares and offered some yellow, green and off-white wool. Having a good eye for colour, our crocheter knew that this was not going to give a pleasing result so she has added two shades of pink, one pale and one medium and now the granny squares are pink flowers (deep pink towards the centre and paler pink on the outer 'petals') with yellow centres, that are wreathed by green leaves. To add further zing to the creation, she is crocheting the squares together with bright hot pink which really stands out against the off-white background. This judicious use of colour has transformed the project from ho-hum to eye-catching! 

Our teapot cosy queen continues to produce an amazing array of jaunty teapot cosies decorated with flowers or gum nuts in a variety of colours to contrast against the main colour of the teapot cosy. She has even transformed a Beanie kit into a delightful teapot cosy, utilising the accompanying pom-pom as a rather cheeky embellishment. A boutique tea shop is so impressed with her work they have offered to purchase some of her fun creations. When the urge to create cosies wanes, she turns her hand to creating colourful yo-yo flowers, also know as Suffolk Puff flowers, which are contributing to another project in progress.

A Great Barrier Reef long-stitch project is certainly a long-term project but its variety of bright colours and shapes helps keep the work interesting. It's also a project where one is able to stitch and socialise so our long-stitcher enjoys both the social  and sewing aspects of our SSSs. Using the portable tapestry frame to keep the work taut also means that as one progresses along the project, the scenery changes adding to its appeal and dispersing any tendency to sameness.

Another of our sewers has a daughter who appears to be doing very well for herself as she is having a  form-fitting sleeveless dress currently being constructed from a wonderful red retro tartan fabric. This fabric appeared to have a wonderful weight to it. Her SSS mother is a very experienced sewer who is willing to take on a challenge. Like many of us she has always attached the iron-on interfacing to the facing but on reading yet another sewing book recently she came across the idea of ironing the interfacing directly on the actual garment. We look forward to seeing how this experiment has affected the way the finished garment hangs.

Trying to use tiny blind hemming to stitch down the binding of a lap quilt certainly kept one of our SSSers occupied. Our resident expert in all things textile commented that she appeared to be making hard work of it so everyone popped over to check out her technique. While the technique was a little awkward (done upside down to what one would normally do) and certainly time-consuming, the end result was a very tiny, close-to- invisible stitch which in the end is what counts, giving the quilt a very neat binding.

Our resident expert in all things textile, often does a lot of her cutting-out at SSS and as the projects are often gifts we rarely get to see the final result. This delightful quilt is one of her recent achievements.

The colours are just fantastic and every time you look at it, a different pattern leaps out.  Patchwork is so much about illusion. What you see is not necessarily an indication of how it was constructed.  Being a novice patchworker, my mind boggles as to how this masterpiece was actually constructed. It's refreshing to see the development of such real productive technical skill in a world where there seems to be such an emphasis on cyber skills.

If you are interested in Social Sewing Saturday, just pack up whatever project you are working on together with whatever you need to progress it and come along. While the lighting could be brighter we have wonderful roomy tables which are particularly good for cutting out projects or for just  spreading one's accoutrements out a bit.

Looking forward to seeing how all these projects have progressed when we next meet on Saturday 28 May at 1.00pm at the Community Meeting Room at the Gordon White Library.  Meanwhile, stay stitching and socialising!

 

Look at these lovely, snuggly nighties!

Thought I'd share a photo of the final product from the nightie project begun last SSS!

Don't they look wonderful? All we need now is some winter weather!

Don't forget April enjoys two SSSs, so ......

Looking forward to seeing you, your projects and your sewing gear this Saturday at the Gordon White Library Community Meeting Room at 1.00pm!

Seven sew and socialise on Saturday!

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!

March SSS meeting in April!

Just a reminder to folks that we postponed our March SSS meeting due to Easter celebrations.

We'll meet next Saturday (2 April) at the Community Meeting Room at Gordon White Library from 1.00pm till 3.00pm.

April is a month where we have twice the fun as we will also meet on Saturday 30 April to sew, socialise et cetera!

Don't forget to bring whatever project you're working on and all the goodies you need to progress on it! If you just want to peruse library magazines and books for inspiration that is fine also!

So many folk enjoying a 'sew'!

We had a wonderful group turn up to enjoy the cool and to have a bit of uninterrupted time on those projects which we want to work on but somehow just find it hard to get around to when there's all those household chores shouting at us to be done.

One of our regulars had been merrily sewing away at home and then was flabbergasted to realise she had sewn too many triangles together for that part of her project, so decided SSS would be a great place to come along and socialise as she engaged in therapeutic unpicking!

Another of our social sewers is working on a king-size quilt project which requires the assembly of diamonds flanked by several surrounds as her base piece, so she was able to add a few more diamonds to her growing collection of  blue, lavender and green pieces. A project of this magnitude really requires resilience and persistence as the number of pieces needed is huge while there needs to be a standard of consistent accuracy as well. We look forward to watching the construction of this quilt of wonderful fresh but calming colours.

One of our sewers is always producing wonderful clothes for her children but this Saturday it was her turn! This fabulous red fabric flowing over the table was going to be converted into a great summer dress following a pattern gleaned from the internet. This sewer is always very productive and in no time at all the fabric was cut into pattern pieces and assembly begun. A bit of discussion ensued as to how one goes about lining such a dress and then construction continued. We're all looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Several of our sewers bring along several projects as they are never sure which creative current  they will feel like riding at the time and sometimes they like to change rafts mid-stream. One of our serial crocheters (it doesn't seem be a real word but it should be) has been making a series of coseys for smaller sized teapots. These delightful coseys are adorned with an assortment of multi-coloured flowers and will certainly enhance one's experience of a cup of tea. When the thrill of crocheting a cosey wore off she then continued to create these felt-centred flowers made from a circle of fabric from the scrap material in her stash. These colourful yo-yos made with the assistance of the versatile dental floss are then attached to this lavender corduroy blanket making a unique lap blanket that is not only cosy and warm but beautiful as well.

A new skirt was on the to-do list for another of our regular sewers. A nice and easy sew-up and attach elastic to the top was the plan. She chose a firm knit fabric with a sort-of check design from blue stripes on a white background. It did get cut out but there just too much discussion required to progress much further into the project.

Another of our regulars is making a valiant effort to restore and re-activate her sewing genes. She has battled and persisted with a recalcitrant lined winter skirt without a great deal of satisfaction. After deciding to sew the lining and skirt separately she still was not happy with her progress so she has decided to regroup and start on another simpler project to regain her shattered confidence - table mats! She had ironed the interfacing to the back piece and after advice from our resident in all things fabric, cut out the front piece to utilise the fabric design to its best advantage. Theoretically then, it was just (never use this term just) a matter of sewing the two pieces together, leaving a gap, turning it inside out etc but...... somehow that uncooperative back piece ended up with the interfacing on the outside not the inside! When our tenacious sewer realised her mistake she collapsed in fits of laughter. Much hilarity ensued as we have all been there, done that and knew how she felt! Many complicated plans followed endeavouring to avoid the great unpick but eventually she opted for making another one entirely! We look forward to seeing her set of table mats next time!

One of our new-comers has been a long time coming to our SSS but last Saturday she eventually made it, complete with projects to be worked on! First she toiled on all the laborious cutting that a rag quilted wall hanging requires. Then when that was progressed as far as could be, away with the scissors and out with the crochet hook to work on a multi-coloured stripey lap rug with purples, greens and whites in the mix so far.

Another newcomer to SSS brought along a long-stitch with a story, to work on. Apparently her husband started it then asked her to work on it a bit, then he decided to work on it a bit more and now she is back working on it. It certainly is a family project. It is called The Great Barrier Reef and contains all the joyous colours of the reef. It will be a stunning picture for a wall in the family home when completed.

Our resident cross-stitcher spent most of the time setting up a canvas for a new project. The edges are now taped and the half-way lines both length-wise and breadth-wise are marked with a running stitch. The colours have been separated and attached to the card but the correct colour codes have yet to be added. Then all will be ready for the real fun to begin.

Thrown into the mix of all of this sewing, crochet and conversation was a visit from a delightful journalist from The Daily Mercury. Hence, page 6 of Monday 29 February's edition has a lovely collection of photos as well as some of our comments. We certainly look and sound an industrious bunch!

As Easter falls at the end of the month and there is a local election on the Saturday before that, our next Social Sewing Saturday will be on Saturday 2 April. It'll be interesting to see how everyone has progressed by then.

Happy sewing!

We start our Social Sewing this Saturday at GWL!

After a few of our enthusiastic sewers had a practice run in January, we'll kick off our 2016 SSS this Saturday at the Community Meeting Room at the Gordon White Library at 1.00pm.

Just bring along a project that you are working on and the equipment you need to progress it - it doesn't have to be sewing but some association with textiles, crochet or knitting is fine.

If you're looking for inspiration the library has a great collection of craft magazines and books to help kickstart the creative juices! If you just want to chat with fellow sewers that's just fine too!

Looking forward to seeing you this Saturday at 1.00pm at the Community Meeting Room at the Gordon White Library!

Socialising, socialising and some sewing.....

The Community Meeting Room at Gordon White Library was buzzing on Social Sewing Saturday! Nine people worked on a variety of projects while socialising and networking. It was wonderful to hear such a buzz of conversation backed by the whirr of a sewing machine.

One of our regulars was able to continue with her Knitted Knockers Project while enjoying the refreshing cool of the air conditioner and escaping the oppressive heat and humidity of our summer. She was knitting along very merrily but unfortunately socialising created a lapse in concentration and the project was cast into the unpicking category to be dealt with later. This was a very wise decision as one could then give full concentration to socialising, sampling some of the sweets and finding out about other members' projects which is an important information sharing function of Social Sewing Saturdays.

Our resident FOML, expert in all things textile, has several patchwork quilts in the pipeline and some are due before Christmas so there is a little deadline pressure on there. Consequently she was carefully cutting pieces for a quilt which is based on triangles. We look forward to seeing photos of the completed project in the near future.

Our Christmas elf was crocheting a soft light green rug (maintaining a Christmas theme) amongst handing out beautiful living (more green) presents to SSSers and providing delicious paleo party pieces. This SSSer  brought in a bag of fabric scraps from her stash which another SSSer gratefully accepted. We look forward to seeing how she transforms these tidbits into treasures as she is always mass producing some projects from various bits and pieces for various occasions.  Currently this SSSer was busy embroidering using a variety of colourful stitches on a neutral background. It had the suggestion of the delightful old-fashioned doily about it. It'll be interesting to follow its journey to its eventual destination.

One of our SSSers has been stealthily stalking her skirt project for months. She brings along her machine and the cut-out pieces for her skirt, ponders through the machine instructions then picks up the pattern's instructions and wrestles with them for a while and then in sheer bewilderment turns to another less-taxing project she has brought along. But this SSS was it! With assistance from a more experienced sewer, she now has an operational machine and has sewn her first seams on her skirt which she then proudly modelled for her very appreciative audience. Hopefully this confidence boost will inspire her to continue manufacturing her skirt. The first step is usually the hardest but most important in a challenging journey.

One of our new SSSers was knitting a delicate white baby bonnet on her four needles. Unfortunately the socialising meant a bit of unravelling as well, but that's just part of its therapeutic benefits. This trendy bonnet complete with tiny ear flaps will match the beautifully-knitted overalls that she had knitted previously. This delightful layette is destined for far colder climes than ours and its owner will certainly look extremely cute in it.

Another new SSSer decided to work on the socialising aspect of SSS before she sampled the sewing aspect. She bought her family along for support so all was exceptionally social!

A decision to make a baby dress using traditional techniques brought another return SSSer back after an absence. This small frock complete with pintucks, handsewn hem, petit Peter Pan Collar and placket back to be closed with press studs, has been carefully constructed from a William Morris inspired lawn which adds to its vintage look. Another lucky baby is going to be rating highly in the fashion stakes.

Our resident cross-stitcher continues to stitch her Domestically Challenged kit. The picture is completely cross-stitched and she is now stitching the framing. Once the cross-stitching is complete, it'll be outlining time which, though rewarding, brings its own challenges.

As it was our last SSS for 2015, several regulars brought along some goodies to share and the whole afternoon certainly had an exciting vibe which was enhanced by the Christmas flavour.

Our first SSS for 2016 will be on Saturday 27 February at 1.00pm at the Community Meeting Room at the Gordon White Library.

Enjoy the Christmas break and we look forward to seeing what projects our summer has inspired.