Sometimes, and this is one of those times, I need to look at fabric for a day or so before I decide if the fabric will work for what I want to make. What I want to make is bras. I just finished one made from cream super simplex with brown accents and cream colored lace. I’d take a photo, but there’s no way to arrange the bra so you could see all of it and I’m not about to model it. You’ll have to use your imagination. The bra fabric and lace came from Bra Builders https://www.brabuilders.com. I had asked for a spool of matching thread. They sent brown thread. So my cream colored bra has brown top stitching. If I were to do this again, and I might because there’s fabric and lace left over, I’d use cream colored thread.
I made free standing lace on my embroidery machine. I’ve checked to make sure the lace will fit on the top of the bra cup. Now, I just need the perfect fabric, and I’m not in the mood for white.
I like the fabric, but I don’t know if I like it with the lace. There’s stabilizer around the lace because I haven’t washed it off yet. It is easier to sew down the lace if I don’t wash out the water soluble stabilizer. The first time I wash the bra, the stabilizer will be gone.
I’m leaning towards this one. The fabric is more green than it shows in the photo.
I wanted to go to the No Kings demonstration yesterday. I planned on it. I didn’t go.
I’m still doing rehab following a broken foot. I can only stand for so long or walk so far without a walker. Because the demonstration was in a park, I’d have to be pushing a walker over grass. That’s not easy. It meant if there had been any sort of problem and I needed to leave in a hurry, or out run a bullet, I couldn’t. I still planned on going. I had wanted to photograph the demonstration. I got up, looked at the air quality index, and realized I needed to stay home. The air quality was solidly in the poor range.
Our poor air quality, which has been going on for several days, is because of two wildfires in the Gila Wilderness. The fires are more than 200 miles west of us so we are in no danger from the fires. All the crud in the air from the fires is blithely floating by my house. This is causing an allergic reaction.
This is what I saw the other night. Looks pretty, right?
Tweaking the photo in editing shows what the camera “saw”. Those vivid blues are courtesy of air pollution from the fires.
I saw photos of the local No Kings demonstration this morning. There were more people than I expected. There was someone with a “Free Palestine” sign. Apparently this person is utterly ignorant of Israel’s history. Israel left Gaza in 2005. In 2006, led by hatred, the people of Gaza voted Hamas into power.
Another person was wearing a keffiheh. The only reason for anyone in this country to wear such a thing is to advertise the wearer’s hatred of Jews.
I’m now glad I stayed home.
I’m slowly recovering from the broken foot and have been able to do some photography outside.
The Dona Ana Mountains about a half hour after sunrise.
The view from my backyard a half hour after sunrise. Yes, I know there’s a dead yucca spike smack in the middle of the shot. Yes, I know it shouldn’t be there.
This was taken about an hour before sunset last night. I liked how the light was on the cactus.
This is what a cactus dying from thirst looks like. Note the tiny tuna developing on the cactus pad. There were incredibly few blooms in the desert this spring. We had less than half the average amount of rain last year. When the annual rainfall is about 10 inches, missing half of it is disastrous. Monsoon season – don’t laugh that’s what it’s called here – started June 1. Since then, we’ve had less than a half inch of rain.
I had made a couple pairs of pajama bottoms from knit fabric I got at JoAnn’s. The fabric had an incredibly short lifespan and developed holes faster than I could patch them. That’s what happens with cheap fabric. I hit a sale at Mood and bought cotton knit for three pairs of pajama bottoms. I started on one pair yesterday.
This is for the pair that’s in progress.
A future pair.
The other future pair.
Because fabric from Mood is so often wider than what I could get from JoAnn’s, I’m discovering I can make gym shorts and pajama bottoms from the fabric. I need gym shorts as well as pajamas.
I’ve been designing fabric and putting new designs in my Spoonflower shop. To design fabric, I take photos – usually nature photography. Then, I use an editing program to play around.
These are the photos for the designs I created this morning.
Some of these designs look a little different after I finished the designing and proofing process in Spoonflower.
I have been using ketamine through Mindbloom for a couple years now and I’ve made great progress healing from an abusive childhood. One of the things Mindbloom offers is something called Integration Circles. These are zoom meetings led by a facilitator and offer peer support. What happens in the circles is confidential, so I am limited in what I can share.
After listening to one member speak, bells, whistles, lights and sirens went off in my brain. I thought about the idea of a container for feelings that I had suppressed and which were surfacing. I’m working on an idea to make a fabric box to contain these feelings. I’m not sure I can get into my sewing room – it’s not a walker-friendly room and I’m still using a walker to get around while my broken foot continues to heal.
I’m at the thinking about and sketching about stage of the design process.
This is how far I’ve gotten. I’m thinking about a box with a lid. The lid has a flap so I have a way of keeping the feelings contained. I’m thinking that if I cut the stiff interfacing into individual pieces, the fabric with interfacing will be easier to fold into a box. The sketch shows a cube, but I wonder if I want to play with a rectangle instead. I’d like to be able to use my embroidery machine for the design on each side and the lid of the box. To keep the box closed, I’m thinking I’d like to use a ribbon on the flap. The ribbon would wind around a button keeping the box closed.
Once I get the design worked out, I will need to determine if I can get into my sewing room. Then, it will be a matter of auditioning fabric and sewing the box.
I learned to sew 60 years ago. All that experience isn’t always an advantage. Back then, a sewing machine needle lasted months and months through project after project and garment after garment. Now, needles get changed after every project. Or that’s when they are supposed to be changed.
Sixty years ago, there weren’t many choices in sewing machine needles. You could buy needles for light weight fabric, needles for mid-weight fabric, and needles for heavy weight fabric. There weren’t ball point needles because there weren’t knit fabrics available to the home sewer. We were sewers, not sewists. I still hate the word sewist. It reminds me of a John Wayne movie, The Shootist.
Embroidery needles were for hand embroidery because machine embroidery wasn’t available for the home sewer.
Now, sewing machine needles come in lots of sizes for lots of different uses. It’s hard to keep up. I was having problems with my new embroidery machine. I had ordered some embroidery thread from Superior Threads. I was surprised to see they recommended a size 90/14 embroidery needle. I thought size 90/14 was just for heavy fabrics and I was embroidering on fabric I thought needed a size 70/10 needle. And so I bought some size 90/14 embroidery needles from Superior Threads. I had hit a sale and got free shipping. No telling how much the additional thread storage boxes, which I haven’t purchased yet, are going to cost me.
I inserted the size 90/14 needle into the embroidery machine, and magically stitch problems disappeared.
When compared to my embroidery machine, my iPhone 15 is brick that dials numbers and holds photos. Today’s machines, sewing and embroidery, are so complex that any tiny mistake in threading results in me trying to rip out embroidery stitches. I was taught that there are three things you can do to solve something like 90 % of your sewing problems. Clean the machine, change the needle, rethread the machine. It’s still a good way to solve sewing problems.
Most of the time. Sort of.
I keep the manual next to the machine. That’s how I discovered that I’m supposed to put my finger on the bobbin and hold the bobbin down while I thread the bobbin thread through the track that leads to the thread cutter. That solved a whole lot of stitch problems. I’ve never had a machine that required me to hold down the bobbin while threading the bobbin thread through wherever it has to go.
But now the embroidery thread is being carried to the back of the fabric indicating the tension is too low. I had lowered the tension to help with I forgot what, but it did work for a while. Now, I had to raise the thread tension to neutral. I had slowed the stitch speed to solve some problem I was having. But once I started threading the bobbin properly, I could increase the stitch speed.
I had some dye failures. One resulted in a brown tee shirt with more freckles than a room filled with red haired kindergarten kids. Jim suggested I consider it a tee shirt to wear while working out at the gym. Okay, but it needs embroidery. Everything I own needs embroidery these days. And so I got out some of my new embroidery patterns and played around.
Not the best choice of thread colors for this one. Two of the colors are too similar to be used in the same pattern and one of the variegated threads isn’t working with this pattern. Fortunately, this is a gym shirt.
I thought these might work for a quilt that needs quilting. Probably not. The quilt has lots of ferns, and I don’t think fancy leaves would be an addition.
Finally, after wearing ill-fitting uncomfortable bras for 60 years, I’ve got a bra that fits. A bra that’s so comfortable that I forgot I was wearing it. And the straps stay up!
I used a Pin Up Girls pattern, and paid attention to everything Beverly Johnson said in the Craftsy Bra Making class.
Because I’ve always had a problem with the band riding up in the back, I thought I was doomed to have sagging breasts. Beverly said in her class that if the band rides up in the back, use a double layer of power net. Worked like a charm. I moved the straps closer to the center in both the back and the front and now the straps stay put.
That was so exciting, I decided to make another bra using the lace I had made with my embroidery machine. First, the iron spewed black stuff all over one of the cups when I went to press a seam. Next, the sewing machine kept deciding not to move the fabric when I sewed. Except it didn’t happen all the time. Then, I sewed the elastic on the wrong side of the band. I started to rip off the elastic, and decided it was time to give up on sewing and do something else.
I’ve ordered mesh fabric to make lingerie laundry bags. Nothing ruins a bra quite as fast as the straps and wires getting wound around everything else in the washer.
I’ve got lace made for three more bras, two bra kits I ordered from Bra Builders, and enough fancy lace to make another half dozen bras.
When is a quilt not my work? When does a tool transform into someone else’s design?
I bought an embroidery machine. I knew I’d like it, I never knew I’d love it and want to use it so much. It has replaced my need to use fancy threads on all sewing projects. Now, all projects have to have embroidery. That’s not a bad thing. Even though I bought the machine, a Babylock Meridian 2, on sale and got a great deal, it wasn’t cheap. If I’m going to have an expensive tool, I want to use it a whole lot.
I found a fantastic sale on trapunto designs – 25 designs regularly $50 marked down to $10. I bought the designs. I started playing around with them wondering what I was going to use them for. Then, I realized, I could use them to make a quilt. Except is that my quilt? Or is it the work of the embroidery designer?
I used some scrap fabric and some thread that I’m not in love with to see how big the designs are and how they look when made.
These were all stitched on a quilt sandwich.
Next, I decided to see what size block the design would fit in. I marked out 12″ 10″ and 9″ squares and experimented. I used leftover muslin from a muslin I made for a dress pattern. Good thing I made the muslin because the size I thought would fit was waaaaaaay too big. Not wanting to waste fabric, I’ve used hunks of that muslin for all sorts of experiments.
The 9″ blocks won.
Then I started playing around.
I decided I dislike the font I used in the top design.
Better font and interesting design but I’ve no idea where I’d use it. Still, fun to play around.
I hand dyed fabric to make a blouse. I decided this would be a nice design to embroider on the blouse. I doubt I’ll use these colors, but I did get an idea of what I wanted.
Or maybe not. I’d have to change the orientation of this one, but I think it would be pretty on a blouse.
What about these? A different orientation could be quite pretty on a garment.
But what if I used more subtle colors of thread?
But back to the quilt question. If I use the designs for quilt blocks, is it still my quilt? Is it my work?
So much has happened this week, and it’s only Wednesday.
Monday was our 52nd anniversary. I had hoped to do something special on our 50th anniversary, but we were having a pandemic and deranged passengers thought it was fun to have a brawl in mid-flight. Not the kind of excitement I was looking for. Brady is learning fast and doing well, but she’s not fully trained yet. I cannot fly with her until she’s fully trained. And so a special cruise is not going to happen for a while.
Today, I get fitted for a boot that will allow me to get around without further damaging my achilles tendon giving the tendon a chance to heal. Also today, we will celebrate our anniversary by going to a restaurant for lunch. Brady will be with us. When we take her with us to a restaurant, we make sure we arrive at an off time. I need a table that’s out of the way and large enough that she can fit under the table. A table in a corner is preferable.
While my tendon heals, I’ve been having to use a walker to get around. I decided to make a bag for my walker. I used a Kwik Sew pattern and the pattern had a few mistakes. I had to redraft the pattern to make the bag 3 inches longer and 1 inch wider. I also needed to adjust the length of the straps that attach the bag to the walker. The strap length of the original pattern was too short.
This was the bag I made with the original pattern.
The new and improved bag. I made it from some upholstery fabric I found for $4.99 a yard at JoAnn’s.
I did an embroidery design on the inside of the flap. No reason why I shouldn’t have something cute to look at when I open the bag. I used proofs of my Spoonflower designs for the lining.
And the back of the bag. I didn’t realize the Star of David didn’t point straight up so I didn’t change the orientation.
My rabbi sent an email to the congregation yesterday. A credible threat had been made to our temple and our congregation. Local police and FBI are investigating. There will be security during services, but a couple rent-a-cops aren’t much of a defense against a terrorist. I’ll be attending services via zoom. I’m so tired of being afraid. I’m so tired of university presidents granting legitimacy to pro-hamas terrorists. I’m so tired of people not taking anti-Semitism seriously. I’m tried of researching military-grade body armor capable of stopping a round from an assault rifle. Unfortunately, the strongest armor is the one class that isn’t made to protect a woman’s body. I’m tired of leaving Brady home because I’m worried that I won’t be able to protect her. When my great-great-grandparents along with my 10-month-0ld great-grandmother left East Prussia, they were disguised as German Lutherans. Now I understand why they hid. I’m torn between wanting to stand up to terrorists and refuse to be bullied into hiding and not wanting to get killed.
If I ever decide to make cargo pockets again, someone stop me!
I wanted shorts with cargo pockets. I’ve got a Green Pepper Pattern for cargo pants. I thought I could just take the pocket pattern piece from that pattern and use it for cargo pockets on my shorts. I’ve been sewing 59 years and I couldn’t understand the directions. I decided to draft my own cargo pocket. Just a simple patch pocket with a pleat in the center. I drafted a pattern for the pocket flap.
I sewed the shorts together leaving the inseam open. I thought that would give me plenty of room. It didn’t. If there’s a next time, I’ll sew the side seams, but put the pockets on before sewing the center seam.
I think I want the pocket wider, but I’ll need to wear the shorts to know for sure. The point of having cargo pockets is so I’ll have someplace handy to put treats for Brady.
Update: I’ve worn the bra for several hours and it’s comfortable. I’ve ordered a no band pattern from Pin Up Girls. I’m hoping the two patterns, both Pin Up Girls patterns,, can be fit the same.
All I want is a bra that’s pretty, fits, doesn’t poke me, and the straps stay up. I had no idea how hard it would be to achieve that.
I stopped counting the number of bras I made so I could tweak the fit at 7 bras. It’s too depressing to count higher than that. Cups too big. Cups too small. Bridge too narrow. I have a copy of The Bra Makers Manual and kept checking to see what I was doing wrong. I came across instructions on how to turn a back closure bra into a front closure bra. And so I followed the directions, increased the width of the bridge, and tried again to have a bra that fits. Being discouraged from all the attempts that didn’t fit, I was in no hurry to finish this bra. I’m pretty sure another failure would be the last attempt.
I wanted to line the bra so I wouldn’t have raw seams. A friend was downsizing and sent me all of her sheer fabric. I thought one of the sheers would be perfect for lining the bra. It wasn’t. I had a horrible time sewing the parts together in sheer fabric. The threads pulled and gathered the seams. I switched to hand basting. When it came time to attach the channel for the under wire, I attempted to tack the lining to the bra cups. Except the sheers had gathered enough that I couldn’t. I had already sewn the lining to the edges of the bra and attached the elastic to the bottom of the band. The only option was to cut the lining out. And so I did.
I attached the under wire channel and inserted the under wire and discovered I had cut the channel too short. I had to add about an inch of channel to one end on each cup.
I bought hooks and eyes for the front closure and wondered why anyone would buy hook and eye tape. When I was sewing the hooks and eyes to the bra, I discovered why. Sewing individual hooks and eyes is a PITA.
I attached the straps to the back of the bra and pinned the other end of the straps to the front of the bra. I attempted to put the bra on. It was too small and wouldn’t stretch. I wondered what I did wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. In order to sew the elastic to the power net without stretching the power net, I put a strip of water-soluble stabilizer behind the power net. I hadn’t washed out the stabilizer, and the stabilizer was keeping the power net from stretching. At the moment, the bra is on the line drying.
Anyone know why wordpress will not let me access my account on Opera? Yes, I tried. No, it will not take my email address. No, it will not take my username. No, it will not let me use a link sent to my email. I’m starting to hate wordpress.
Send photo of each listing to my personal Facebook page. Check.
Send photo of each listing to my Facebook business page, Deb Thuman’s New and Improved Art Page. Check.
Move photos from laptop to iPad. Check.
Figure out how to get the photos onto Instagram. Check.
Wonder why I bother with Instagram. Check.
Get photos and link to my store onto Instagram. Check.
Send photos to google photos. Check.
And that’s why I didn’t get much done today.
I spent a good part of the week tweaking a bra pattern. I’m determined to make a bra that fits and is comfortable. The first three versions weren’t right, but each was closer to being right than the preceding version. I had to dig out my copy of Bra Maker’s Manual to find out how to solve the drooping problem. I need to alter the pattern piece for the upper cup slightly. I also need to alter the back slightly so I can attach the straps closer to the middle of the back of the bra. I hope that solves the falling strap problem. Once I get all the tweaks worked out, there will be photos.
I’ve been sewing. And dyeing. I altered a pattern to make tee tops, and tweaked again to make tops from woven fabric.
For the most part, I like these tops. I think they would have been more successful in a different fabric. These are all made from 100% cotton. I’d like to try sewing with batiste, but there’s no batiste for sale locally. I could order batiste online, but I’ve never worked with batiste and I’d like to be able to feel the fabric before buying.
The 100% cotton knit tops were more successful and incredibly comfortable. I bought 10 yards of white cotton knit from Dharma Trading with the intention of making tee tops. Wrestling 10 yard of 60″ wide fabric isn’t easy and I wish I had a 30′ long cutting table. I used an eight foot long table and set it up in the kitchen. After I got the tee tops made, I dyed them. There are five tops and three are solid colors. Here are the wild ones.
I folded the fabric horizontally and then tied it with strips of fabric. The design is a bit more subtle than I anticipated, but I like it.
For this one, I tied buttons into the fabric and used twist ties to hold the buttons in place. The trick is to make sure none of the circles fall on an embarrassing part of the body.
Some days, today being one, making art is difficult. I put beads in a row to make a necklace, and I hate every necklace I try to make. Nothing looks right. Aquamarine beads don’t look right coupled with any other variety of bead. I’ve got blue, teal, yellow and red tiger eye beads. None look right with any other variety of bead. Swarovski crystals don’t add anything to a collection of beads. Neither do pearls. I just bought sparkly black opals. Even though I have severe bling addiction and love sparkle, I can’t come up with a design in which to use them.
I’m stuck.
I’ve got a pattern for pajama bottoms laid out, but I don’t feel like cutting it out and sewing the pieces together. I’ve got a pair of slacks almost done, but I don’t feel like doing the final chore: inserting elastic. I need a pair of white slacks and I’ve got some white linen/cotton blend. I don’t feel like laying out a pattern.
I’ve started writing a second novel, but don’t feel like writing it. Maybe it’s because of how I’ll feel while I’m writing it. I don’t write fluff. I write my guts. My guts take a lot out of me. The novel is about the hell I went through working at the Public Defender Department – a hell that nearly killed me.
I want to blame this malaise on external events. Except external events aren’t the cause of my malaise. My painting teacher said my work is self-taught folk art. Um….doesn’t taking art classes take my work out of the self-taught category? Folk art? What the fecal matter is folk art? Anna Robertson Moses created folk art. I like to think my work is more refined than Moses’ work – which isn’t taken seriously. If Anna Robertson Moses’ work were taken seriously, she wouldn’t be known as Grandma Moses.
Maybe the subject matter of my current work contributes to the malaise. I’m doing another painting about mass shooting. Painting about antisemitism during Passover and on Holocaust Remembrance Day is a strange experience. I paint while thinking about hatred, oppression, slavery. The two landscapes I’m working on aren’t enough of an emotional break. Worse, a third mass shooting painting is working itself through my mind.
I take photographs of the spring blooms in my yard, but I hate the photos. There’s no magic in them. There’s nothing in the photos which grabs my attention.
I love yucca flowers. I don’t love the photos of yucca flowers I’m taking.
I don’t think the problem is my photos. My photos are technically good, but they don’t give me joy.
Why am I not happy about the crisp detail in this photo?
Why am I not pleased with the playfulness of this composition? I can’t even imagine turning this into a fabric design – and I love designing fabric.
When I retired seven years ago, my serger died. Jim retired two weeks ago; my serger died. Now, I have a heavy duty Brother. It threads a bit differently than my old Brother serger, but it’s just a matter of learning new threading. There’s no Dreaded Bottom Looper. There’s a lever that comes out, put the thread in the guide, turn the hand wheel so the lever goes back inside, and then thread the bottom looper the same as threading the upper looper. This time, the instruction manual has good instructions for how to use the attachment that puts elastic on something. A few practice runs, and I had the settings all worked out.
For some reason, my sewing machine, Pfaff Quilt Expressions 4.2, refuses to sew on sport lycra. It sewed on other sport lycra, but it wouldn’t sew on this sport lycra. I unthreaded the machine, cleaned the machine, put in a new needle, still wouldn’t sew. I tried a stretch needle, a ballpoint needle and a universal needle. Still wouldn’t sew. I had been sewing a casing in my undies, then threading the elastic through the casing. PITA. With the elastic attachment for the serger, I can make a pair of undies in an hour. This is very good because I was running out of decent undies.
I made these using fabric I designed and had Spoonflower print on sport lycra. My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman I just got back seven yards of proofs and I now need to put 294 new designs in my Spoonflower shop.
I use wooly nylon in both loopers when I’m sewing on stretch fabric such as lycra. Where other threads won’t stretch, wooly nylon will.
I want to experiment with other types of thread. I’d like to be able to get the same stretch but with a metallic thread.
It rained today. And yesterday. And the day before that. We’re still about 4″ below average rainfall. That’s a big deal when the annual precipitation is a bit more than 8″. I had a chance to photograph raindrops.
If you look carefully at the water drops, you can see an upside down image of the stem.
No, it’s not a photo of an experiment gone very wrong. It’s raindrops on an agave leaf showing the texture of the leaf.
Elizabeth became queen the year I was born. Now, I feel as if a part of my past is gone. It feels odd to grieve the loss of someone I don’t know. The only other time I’ve experienced grief at the passing of someone I don’t know is when Pete Seeger died. I saw bits and pieces of the queen’s funeral this morning and wondered about so much pageantry. How does one practice for such an event? How does one even know what to do in such and event? How does one practice the events surrounding the death of a parent or grandparent? Yet they all seemed to know what to do and when to do it. The other reaction I had is the notion of a corpse hanging around for 10 days. You can’t have a body hang around too long. Bury it before it starts to stink.
I wish I could sew like the queen’s dressmaker.
I take a painting class and am utterly unable to walk into the painting studio without getting paint all over me. I need crappy clothes for this class. The only pair of jeans I have is falling apart. The rest of my slacks are dress slacks. Before I can sell my designs in my Spoonflower shop ttps://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman I have to have the designs proofed. I can put 42 6″ x 6″ designs on a yard of fabric. This has caused a pile of proof yards to accumulate. I needed something to do with all this fabric.
The paint doesn’t show on these pants. I’m working on a second pair. I wanted to make a top out of proofs, but I haven’t decided what I want to make. Scrub tops are comfortable and I wouldn’t have to wear a bra, but I don’t think I want to wander around looking like a psychedelic health care worker.
I’ve been working on small paintings for my painting class. I’m working with 8.5 x 11″ MDF. I thought this would be a series of small paintings showing what bipolar disorder looks like from the inside. Once I started painting, I realized I’m painting my autobiography.
These are some of the designs I made on my iPad but haven’t yet translated into paint.
I was going to explain these, but I’d rather hear how you interpret them.
These, so far, don’t have meaning.
I’ve been criticized for working intuitively and told I should plan out a piece before starting on it. This series defies planning. I think I’m working in one direction, and then I discover I’m working on something different. I’ve no idea when this series will be done or what, if anything, I want to do with the designs. Crit will be especially intriguing.
Deb's Art 