Tag Archives: project

Using up the left overs

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

A New Year. Classic time for plans, resolutions, reviewing the last year and considering what to change about the coming one. I’m not good at resolutions, not at keeping them anyway, but I can reflect and review with the best of them. Last year I did get quite a bit done, made some changes to the house, taught a sewing workshop (really keen to do more of that), did some sewing, but not enough. What am I going to change about 2016?

Definitely resolved to be more organised. And if possible to waste less time. Although it’s hard sometimes to define what is wasted time. Sitting in the garden with a good book and a cool drink is not necessarily a waste of time. Such moments are all part of a balanced life, and essential to one’s well being.

On the other hand, spending half an hour looking for some black elastic, and only being able to find white, even though I’ve looked in at least a dozen different spots where black elastic might be, is definitely wasted time. What am I going to do about it? Put down black elastic on my shopping list for one thing, and have a dedicated spot to keep it for another. Time wasting problem solved!

Part of my plan to be more organised, is using up some of the stuff I already have, instead of acquiring more. I have boxes and boxes of fabric, much of it scraps left over from past projects. I’ve always kept those scraps with the idea that ‘they’ll come in for something one day’. Well, the next 366 (2016 is a leap year) are the days that at least some of them are going to fulfill that destiny. I’m looking out for small projects that I can use them up in.

One resource I found is a charity called Angels for the Forgotten, one of a few listed on the Australian Sewing Guild’s website. There are a number of things they ask for, most of which can be sewn with only small pieces of fabric, so I will definitely make some of those. I have started with a journal cover, using three of my ‘come in handy’ bits. The girl in the 1950s dress on the front is cut from a slightly larger piece, I’m going to use the rest of it to make a pouch for feminine hygiene items. That should put paid to all of that fabric, and the plain red and some aqua coloured cotton I used for the lining are also left overs.

IMG_3929 IMG_3927

I got inspiration for the cover from two of the blogs mentioned on the charity’s website, but didn’t follow either of them exactly.

Ellison Lane

Bloom & Blossom

Advertisement

Seeking the Essence of Erewhon

19 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

I’m in danger of having a long break between posts again! Mostly due to lack of inspiration, and time. I have been busy on a couple of projects, but can’t write about them yet. One I have sent away for (fingers tightly crossed) inclusion in a magazine, although I haven’t heard anything so I’m not over optimistic about that. Two more things I am going to enter in competition, so no details about them either. Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be able to blog about them, even if there is no success!

I’ve also been devoid of inspiration for next month’s writing group. The topic is about place – more precisely I think the question is ‘can we exist outside of place?’. For a start, I don’t even really know what that means. I tend to take things very literally, so my first instinctive answer is no. By existing, we take up space, so we have to have a place to exist in. I suspect that is not what the question means however.

My second, slightly more thought out reply, is ‘yes, of course’. If you mean, do we continue to exist when moved from the place we are born, then obviously we do. Millions of migrants all over the world are proof of that, myself included. Is this some metaphysical question – if you uproot me from the place of my birth am I the same person? Again, I don’t know. My feeling is that all our experiences combine to make us the person we are (people we are?), and place is just one small part of that.

I’m really not very good at abstract concepts.  This topic was introduced with a reference to the novel ‘Erewhon’ by Samuel Butler, which I had not read. I found it on Project Gutenberg, but I have only read about a third of it so far. It’s interesting, but I’m reading it as an adventure story, wanting to know what happens next, without much thought as to the satirical or philosophical nature of the work. I guess in any case I should hold off thinking too much about the message of the book until I have finished it.

I really didn’t have any idea of where I was going with this post when I started writing. (OK, you can say that I still don’t!) And none of this rambling has brought me any closer to writing anything for the group. I’d really like to challenge myself and write something a bit more imaginative or less factual and down to earth than I usually do, but at this stage the ideas just aren’t there. I have three weeks. And I also have to finish the projects for the competition. Will it help to continue reading Erewhon?

Two very different projects

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Two projects currently on the go. Actually there are more, but these two are centre front!

First, the automatic gate opener. I bought this some time ago, and started installing it, and it’s still not finished. The first part of the job was to re-hang the gate so that it would open and close smoothly, or, as the instruction manual had it, ‘oscillate fluently’. Having done that, best part of a day’s work, we then had to wire up and instal the solar panel, battery and motor. The instruction manual, which was so eloquent when it came to describing the movement of the gate, was sadly slightly obtruse over the details of the wiring. Like many things, I’m sure it would have been OK if I knew what I was doing, but since I didn’t ….

However, I have since been emailing the technical support guys, and I think I know what I have to do. Just have to find time to do it, in daylight. At least we got the battery connected to the solar panel, so it should have been charging over the last few days, although it doesn’t seem as if the battery is fully charged yet.

The second project I am on firmer ground with. A friend of my daughter’s just had a (very premature) baby, and I wanted to make a small gift. I found a cute fish here and downloaded the pattern. It’s pretty simple, and I probably could have drawn it myself, but I needed something straightforward. I dug around in the stash to find some suitable scraps of colourful fabric, and I’m halfway there. Will post photos when it’s finished. It might be something that I can get into and get finished within a couple of days, unlike most of the other things I take on.

i got a reply from an online journal that I had submitted an article to this morning, and got excited when I saw the subject and sender in my email inbox. Short lived excitement though, ‘thank you for the opportunity to read the piece, it is not for us’, or words to that effect. I can’t remember now how many submissions I have out there, but I’m sure I should be doing more, there can’t be many left that I haven’t heard about. How many at one time is a good number, I wonder?

Next projects

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

OK, so I sent my entry in for the Australian Cotton Fibre Expo. Actually, I sent in photos and paperwork, which is all that’s required at this stage, and I have to admit that the piece isn’t actually finished. It’s finished enough that I was able to take photos of it though, and it doesn’t have to be sent in until April, so I have a little time yet. I’m pleased with the way it’s gone so far, and pretty confident that it will turn out looking the way I want it to, so fingers crossed!

I need to be strict with myself and finish it before I go on with anything else, or at least start anything else. I’ve already got one project on the go, but that’s a long term thing. It’s a quilt, done in the English method using papers, of hexagons which I think are about 2 inches across, or about 5 cms. I haven’t yet stopped to calculate how many I will need to make for a double bed sized quilt, but I think it will be well over a thousand. I’ll be stitching this all by hand, so you can understand why it’s a long term project! It will be all made from either old clothes, or left over bits from making clothes or other things, so I’m digging through my stash. I’ve been sewing for over 40 years, and mostly when I’ve made something I don’t throw away the scraps, so I think I will have plenty of fabric. I want to go back to the origins of patchwork, when it was a way of using up scraps of old fabric and the good bits of old clothes. Whilst I also love lots of the quilt fabrics which are available today, and have succumbed to some of them for other projects, I have a slight problem with going out to buy yards of new fabric, bringing it home to cut up and stitch back together again. It doesn’t sit too well with the whole ‘use less’ philosophy which I try to live by.

Another inspiration for the quilt is that my Mum made one back in the 1970s. Hers is the same, made of bits of my old dresses, and hers, and she and my Dad still have it on their bed. Her hexagons are smaller though, which makes it even more laudable. I talked to her about it recently, and she told me that one of the patches was from my Dad’s ‘demob’ shirt, in other words the shirt from the suit of clothes he was given when he was demobilised from his National Service in the UK, about 1948 I should think. That patch is wearing thin now, but after about 65 years that’s not surprising! Now I come to think of it, some of the fabric I am going to use will be about 30 years old already, so it only has 35 years to go.

My next short term project might be a quilt for my daughter’s engagement, and for that I shall succumb to browsing the internet for fabric. I want some with themes to cover their interests, so that means hours spent on the net looking for just the right thing. I can’t wait!