We all knew that the Bard was a ham.... so here he is in the Limelight.
This mini quilt is a great little project for any level of embroiderer & quilter! It's really a great scrap buster too, and would make a really great gift! I'll put it up in the shop and it should start shipping on Monday! Pattern includes instructions to embroider by Nicole of Follow the White Bunny, Quilting instructions by this one (points at self), along with detailed illustrations, a DMC floss guide and an iron on transfer! With this pattern, you will be well on your way to whipping these out for everyone you know.
I've tested the iron transfers and you can get a good 4 transfers out of it! Pretty sweet!
I am so excited that everything is coming together. I will have you know that this has taken much longer than I planned for, but everything looks great! You will be happy to know that each quilt pattern has 8 pages and is full color. They include very easy to follow instructions, very specific details along with quilting suggestions!
If you have ordered a quilt pattern it will ship by Thursday, and if you ordered an embroidery pattern it will ship by Monday!
wholesale information available by writing to lizzyhousepatterns (at) gmail (dot) com. More information to come tomorrow!
Deborah Moebes is amazing! She is like a sewing bff...or a sewing super hero. She owns and operates the stitching party powerhouse Whipstitch. She has also written an amazing book, Stitch by Stitch that is an essential sewing primer for learning to sew. In fact it's pretty much a gift that she has written and given to the world. It is comprehensive, supportive, helpful and it's a book that allows you to grow as your progress through it.
I've asked Deborah some questions, and you're in luck... she answered them!
We read that before you were heiress to an Atlanta Sewing Empire, you were an archeologist. Does this effect your process in any way? Meaning, I am a printmaker and it effects everything that I do. Thought process, work process, finishing process...
Totally! Archaeology is about quantifying and measuring--data, artifacts, structures--but in the end, it's really about people. What I learned as a scientist translates directly to the way I look at what I do now, especially my understanding of how sewing has changed over time and how people learn to sew. I think that the way I approach my own sewing is more methodical and planned because of my years as an archaeologist--I think through projects way more than I did before I was a scientist, and I see more organization and system in my projects, if that makes sense. I also think that the human connection of past to present is huge for me, and is a reflection of my background--there are very few things I do in sewing where I don't think about the timeline that led to me making that very project in that way; I really wanted the book to be part of that larger context, and to represent another link in that ongoing chain.
When choosing fabric for projects, what are your personal specifications besides what a pattern calls for? I refuse under any circumstances to use a polyester fabric, and that almost always includes blends, as well. I really, really feel strongly about using natural fibers and about wanting the fabric to feel good under my hands as I work. After that, I'm like most people: I want something pretty that flatters me, and that appeals to my eye and personal aesthetic. Most of us tend to develop a palette over time, and gravitate toward particular colors; I tend to use a lot of lime and chartreuse, a lot of tomatoe-y reds and clear blues for myself. And as surprising as it seems, considering how much I love so many of the prints that are on the market right now, I generally prefer to make garments from solids (and then accent with accessories made in prints).
You have included a very thorough section about types of fabric, how they are made, and design specifications. Do you have a favorite cloth to work with? If so for what reasons? I find cotton to be a really versatile and forgiving fabric--it's certainly the fiber I recommend for anyone looking to learn to sew. I use it for the majority of my projects and love the way it behaves and feels and how easy it is to work with. As a fiber, it also comes in a wide range of fabrications, which is so great--everything from broadcloth to voile and lawn to knits. I'm working with more knit cottons lately than I have at any other time, and am really excited to see so many more interlocks come on the market.
Let's expound on choosing fabrics. How and why should we choose what fabric to use, Deborah?
When choosing a fabric to suit a planned project, your goal is always to focus on three qualities of the fabric: the weight, the drape, and the print. These are the characteristics that affect the functionality, the desired shape, and the aesthetics of your finished project.
Weight is the heaviness of the fabric, which has as much to do with what season to wear it as it does with where on your body to wear it. Fabrics with more weight have a better recovery and staying power: a lightweight cotton, for example, won’t put up with being used as pants, and will leave you with a saggy bottom after a few minutes of sitting, but a heavier twill will retain its shape longer and recover better, so that when you stand back up your behind is all it was meant to be.
Drape is how the fabric hangs on the body. It is related to weight, but fabrics of the same weight can have very different drape. A cotton canvas, for example, is a heavier weight fabric, but some have a soft drape that hangs and conforms to the shape beneath it and others have a stiff drape that creates cones and hard folds. Choosing a fabric with the correct drape for your project is essential to getting the shape that you want: you don’t want a tote bag that goes limp when you set it down, or a wrap dress that looks like a snap-on outfit because it doesn’t move.
The aspect about fabric that most people really spend their time thinking about is pattern or print. It matters, don’t get me wrong, but this should be the final consideration in choosing your fabrics. The weight and drape of the fabric mustbe right before moving on to the print and pattern!
The major considerations in print selection are scale and placement. Scale is the overall size of the design, which can vary from a “ditty” print of very tiny images to a large-scale print with a 20”+ repeat. Smaller prints make the wearer of a garment look larger, and larger prints shrink the figure. Placement matters, too—few things are more frustrating than finishing a dress and finding that you’ve placed the arrow design on your fabric so that it points to….parts you might not want an arrow pointing to. You may also want to deliberately place a particular part of a print in order to best show it off, like when you center an image on the front of a handbag, for example. Watch the scale and the placement in order to achieve the overall impact you want your project to have!
This is Lizzy again. I was always told by my teachers, and I have passed it on to my own students... People often say that they can't paint. They generally have only painted once... but the first time they did paint they were using a brush that cost $1.00, a box set of paints from no one knows where, on a store bought canvas that has essentially been lacquered with starch. None of those are the right tool for the job. A brush that you have no control over? paint with no vehicle, mystery pigment, and questionable binder? A canvas that is dead? how would it ever have been successful?
You don't need to be a painter for this to apply to you. Your materials, when you sew need to be the right tools for the job, and you will have success! Deborah does an amazing job in Stitch by Stitch by giving you a wealth of information that you can store in your armory of sewing knowledge to help you progress as a sewer/sewist/seamster/seamstress.
Here is proof that I don't do everything, already. This is my first go. So today I looked through my stitch guide book, but mostly I just drew how I was feeling and starting filling it in. Do you ever have the feeling that you need to do tight specific hand work? Since I don't currently have a quilt to bind I just went for it.
Here's to getting better, learning more stitches, and embroidering my feelings.
When I was in HighSchool, I loved Weezer so much, that I painted a Weezer W on my wall. I had actually loved them since the second grade, but I professed my love in highschool through interior semi gloss and painters tape, and a campaign to get Surf Wax America as our senior class song. The room isn't a bedroom anymore, but a sewing room, and for some reason today it just struck me as really funny...
The first time I ever heard that expression was from Elizabeth MacCrellish. It was the closing day of the first session of Spring Squam, and I just didn't have any words to express how I felt, and she just hugged me and said, "it's ok. You've found your tribe, baby".
It's like everything stopped, and I was just left to think about what that really meant to me.
You were some how seperated from your tribe, and something inside you leads you to finding them again. In a way I think that that's how it should be when you find an important significant other... that you were seperated at the beginning of it all, and it becomes your quest to find the missing link. I don't think of this as finding your tribe so much as finding a missing part of yourself.
I am always searching for a place to fit. I am aware that I am a peculiar person. I'm generally a square peg trying to fit in a round hole, and for a while I can be complacent enough to fit, but there isn't much honesty in it, and it doesn't last, because I inevitably give myself away as an outsider when I am fed up with the game.
Aside from my own family, there have been a few times in my life that I truly fit, that I had found the people that I was looking for. When I found printmaking, it was like I found myself in a whole group of people, and that evolved into a super tribe with some of the people that I care most about. As life would have it, I no longer live in Idaho, and most of my associates don't either. It was just for a time. It turned into something else, as I stayed in Idaho longer to get my footing a new tribe formed, and it revolved around baking and quilting and creating and fine art and very late nights. I could say anything, I could cry all night, I could express myself, and best of all, I was understood. Or at least there was an understanding that they were trying to understand me as much as I was them. That was one of my happiest times.
I moved on and left my peeps looking for my own life. The newest tribe I became a member of was my Squam family. I felt again that I found pieces of myself that had been scattered and lost, and some how I was lucky enough to be able to collect them again.
So as I continue to search and constantly evaluate my life, it becomes more important to me to surround myself with the people with whom I fit. It also becomes easier to know if it's going to work or not. As I get ready to move again and start another life, it just has me thinking about the people that I will meet, and my sincere desire to find a tribe.
The people who I have grown closest to have made me my best, and seen me at my worst.
Today I made a doll quilt. I signed up for the Doll Quilt Swap 9 and it started back in June? A while ago. Last month I made this quilt. I just wanted to sit on it. I wasn't sure if it was the one, but I felt like I was on to something. It's that rule in art when you spend a concentrated amount of time working on something... then you walk away from it, and look at it later with new eyes, or a less agressive/ personal/ too close to home, eye.
this was inspired by my deary friend Benjamin's work. He's a dream of a graphic designer. At one time he gave me permission to make all of his work into quilts. I'll see if I still have the email so I know it's in writing.
Anyway. I was packing up the quilt today to send it off to my swap partner. And then I knew. It wasn't right. Not that the quilt isn't sweet action... it just wasn't the right quilt. But I didn't have another quilt...
not a problem.
For anyone who has worked with me in real life you would know how impulsive I can be about deadlines. Something is due, and then I don't like it anymore. It's not that it's bad or wrong... I am just over it, or dissapointed in it, or just too close to it, and then I start over. I have driven myself near crazy, and those around me, but I can't think of a time when I started over with a very pressing deadline that I wasn't more sure about my decision. More sure that the first thing was right, or more sure that it was the right thing to move forward with something else. But I would say if I feel impressed to do something different, 9 times out of 10 it's truth bombs dropping all around me and it leads me to something I needed.
5 hours later, this is what I had.
Wam!
It's called Vivaldi. Here's why. A couple years ago I was up in the lab at school waiting for an advanced typography class that I was sitting in on to start, and my friend Nick came in with a book from the library that he had just checked out. I don't know what the book was, it was a design book (obvs), but we started going through it and I saw this cover for a recording of Vivaldi. I was amazed and blown away! and in love! and to this day I have thought about that cover. This is my best impression of that cover. A manifestation of a vivid memory.
update:I found it! I'm amazed! The last time I saw it was 2+ years ago. I didn't remember any purple or neon.
When I finished it, I took its picture, folded it along with some other stuff, put it into a box and shipped it off.
Here's the thing. When I was posting it on flickr earlier I had an epiphany. An epiphany I would not ever have had if I just boxed up the first quilt. An idea that I had been desprately reaching for. It was like some office aid showed up with a note from my mom saying I could leave school early. It was that good, and the quilt turned out so well.
I had been worried for a while that I had lost my clarity. That the force wasn't strong with me anymore, but it's instinces like these when I remember that all I have to do is listen.
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