Featherstitch Avenue

Style and Couture Sewing

Mother’s Day

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Car Wash Skirt

Car Wash Skirt

Car Wash Skirt

Car Wash Skirt

Car Wash Skirt

Car Wash Skirt

Car Wash Skirt by Tracey

Pattern, draped by Tracey

Fabric, Wool Tweed, B&J Fabrics

Lining, Silk Charmeuse, Susan Khalje Couture

Photography by Santiago Vanegas

At least once a day, I feel like Sisyphus.  If you need a refresher on mythology, Sisyphus was the guy who was doomed to push the boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down again.  I think many moms feel just like that, some of the time.  When asked, “Hey, what did you do today?”.  I say, “Well, let me tell you, I pushed this boulder all the way to the top of the mountain.  And man!  Was it hard work!”.  To that, they reply, “Uh, you sure about that?  Is the boulder you are talking about the one sitting at the bottom of that hill?”.  Yep.  That’s the one.

That’s one of the reasons why I make my creative life a priority.  For the times, I’ve cleaned my butt off, but there are still dirty dishes in the sink, or all of the clean laundry seems to be spilling over the dirty clothes basket, or my son rips the toilet paper holder out of the wall (true), I need to be able to make progress somewhere.  So, I head to my tree house (which is what I call my sewing room), and get to work on a project.

The car wash skirt project threatened to topple my whole system because the progress I was making was about the slowest in my history of sewing.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem with slow sewing, but this was like watching the grass grow!  My pace was so frustrating that it took a Herculean (mythology again!!) effort just to finish.  And after about 10 months, give or take, I finally did.  Phew!

This skirt is packed with couture details.  The wool tweed is quilted with the silk charmeuse lining.  The interior pieces were joined using a hand sewn fell stitch.  I put in a petersham ribbon waist band and the zipper was installed using a prick stitch sewn by hand.  Now that it’s completed, I’m thrilled with how it turned out and I’m already starting to forget all the time and force of will it took to get it done.  Just like child birth!  We moms are programmed to forget the pain.  And when I look at my gorgeous angels, I don’t think at all about the effort of bringing them into the world.  Or not much anyway.

Next week, I’m off to Baltimore for another couture sewing workshop with Susan Khalje.  I can’t wait!!  I’m busting out some lace I bought in Paris.  See you soon.

Making (Very Slow) Progress

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Skirt

I’m still here!  And I’ve been working on my skirt (as well as other sewing projects like the 30 Incan tunics I’m making for my daughter’s class!).  It’s slow going, people.  I was so excited about draping the pattern for this skirt and so happy that I have all the couture skills I need to pull it together that I didn’t really stop to think about the enormous amount of hand sewing that would be involved.  Hand sewing is really my favorite part, so I wasn’t too worried, but my goodness, this is really excessive!

Pattern pieces

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  First, I needed to lay out the pattern pieces, carefully placing each piece to preserve the stripe effect of the fabric.  It’s difficult to tell in photographs but there is also a subtle verticle pattern as well.  Different ribbons are used to give the fabric a beautiful change in texture, so I had to be mindful of where I was placing the pieces vertically as well as horizontally.

I gave myself enormous seam allowances because this fabric unravels at the slightest touch and I didn’t want it to totally disintegrate before I got the skirt together.  Next, I laid out each piece over silk charmeuse and pinned like crazy.  Then the two fabrics were quilted together.  The pieces are so narrow that I was only able to manage one stitching line down the center.

Seam Allowances

Once I stitched all the fashion fabric pieces together, this is the mess that was the inside of the skirt.  Seam allowances galore!  Now the next step was to turn this unruly jumble into this….

Silk Lining

You can see the machine quilted stitches alternating with the hand made fell stitches.  It’s a work in progress as I still have two more seams to complete before the front of the skirt is done.  Yes, just the front!  I haven’t worked on the back at all yet!!  It’s going to be warm before I finish this.  Oh, well.  It’ll get worn eventually.

Here’s more pictures of the work on the lining.  I’m going to want to wear the thing inside out with all the effort that has gone into the interior work.

Seam Detail

Lining Detail

And a look at the outside…

Car Wash Skirt

Time to settle in front of the TV for the Super Bowl.

Then it’s back to sewing.  So, I’ll see you when I see you.

 

Caliber

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Caliber Bracelet

Caliber Bracelet

Caliber Bracelet

Caliber Cuff

Caliber Cuff

Photography by Santiago Vanegas

I’ve been busy working on my skirt project and about a million other holiday and school related things, so Santiago took the lead this week to bring you this post.  This photo shoot is 100 percent his brain-child.

The bracelet and cuff he photographed this week are made by a company called the Caliber Collection.  (The steel one belongs to me, the brass one belongs to Santiago.) The jewelry is made from the metal from illegal guns and bullet casings taken off America’s streets.  Twenty percent of the net proceeds from the sale of their jewelry are used to fund public safety initiatives designed to reduce illegal gun violence.

Well, with a background like that, Santiago’s ideas started flowing.  This is a wonderful thing, but understand this, some of his plans can be pretty ambitious and most of the time I just stare at him and say, “How the heck are we going to do THAT?!”  So when he made his pitch that he wanted to create a room and use string to mark bullet trajectories like in our favorite crime show Dexter, I gave him the look I sometimes do that says “Don’t you put one more thing on my plate!”  The idea was good, so I told him to run with it.  But he was on his own.

I love how the images turned out!  To see him in action, we have a time lapse video up on our Instagram.  And just to explain a little further, the number on the bracelets are serial numbers from weapons reclaimed by law enforcement as part of buy back programs in cities across the US.  Our bracelets come from the San Francisco program.  To read more about the Caliber Collection, click here.

We will be back again when I have something to show you on my skirt.  Not exactly sure when that will be, but hopefully soon!!

Happy Holidays Everyone!