"Seeds from my Textile Garden" ...

This evening I'm giving a talk to a gardening club (specific details will be uploaded soon when my computer has come back from being upgraded!).

You may start to wonder what have textiles & gardening in common? My first thoughts were germinating on COLOUR (click this link to see what I mean) & secondly, what can be made using a variety of 'textiles'? Being near to Christmas, ideas were not short in appearing in my head!!! The next step was to gather existing samples together, make some examples appropriate for the evening 'project activity', decide on the 'goodies bag' contents (eg. ribbon at left) & give the evening a title. Predominantly inspirational, I decided on:

"Seeds from my Textile Garden"

Short party dress to Bridesmaid long dress ...

Several months ago I was asked to make bridesmaids dresses for 4 children ages ranging between 5 & 13 - only 1 (the eldest) living locally. Several challenges were set in the making of the skirts (full details can be found by clicking this link CiCi Designs).

Below are the first set of images together with brief details of the garments.





The wedding was to be in October & the bride had seen short 'party' dresses (see left) to buy on-line but wanted her bridesmaids to wear full-length.


To give the younger girls the opportunity of having 2 outfits as well as providing the best opportunity for a single fitting, it was decided to make separate skirts to wear over the shorter dresses.

The dresses had a separate net petticoat (see right) which consisted of 2 layers. This was wore under the short dress as a base layer for the main skirt.

The skirt was made of 2 layers, worn over the nets & to cover the waistband, a separate sash was made with velcro fastenings.

Wave curtains information here ...

One of my blog entries here is quite popular !! so I've decided to add it to my Stitcherydoing page. I've also added more information regarding WAVE CURTAINS or DRAPES & over the next few days will be adding more pix. In particular:

        Dressing a Window shows how curtains are hung to retain their folds &

        Make a Wave Curtain demonstrates & details how to make these flattering furnishings.

If you want to have a read 'in one spot', then please click Curtains to the link.

Buttonhole stitch holds & shapes plastic !!

Recently I've been finishing the next phase of my textile cell - below is where this stage began:

& below is where it's finished up this week:

If you want to read more then click here

Invisible Lock-stitch hem ...

Above is the finish of a lock-stitch hem - hand stitched on a pair of trousers when they were shortened. If you would like to see how they were done together with the addition of petersham along the inner hem edge, please visit this link:

Lock stitch with petersham

Hem finishes ...

Into the New Year has seen me with a wide variety of trousers for hemline 'alteration'. As I usually repeat whatever is the original stitching finish, some of these are completed by machine (like jeans) whilst others have to have a 'blind hem' copied. These 'industrial blind-hem finishes' are quite invisible but with their continuous thread manner of stitching, once an end is pulled, the entire hem can easily & quickly come undone. Although domestic machine 'blind hemming' is especially good for some garments, I find that in others it leaves the inside hem with a row of visible stitching as well as sometimes leaving a 'slight ridge' on the outside if the fabric is somewhat thick. Also, it can result in the missing of some of the 'catch stitches' especially if the fabric is a man-made one & as stitched, will normally result in a 'foldline' being visible that is sometimes difficult to press out.

So if the garment is to be used frequently & have a reasonable amount of continual wear &/or cleaning, there is nothing better than a 'hand-worked lock-stitch' hem (see above finished - red circle shows almost invisible stitching). Something resembling a peculiar type of blanket stitch, it enables a hem to be held firmly in place whilst being almost invisible from both sides of the work when finished. Very hardwearing, it can easily be adjusted in stitch size to take into account the fabric type being worked on, is fairly quick & easy to stitch & if the hem needs adjustment later, is readily unpicked.

Over the next few weeks, I will be showing this technique in greater detail along with some of the problems mentioned above.