Silk

 

I bought this silk in Singapore in 2010! Every now and then I'd take it out of its packet and admire it. I felt guilty about not using it, but also wanted the right project for it. At last I've used it, or half of it anyway, to make a blouse to wear with the skirt shown in the previous post. 

I used the 'wrong' side of the silk as the right side of the garment, if that makes sense. The colour is closer to the maroon in the skirt, and I like the texture. The bright pink, smooth silk is on the inside. I didn't have buttons that would do the garment justice, so I used press studs. That saved me making buttonholes too, always a bit nerve wracking on a special fabric. Before starting, I reread an article 'How to sew with silk' on ageberry.com, that I'd saved on Pinterest. It was very useful for deciding things like stitch length and how to neaten the seams. 

According To Your Cloth

 

My sewing mentee gave me this fabric. He suggested I make a dress with it, but I thought that would be a bit overpowering and a skirt would be better. I thought a skirt cut on the cross would be good, so I bought a large piece of very expensive tracing paper to make a pattern. But when I came to fit the pattern to the fabric, it turned out that the fabric was much too narrow for that. So I made a straight skirt, using the full width of the fabric for the back and another for the front to make a very full skirt. Too full? I'm not sure. I'm still mulling that.

Two More

 

I've made two more beaded bracelets for the order. Here are all four of them together:

Back To Bracelets

 

I have an order for four bracelets in 'African' colours, so I'm working on that. Two done, two more to do. 

One Done

 

I've finished one food cover, sewing beaded running stitch around the border and sewing on the tatted stars. I've done the beaded edging on the second one:

I hope to finish it today, but I have a long to-do list, from pickling onions and doing the washing to cutting gift tags for tomorrow's craft group meeting. I'll have to see how it goes. 

Still Tatting

 

I've been tatting, in between sewing jewelry bags (50 last week and 60 this week). I was looking through me tatting file recently and came across my scribbled version of Anne Bruvold's flowery triangle. Anne didn't write out the pattern, but gave permission for it to be copied. I've tatted it several times before. I thought it would work well on a food cover, combined with butterflies. I also tatted more stars, to make five altogether:

It's always interesting when you tat a motif a number of times to see how thread size affects the size of the motif. The yellow star measures 12cm across, whereas the pink one measures 9cm.

Seeing Stars

 

Manju Talekar developed muskaan's Endruck's leaf doodle into a star and muskaan has written and diagrammed the pattern.  You can find it on this blogpost.  It's a really good design that lies nicely flat. I thought I'd make several to put on a food net. I worked it in two rounds because I find it easier to sew in ends than to make a split chain!