May 2012 Show and Tell

Sheath Success

Dress for a Texas wedding

Coco's jacket nearing completion

Improving RTW

Tatting

Silk summer suit

(Very) Wearable Muslin

French Knots

Today's inspired presentation focused on French knots and related embroidery and their uses. Here are some pix of the samples. What fun! Thanks, Karen.

Buttons stitched on with knots to look like flowers

French knots and other stitches on this child's dress

Lorraine's Mani's blouse - French knots hold the bias tubes in place

Guffey tips at Expo

I took a fantastic class with Cynthia Guffey on piping. It was one of those 2.5 hour evening classes. There were problems with the sewing machines (wrong feet and clogged with thread from previous class) and so Cynthia sat down on the floor and walked us through the process by hand. And, it was even better than it would have been if the machines had been working great. We could watch her hands close-up and see just how she achieves perfect results. I will never reach her level of skill, but my knowledge grows each time I take one of her classes.

Here is one tip she offered: never understitch by machine on a concave curve. Even if you have trimmed and clipped according to Cynthia's techniques, the machine will close the clips and cause a bubble with the seam is in place. She recommends hand-stitching the understitching to maintain the curve gained through clipping.

The machine dealer felt really bad that we could not use the machines and so she arranged for each of us to receive Cynthia's piping DVD for free. Cynthia's DVD's may actually be better than seeing her in person. I have her zipper DVD - it is information-rich and the picture quality is great.

Sewing Machine needles

It was a learning for me to know that there are sewing machine needles with two eyes. After I took the needle class where I hear about this, I ran and buy them.

Nancy H.

I only spent one day at the Expo this year -- had to save time and energy to also attend the American Craft Council show. I thought the vendors were back in force this year. Some were missing, but it was still a good collection. Heavy on Quilt Shops.

I bought two patterns by Lois Ericson who passed away recently. Partly to honor her life and also because I know that once they are gone they will be hard to find. I enjoyed my class on Landscape Quilting. I'm not a quilter but I have a special scene that I would like to capture and I was so inspired by Barbara M's beautiful landscape quilt.

It was great seeing so many CWC members -- We could have held a meeting!

G

Naples and Jeffery Diduch's blog - Made By Hand

I love the video of the Napolitano tailors. I first saw this on Jeffery Diduch's blog and it brought back childhood memories of living in Italy in the late 50's. You might want to look at his blog, particularly for the 3 items on Claire Schaeffer. Those of you in the Coco's Jacket working group will particularly enjoy.

http://tuttofattoamano.blogspot.com/search/label/Claire%20Shaeffer

Basting - a cool video from Italian tailors

Marcy Tilton has some interesting tutorials. One concerns basting and contains a cool video interview with several Italian tailors. The quick shots of basting are fun to see.