Back from Vacation

I just returned from a wonderful vacation at the Delaware shore.

My vacation attitude was best summarized by this line from the Jimmy Buffett, Zak Brown song, Knee Deep,  ”only worry in the world, is the tide going to reach my chair” My beach chair was parked at the high tide line so I could keep an eye these two "sea urchins".

They had to be forced to take a breaks from playing in the waves and digging holes in the sand. I wish I had their energy. We were dreading a beach vacation in the hot humid weather the east coast is experiencing, but it was tempered by cool ocean breezes and we could actually were able to sit comfortably on the porch of the beach house in the evening. We returned home to a crunchy brown lawn and parched looking perennials. My fig trees are the only plants in the yard thriving in the hot weather and they will have a bumper crop, if I can just keep them watered until the fruit ripens.

Sewing related activities during the vacation included a trip to all the quilt shops in the area with DS, BFF and SIL, who are all quilters. My DS has a AccuQuilt,

a fabric cutting machine that uses dies to quickly and accurately cut the strips, triangles and other shapes used in quilts.  On the one rainy day of the week, we sent the guys off to the local nail salon to get pedicures and we used the Accuquilt to production cut quilt shapes. I have saved my good silk work blouses for years with the idea of making a quilts from them to “document” the fabrics and colors worn during my career 1979-20??. This is only a small sample of my old blouses.

Originally quilts were made from clothing scraps, and historians learned a lot about the fabrics and dyes of those times from studying the quilts. But nowadays, quilt shops have fabrics designed specifically for quilting, complete with  marketing and advertising campaigns, classes, and glossy books to encourage sales. I am a bit saddened by this trend. These fabrics are not anything like the natural fiber fabrics used currently for clothing.  I cut apart my blouses, preserving the large sleeve, front, and back pieces. So while SIL and BFF were cutting up the latest quilt fabrics, I was cutting triangles and strips from silk broadcloth and shirting. I recently read a post by Lauriana of petitmainsauvage  She buys circa 1980's silk blouses like mine from thrift stores and repurposes them. I thought “Honey, I wore those blouses, you ought to see my collection!" But she is right about the blouses being made of wonderful fabrics, and lots of it because of the blocky styles.

On my inspiration board for fall are these wonderful garments that combine traditional tailoring and knitting. I just love them.

They are from the Winter 2010 collection of VAWK, a Canadian based design team that includes Sunny Fong – winner of Project Runway Canada’s Season 2. The knitting is the work of 24 year old Jacqueline Schiller, who was discovered behind the counter of a yarn shop and commissioned to do the knitting side of things two weeks before the show.

The knitted pieces appear to be attached to some of the garments with needle felting. I wonder if I can justify the purchase of a needle felting machine for this project.

I have a coworker who is a fantastic knitter. She looked at my sketches and the pictures and suggested the yarn type and weight that would achieve the look I was after. Part of my confidence in pursuing this project is the knowing what a great resource she is. I found the perfect yarn, a wool thick and thin bulky roving, that matched my wool fabric, while on vacation.  I practiced my knitting during after dinner chats on the porch. I need the practice. The last time I knitted a garment, I was in high school.

The article Knit One, Sew Too by Susan Lazear, which appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Notions ( a publication of the American Sewing Guild) is a great source of information and inspiration on using a sewing pattern and incorporating knitting in the finished garment. I may use some of Susan's ideas with some of the sweater knits I bought in recent years from EOS and Denverfabrics, and thought there might be others of you with similar fabrics aging in your stashes.