Wednesday, August 31, 2011

In the Queue Wednesday

The men's version of The Original "How Much Fabric?" Reference Cards is available for sale. :)

The baby & toddler set is at the card printers. :) !

Over half of the patterns for the children's set have been entered into spreadsheets - this last set will be out before Christmas. :) !!

What's next in my business queue? Well, people have been asking about an app...

Spreadsheets - I'm in my element. Apps - yikes, this is all new territory to me.

I'd definitely appreciate any thoughts, opinions and/or suggestions!

In any event, new and scary territory or not, I'll get to it... It's in the queue. ;)

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Cool Chart Tuesday




Recently I found this cool infographic about the History of Fashion Week. You can see the original here.





I love how it summarizes funny little details like champagne consumption! Have you ever been to Fashion Week? Would you like to go? It seems like sewing is about high fashion for some people and not for others. Do you watch fashion trends? Do you want in on some of that champagne? ;)




PS - I realize the image is very small and doesn't blow up well. Sorry about that. If you click the link in the text, you should be able to blow it up and actually read the words!

Friday, August 26, 2011

Friday Confession



Sometimes I just wander into my sewing room and look around, trying to come up with a topic for a Friday Confession. Recently I was scanning the controls of my sewing machine and the speed button jumped out at me. As you can see, I have an extremely expensive, top-of-the-line sewing machine, that has (brace yourself) TWO speeds. Yup - sometimes the amount of choice just overwhelms me... ;)

Anyways, I don't pay much attention to it when I'm sewing - apparently I usually have it on "HIGH". Who knew? But it got me wondering if other people do think about this when they sew...

So, how about you? How many speeds does your machine have? What speed do you usually have it set on? Do you change the speed under certain circumstances? If so, when and why? I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say! :)

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Talk Back Thursday


Thank you so much to Katherine, Sarah, Mary, Claire, VernonFashionStudio, Lynne, Carla, Corrine, Gwen and Mamafitz for talking back to my confession last week! I asked about straight pins and whether or not people preferred specific types.

So, what did people say? I think Carla summarized it best - there's no one right answer, this is a matter of personal choice. And, indeed, there were quite a variety of personal choices expressed in the comments. ;)

Just over half of the commenters have a pin of choice and stick with it. Here are how their votes fell out:
  • "standard" straight pins (2)
  • small ball point pins with colored heads (easy on the fingers) (1)
  • extra-long pins with plastic heads (1)
  • IBC glass head pins (1)
  • super-fine glass head pins (1)
The rest of the commenters use different pins for different purposes.

For everyday use, people recommended:
  • glass head pins, at least 1.5 inches long
  • Iris silk pins
  • extra-fine glass head pins
For delicate fabrics:
  • silk pins (consensus here across several people!)
For knits:
  • ball point pins (only 1 person called out this category)
For bulky fabrics:
  • long, flower-head quilting pins
  • long, glass-headed pins
For quilting:
  • long-flower headed quilting pins
  • safety pins for quilt sandwiches
For fittings:
  • long glass-headed pins
For applique:
  • 1/2 inch pins
For fabrics that don't hold a pin well:
  • double-pronged pins
Finally, Gwen pointed out that there are non-pin alternatives, such as small clips, for those fabrics that are super-delicate and/or very bulky.

We also got some general advice - but, again, remember that not everyone agrees with all of these suggestions:
  • longer pins are better than shorter pins
  • glass heads are better than plastic heads (primarily because of ironing, but it was also said that plastic heads are more likely to fall off)
  • don't buy cheap pins - they can damage your fabric and won't last as long as quality pins
Sadly, despite all the variety in the answers, no one called out "shrinky dink" headed pins, like those in my photo. Go figure... ;)

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to leave a comment! :)

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

In the Queue Wednesday


It seems like it's been forever since I've been in my sewing room... :(

But, currently at the top of my queue is preparing for the new year of ESL classes - which begin the first week in September. So, there's no sewing for me until I finish getting ready for the first day of class. I need to prepare an assessment (to figure out my students' goals and current proficiency in English) and to have all my handouts ready - the syllabus, music CD & song lyrics, vocabulary flash cards, etc.

Yikes! When did life get so busy? I wonder if one of my cats would switch lives with me...? I think I could handle this amount of stress. ;)

Anyways, somehow, someway, it will all get done. It's in the queue.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Cool Chart Tuesday

Have you ever wondered what sewing-related careers are like? I found some interesting information on the website PayScale about these 2 careers - Seamstress and Fashion Designer - and made you a couple of cool charts.

Before you look at the charts, why don't you do some guessing?

Try to answer for each career - seamstress and fashion designer:

1. What % of the employees are women and what % are men?

2. What do you think the approximate hourly wage is?

3. If the hourly wage depends on the industry hiring this person, which industry probably pays the highest? the lowest?

4. What benefits do people get? Paid vacations? 401K? Health insurance? Flex-time?

Okay, now see how you did:




How did you do? Were there any surprises in these data for you? Anyone going to be turning in their 2-week notice tomorrow? ;)


Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday Confession


Can you handle another confession about straight pins? I'm afraid I'm pretty clueless about the different types - when I look at the variety on the shelves in my local sewing store I feel lost and just grab the closest package (or walk away empty-handed!)...

How about you? Do you think it really matters? Is there a particular type that you buy? If so, what and why? Does anyone buy more than one type and use them differently? Any/all advice would be greatly appreciated!

Photo credit: Craftapalooza

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

In the Queue Wednesday


Believe it or not, I'm still plugging away on my "How Much Fabric?" Reference Card sets! Set #3 (for men's clothes) is at the card printers - within a week I should be assembling the sets onto the rings! They should be available at www.gwynhug.com by the end of August. Yay!

As for set #4 (newborns through size 6) - I've sent half of the tables and garment pictures (all baby clothes, toddler dresses, toddler pants & toddler tops) to my graphic artist and am just trying to dig up a few more patterns for the other 3 cards (toddler skirts, toddler jackets & toddler nightwear) before I send her those too. I'm hoping that this set will be available by the end of September...

That will only leave 1 set - Children's clothes - sizes 7 - 16. In the process of creating the toddler cards, I have already begun collecting and entering children's patterns too. So, I'm really, really, really trying to get these ready in time for Christmas.

I don't know exactly when I'll get these done, but don't worry - they are in my queue! ;)

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Cool Chart Tuesday

Today's topic is fabric, and I have 2 cool charts for you. :)

This first one is courtesy of the Colette Patterns website. It gives you a nice visual representation on how different types of fabric compare in terms of their weight and their drape. This is really useful when you are trying to decide what type of fabric to use for a particular pattern. :)



The next chart (actually a series of tables) show the fabric care symbols as published by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (from this website).




I remember that, when I was young, fabric stores used to give you a tag or slip of paper that had similar symbols on it, telling you how to care for the fabric that you just purchased. Does anyone else remember that? Do any stores still do this?


Saturday, August 13, 2011

A Boat and A Lake: The End

We just returned from our summer vacation - spending almost a week (6 days / 5 nights) exploring Lake Powell (Arizona & Utah) on a houseboat. While we have visited this part of the country before (and we love it!), it was our first experience on the lake and our first time in a houseboat. Each day this week I'll show you pictures from our trip - grouped into themes.

Today's theme: The End


A perfect end to our last night on the lake... a campfire and a serenade...

Okay, there were some s'mores too! ;)

You know that your vacation is over when you gaze longingly at your crumpled bathing suit and shorts as you strap on a bra and pull up long pants for the first time in a week... Sigh...

I hope you've enjoyed these pictures and stories from our summer vacation! Next week, we'll return to our regularly scheduled sewing blog! ;)

Friday, August 12, 2011

A Boat and A Lake: Jumping in the Deep End Part 5

We just returned from our summer vacation - spending almost a week (6 days / 5 nights) exploring Lake Powell (Arizona & Utah) on a houseboat. While we have visited this part of the country before (and we love it!), it was our first experience on the lake and our first time in a houseboat. Each day this week I'll show you pictures from our trip - grouped into themes.

Today's theme: The Anchorages

While each part of our vacation had it's own surprises and challenges, by far the most "exciting" aspect was finding a spot and anchoring the houseboat down each night. The theory is that you just motor part-way up onto a beach and dig holes in the sand to bury your 2 anchors there, holding your boat in place overnight.

Sounds pretty easy, right? (Well, I thought it did anyways...) But finding a good spot turned out to be tricky. You want the front part of your 2 pontoons to rest snugly in the sand, while the back half of your boat, including the 2 outboard motors, to still be in deep water, so that you can start them up without damaging the propellers.

We thought we had found a good spot on Sunday - our first night (although, in hindsight, we can see from this picture how we were wrong):




As you can see from the threatening sky, a storm was on its way in.











Sure enough, later that evening we were struck by a massive storm - thunder, lightening and torrential rains that created multiple waterfalls along the sides of the cliffs around us! All of this came with fierce winds. We watched in awe from the safety of our cabin, little realizing the potential impact of this storm on us.






At one point we heard a loud noise from somewhere on the boat. It turned out that one of the plastic lounge chairs was blown off the upper deck, into the lake and broken into 2 pieces. We were able to recover the pieces the next morning and, from then on, whenever the wind picked up we used 6 of the 12 life jackets onboard to attach the lounge chairs to the railings of the upper deck.




But that was nothing. It was Tuesday morning, when we were ready to leave, that we learned what the storm had done. It had blown us sideways into a sand bar, and we were stuck, stuck, stuck! :(




We tried for a couple of hours to break free, without success. Finally, we called for help on the marine radio and were told that someone would come out to get us, but we were 3rd in line and it may be a while...




After waiting by the radio for 5 hours, my husband got bored and went out with his life jacket and a shovel - it took him an hour, but he actually dug us free!




Unfortunately, this meant that we were quite late heading out to find our next site. You're not supposed to be on the lake at night - plus we didn't want to be trying to find a site and fix our anchors after dark! - so we were feeling quite stressed as we motored along.




Some kind folks in a speed boat intuited our plight and guided us to a good site:











You can see that the sun was going down as we anchored and took a quick swim to relax...

Other than the stress of getting there before dark, the 2nd site was uneventful. The next morning, we left for our 3rd site. Once again, we had difficulty identifying a good site - this time we wanted to avoid getting stuck in the sand, so we picked a rocky shore and my husband used the rocks to secure the anchors.














Or so he thought! We had another huge wind blow through that afternoon, and somehow it blew one of the ropes right up over and around the rock, pulling one anchor deep into the bottom of the lake. :(




Scott didn't want to unhook the anchor from the boat, as it was still helping to secure the boat - but when he tried to pull up the anchor, it got stuck on something at the bottom of the lake! We were looking at each other like - Are you kidding me? Can't we catch a break here?




Well, amazingly, he had packed 2 long coils of webbing and a handful of carabiners, for us to take on our hikes, in case we ever got stuck out on the rock cliffs somewhere. So, he used our gear to build a second anchor to the shore. Then he was comfortable untying the real anchor from the boat - at which point we were able to pull on the anchor from all different angles, eventually unsticking it and raising it.




As we lay panting on the deck - tired and relieved that it had worked - I commented to my husband, "That was amazing! You're not just some mild-mannered college professor!" His reponse, "But that's all I want to be!"




Of course, our happiness was premature at this point. Our next step was to un-anchor both sides of the boat and head out. I manned the helm and used the steering wheel and outboard motors to keep the boat steady, while Scott collected our handmade anchor and the other real anchor and brought them back to the boat. As he was stowing the real anchor, it slipped out of his control and knocked him on the head! It gave him a cut, and blood started pouring down his face!




I was horrified - watching the blood cover his eyes, his nose, his mouth and his beard - afraid to leave the helm in case the boat drifted and got stuck again. I kept telling myself - it's okay; scalp wounds bleed a lot...




Sure enough, once he got the anchor fully stowed, he came in and cleaned up, and it was a small cut, shallow and less than half an inch long. You can tell I'm a wife first and a photographer second, as I sent him to clean up before it occurred to me to get a dramatic picture. ;)




By now we were feeling pretty stressed out about this whole anchoring business... And we still had 1 more site to go! For our last site, we again got some advice from folks in a speed boat. Scott dug the holes for the anchors very deep!






And every time the wind picked up, we cringed, went on the alert and tried to brace ourselves for another "adventure"...


But we made it through the night without incident and managed to get ourselves and the boat back to the marina the following day, in the right number of pieces - well, okay, 1 extra piece because of the lounge chair going into the drink! ;)




I'm super proud and impressed by how well my husband was able to get us out of those scrapes - oh, I helped, but it was generally his brains AND his brawn that got us out. But it was pretty much right up to the edge of how much "adventure" we like to have...




With time, the sharp edges of the memories will undoubtedly soften and we'll be able to look back on the trip without adrenaline flooding into our systems... But I know one thing for sure. We'll never forget this one! ;)




I have one more picture for you tomorrow...

Thursday, August 11, 2011

A Boat and A Lake: Jumping in the Deep End Part 4

We just returned from our summer vacation - spending almost a week (6 days / 5 nights) exploring Lake Powell (Arizona & Utah) on a houseboat. While we have visited this part of the country before (and we love it!), it was our first experience on the lake and our first time in a houseboat. Each day this week I'll show you pictures from our trip - grouped into themes.


Today's theme: Hiking the Shores

We've always been drawn to the landscape of the U.S. desert southwest.



It seems other-worldly (to a couple of Floridians, at least!) and simultaneously invites and discourages exploration.



Everywhere you look there are signs of the immense power of wind and water in shaping the land.



Look at this series of rock "U"s that channel flash floods through the desert.



The red sandstone cliffs are constantly changing - steep faces developing caves, caves growing into arches...



Whether you focus in closely on a small section of rock fins...





...or look around at the massive boulders and balancing rock...




...or climb up a flake...



...to get a better view of a series of rock pools...




...or to get a panoramic shot of the lake itself...


Everything about this land speaks of the insignificance of man.

PS - Notice those storm clouds in the picture above? Consider it more foreshadowing... ;)

Tomorrow's theme will be our anchorages (and all this foreshadowing will be explained...)

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

A Boat and A Lake: Jumping in the Deep End Part 3

We just returned from our summer vacation - spending almost a week (6 days / 5 nights) exploring Lake Powell (Arizona & Utah) on a houseboat. While we have visited this part of the country before (and we love it!), it was our first experience on the lake and our first time in a houseboat. Each day this week I'll show you pictures from our trip - grouped into themes.

Today's theme: Kayaking the Channels

Most people seem to enjoy Lake Powell at high speed - the main waterway and bays were full of motor boats and jet skis. But we rented a kayak and did a lot of paddling in the narrow channels - and we typically had those areas all to ourselves!


Prepare yourself for a number of pictures of my back - taken by my husband during those kayaking excursions:



We believe that the white layer of rock running horizontally along the cliffs is the high water mark. According to our shuttle driver (and who would know better?) the water level in the lake is currently the highest it has been for the last 10 years.





Sometimes the channels narrowed and the cliff walls towered over us, providing much appreciated shade.





Note that my husband requested that I stop paddling when he took pictures - most of the time I was paddling! Honest!




Oooh - the picture above shows extra human interest - my husband's toes! ;)





At the end of each voyage, we'd drag kayak up onto the rocks and go for a hike.


And that brings me to tomorrow's theme - our hikes. :)

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

A Boat and A Lake: Jumping in the Deep End Part 2

We just returned from our summer vacation - spending almost a week (6 days / 5 nights) exploring Lake Powell (Arizona & Utah) on a houseboat. While we have visited this part of the country before (and we love it!), it was our first experience on the lake and our first time in a houseboat. Each day this week I'll show you pictures from our trip - grouped into themes.

Today's theme: In Transit

Lake Powell is actually a man-made lake (or reservoir), created by building the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River and flooding a vast area of desert cliffs and canyons. This makes it quite an unusual "lake" - surrounded by red cliffs and with over 1,500 miles of shoreline. That's more shoreline than in the entire state of California!


We chose to explore the first 50 miles of the lake.




Surrounding the boat on every side were red sandstone cliffs. Often it looked like the way ahead of you was completely blocked, and it wasn't until you came right up to the edge that you saw that there were 2 cliffs that didn't touch and there was a passage through on one side or the other...





Navigating from the geography shown on the map turned out to be pretty difficult - in the boat you never had a bird's eye view (like on the map) and the "landmarks" had somewhat unhelpful names like "castle rock" - NOT pictured below, although this looks as much like a castle to me as everything else out there!






Of course, there were numbered buoys in the lake and on the map. It drove my husband crazy because the location of the buoys in the lake only roughly corresponded to the location of the buoys on the map.




Another challenge was assessing distances to things. At least, it was difficult until I figured out this simple heuristic: when you look at an object and wonder how far away it is, it turns out you couldn't go wrong if you estimated that the answer was "far."







Here's a view (below) behind our houseboat, showing our wake. That brings up the topic of speed. How fast does a houseboat move? I think it can best be illustrated in the following vignette:



The collision was imminent! They watched in horror as events unfolded over the next 10 minutes as if in slow motion...



Yup, it was that fast... ;)





During our entire 6 day trip, we only touched civilization once - when we stopped at the Dangling Rope Marina (see below) to refuel. My husband was at the helm and he slid our houseboat into the slip as smoothly as silk - as if he had been doing it all his life.



Then he realized that (just like in a rental car!) the gas tanks were on the opposite side of the boat. So, he pulled out, circled around and came in again for the other side...



This time, he crashed bumped into the dock. He was a bit embarrassed, until the attendant told the story of a guy the previous week who had driven his houseboat right up onto the dock, punching a hole in the front of his boat and coming dangerously close to crashing into the gasline pump itself!






The most beautiful times were early morning and evening, when the sun, hanging low along the horizon, would light up the cliffs a beautiful, vibrant red...





(There was no boating allowed on the lake at night, so these times were often more peaceful too.)


Our pictures don't do it justice - it was like the rocks were glowing from within.

To answer Gwen's question - No, thank goodness, neither of us experienced any seasickness!

Tomorrow's theme will be our kayaking excursions. :)

Monday, August 8, 2011

A Boat and A Lake: Jumping in the Deep End Part 1

We just returned from our summer vacation - spending almost a week (6 days / 5 nights) exploring Lake Powell (Arizona & Utah) on a houseboat. While we have visited this part of the country before (and we love it!), it was our first experience on the lake and our first time in a houseboat. Each day this week I'll show you pictures from our trip - grouped into themes.



Today's theme: The Houseboat



It was just the 2 of us, so we rented the smallest possible houseboat, 46 feet, out of the Wahweap Marina, near Page, Arizona. Here is a shot of "our" houseboat (X11) waiting quietly for us at the marina.











As you can see, there is an open upper deck - great for watching sunsets and dancing - complete with a water slide. On the "ground" level there is a main compartment (with air conditioning!) and small front and back open-air spaces.



The back (stern) open-air space contained the 2 outboard engines, panel access to the generator and the gasoline tanks. This is also where we carried the rental kayak.



The front (bow) open-air space had 12 plastic deck chairs, a large cooler and a propane grill - along with the 2 anchors (note 2 heaps of rope - or "line" - in front) that figured prominently in our trip (a bit of foreshadowing there!).








See (below) the 2 lounge chairs on the upper deck? Don't they look comfy? Did you notice that they are not secured to anything? No, we didn't either. At least, not at first... (More foreshadowing!)




Inside the main compartment was a small back bedroom, a small restroom and a relatively large living space, that included a sofa (convertible to a bed), a dining room table (convertible to a bed)...






and a full kitchen (with island) - refrigerator, oven, microwave, coffee maker, blender, toaster - the works! I carefully planned out a full menu for the entire 6 days and prepared a shopping list. A local grocery store delivered everything right to the boat for us!












And, of course, the most important bit - the helm!








The houseboat is pretty much an RV loaded onto a motorized pontoon boat, so previous experience with any type of motorboat (we had none) and/or previous experience with an RV (we had none) would have been extremely helpful.



But, don't worry - they did give us almost an hour of instruction before turning us loose for a week on the lake with this massive piece of complex machinery worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars... ;)



Tomorrow I'll show you pictures from when we were underway and the beautiful scenery around Lake Powell.