Shopping & Stitching

Another Fibres West has come and sadly gone. I had a lovely time though! I joined 3 weaving buddies on Friday morning and we drove out to Cloverdale together. We hadn’t signed up for any classes, all of us being rather well-seasoned fibre folk, and of course none of us needed to do any fibre shopping, right? Right.

Brenda of Penelope Fibre Arts does a lovely job every year organising this event. This was its 10th year! It’s always a great time to hug old friends and chat with new people and see what lovely items the vendors have for us. I (ahem!) bought a few things:

From top left that’s a cone of deliciously fine 40/2 linen from Jane Stafford, 3 tubes of yummy 8/2 hemp from Langley Yarns & Crafts, a very nice wraps per inch gauge from Crafty Jak’s, two skeins of pretty sock yarn from Black Cat Custom Yarn in “Foundry” and “In the Navy”, and underneath is 5 metres of gorgeous black linen fabric from J & P Fabrics (no website, Instagram @jpfabric). I have plans for all of these lovelies! I’ve already washed and dried the linen yardage (metre-age?). It came out soooo nice.

I’ve also slowly been stitching away on my Marcy Skirt (aka “Saddlebags”!). It’s still not finished. All the hand-stitching I’ve been doing! Oy. Semi-couture level stuff for sure. It’s actually kind of fun but I’d like to get on to other things. Now, if you please. I did find another advantage to the underlining. You can slip-stitch the hems without actually piercing the fashion fabric. Looks very smooth:

There will be some machine stitching however. And I plan to (gasp!) serge off the seam allowances. There’s too much bulk to do anything else but get rid of as much excess fabric as possible. And speaking of excess, I ended up taking another 2.5” off the top edge and turning a wider elastic casing for 1” elastic. I can still get it over my hips so no need for a zipper. I had already taken 3” off the length at the lengthen/shorten line! And it’s still pretty long but a much more practical length. FYI, I’m 5’3.5” - kinda sorta short. Only one or two more sewing sessions should see the end of this project. I hope. This skirt had better be something I wear frequently to justify the amount of fussing it’s taking!