St. Gregory's Abbey

Yesterday I went to St. Gregory's Abbey with members of the GR sewing guild. Seven monks live at this Episcopal Benedictine Abbey near Three Rivers.

They have quite a collection of beautifully decorated vestments. The monk who is in charge of them was very generous in showing us the amazing items.

The first three pictures are of a stole from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The embroidery is all done in various metallic threads. The intricacy of the stitching is unbelievable. The metallic threads have tarnished and dulled over time, and you can see that the silk fabric is quite frayed. Still it was quite something to see.

The other pieces we saw are much more modern--from the 20th century. Most of the elaborate embroidery was done by one person, Sister Scholastica, who is now deceased.

The photos are primarily from stoles and chasubles which are worn at different times in the church calendar.

Enjoy the pictures! And does anyone know the trick to getting the photos to be oriented in the right direction? I figured out that they always go with the longer way vertical and the shorter way horizontal. Is there a way to work with this?

Beaded Pin

To the long list of things I don't know how to do, add the way to get this picture horizontal. AARGH!

If you want to get a better look at the pin-in-progress, lie down with your head to the right and look at it sideways. Pretend the curve is on the top and the straight edge is on the bottom.

I've now finished the picot stitch all the way around the top, attaching the ultrasuede backing to the pin. Next I will add some beaded fringe to the bottom. Then I will sew the pin back on--and I will sew it on so that the pin hangs the right way!

In the photo, the beads look more blue than they do in reality. It actually is a very dark pin, with differences in sparkle and shape showing rather than differences in color. Although the blue is nice, too.

And I'm still working on the photography part. I have learned about the macro mode (Is it a mode?) on the camera and I've played with flash and no flash. Now if we had some sun, I could try that, too.

I'd like to sign the back of the pin, but I haven't found anything that doesn't seem to rub off ultrasuede. Any suggestions?

Project Progress

I'm making progress on the raw edge collage sweatshirt jacket. After preparing the sweatshirt and cutting the fabric pieces, I placed them randomly on the sweatshirt front and back. After a little bit of rearranging and removing most of the pieces with a lot of white, I pinned the patches on the sweatshirt.

That's where I got stuck. I had used all my straight pins on the front and the back and had none left to pin the patches on the sleeves. Now the other time I did this, I used glue stick to attach the patches to the sweatshirt. I didn't think that worked too well. The more I handled the sweatshirt, the more the patches came off. Glue stick doesn't hold up well to the stretching of the foundation fabric. So I resorted to pins. This time I started with pins, but I didn't have enough for the entire sweatshirt.

I decided to go ahead and zigzag around all the patches on the front and the back before starting on the sleeves. Zigzagging around these patches is not the most exciting part of the project. It took several hours to do the front and several more hours to do the back.

Then I pinned the patches on the sleeves and started sewing them on. It's a couple of hours per sleeve. I just have a little more to do on the second sleeve.

I'm pleased with the combination of fabrics. Many of them came from Northcott Fabric's Quest for the Cure collection for several different years. I'm glad I took the whiter patches off.

I just have to get this finished enough for Thursday's meeting of the Renegade Militant Seamstresses. I think I'm going to have to go to the fabric store to get some sweatshirt fabric to make some small step-by-step prototypes.

A New Project

I'm working on a new project, or maybe I should say another project. It's a replica of this raw edge collage sweatshirt jacket I made in 2004. I've had more comments on this jacket than on anything else I've made. I've even been stalked while wearing it! Ok, maybe stalking is too strong a word for someone following me around in a fabric store or a quilt show...

All this for what was kind of a "throw away" project. I just wanted to figure out how these things were made so I went at it. And the collar, which seems to be of such interest, was made using the "Necessity is the Mother of Invention" method.

This is what the surface of the jacket looks like:




Anyway, I agreed to show the Renegade Militant Seamstresses how to make one, so I am making what will be a partially completed example.

The trick has been to remember how I made the first jacket it so I can put together a handout. I'm pleased to say that I am remembering more than I expected.

I'm making the new one in blue. Here are the fabrics:



You can see the blue color of the base sweatshirt on the lower center to right edge. I got it at 80% off in the men's department of a chain store. Must have been too girly a color to sell...

Now I'm arranging my patches on the sweatshirt. The first major decision point is what to do with the fabrics that have a lot of white. They look awfully white on the sweatshirt. At this point, I think I will take them off and substitute ones with more blue.

And then what to do with the already cut patches I won't use? Another project?

The Shepherd's Rug

Letty Klein and Ann Brown, authors of The Shepherd's Rug, presented a workshop using the technique to make small mug rugs. At right are some of their larger rugs.

We braided wool roving and then sewed the braid with waxed linen thread into a circle to make the mug rug or hot pad. It was surprisingly easy. We have the option of felting these mug rugs or leaving them as is.

The roving we used was from many different kinds of sheep, as if I knew the difference...

The brown roving I used had a tendency to pull apart. Letty told me that was because it had some buffalo hair? fur? fleece? in it. And in case you're wondering, I do know that buffalo are not sheep.

Here is my mug rug:


Letty and Ann and their friend Janice were on their way to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. Letty and Ann were going to teach a two-day workshop on making a shepherd's rug that would be about two-feet by three-feet.

September's Project Completed!

I finished September's BJP project. Starting early, working small, and using relatively large beads are some of the reasons I'm done so soon.


Technical details:
I used Lacy's Stiff Stuff as the foundation. Because I didn't want to work on white Stuff, I sprayed both sides of the Stiff Stuff with Memories Mist in yellow and brown. I found it on clearance in the scrapbooking department of one of the large chain craft stores. It is permanent when heat set, and, as far as I can tell, it doesn't change the hand of the fabric.

The size of the piece is 2.75" by 2.75".

The large beads are amber chips from a child's necklace I got in Vilnius, Lithuania, last September. The amber chips are 1/4 to 3/8 inch across. I hadn't worked with so many large beads before. They take up a lot of space fast! I didn't want any of the other beads to compete with the amber so most of the rest of the beads are 11/0 and 15/0. There are a few bugles and 8/0 beads.

What I Was Thinking:

I was thinking about our trip and about sand dunes. The dunes in Lithuania are a World Heritage Site. We have plenty of dunes on Lake Michigan so they are a familiar sight. I wanted to show the layers in the sand as it moves. (OK, so I was also thinking about how excited I was at being part of the BJP group.)


Issues That Came Up:

• Did I choose a format that is too small? Should I do another beaded project for September? A larger one?
• The Stiff Stuff drew in more than I expected as I added more and more beads, and some of the beaded rows buckled. How can I reduce the thread induced shrinkage? Or remember to leave a little breathing space between beads? Or at least remember not to pull the thread so tight?
• Should I try a different stabilizer? Perhaps paper under fabric, which I liked a lot when I used it. My knuckles can get awfully sore from pushing the needle through anything heavy.
• How can I improve my photography of shiny things?

Now I'm ready to start a new project, but I'm not sure if it will be September 2.0 or October or something unrelated.

September's Project

For my September BJP project, I thought back to this time last year when we were in Lithuania. Amber was everywhere--in the jewelry shops, in the souvenir stores, and in all the street stalls. It was beautiful.

But I wanted beads, not jewelry. I couldn't find any. We even found a bead store in Vilnius, and the clerks looked confused when I asked if they had any amber beads. (No, it wasn't a language problem.)

After several days in Vilnius, I was pretty determined that I was going to find some amber for bead embroidery. Amber beads would be a great memento of the trip, and easy to take back home because they were unbreakable and lightweight. But I didn't want very many beads and I didn't want to pay too much. I finally decided that a necklace of amber chips would do. I could deconstruct it without guilt.

I looked a little more closely at the necklaces and discovered that a 28-inch necklace has a lot of amber chips. Way too many! Then I found a small child's necklace. Just right for my purposes. The amber chips are quite small, 1/4 to 3/8 inch, all the better for embroidery.

These are the amber chips from the little necklace:




If you look closely, you can see the price tag still attached. 10 litas or about $4.00.

The other beads I am using with the amber are here:



This is the tray I work from, with it on my lap and my feet up on the footstool. Usually there aren't so many beads on it all at once.

I started early so my September project is nearly complete. Just another couple of days will do it.

And for those thinking of going to Lithuania or the other Baltic nations, it was a great trip.