Summer writing and sewing

I only recently realized that to be an academic means that you have to wear several hats at once. The first hat is that of a researcher. If I were to imagine what a researcher's hat looks like, it would be Indiana Jones' fedora, probably because my first love is archaeology* and Vivianna rhymes with Indiana (I can't count how many times has my family called me Vivianna Jones!) The next hat that an academic must wear is the teachers hat, here I think about a helmet that protects the wearer from student apathy and constant questions that could be answered by consulting the syllabus. The final hat that an academic wears is that of a writer. The writer's hat is definitely made of a lightweight fabric perfect for wringing in your hands when faced with writers block. Of all these hats I have to wear, I'm having the most trouble with the writers hat. To further this metaphor, my hat is definitely wrinkled from too much wringing.

As a student, you take courses and have to write papers and exams to get a grade. So as a student my writing was a means to an end, a way to show my knowledge of a particular subject to earn a particular grade. This was the way I approached writing for over 15 years. This year, as my coursework ended and my proposal writing began I was struck by the realization that my writing is no longer a means to an end. It is the end itself. The goal isn't just to showcase my thoughts and research but also to communicate it in an understandable and compelling way. To be a good researcher, I think it is necessary to be a good writer. Why did no one tell me this before!?

As the shock of being a writer wore off, I started working on my dissertation proposal, it is supposed to be finished by the end of the summer. I can say that I honestly understand why everyone says that you should never ask a grad student how their writing is going! (Its usually not going as well as planned). In a way writing my proposal is like forging a giant key that will unlock the next phase of my Phd. Once my proposal is approved I can leave for my fieldwork in South Africa. How awesome and how daunting! It feels like a lot of pressure. I'm trying to take it one day at a time but its difficult not to get paralyzed looking a the mountain of work ahead of me.

By now you know me well. What do you think I have been doing to deal with my stress? Procraftinating of course! Not all of the sewing I've done has been to procrastinate (more on the below), but its all been fun!

Here are a few of the projects I've been working on:

My sister got married a few weeks ago. She asked me to make a clutch for each of her bridesmaids (including me) So I got to work and made 7 envelop clutches using Noodlehead's pattern. This project wasn't designed to procrastinate, but it had the same effect I had to take time off from writing to make these beauties. 

Here they are all together the morning before the wedding.

Hanging out in the sun before their big day.

The really neat thing about these clutches is that they match out bridesmaid dresses!! My sister had the great idea to have our dresses custom made by one of our best friends moms who is a great costume designer. She gave me all the left over fabric and I used them to make our clutches. I made a green one for my sister that matched her wedding shoes!

In all honestly, it was a really long process to make 7 of these clutches. It took me 5 days! But I think it was totally worth it. Here are the pieces of each clutch ready for assembly. Each clutch has a different lining fabric and card pocket!

The next thing I worked on was my mini quilt for the instagram based cotton + steel swap. This is the first mini that I made without a pattern. I just used different elements of quilts that I liked and put them together. The center circle is a paper pieced pattern by Jeli Quilts. The outside Xs are raspberry kisses, instructions found on wooden spoon quilts blog I have to say I love this quilt. It was really difficult to mail to my swap partner.

Check out the hashtag for other beautiful quilts #cottonandsteelminiquiltswap

Check out a close up of the center. Isn't it pretty!! 

This week I decided to work on a quilt just for me. Its an adaptation of the mini I just made and the goal is that it will be a full size quilt. It starts with the same center piece and then I will add many different types of borders to make it bigger. It should be the most intricate quilt I have made so far by the time I'm finished.

Here are 20 blocks in the making that I will eventually add to my quilt. If you look at the previous quilt you will see that these will be rotated and become the Xs to make the raspberry kisses block.

Here's a mock up of what it will kind of look like. I'll share more updates as I go for this one. 

There you have it, all the ways I've been procraftinating in the last few weeks. Including this blog post today! At least I got it all out there. Now to get back to work!!

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*That is not to say that Indiana Jones is a proper archaeologist, he is more like a tomb raider.

Whirlwind of a semester

It has been a while since my last post. I honestly can't believe how quickly the winter semester flew by. I feel like I blinked and all of a sudden its mid may!

Before I share with you what I have been up to I have an announcement:

I am now a coffee drinker. 

Here it is, my first cup of coffee (yes I took a photo)

Yes, you read that right. I now drink coffee. I managed to finish my undergrad, masters, a graduate diploma and the first semester of the PhD without the help of caffeine (although my tea consumption increased over the years). Then suddenly in March this year I hit a wall, I wasn't sleeping enough, had a growing list of deadlines and couldn't really function normally, unless practically falling asleep in class is normal. So thoroughly beaten by the academy, I turned to the Coffee Gods. They heard my cry for help and responded with Lattes, Americanos and regular coffee. With their help I finished the semester which I suppose is better than giving up and turning to the Alcohol Gods.

So what have I been up to? Well, I finished my final semester of coursework for the PhD. This essentially means that unless I decided to pursue another degree later on (which I won't!!!) I will never have to take a course again. Pretty crazy. For this last semester I was taking 3.5 classes and have never been busier. Often times I slept 4-5 hours a night just trying to get all the reading and writing done while maintaining a little sanity. I'm not sure I managed the sanity part, but I did do well in my courses which is great.

Now that my coursework is done, over the summer I have to write my dissertation proposal (a 20-30 page document that explains my proposed research). Once its approved then I can begin my fieldwork in South Africa! More on all of this in the coming weeks

Am I still crafting as the title of my blog would suggest?

Yes! Despite my busy semester, I still found time to quilt and sew. The Instagram community of quilters and sewers I discovered this year are an endless source of inspiration and they are responsible for a big part of my winter sewing. In part because I signed up for some quilting swaps without really considering my huge work load and partly because I was so inspired by their creations that I employed classic procrastination skills (which I like to call procraftination).

Here are some of the projects I worked on and finished throughout the winter semester. 

This was my first mini quilt swap, I love this quilt, it was sooo hard to mail it off to my swap partner, but she loved it, so that made me really happy.  I made a half size version of the Astrodelic pattern by Artgallery fabrics, its a free pattern that is really easy! 

I made this tote bag for a black and white tote bag swap.  I really like the geometric pattern that I created almost by accident. I didn't use a pattern for this tote, but I did use this tutorial for to make my first interior zipper pocket. It was super easy and I find it makes the bag more versatile.

I made this rainbow feather quilt for a rainbow themed quilt swap. I really like how it turned out. This one was by far scheduled at the craziest time, I had to mail it the final week of classes. Scheduling fail! The feathers were made adapting Anna Marie Horner's free feather quilt pattern

Spring Sewing

I took a much needed week off from school and spent a large part of that break sewing, here are the fruits of my labour:

I finally finished my supertote bag. Although it was much more time consuming than I expected, I love it.

I signed up for another swap!! It is supposed to be for a one hour basket. My basket took much longer  to make because I tried paper piecing for the first time. I love how it turned out. If you want to make one, check out this great tutorial by Kelbysews 

I made one for myself, this one took a little over an hour

I made myself a wallet!!!! This feels like the coolest thing I have made myself by far! Its beautiful and super functional. The "Have it all" wallet pattern by Straight Stitch Society was easy to follow, it took me about 5 hours from start to finish, including cutting out the fabric. The only thing I would change next time is to use more/the right interfacing, the exterior flap feels a little more flimsy than it should. (I used what I had instead of what was recommended in the pattern)

Here's a shot of the inside. Isn't it great!!!

Since it had been so long since I did some patchworking (can I conjugate that?) I decided to make a carpenter star. I will eventually turn this into a lap quilt, but I'm still trying to figure out what to add to it to make it bigger.

All together its seems like a productive few months! I have so many projects I want to tackle this summer, hopefully I will be able to get to all of them and finish my proposal. 

Viv

Final papers and Christmas sewing

I made it through the first semester of my PhD. It was quite a ride. The month of December has flown by with papers to write, grading to complete, exams to proctor and gifts to sew! Some days I didn't sleep very much but I got it all done!

My friends and I had a wonderful Christmas dinner on the 14th of December. It was our first time hosting Christmas in our new house! In preparation, I did a little Christmas crafting; I made a holiday felt garland.

All it took was some pinking shears lots of felt and some time!

Here is a close up of the garland.The technique is really simple! I sewed down the centre each circle. I let 4 stitches go in between each circle to give them some space, they hang better that way. 

 I used painters tape to mark the space for the circles so the stitching would be more of less in the middle. 

Here it is installed in my dinning area. Later on I added some Christmas lights to give it extra Christmas flair and it looks great!

After our christmas dinner we had a gift exchange. I was secret Santa to my friend Theresa and made her 3 open wide zipper pouches (tutorial here). I wanted them to be really personalized so I added pieced tops to make each one unique. 

Macbook for scale ;)

Here is the detail on the medium bag, I used a lot of scraps here,it kind of felt like doodling with fabric

Mini flying geese for the smallest bag

I tried my hand at making printed labels with great success, here is the biggest bag with the label ready to sew. I'll have more on the labels in a future post, but let me just say sewing them on after the bags were completed was not the best idea. I ended up having to open up the lining to make it easier. Save yourself the headache, plan ahead and sew them to the lining before assembly!!

All three bags with their labels ready to be sewn.

The bags were a great success, Theresa loved them! What do you think?

Happy holidays everyone

Vivianna

A little lamb for my little nephew

My life has changed a lot recently, I got married last year, bought a house this year and started a PhD this fall in a city 2 hours away from that house, my family and friends. All these changes have been amazing in many ways, although being far from my friends and family has definitely been the hardest part. 

By far the change that took me the most by surprise was the birth of my nephew, now you might be thinking, didn't I have 9 months to prepare for this? Yes, you're right, my sister is not a candidate for the show "I didn't know I was pregnant". The day he was born was a little surprising, I was away at school. I had warned my twin sister that of all the days for her to go in labour, Tuesday is the absolute worst (for me, of course that is the most important part of her labour, right? my schedule) and of course that is the day she went into labour (thank you Murphy's law!)

So here I was at the library getting updates by text message from my friend Theresa who was with my sister at the beginning of her labour. I felt excited, and also extremely far away and also sad. Such a mix of emotions to feel. I knew there was nothing I could really do to help my sister, but I knew that I wanted to be there to be part of this awesome moment. When her water broke I was kind of incredulous, I had been in denial until then, sure in the fact that this could not happen without me being there! I remember thinking, really this is happening now, when I just can't be there?? And I was also thinking, wow this is the moment!! How amazing I will have a nephew soon! I was in charge of the telephone tree to announce to everyone that the big moment was on hand! A very exciting and fun job. It is perhaps the best news you can call anyone with!  

Did I mention that while all this was happening, I was at the library to work on a very important presentation for the next day? Well I was, I'm sure you can tell that I was distracted to say the least! It was a torturous 12 hours for me, feeling far away and stressed about a presentation that I didn't want to be doing in the first place. I am still amazed I got through that presentation the next day on 3 hours of sleep. You guessed it, I only really got down to work after my nephew was born, meaning I went to bed at 4am! I like to joke that my sleep deprivation that night was in solidarity with my sister, her fiance and my nephew, but the truth is that it was part of a struggle that I am almost always losing, a work-life balance.  

The call that I got from my sister about an hour after she gave birth was very special and I will always remember it, the first photos were incredible. So the birth of my nephew was not all that surprising, but the thing that did surprise me was how much I love him. He's truly the greatest baby on earth. Yes, you are also right in thinking that I am completely biased in this opinion, but thats ok, its my opinion right? My friends had a bet as to who would cry when they held him, and I "won" that honour. He is truly perfect.  

What did I do to prepare for the birth of my perfect nephew? I made him a stuffed animal and baby blanket of course!!! Check out little Lamby, you can find the great pattern here.

The pattern is relatively easy, it just requires some patience and precise sewing. if you look at his face below you will see that I embroidered all his facial features, I did that because this stuffed lamb is for a baby, and I wanted to avoid any choking hazards. I also pre-washed all my fabrics to get rid of unhealthy residues and dyes. The harder part of this pattern was sewing his "hair", it is so curvy, I really had to sew slowly and I did have to get my friend Mr. Seam ripper involved a time or 2. The longest part was definitely the embroidery, but that is probably because I am a very novice embroiderer. 

So here is Lamby's face all ready to be sewn to the rest of his body. I unfortunately I did not take any photos of the previous steps, but let me tell you that it was very fun to pre-stuff the little arms and legs and to make the little ears!!

The hardest part of this was sewing all together when the limbs were all tucked inside. It was very bulky and at times I had trouble shoving little Lamby in the right position to be sewn. (See the pattern for more information on this step).

Here he is all sewn together and stuffed part way and almost ready to be hand sewn shut. (if you look at the right side of his torso, you will see the opening) Again apologies for not getting step by step photos, I was just to excited to see him stuffed!

Here is Little Lamby chilling at my dinning table, watching netflix patiently waiting for my nephew to be born.

I made a blanket for my nephew, that I knew would be super useful while he was still in a stroller (so for a while yet). It is very easy to make, a cotton fabric on top and a pretty orange minky on the bottom, just sew with right sides together, leaving a 3 inch opening to reverse it. Then stitch it shut. I also added a line of stitching all the way around about half an inch from the edge to hold the sides together and also to make it look more finished. Thats it, it took me about an hour. 

Here is my finished gift, a baby blanket and a cute little lamb stuffed animal!

Lamby likes his new blanky, but don't worry, he knows he will have to share it with my nephew.

What do you think of Lamby? have you every made a cute gift for your family or friends? Share it in the comments :)

Vivianna

A Marxist gingerbread man

The end of the week and weekend so far has not been a very productive studying week for me. I started out with great hopes that I would slay the academic dragon this weekend, as well as make progress on my christmas quilt, but unfortunately that has not materialized.

I bought some great fabric on Thursday. I can't wait to use it and see the different blocks I have planned take shape in my quilt.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending time with my sister, step-mom, step-sister and my amazing nephews! They are only 2 months apart, so it was a baby afternoon. It was a great change of pace and a nice reminder that there is more to life than school.

On my way home, I knew that I would have to work all night to catch up on school work, but after dinner when It came time to sit down and read yet another article that uses marxist theory, I decided to push it off until today and let Future Viv handle it. So I sat down at my machine and started piecing together my first gingerbread man.

He turned out great but he is a lot smaller than what i had planned, so I will have to adjust my design for the finished quilt, using some filler squares. More on that when I have time to sketch it out. The pattern for Mr Cookie comes from Lori Holt and is part of an instagram sew along calls #haveyourselfaquiltylittlechristmas. She has many great patterns, here is her blog

I was tired and a little irritable while piecing him, probably an indication that my sewing time was not for relaxing but for procrastination. And so, with every stitch my anxiety over getting my work done increased. And yet when he was all done, I could not bring myself to go to bed early. Instead, I watched videos about free motion quilting and looked up pretty quilting patterns on Pinterest.

So, this morning, Future Viv woke up, she was not impressed with Yesterday Viv's procrastination to say the least. I am at Starbucks, trying to catch up on reading, while the midterm papers I have to grade are weighing heavily on my mind.

Funnily enough, I am reading an article that argues among other things that School is an Ideological State Apparatus that indoctrinates young impressionable children into the ruling ideology in order to reproduce the material means of production.  I am beginning to vaguely understand what this means, which is progress for me. But I find it ironic that this article is in my reading list this week as I am struggling so much with the whole school system.

That's it for now. Not such a fun post, but at least you know where I'm at.

Vivianna

Relaxing Christmas Quilting

This has been a crazy, exciting and wonderful week! My twin sister gave birth to a beautiful son! I am an aunt for the first time!!! Amidst this wonderful news, I also had a presentation to prepare for on Wednesday and a conference to attend on Friday. It was a busy week filled with trips back and forth between Montreal and Ottawa. By Saturday morning I was completely exhausted and ready to relax a bit. What better way than with a little bit of quilting?

Ever since I started quilting, I have wanted to make a Christmas quilt. The holidays can be such a fun time to be with family and celebrate traditions. With the birth of my beautiful nephew, I can only hope that this quilt will come to represent fun holiday traditions and family time. So, this weekend I started my first Christmas quilt and I’m excited to share the process with you!

Photo from original pattern

My inspiration started with this Christmas tree block, it’s so cute and easy; you can find the pattern here.

I purchased the Christmas fabrics I used from Walmart. I had heard that the store carried some fabric, but had never explored that option. I went this week and was surprised to find they had a good selection. It may not be the finest quality fabric that you can purchase from a quilting shop and some may have serious objections to that, but I think that broader tradition of quilting is about working with what you have. If you have beautiful expensive fabrics, that’s wonderful, and maybe your quilt will stay nicer for longer, but less expensive fabrics can also produce great quilts.

So, while I was watching this weeks episode of How To Get Away With Murder, very interesting developments I have to say, I started cutting my fabric. The pattern calls for mainly strips and squares, which is one of the reasons this block is so easy. There are no triangles! 

Here are the trees all cut and ready to sew, it was very easy to get to the process. The red one on the right has all the cream pieces that will be make up the background of the tree. 

This pattern calls for drawing a diagonal line along 8 of the cream squares that are matched up on each of the tree strips. It is a kind of tedious process, but it makes assembly much faster and so its absolutely worth it.

Of course, my friend Mr. Seam Ripper wanted to get in on the action. I accidentally sewed the tree stump to the wrong side of the tree!! Irritating, but no quilting project is complete without the seam ripper!

Mid-assembly, you can already tell that it's going to be a cute christmas tree!

                     

Here are my trees all finished! I really like how they turned out. I can see my quilt coming together nicely with other fabrics and maybe another block or two mixed in, maybe a star, well see how it goes. I doubt I'll have time to finish this before christmas, but its certainly a step in the right direction! What do you think so far?

Some tips for this pattern:

Choosing the right foot for the job

As I started quilting more, I bought a quilting foot for my sewing machine that has a 1/4 inch guide. It is perfect for certain jobs since it ensure perfect seams. but for others like sewing a diagonal line, my traditional foot is much better.  

The photo with the red fabric has the the regular foot, it works for all types of sewing. The photo with the cream fabric has the quilting foot with the guide. 

Chain piecing

I have found that whenever possible it is so much better to use chain piecing as a technique. The technique calls for sewing each piece right after the other without cutting the thread in between. If you look at the photo on the left above, you will see there is another square right behind the one I am sewing, this is chain piecing. It is much faster and saves a lot of thread! On the right here you will see the 4 pieces I sewed using the chain piecing technique.