Round Two - DC Threads at Artomatic

Here are a couple of pics from DC Thread's Quiltomatic Lounge at Artomatic!Many thanks to our resident quilting experts, Shirley and Charlene from Wee Bee Quilters from North Michigan Park, Jules from Columbia (the country not the city) and a couple of other drop ins who stitched up a storm!

Theme Dressing - ISO an Intervention or 12 Step Program!

Okay, OKAY - I admit I have this odd need to try to construct garments for many of the events I attend. Oft times the garment is an appropriate fashion chioce but then there are the times (not infrequent) when I find myself "theme stitching". Usually, I hope, the final product is "appropriate" (whatever that means) - age, taste, theme! But really - is any theme sewing/dressing appropriate? Really? You decide. Here are some examples of last year's "theme dressing":

The Fourth of July "Save the Baby Skeets" T-shirt (BTW - we won a case of wine for that event! - not sayin' my T-shirt had anything to do with it though!)

And there's my fav - the Obama Dress! Sorry - THAT one was TOTALLY appropriate!


And my most recent (and probably the genesis of this self-absorbed post) - the Alohoa Paddling Pants for the NCA Monumental Outrigger Canoe race - - -

Here's the back story on the paddlin' pants:

Here are my FAVORITE hiking and paddling pants.

I desperately wish I had bought 2 pair! Didn't! So I have wanted to try to "rub" a pattern from them forever. So, Saturday morning before the race I decided I would try to make a copy and, as theme sewing chance would have it, that I also NEEDED to make something to wear to the race (see - I definitely need that intervention - who gets up at 6:30 am the day of a race and decides to make a pattern and a garment to wear by 10:30?)

So here is a photo of the muslin pattern on the fabric. So the fabric has a story too. Sis, Sue, left us all for 2 years to live in Palau - another story - and she sent to me some fabric she found at a local shop. I have waited for the perfect garment to present itself and, well, I think it speaks for itself!

Here are the finished pants. I love how they look lying flat - however, they don't fit as well as the original pair (granted I only had about 20 minutes to fit them as I didn't really get started cutting and sewing until about 2 hours before I needed to head out). The closure is just an opening for the draw string waist. I added about 4 inches of elastic in the middle of the drawstring - that seemed to help avoid the typical drawstring sack look. I don't have a photo of how they look "on" but it wasn't too awful as I wore them in public!



Got a bunch of compliments on them - mostly due to the print of the fabric - an objective measure of success for us theme sewists!!!

Here is our team - DC PoWeR (Paddlin' Women Rock)


I gotta say - not my best fashion statement but then again - the homies from the boat house are all 'bout fun in the water and nuttin' 'bout the fashion!

Peace out!

DC Threads Hits Artomatic

DC Threads hit the road last night and became a part of art history in DC - the first Sewing Lounge at Art-o-Matic! We set up shop on the 3rd floor with the Wednesday night Stitch 'n Bitchers and spent the evening stitchin' up a storm! Many thanks to Rebecca and Lauren for making the magic happen and to all the knitters who tolerated all of our stuff! We are set to be back next Wednesday - June 24th - for another round! Check out the details here - Quilt-0-matic at Art-o-matic


Check out the awesome quilt squares we built for the 1st annual Art-o-matic Quilt-o-matic!

See you next Wednesday!!!!!

DC Threads at Artomatic!!!! Come Stitch With Us!

DC Threads will be at Artomatic this Wednesday (June 17th) from 5:00-8:00! We'll be stitching along side the "Stitch 'n Bitchers" building the first ever Artomatic "Quilt-o-matic"! We will be there with our machines encouraging the crowd to sit and stitch a quilt block with us! So stop by on Wednesday to stitch with us and to enjoy all the AMAZING art and artists! STITCH ON!

photo credit M.V. Jantzen

photo credit Andy Lungren Werner

Artomatic is a month-long art festival in DC that is free to the general public celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Monument Realty and the Capitol Riverfront BID have provided a brand-new 275,000 square foot building to host Artomatic, right next to the Nationals Stadium. The event features nine floors of visual and installation art, theater performances, dance and comedy, three music stages, street performances such as fire dancing and drum troupes, and a film screening theater. With four stages, four bars and a lounge on each floor, the 10th Anniversary Artomatic is bigger than ever. 52,500 people attended Artomatic last year, and 70,000 are expected this year. Over 1,000 visual artists and 600 performing artists are exhibiting this year.

55 M Street, S.E.
(at the corner with Half Street)
Washington, DC 20003
Metro stop: Green Line, Navy Yard, Ballpark exit
Free admission.

Next Sewing Lounge - June 13th! Start your summer with a FAB new skirt!

Summer is here and so is the next session of the DC Threads Sewing Lounge! We invite you to join us on Saturday, June 13 from 1-4pm at the North Michigan Park Recreation Center to kick off the summer sewing season with us.

This month, we'll be showcasing this fun wrap circle skirt, a great project that needs no pattern just some geometry and basic math! We found it takes up to three yards of 45" wide fabric, plus a sew-on snap and D-rings for the closure. More details can be found on this link on Burda Style.

As always, you can bring your own project or browse our library of patterns for other ideas. We'll also have tutorials for first-time and beginning sewers and plenty of fantastic people to share your threaded thoughts with.

If you haven't done so already, please be sure to RSVP on the DC Threads website. This helps us get a headcount so we can plan accordingly. And of course if you'd like to volunteer as an assistant for beginning sewers, please let us know.

Burda World of Fashion Circular Skirt - A Hit or a Miss?

I actually have been doing a tad bit of sewing but I just haven't had time to post any of my toils! But today finds me in jury duty with a little time to spare!

For this month's Lounge we have chosen a Burda World of Fashion circular skirt pattern - billed as an easy beginner project – a necessity for the Lounge’s pattern inventory. As always, we "test" drive the project/pattern before we unleash it on the "Loungers". Here is my finished garment (please excuse the resolution of the photos - my digital camera was MIA and these are taken with my Blackberry).


It looks cute as a button on the Burda model/designer/sewist and it is really EASY PEASY to make (despite that fact that the project immediately presents you with a math problem – not my strong suit but I am quite proud that I was able to channel a little geometry). But that said there are a couple of issues that need to be mentioned before you dive into this project!

The pattern and fabric yardage as designed assumes that we all live in a 26 inch waisted world, that we prefer to wear our skirts at our high natural waist, that we are all under 5’6” and wear our skirts at 21". I am not quite a 26 inch waist, am 5'9", and do like to wear my garments slightly below natural waist so I needed to add about a 1.5 inches to the waist measurement and I wanted to add an inch to the length to assure that the skirt would be long enough. The pattern is built on the premise that you cut the whole skirt on the fold as one BIG circle. These small adjustments, though, push the measurements past the 45 inch width of most fabrics – so unless you have 60 inch fabric you need to cut a couple of bias panels to assure that you have adequate “coverage”. Not a huge deal but it detracts from the “circularness” of the design, adds a seam disrupting the bias fall, presents more math (ugh!) and may require some fitting. All this adds up to shifting this cute, easy, breezy skirt from a beginner project to a “more than beginner” project.

So I finished the project and tried it on and, whereas it is cute and breezy and (relatively and theoretically) easy – it just didn’t look that great on me! If I can swallow my vanity (and can find five free minutes)I will post a photo of me modeling it soon.

So now for the good news – it is really easy to make once you figure out the yardage and fit. The bias cut makes hemming the skirt a breeze and the ‘D-ring’ closure is a “cinch” for the beginner. I cut the waistband on the bias because I ran out of fabric due to the increased yardage required but, as it turns out, the bias cut made attaching the waistband to the tight waist curve uber easy!

I am test driving a super simple wrap skirt tonight as an alternative to the circle skirt for the Lounge on Saturday! I’ll let you know how I do!

Come on down to the Lounge this Saturday and test drive these patterns for yourself!!

OOOHHHHHH! I need to sew more - Where exactly does the time go???

But instead of creating I am wasting precious sewing hours doing things like this --
What's MY word?

Your Word is "Fearless"

You see life as your one chance to experience everything, and you just go for it! You believe the biggest risk is being afraid and missing out on something amazing. Sometimes your fearlessness means you're daring. You enjoy risky activities. And sometimes your fearlessness means you're courageous. You're brave enough to do the right thing, even when it's scary.

What's YOUR word????

What's your WORD??