Fishfish Designs

Two more

2009-10-18T16:02:45Z

One hat and one neckwarmer, on Etsy.

Anyone need hats?

2009-10-11T21:29:15Z

3 new ones up on Etsy.

Got another 2 hats that need finishing, and a neckwarmer in the works. Will post later when done.

back to basics

2009-10-08T22:34:53Z

Knitting hats again -- expect to see the first bunch posted in the Etsy shop this weekend!

Chanel's spring '09 couture collection has been stuck in my mind for months, and it's gotten me thinking about the role of constraints in the design process. I've found that I definitely suffer from design paralysis when confronted with too many choices. Am now using up my tons and tons of white/natural/oatmeal colored yarns to make hats. Hoping for a more methodical approach. Amazing how a monochrome palette can make you focus on form and detail.

knitting again.

2009-09-23T04:29:03Z

Started knitting for holiday gifts. It's been eons. Poked around Ravelry for a beret pattern and got tired of that and am making my own up as I go. Feels good, familiar, different...I was starting to tire of the draft-trace-cut-stitch-press-stitch cycle of sewing. Such large frameworks are required, so much space to clear, so many hours to block off in a day.

I must sound like a broken record: I need to clean out the studio and organize it. This weekend, most likely (why is it only Tuesday?). And then maybe think about bringing my knitting machine out of hibernation to make a few hats for Etsy.

plackets & shirtmaking

2009-09-07T18:42:19Z

I had a lot of drapey red cotton twill. The drape was more akin to a silk twill than a stiff cotton twill, which confused the hell of out me. But eventually I decided to make a tunic-type shirtdress with the help of placket instructions from David Coffin's Shirtmaking book. Plackets: not actually difficult to sew!

Really bad photo courtesy of my beloved ancient Canon being unavailable. I need to get rid of that DDR pad in the back. But you get the idea.
I will admit that the only reason I made this dress was so I could wear the belt with it. Sans belt, that dress is a sack.

bad photo

2009-08-26T23:51:18Z

A few weeks ago I decided to tackle a strapless sundress with built-in foundation, because it is past time for me to tackle that whole "fit a custom bodice for yourself" and "learn to build support into a garment" endeavor. It turns out that given enough muslin, grosgrain, and cheap plastic boning, I can in fact build a passable foundation. I am excited. So excited, in fact, that I am going to post a shitty photo of my work in progress.

This is why I haven't packed yet for my 4am flight tomorrow.

Sort of better?

2009-08-23T07:01:24Z

Quick and easy project.

Made loose and flowy pants from pinstriped heavy cotton gauze (another piece of fabric that's been taunting me for months). The fabric looks like a "stria" type weave, but if you flatten it all out it becomes apparent there are closely-spaced white pinstripes running down the length of it.

Details: I cut my usual trouser-leg pants pattern but skipped doing pockets or a zipper fly, since the fabric was somewhat stretchy from the crinkling. I reinforced the crotch seam with twill tape and sewed vertical seams using a narrow zig-zag stitch, just as with moderate stretch knits. For the waistband, I used a folded band of cotton/lycra interlock. I made hem facings from a linen/cotton woven, to both cut down on bulk and to ensure the wide leg would keep its structure at the hem.

Paired the pants with sort-of-okay tank top and a belt, and wore it while running errands. The waistband grew a bit over the course of 6 hours so I think I need to take it in.

Barely wearable

2009-08-22T15:36:11Z

I have spent the last 2 evenings after work sewing a goddamn proof-of-concept garment out of polyester blend fabrics, just to get it out of my head. Sewing room is a mess now, pattern pieces everywhere. But at least I have this tank top. I may wear it for bumming around the house. Looks passable from the outside, but the interior construction is a hack job (side slit facings, blind hem, zipper install).

Cue unflattering photo:

Fabric is a bright turquoise poly/rayon linen-look remnant that was overdyed for a mottled/heathered effect. Its thickness and polyester content rendered it impossible to press crisply, hence the wrinkles along seamlines. I suspect thread tension also contributed to the puckering. Who knows if it'll even out in the wash.
I used a previously developed sheath dress pattern as the starting point and modified from there. Even if I don't wear this top, I can make a copy in a better fabric...just kind of a shame though, I spent 10 hours futzing with the damn thing.

Thrifty abominations

2009-08-15T23:42:07Z

Picked up this camouflage helicopter fabric for cheap at a JoAnns going-out-of-business sale several months ago:

It was going to be a pair of boxers, because fabric this loud should not be used externally. But the minimum cut was 2 yards, which would have resulted in a lot of waste had I only made boxers from them.

The boyfriend enjoys hurting people's minds by wearing absurd color combinations (often in conjunction with the dinosaur camouflage shorts), so he asked that I make him a camouflage helicopter-print Hawaiian shirt instead. Having no small misanthropic streak myself, I supported this idea, with the added stipulation that he ONLY wear this shirt with camo dino shorts, for maximum visual joke-age.

So here we are:

I even dyed the buttons to coordinate, because even awful novelty gag shirts have to be well-made:

Graduation Quilt

2009-06-20T20:18:20Z

Last month, I asked my sister if she wanted a high school graduation gift. She said, "I dunno, make me something." So I asked for her three favorite colors (blue, green, silver-gray) and started sketching.

This is the story of 2.5 weeks of intensive quiltmaking.

The quilt design was basic - a square grid with appliqued circles of different sizes and colors, on a white background. The concept itself had been jangling around in the back of my mind for a few months prior, so I was glad to have a reason to construct it.
I managed to score nearly all the materials from a JoAnn's fabric store that was closing, and then some: Omnigrid, where have you been all my life? I am now a true believer in clear grid-marked quilting rulers.

Components list

The quilt top: pieced from 44" wide white-on-white paisley print (subtle, I like that), and a few extra bits of other white-on-white prints (vaguely modern geometric) and a lovely white-on-white floral embroidered lawn (my favorite corner).
The circles: cut in 3", 3.5", 4", and 5" diameters out of a smattering of fat quarters and bits from my scrap bin (stalkers may recognize some of the scrap fabrics). This took basically an entire weekend. Then came the grid-marking and placement of circles. Many pins were involved.
The batting: bonded high-loft polyester, 2-3" quilting distance.
The backing: 108" wide white quilting cotton.

Eventually there were 88 circles pinned in a 7.5" square grid formation all over a pieced white cotton quilt top. And then I had to machine-applique them all. And because I'm insane, I had to machine-applique them all using thread matched to each circle. This is what happens when you stick to your design principles. You can still see some loose circles pinned down in the back of that picture, because I was so sick of stitching that I just had to get up and snap a photo.

At some point (during all the evenings after work), all 88 circles managed to get appliqued, and all the thread tails got trimmed, and the whole thing got smoothed out and there was some quilt-sandwich-assembly and giant safety-pinning and big sloppy basting:

While at the crossroads between quilt top finishing and quilt sandwich quilting, I pondered my quilting pattern options:
1. Straight-line square grid
2. Outline each circle only
3. Outline each circle and do concentric stitch pattern outward with overlapping ripple effect

I chose #3 because I hate myself. Also, because it was the best option.

Looks great, though!
After going through three different free-motion quilting feet during my first quilt attempt, it seems I have finally stumbled upon a free-motion foot that fits my machine and isn't made from totally cheap brittle plastic. Hooray!

Wrestling a giant thick quilt through a basic home sewing machine is no joke. Good thing I've been keeping up with the pushups, because damn.

For the negative space around the circles, I chose a simple straight-line outline frame going all around. Walking feet are awesome.
Then I went to the fabric store, spent a good 30 minutes hemming and hawing over which white-on-white print I should use for the binding, made 13 yards of 4" bias binding (here's where the 4" wide Omnigrid ruler came in handy too), and machine-bound the quilt.

Final view.

Flew to CA to attend the graduation. The quilt was very well-received (sister's taking it college). Now my studio feels somehow bare and forlorn without a giant cloud of puffy white quilt to fill it. Which means I ought to start a new project!

covering my butt

2009-06-20T01:41:53Z

Now I have more than 2 pairs of pants in rotation! (Scary, I know. Nobody cares when you work in a lab.)

1 pair black linen/cotton blend with subtle textural vertical weave pattern (like pinstripes in 3d), perfect for the Houston summer. It's been in the 90s for a few weeks now, with no sign of rain. Not that rain would do anything except make things more humid, but change is welcome, right? I think I need to make more linen pants to round out my summer wardrobe.

Now with squirmy toes and 50% more cat.

1 pair army-green thick cotton twill, to replace the ones that shrank which I then gave to a smaller friend. Thankfully, these did not shrink.

I'm not sure if my base pants pattern needs more tweaking, or if I'm simply unused to the looser look of non-stretch woven pants (i.e. not vacuum-sealed to thighs). Might try grainline correction using darts on the back pieces to get it to hang better.

Dr. Duro: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love polyester jersey.

2009-03-21T22:25:10Z

I made this yesterday night. The "Duro" dress is on its way out, trend-wise, but I don't really care. I have an emerald-green Pucci-esque printed version I bought two years ago, but I rarely wear it because the kimono sleeves are too wide for my taste and the neckline is cut super-low. This one is relatively utilitarian.

I had ordered the fabric because I really liked the graphic print, not so much the colors. After considering my color options, I bought a yard of black jersey to use as banding around the neckline and possibly cuffs and hems. The cuff & hem bands were nixed when I realized that alas, I am 5'4" and too short to pull off multiple bold horizontal lines in a garment. But you bet your ass if I were 5'8" I'd be all over that shit.

Anyway, the solid-contrast band worked to keep that muddy tan color away from my face, and as a result I now have an easy pull-on jersey dress for spring. I also made an identical tunic-length top out of the scraps.

Pattern: Bodice self-drafted from a basic t-shirt pattern, skirt eyeballed using a basic straight skirt pattern piece.
Materials: Main body is 95% polyester 5% spandex ITY jersey. Contrast bands are 100% polyester matte jersey. I normally don't do synthetics, but I ordered a few poly/spandex jerseys and they seem nice so far. I think the loose cut of this garment helps with breatheability issues. I still prefer natural fibers, but in the future I may be willing to make an exception for poly/spandex jersey in particular.
Notes: The neckline band on the dress wound up a bit wonky on one side due to easing-in issues. It didn't happen when I re-made the pattern as a tunic, so I think maybe ripping the bands out multiple times on the dress was not the best thing. It's not super-noticeable and it will probably only bother me because I know about it.

The weather's warmed up around here and spring is most definitely in the air, so I may give myself permission to abandon the fall wardrobe project for now, as I am in no mood to sew jackets or warm things.

Cyclical, integral

2009-03-08T08:26:27Z

Out of idle curiosity, looked up instructions on how to make a backstrap loom. As I searched, I dimly remembered having made one out of cardboard when I was about 12, using instructions in a school library book. I'm sure my mother still has the resulting woven swatch somewhere.

I dabbled in a lot of crafts as a kid, all self-taught from books, using whatever I could find. Now I find myself returning to them one at a time, now with more resources and research on hand. It feels oddly comforting and familiar, like visiting old friends who have grown and changed in my absence (and I have grown and changed as well).

Things I did once, in the distant past:
- 2-d art
- ceramics
- weaving
- rubber stamping/papercrafts
- origami
- polymer clay sculpting
- latch hook rugs
- embroidery

Things I have done twice:
- knitting
- sewing
- jewelrymaking

Recent endeavors:
- crocheting
- spinning
- dyeing
- machine-knitting
- quilting

I rearranged the studio some more today, making room for a serger setup. I don't have a serger yet, but it's in the plans. The knitting machine has been put into storage, the beads no longer have their own table (they now reside in a set of plastic storage drawers and tackle boxes). Everything's becoming more sewing-oriented, but at the same time it isn't, because...

I received a copy of Printing By Hand over the holidays. It's a great book, a primer on all the major printmaking methods and how to start doing them. I want to print lots of things (mostly fabric), a permutation of my long-ago obsession with rubber stamping on paper.

And in addition to wanting to print on fabric, I also want to bead it, embroider it, and add knitted/crocheted pieces to it, and dye it, and quilt it (although not all at the same time). Every old skillset is new again. I am restless inside my own head, always switching media and trying the next new thing, becoming the proverbial jack of all trades.
But everything eventually cycles back around and resurfaces, which is sort of useful in my unending quest to make stuff.

Wish I could do this for a living.

Trying to

2009-03-01T00:23:31Z

rearrange the studio.
make keep/toss piles for materials.
make an inspiration board/wall thing.
figure out where my design sense is going.

Things I have learned thus far:
- I do most of my jewelrymaking activities sprawled on the floor. The little table I got off Craigslist two years ago has served only to collect detritus. It's going away now.
- I need to figure out a scrap-storing methodology if I am to keep all these fabric scraps. Organized by weave and then by color, I think, but where to store?
- There are way too many cardboard boxes in here.

Small problem

2009-02-21T03:33:05Z

The cat may be glaring at me because I bought too much fabric.

A productive weekend

2009-02-18T23:49:43Z

Wore this to work today. Those are the same pants I just finished, and I made the orange mock wrap on Sunday.

Other things I made:

The same wrap top as the orange one, just done up in printed cotton jersey (which was actually left over from this dress I made over a year ago).

Found a white cotton/poly rib knit in the clearance section of JoAnns. Bought it. Made a raglan top with little yellow buttons.

The upshot: Three out of six tops in the planned wardrobe are done! The mock-wrap style tops were made from Simplicity 4076, with modifications (added 1" to neckline edge so I could turn and stitch to finish, lengthened by 2", disregarded the two different pieces for the left and right fronts).

What I will be making next:

Big graphic printed olive green cotton, from a thrifted duvet cover.

Laying it all out

2009-02-16T01:39:54Z

I'm two garments in on the wardrobe I designed back in November (see the check marks?). It's warming up around here, but I still want to finish this set before I start sewing the other wardrobe (a spring/summer one) I drew out over the holidays.

I know I wrote "4 bottoms/6 tops/1 jacket" on the paper, but I have no idea what jacket I would make to go with this. Maybe a trench, since I've had a nice pattern hiding in my filing cabinet for a year now, but I haven't gotten up the nerve to trace it off yet.

The fabric stash is still growing. Maybe in the course of sewing this wardrobe I can outstrip my rate of fabric accumulation (oh who am I kidding?).

Ridiculous

2009-02-15T21:36:42Z

Found the fabric on sale on Friday. Made these for the boyfriend today.

"I thought you meant camouflage fabric and dinosaur fabric."
"No, it's camouflage dinosaur fabric."
"Oh hell yes!"

Also, I've completed the first item in the wardrobe I've planned (from all those sketches)...

Welt pockets in the back. This is the third time I've put welt pockets on pants, and it seems to be getting easier.

And of course, the requisite pocket fabric:

Pattern: Heavily modified from Simplicity 4135
Fabric: 100% cotton cream/black herringbone, reads as a brownish gray. I adore herringbone and all manner of menswear fabrics.

I'm quite happy with the angular front pockets. Picked that off a pair of ready-to-wear pants I saw somewhere (probably Anthropologie, my favorite inspiration mine). I hemmed these pants at a longer length, so that I can wear them with heels and look like an adult.

classing it up

2009-02-05T05:10:12Z

I needed a light sweater-type thing, and this style has been everywhere lately. Long, drapey jersey with a wide-banded open front. My machine is awful at hems on lightweight knits, so I left the edges raw. Now I don't have to schlump around in an old hoodie if I don't want to.

Fabric: Mystery synthetic jersey from a warehouse in SF
Pattern: On-the-fly modified from my basic tee pattern, which I customized from the basic tee at Burdastyle.

I banged it out on Sunday afternoon, then started on a pair of pants in cream and black cotton herringbone. I'd have finished them by now if I weren't coming down with what I suspect is the flu.

I hate winter

2009-01-31T22:29:55Z

Well, maybe not hate, but there are many reasons I dislike winter: it's cold, tomatoes and basil aren't in season, and I usually come down with a nasty head cold every year. But the best reason is this: The days are shorter. I haven't gotten anything done sewing-wise for a good two months because it's always dark and/or overcast when I get home from work.

I finally finished this paisley shift dress today. It had been lounging on the back of my sewing chair since mid-December. The plan was to finish it in time for the winter festivities, but I got caught up in gift-shopping and cookie-baking and friends-visiting and food-consuming.
The weather finally turned nice and sunny today, so I put in the zipper and hemmed the thing. Yeah, I was two steps away from finishing this dress and it languished for weeks. Oh well, it's done now.

The color is closer to true in this last photo:

It's kind of a medium-gray background and the woven paisley design is a shiny darker gray. The fabric was reversible so I spent a few days trying to decide which face to use. I went for the less-shiny side.

Pattern: Heavily modified from a basic Big 4 dress shell
Fabric: Jacket weight cotton/poly jacquard with some stretch, charcoal heathered woven cotton for facings, and matching Bemberg rayon lining.

Now all I want to do is make summer dresses, but first I should sew stuff to augment my work wardrobe...

amuse-bouche

2009-01-25T16:31:37Z

Faced with my ever-growing fabric stash, I've begun sketching. Mini-collections, grouped by color scheme and season (you know it's bad when you can visualize everything in your stash from memory). Lately there's been a meme of sorts going around, called SWAP: Sewing With a Plan. I'm hoping that with a plan, I can start using up some more fabric and also wind up with a coherent wardrobe in the end.

Also, we've started a food blog: 28 oz. wine glass

It's finally cold enough

2008-11-18T03:58:34Z

Cracked open the yarn vault tonight and damn, do I have a lot of unfinished bits and pieces in there (also, tons of yarn). Resolved to either rip/store or complete everything in that pile this winter.
The nice thing about taking a hiatus is that abandoned half-realized ideas now look fresh and new. One item in particular, once reworked, could be the seed concept for a small series/collection...

resurfacing

2008-11-09T19:42:30Z

Work's been busy and I haven't really sewn anything in a month or so. I did make some jeans last month and I've been wearing the crap outta those, but they're in the wash right now.

First thing I did today was make something to wear.

Fabric is a thick cotton tricot knit that's navy on one side, silvery gray on the other. The silver threads peek through on front which yields a heathered/denim effect.
Pattern is modified Lydia from Burdastyle. This was originally going to be a hoodie sweater dress, as I was testing the fit for a future hoodie, but I decided upon the structured tube/collar instead while playing with fabric scraps.

impetus

2008-09-06T19:58:32Z

Bright turquoise baby sweater, for a coworker's little girl:

The fabric-covered button was made using a 1.5" dia. button kit and a scrap of quilting cotton. It adds a good punch of color.

I tried using a backing button to help support the weight of the ginormo-button and to distribute the stress from the single-button closure.

Front:

Inside:

Pattern: Ribbed Baby Jacket by Debbie Bliss, 12-24 month size. Free pattern available here.

Yarn: Knitpicks Totem, a 50/50 wool/modal blend. Feels cottony, nicely drapey, but not saggy thanks to the 50% wool content. Sad this yarn's not available anymore, it was a test-run that was sold off at deep discount about 2 years back.

I knit the body of the sweater on my LK-150 knitting machine in an evening, then spent another evening knitting the ribbed neckband by hand. Very quick, as far as handknits go, and very satisfying to finish a knit garment in 2 days. Sewing has spoiled me so much, in that it is instant-gratification compared to knitting.

All hail IKEA

2008-08-31T18:12:01Z

Skirt made from IKEA table runner fabric and scraps of matching blue linen. Self-drafted pattern.
You can still see the foldlines from where the fabric was pre-hemmed; hopefully they'll come out in the wash.