Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm

On Wednesday night we saw Wil Wheaton and Paul and Storm live at the Alberta Rose Theater.  They were hilarious!! It was the epitome of geek culture with obscure sci-fi references flying through the house.  Reverse the polarity anyone?  I have been a fan of Wil's Table Top show on Geek and Sundry not only because the banter among the players will make you laugh until you cry, but some of the games are amazing.  I still want to buy Dixit.  Beautiful illustrations from a French board game company.
Anyway.... here is Paul and Storm's best 36 seconds on the internet from Wednesday night.  I'll bet you will watch it at least 5 times today.

I have torn my studio up in an attempt to purge, reorganize, and create more breathing room to increase the flow.  It is still a mess.

There is a slight funnel effect the closer you get to the computer.  The biggest flow issue is the ironing board.  It is not only in the way, but blocks one of my cabinets.  When I planned the layout of the studio, I did not think about the ironing board which is up most of the time... especially when I am sewing.

I am still rearranging and cleaning, but I'm getting closer.  Will post more as the progress ensues.

Jacket Lining Project

About a year ago, I decided to fix the lining on my pea coat.  Every time I put it on, I heard a distinct ripping sound.  You can see in the first two pictures the state of things.

So many of my vintage coats have beautiful, heavy weight satin lining that are durable and look gorgeous.  The lining in this coat was cheap and too light weight.  I decided to replace it with a heavier satin lining in hot pink AND replace the Thinsulate inter-lining that I had paid extra for when I originally purchased the coat from J. Crew.  This coat is also a petite, so I didn't have to hem the sleeves.  The shell wool is in good condition.  There were many reasons for saving this coat... as well as keeping it out of a land fill.

 I have the whole step-by-step up on Burdastyle here, but I will show you some highlights.

Lining removed

 I did not make marks when I took the lining apart and I should have.  The body has side panels and the sleeves are two part sleeves.  The front seam of the sleeve appears to line up with the front seam of the side panel, but something happened during my construction phase and these seams did not line up.  I will be more careful the next time I re-line something and make more marks.  It's an easy step when the lining is still sewn together, but almost impossible once you have ripped the whole thing apart.

Cutting the new lining

I bought this coat right before leaving for Berlin in January... a very cold time of the year.  I wanted the Thinsulate interlining for extra warmth, so I wouldn't have to add a lot of layers to my wearing or suitcase.  I have sewn with Thinsulate before and have worn it many times.  I ordered it online from Seattle Fabrics.

Thinsulate

DO NOT IRON THINSULATE!!!  An iron will instantly melt the Thinsulate together into a felted mass and will no longer work as designed.  If you have a coat with a Thinsulate interlining do not iron it or let your dry cleaner press it.

Lining in progress with Thinsulate flat-lined to each lining panel.

 I did not take out every seam and remove every button, so there were some bulk issues to work around especially at the back neck.  There were also some seam allowances that were not the same which made it even more challenging to sew.  I had to use some hand sewing to get the lining in.

I started using leather thimbles in college when I was a sewer in the costume shop.  We were often sewing on bulky fabrics or unusual items.  Nothing hurts quite like running a needle through your finger eye first, so I adopted the use of a leather thimble then and always keep one on hand.

The best invention in the world!!!  A leather thimble WITH a non-skid metal plate!

Back neck seam in-progress.

 This is a production style construction coat NOT a tailored coat, so the lining is attached entirely by machine.  As such, there is an opening in the left sleeve through which the entire garment is turned.  Crazy but it works!  My very first job was as a sample sewer at Nike.  All of our lined jackets and coats were constructed this way.  It took me several hours to wrap my brain around this construction because the visual modeling in your mind is hard to create.  The best way to learn is to try it and see what happens.  And don't get frustrated if you get your sleeve linings twisted... it happens to everyone.  That is why there are seam rippers.

Turning the garment... aka sausage stuffing.

Garment turned showing opening in left sleeve

Done!

Stairway Carpet

The striped runner is finished!  We have learned A LOT about carpet runners, padding, and stripes.  There are some issues that are not what we initially wanted, but we are mostly pleased with the results.

There is some unusual mitering going on at the landing.  We are going with it.  There are several issues here:  the stripe pattern is not centered in the runner, the stair widths are not the same on the upper and lower stairs, and the walls may not be perfectly square... since very few things in this house are square, plumb, or at right angles to one another.

There is more touching up to do on the trim and then maybe we can get the paint cans out of the dining room.

Plaster Walls and Shelving

I love plaster walls.  However there are some challenges when drilling into them to hang shelving.  Such as when you drill the screw holes 1/8" too close together and then you have to remove not only the screw but the screw anchor as well.

We now have craters in the wall.

We are patching and will be painting.  But the room's occupant loves to dig in the filling material.  As soon as it is dry, we find evidence of mining going on and have to refill.  I am trying to fill and paint today before the miner gets home.  

Carpet, carpet, carpet

The new carpet is very soft, very quiet, and most of all VERY CLEAN.  You can lay on it and roll around and play on it without wondering what germs, dirt, and bugs might be hiding in it.  The last of the main plush carpet was installed yesterday upstairs.

The front of the carpet has been wrapped over the edge of the floor.  The wood part will be covered by the striped stair carpet.

Mister e's new room color.  The picture makes it look lighter and more turquoise than it actually is.  It is more like a stormy sea.  We are going to put up shelves for the Star Wars ships.  e has requested that the shelves be the same color as the walls, so it looks like the ships are flying in space.  Genius and simple solution!

Stripes for the stairs

This is the amazing hospitality carpet with stripes!  The pile is very dense and low.  Some of the stripes are raised.  We get to keep all the left over carpet and had a small piece of the stripe.  So we unrolled it in the hallway to get a feel for the stripe.  Love it!  I really wish the piece were longer so we could do a runner for the hall.

The stair carpet has been cut and is off to the binder to have the edges bound.  The guys will be back next week to put it in.  That will be almost three weeks of carpet laying.  Irving (our dog) can barely stand having people in the house especially people he can't see running up and down the stairs and pounding on the floor.  He is so worn out from not barking yesterday that he is sleeping all day today.

How are we getting all these projects done?  We have turned the dining room into a temporary paint station/command central.  The boxes hold the tools, brushes, outlet plates, painter's caulk, etc.  All the various cans of paint and primer are on the floor.  After the carpet install, there has been a lot of touching up.  This is faster than putting everything back down in the basement and having to run up and down two flights of stairs.  This way, we only have to run up and down one flight of stairs.  Good thing we have a dine-in kitchen.

Stairs

We removed the carpet from the stairs.  Our plan is to paint the treads and put down a striped runner thus making it easier to clean the corners of each stair and only paying for the carpet where you actually used it.  Besides, striped runners on white stairs look very cool.

Fir stairs that squeak if you breathe on them

Most of the carpet is out.  You can still see the
original grey carpet on the upper set of stairs.

However finding striped carpet was challenging.  We asked our carpet guy and he kept showing us subtle sort-of stripes in non-contrasting colors.  They were more "stripe wanna be's" than actual stripes.  We wanted this kind of look:

We finally had to show the carpet guy a picture on the iPhone.  Then he got it.  The type of carpet we wanted was called "hospitality carpet" (think bad casino carpet).  If you do a web search for hospitality carpet, you will find a gold mine of patterns, swirls, optical illusions, tapestries, etc!  Fortunately our carpet guy also does hotel and industrial installs and had an entire room of hospitality carpet swatch books.  We settled on a fabulous black with multi-color stripes.  I can't wait to see it on the stairs!

In the meantime, we have pulled staples, sanded the edges of the each tread and riser, primed, and painted 3 coats of paint on the staircase.

Upstairs Repaint-Recarpet-Cleaning Extravaganza

After jury duty I was seized with the overwhelming desire to get going on painting projects.  So I came  home and opened a can of paint and forced my family to assist.

Our original bedroom color is similar to the color of computers in the 90's sort of a UV tainted plastic putty.  It is not an attractive color at all.  And to make things worse, I spent several days selecting this color the first time we painted our bedroom 12 years ago.  I wanted to bedroom to be a sanctuary with a little boudoir thrown in and the putty wasn't cutting it.  Also it didn't really show off the color of the wood furniture.

The warm putty color and the previous closet situation.

Choosing the right dusky lavender orchid amongst
the piles of stuff.

At about this point, I decided that we weren't under enough pressure to finish, so we ordered carpet and scheduled a install date a couple of weeks out.  That would allow us to focus more acutely on painting Ewan's room, the hallway, and the stairs.  Nothing like a deadline to get things done!

In progress

We decided to change the center alcove into a double hung closet space and move the high boy dresser into one of the closets.  The high boy was originally in a location in the room that allowed for frequent banging of elbows, shoulders and heads (depending on the growth spurt).  Needless to say, the family is much happier with the new location and enjoying fewer bruises.

The closet fully loaded.  I did clean and reduce,
but I am nuts about vintage clothing
so can't reduce the closet contents by much.

The other direction

I will post more pictures with it cleaned up and decorated.  We also have some of the new carpet installed!!  The old carpet came with the house 17 years ago.  It was old, felted, and not comfortable.  The new carpet is posh and makes the upstairs very quiet.

On a completely unrelated note, I discovered my son "gaming the system" while playing Wii Fit.  He figured out a way to hold completely still for the meditation game.

December Recap

The blog has been quiet, but now that January is here and kids are back in school hopefully I can settle into a schedule again.  I need to do some creative things and post some of the things that I made over the summer.  We also have some house projects in process too.  LONG overdue things which involve cleaning out closets and cupboards (Yay!) and painting!

To recap the last bit of December:

We had snow!

Unfortunately... it didn't stick, but was pretty as it fell.

 Dog biscuits for the dog and peanut butter/chocolate brownies for Santa.   The brownies have a stick and a half of butter in them.  Awesomely good... but awesomely bad for the body.  Definitely a once-a-year treat.

My dear friend Stacey bought a bottle of Prosecco the last time we were together before she left for Germany.  Now I am hooked and have been enjoying it over the holidays.  Goes well with potato chips too!  Definitely a more than once-a-year treat... sometimes a once-a-week treat... if not daily.

The Portland institute to doughnuts- VooDoo Doughnut.  I LOVE their boxes!

There were more doughnuts in here, but there is only a maple bacon bar (my favorite) and a voodoo doll (with cherry filling and a pretzel stick for stabbing) left.  Definitely a more than once-a-year treat, but not too often.

I enjoyed a couple of days of jury duty over the two days following Christmas.  The second day was beautiful downtown, so I snapped a couple of pictures.  This is a Michael Graves Memphis-style building.  Oddly weird but interesting.  You can learn more about Memphis Design here.

The elk statue all dressed for the holidays.

We don't have many clear, sunny days in Portland, but when we do they are beautiful.

Back home...

I am back in Portland.  I drove home last Friday in time to see Miss Elsie twirl her baton in a Christmas performance.  I'm still finishing up school work (both for classes that I am taking and classes that I am teaching).
Christmas has started and we bought a live tree this year.  It's really big.  Funny how they always look bigger on the lot than in your living room.

What I have been doing....

I have been doing a lot of reading and not much creating which is starting to wear on me.  Grad school seems to involve large amounts of book reading supported by large amounts of paper reading (and not the newspaper) which is then supported by additional external readings which are sometimes not scanned in well leading to missing words and black blobs.  But I am persevering and learning.  I have also discovered Human Factors which I want to learn more about.  I think they could use some creativity in their website design though.  I have taken one class in this area and am adding a couple more.  

I do squeeze in some knitting on a skirt that I started two years ago.  Maybe I will actually finish it this winter.

Here is what I've been doing:

1. Myself and another student created a protective mesh sleeve for an air fired cannon.  This is me using the industrial sewing machine in the Clothing, Textiles and Design Lab at school.  The bottom picture is the cannon firing.  The big dot is the wad and sabeau.  The little dot is the pumpkin.  This cannon fires pumpkins!

2. I heard Gloria Steinem speak at a small opening at the Prichard Art Gallery.  That is her on the right in the picture in the orange sweater.  She is not a woman of immense stature, but is truly a larger than life individual.  It was incredible to hear her speak and to watch women who had idolized Ms. Steinem finally meet her in person... there were tears in many cases.  She was very patient and had genuine conversations with each person.

 3. I took a group of students and one colleague to Los Angeles for 5 days of factory tours, shopping, and a textile show.  We spend some time (and money) at Mood Fabrics too.  I'll post pictures of the fabric haul in another post.

Sweater factory.... these are the machines that knit the panels (fronts, backs, sleeves, etc):

Psst.... these sweaters are 100% cashmere!... and they are for The Row!

It's always good to take time out to check out the local antique/junk malls.  My dear friend, Ilena, and I absolutely enjoy doing this and found this all-in-one cocktail device.  It comes with a padlock too so you can lock down your rye, bourbon, and scotch.

Pondering going back and getting this.