Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Man, I'd be running to you. Everything we wear is designed to keep your core warm...but since I hit menopause my core is on fire and my arms are cold.
Haha - I'm also trying to work out a new pattern for leg warmers for the round loom. I did one pair but they are so ugly I think only I will be wearing them. Still working on it.
Also sorry to hear about Nancy Zieman. Much too young, poor thing.
As for Lodestar, I love what you said about continuity, the knowledge that your ancestors likely sat in a room with a candle and stitched those same stitches. It's part of what I love most about all hand works.
I find counted cross stitch has soothed when I was stressed, something about that grid and keeping it all counted and contained in there was great.
One of the projects I would like to do, if I live long enough, is to "copy" an amazing colorful photograph I saw. The photographer used a batik filter in Photoshop and I thought well, I could get batik fabric in similar colors and then stitch the shapes on. I hesitate to post a picture because it's not my work.
So instead, one of my two completed cross stitch pieces:
Yay, a knitter! That outfit is absolutely beautiful! I'm so impressed with your skill level! How did you learn how to knit? DId you learn as a child?
NYC, are there REALLY stores in the garment district that only sell zippers??? How cool!!! I lived in NYC for a year back when I was in my early 20s, but never explored the garment district - just not my interest area at the time.
I loved the knit outfit, too, and often wondered if gentlearts's screen name was really about the "gentle arts."
The garment district is not what it once was, but then nothing in NYC is, hence my becoming a refugee. However, on the low, low, lower east side, is a store that sells only zippers. It's called A. Feibusch Corp. and they sell online as zipperstop.com but if you saw the store compared to the website, you'd know they were from two different centuries. They sold pants zippers, jeans zippers, overall zippers, zippers with nylon teeth in every color imaginable and lots of sizes of each, zippers with metal teeth in different colors (a hunter who didn't want light flashing off a silver zipper asked for brass), invisible zippers, coil zippers, coat zippers, rhinestone teeth zippers, zippers with ribbon for zipper tape, two-way zippers, zippers on a roll that you just told them how long to make it and they put the top and bottom stops on and a pull and you could have anything you wanted. They sold thread, too, and a few tape measures and glue and things in two old glass cases, but the rest of the store behind the old fashioned counter was just rows of metal shelves with boxes of zippers.
It was a very Jewish area when Mr. Feibusch incorporated, but has since become part of the edge of Chinatown, so other than the owner, who was old enough to be Mr. Feibusch Jr., everyone working there was Chinese.
Pacific Trimmings sells online and they had a whole room of zippers, including riri zippers from Switzerland. B&J Fabrics sells online (better than Mood), M&J Trimmings sells online, Sil Threads sells hundreds of colors of threads and some zippers, pandatrim.com has a more limited selection of a wider range of supplies.
If you sew anything at all, you'll find things you want at all those places, even online.
I learned to sew from my mother. She was quite proficient at smocking, so I had quite a selection of beautiful handmade dresses. I did some sewing of my own clothes for 4-H projects but I wasn't great at it; what I really enjoyed was counted cross stitch.
As an adult I have a bad habit of buying supplies and starting a project but never finishing it. I have completed a few things, including a jointed teddy bear and this large cross stitch project which I worked on here and there for about 5 years:
About 10 years ago I decided to teach myself to knit. I learned later that I was purling backwards, but I finished a scarf and a shawl before I lost interest. Just a few days ago I picked it up again- I couldn't find a winter hat for my 4-month old so I decided to make one. I only kept one skein of yarn when we moved to Alaska, but I did keep my knitting needles, and after a bit of online research and a couple of days' work I ended up with this:
My husband was quite surprised that I actually finished it! I enjoyed making it so much that I am now working on a second for a friend whose baby is due next week. I look forward to making more baby things, especially Halloween costumes!
I do several things. I'm a needlepoint designer, I also do commissioned needlepoint, finish work, and dabble with quilting. I have a website
Do anyone else here do needlework? Where I live, no one is smart enough to learn. I've tried to start beginning classes, nothing.
I would love to hear from others who needlepoint or quilt.
I made a needlepoint rug once. I was inspired by the rug Barbara Bush made for the White House. There used to be stores devoted only to needlework, but I’ve not seen one in years. My last effort at counted cross stitch was around 2004, when I had the church my son got married in charted to make as a gift. The gauge was so small, that I found I couldn’t do it with middle aged+ eyes.
Anyway, I think the days of ladies sitting around stitching are over. Now, I knit more than anything else.
Anyway, I think the days of ladies sitting around stitching are over.
Oh, I hope not! Or if so, then maybe WE can bring that back to our communities.
One of my very happiest memories is of sitting in the historic print shop at the Living History Farms (near Des Moines, Iowa) with the other women of Town, all of us peacefully hand sewing or knitting, with a gentle breeze coming in the open windows. I felt so comfortable and happy and part of a family of friends! (I was the Milliner there for a while.)
In my current hometown there is a group of knitters who get together at the library every week and knit on their own projects and enjoy one another's company. My library is good about having adult programming. They did try to have a machine sewing group, and had some machines set up in the basement, but it was hard to lug all one's stuff to the library and just sew on a project once every two weeks, so that program fizzled out.
I'm so happy to see pictures of some of the things you all are making! That Hardanger embroidery, Lodestar! If you ever have a chance to go visit the Vesterheim museum in Decorah, Iowa you should - their Norwegian needlework collection is amazing. You can see some things on their website: vesterheim.org
There are several really amazing museums devoted to needlework. Has anyone ever been to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah KY? I haven't, but have a friend here who did. She attended a workshop there and took tons of photos of some amazing quilts.
My mother used to do needlepoint, and left behind some unfinished tapestries. I think my sister has them. Is needlepoint really that hard? I'd take a class, and I'm near Nebraska!
NYC, that paragraph you wrote about zipper types made me grin so wide! Somehow it seemed like it should be in a script for a Saturday Night Live Sketch with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd from back in the day.
I'm also very guilty of starting projects and not finishing them - my besetting sin.
. I'm also very guilty of starting projects and not finishing them - my besetting sin.
Me too. I once started a sweater for my husband - can't even remember when - and just found it again last year, half finished, and finished it. I think it must have been about 10 years ago that I started it!
I start something that seems like it's going to be so much fun, then have to force myself to finish it because I see something else I want to do, start that, etc. I've got a blazer half finished for my daughter but have been doing all these wristers (about 10 pairs so far) and will have to make myself get back to the blazer. It's quite obvious that one's not going to be a Christmas present, as I had intended!
I have a cross stitch, a beautiful poinsettia on black, that is now about 8 years unfinished. In the interim my eyes have got so I don't know if I will be able to do that one, since it's on black.
NYC, that paragraph you wrote about zipper types made me grin so wide! Somehow it seemed like it should be in a script for a Saturday Night Live Sketch with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd from back in the day.
Like the “Scotch Boutique “ that only had scotch tape.
NYC, that paragraph you wrote about zipper types made me grin so wide! Somehow it seemed like it should be in a script for a Saturday Night Live Sketch with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd from back in the day.
Like the “Scotch Boutique “ that only had scotch tape.
Because if it's no' Scottish, it's CRAP!
Back on topic, anything done by hand, like needlepoint and cross stitch, is not necessarily hard, but supremely time-consuming. That rug I posted a pic of is a dollhouse miniature done in thread. But I remember Barbara Bush's needlepoint rug and the bunny she put in for Jimmy Carter's killer rabbit story that got blown all out of proportion. What I remember most was how envious I was that she could keep at that thing long enough to cover the floor of an entire room. I'm speechless.
I won't admit to how many projects, of how many different types I have going (because I won't count them), but I do the same. They all overlap and sometimes I will finish several in a short time or just one big or old or slow one and no matter if it's been in the "under construction" heap for decades, the feeling of finishing is just as satisfying. Occasionally I do things like that lovely knitted hat - with pom moms! - that you can finish in less than a lifetime.
601 - I did a 3 month millinery internship (unpaid) and kudos to you. Talk about a fine and dying art. If you have any of those wooden forms, don't let them go easily. There's almost nowhere left to get a new one.
I love that none of us do only one thing.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Somehow it seemed like it should be in a script for a Saturday Night Live Sketch with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd from back in the day. 
