Valentine’s Day sewing

I don’t think I personally know anyone who takes Valentine’s Day seriously, yet when it comes to the 14th February, all of a sudden people kind of feel like doing a little something for their loved ones. That is pretty much my attitude as well, although this year turned out to be a bit different in many ways…

First of all, I decided to take part in this year’s Secret Valentine Exchange. Then I found out that the surgery I was waiting for would be right before I was supposed to send the #2017sve gift off, so I was left with a few days to plan and create said gift. And lastly, I happen to have someone special to spend this particular Tuesday with, which gave me another reason to make something.

For the Secret Valentine Exchage I got to make a present for Stacy, an artist in the US, who seems to be really good at using natural dyes to create beautiful fabrics and yarns. She likes earth tones, and natural fibers, so half way through sewing a kimono robe for her, I realised that it may come out looking nice and perfect to make Valentine’s Day a little special, but ultimately the colour and texture are very far from what she would be happy to wear, so I decided to make something else.

I love making bags and I always wanted to try dyeing with something I can find in the kitchen, like turmeric, so I ended up doing both.

I used this brilliant pattern & picture tutorial, and managed to finish it in about 4 hours from drafting the pattern to sewing the final hand stitches. I have saved the pattern as it makes for a very neat bag, although in future I think I would make it slightly deeper and a bit narrower.

The turmeric dyed fabric turned out to be bright yellow, and not the ochre shade it looked like while wet (picture on top), which was a big surprise, but I was still pretty happy with how intensive the colour was. I don’t know a lot about dying fabric, so other that using an aluminium pot (does it even matter) for the dyeing process, I don’t think I did anything to make it colour fast, so fingers crossed it won’t cause any trouble while washing it…

I got a big box of goodies “in return” from Regina in Pennsylvania. It included 2 little zippered pouches, 3 fat quarters for quilting, two fabric marker pens, a thread wax and a lovely letter. The little bags are so impeccably made I could hardly believe they were not fed through some industrial machines calibrated just to make things like these. I really love the fabric choices as well, they look exactly like things that would catch my eyes in a store.

The fat quarters are really fun too, and what’s best is that I don’t actually have any proper quilting fabric at hand, so they really do fill a gap in my stash.

What I was also missing until now were those marker pens. I have never been a fan of the tailor’s wax or chalk, so hopefully they will end up being as useful as I imagine them to be, just like the thread wax which I am already familiar with. Thank you so much Regina! 😀

Since the surgery, I have been home-bound, so when my boyfriend mentioned that Valentine’s Day is coming up, I thought it would be best to use my time making a little gift, just in case he feels like surprising me (he did 😉 ). He has to wear a suit to work, and sometimes he even puts on a tie, so it seemed like a good idea to try to make one.

I picked out two fabrics for the project from my stash: an African print waxed cotton and a silk sari with a really bold print. Since I was doubted he would wear the latter one, I decided not to cut into that sari just yet, and went for the blue and red cotton fabric.

Using this pattern (with some modifications), and some of the instructions from Purl Soho’s tutorial, I ended up with something very much resembling a tie. It feels super long though, so we’ll find out tonight if it actually works like a tie is supposed to…