Welcome to my website, The Traveling Tiger!
Here I have shared some of my many interests - fiber arts, adventure travel, cycling, and crafts. I hope you enjoy perusing the site! If you are curious about anything, drop me a line at
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Remember me? Last seen throwing up hands in despair and turning to work on the lining?
Well, I’m still in a state of moderate despair, but at least I’ve figured out some of the things that were bugging me:
- Applique fabric too “busy”. I was using the same fabric as the body of the garment, for convenience, but it really needs to be a bit plainer, or at least different from the body fabric. It just looks funny.
- Applique fabric too heavy. Leaves are light and airy.
- Too many leaves – they compete with the curve and add heaviness to the design.
I’m still playing around and percolating – this weekend I plan to dye bits of many different fabrics (chiffon, organza, china silk, charmeuse) and layer, paint, silkscreen, etc. the bits until I arrive at a format I like. I may also play around a bit with polymer clay, though that is a bit less likely.
I have also been hard at work on the lining. I have thread-traced nearly all the pattern pieces, and am preparing to baste and sew. My goal is to get the lining mostly in before going up to see Sharon on Saturday afternoon. That is a tall order, but as I’m taking this afternoon off work, that should give me time to get a good stab at it.
The house offer fell through; the bank had eight offers and invited us to give our “highest and best” offer (i.e. more money). We weren’t willing to increase our offer and felt it was likely that someone else would bid higher, plus we weren’t comfortable with some of the contingencies, so we’re dropping out. A lot of stress and hurry for nothing! but, there will be other houses, and we’ll find something eventually.
Finally, because every blog post should have a pretty picture, here is one of the ideas I’ve been percolating: a cluster of three leaves at the shoulder, with one leaf drifting down. The colored swirls indicate where I’m thinking of using some embroidery to suggest movement.
cluster of leaves
I’m not wedded to this design either, but I like it better than the others so far.
Of course, in the end, I may just throw up my hands completely and send in the garment without any further embellishment. I don’t think that would be a tragedy, either.
Randomly Selected Work
The Handwoven Magazine “Not Just for Socks” reader challenge inspired this shawl, a collapse weave in two different sock yarns. I was rummaging through my stash of sock yarns for the contest, and found some Cascade Fixation, an elastic sock yarn with a crinkled appearance that reminded me of cooled lava. This, in
This shawl was one of my early attempts at network drafting. The inspiration for the garnet red weft came when I dyed some yarn for a Tibetan lama friend – she had requested an auburn-to-maroon shade, and I liked the resulting yarn so much that I dyed some more in the same color!
