into the wild blue yonder

For today’s sewing blog installmwent I want to talk about:

Venturing Out.

Picture a Kris Kristofferson voiceover: “You know, some people seem to have no trouble gettin’ themselves new ideas, trying out new things and branching out artistically.”

* record scratch, then in my own voice * Yeah. I’m not one of those people.

So anyway, trying something new. In the case of this Mini Yeti snowsuit, I really got myself in trouble. And then self-rescued. I ventured out in a few ways: mostly, in working with outerwear and tech fabrics I’d had no previous experience with (three such fabrics, to be exact). I also self-drafted a few tricky things (including curved spiral-pieced horns), lined and underlined counter to previous experience and without a pattern, and handworked eyelets. This is all new stuff and done on a blind commission sent my way from Alberta, Canada. And I’ll tell you, the whole thing felt like risky business often, and I wasn’t sure if it would work out.

But, so far, so good. The blessed item is winging its way to its new home, where I hope it will be much-loved and much-worn.

(Elastic-back, plenty of room for a diapered – cloth or disposeable – and active child! Lovely-warm double-yarn yeti mitts with mitten-holders! w00t)

I have neither the right nor the hubris (these days) to define the term or concept of “art”. But for myself, any creation I make without risk and without stretching myself doesn’t feel like art – it feels like craft, or construction, or some such combination. There’s no problem with craft, repetition, or factory-assembly type work – after all, how many times have I made a few tried and true patterns? – but since I’m trying to develop myself beyond what I already can do, that risk isn’t always super-fun when I’m sweating it out.

Still, I think things turned out okay, and I’d be proud to gift, with love, this garment to any budding snow-bound little tot. Which I may have to do, if the client &/ortot this was intended for isn’t into my results.

I wrote a fair bit about how I made this in the Flickr tagset; for details on to exactly what fabrics, how much, and how many hours I spent, etc, you can look at my listing.

And now? Off to the Next New Thing.