Mat! and summer top!

Last weekend,  I took another Navajo weaving class from Linda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornalez... What a amazing pair of sisters, and another amazing class. Here's the mat I made; it's about 7 by 10 inches. Note that the bottom square are done a whole lot better than the top squares!!! I got better as I went along :) The only thing I didn't care for about the class was the speed at which we had to work... there's a lot of techniques that change as you work from the bottom to the top of the mat, so you need to finish in a very intense 3 days.  Still, a very amazing class from two amazing women, and I loved my classmates. And! I bought a loom, so more to come!

I've also been trying to make a top for my sewing class. When I made a muslin from the commerical pattern (Simplicity 8061), I realized it needed some adjustments. First I lowered the darts. Then noticed that the armholes gaped a bit... I added a dart at the front armhole, and walked it down to join the french dart... then raised the back shoulder to eliminate the back armhole dart, and redrew the armhole to compensate, which made the armhole gape more. Ronda, our instructor, suggested back darts which make it lay amazingly smooth on my back! But that made the front gape. And adjusting the back shoulder seam made the shoulder not line up where it should, and after I fixed that the bust dart was too low again. so I redrafted it to a lower point. What a lot of changes. I made four muslins, then constructed the top out of cheap material I didn't care about ruining. The husband's comments? It's flattering, and seems well constructed, and it fits really well. I'm thrilled enough to use the same pattern on some batik he brought me from Indonesia :) All in all very satisfying.

Minor progress on my hat, on my skirt, and no progress on weaving. I wound a couple of warps for the upcoming Kathrin Weber dye workshop, but need to wind 3-4 more PLUS label the bejeebers out of them. Slowly but surely I'm working through being over-committed!