Biggest Little Farmhouse Studio

And a new obsessio begins.. amigurmi.

I’ve been neglecting this site because I’ve been busy loving on our little bundle of joy (she’s 6 weeks already!) and sewing when I get free time. I have some posts in the works, so hold tight — well, not too tight, it’ll probably be a couple weeks (being honest here) — and I should have some detail heavy posts about fabric dying and baby shower gifts galore!

In April 2008, I placed my second order with syfabrics.com. In this order, I wanted to test out their discounted assorted fabric lots to see if they are an economical option for my personal and business sewing. I also wanted to try some new fabrics and colors and figured this would be the cheapest way to do so. Because I was open to color choices, the discounted lots offered me a chance to do both.

I ordered four different discount lots of three different types of fabric: fleece prints, suedecloth, and terry velour.

Fleece Prints
Syfabrics’s fleece prints typically run from $6.50-$8.50/yard. Some of the cheaper fabrics have a volume discount (for 5 or more yards), lowering the price to $5.99/yard. I decided to test out two of their fleece print discount lots:

Five Pound Printed Fleece Remnants: Each lot contains 5 pounds (approximately 5-7 yards) of 100% polyester printed fleece fabric. Assorted remnants will vary in size from 6×12 or larger. Most pieces are clean end rolls and will be 60 inches long with a minimum width of 6 inches. Some pieces may be flawed with stains, print flaws or creases. Great for smaller craft projects.

Total Price: $11.99

Cuts Received: 10 different fleece prints for a total of 6.75 yard. 3 prints were less than 1/2 yard, 5 prints were more than 1/2 yard, 1 print more than 3/4 yard, and 1 print more than 2 yards.

Price Paid Per Yard: $1.78

Overall Satisfaction: Of the 10 prints I received, I really liked 6 of them and hated 2, not bad for a random selection. The price per yard is less than remnant pieces available at Joann Fabric Stores, but being able to pick your prints and cut sizes might be worth a slightly higher price. If you’re open to a variety of prints and sizes, then this is a pretty good bargain.

10+ Yards Assorted Fleece Prints: This lot is for an assortment of pieces that will measure 1 to 3 yards long, totaling 10 yards or more (brand new, 1st rate, no defective fabrics). Each lot is guaranteed to receive at least 5 different prints/colors of our choice, no specific requests please. 100% Polyester fleece double sided. 330-350 grams/yard. Measures 59-61 inches wide, machine washable.

Total Price: $37.50

Cuts Received: 7 different prints for a total of 10.6 yards. 4 prints were less than 1.25 yards, 2 prints were less than 2 yards, and 1 print was almost 2.5 yards.

Price Paid Per Yard: $3.54

Overall Satisfaction: I liked all of the prints and there were 2 prints that I was excited to receive. While gathering data for this post, I noticed that at least two of the prints are from their more expensive line of fleece.

Suedecloth
I currently use white suedecloth in my cloth pocket diapers and wanted to try new colors. Because Syfabrics raised their suedecloth prices since my first order (by a $1.00/yard), I decided to use a discount lot to sample new colors. Suedecloth is available at $5.99 yard (volume discounts are $5.50/yard and $4.99/yard).

10+ Yards Assorted Suede Cloth: This lot is for an assortment of pieces that will measure 1-3 yards long, totaling 10 yards or more (brand new, 1st rate, no defective fabrics). Each lot is guaranteed to receive at least 5 different prints/colors of our choice, no specific requests please. 100% Polyester, 58-60 inches wide, approximately 300 grams/yard.

Total Price: $34.99

Cuts Received: 6 cuts of 5 different colors for a total of 10.98 yards. 1 cut navy (1 yard), 1 cut red (1.16 yards), 1 cut black (2.36 yards), 1 cut maroon (3.19 yards), 2 cuts of tan (3.27 yards).

Price Per Yard: $3.19

Overall Satisfaction: I can use all of the colors, though I wouldn’t have purchased 3 yards of tan. Suedecloth is often available at Joann Fabric Store on a seasonal basis and you can probably get it there for less, especially with a discount coupon, and of the colors of your choice. This lot seems like a decent option when local stores are not carrying this fabric and you need some right away.

Terry Velour
I wanted to test out this fabric for both cloth diapers and cloth menstrual pads. I’d heard great things about it, but was bulking at the $7.99/yard price.

10+ Yards Assorted Terry Velour: This lot is for an assortment of pieces that will measure 1 to 3 yards long, totaling 10 yards or more (brand new, 1st rate, no defective fabrics). Each lot is gauranteed to receive atleast 5 different prints/colors of our choice, no specific requests please. 100% cotton 13 ounce heavy weight Terry velour. Fabric measures approximately 45 inches wide. Great for custom robes, clothing, towels and more. Image shows face of velour, back side is the standard terry loops.

Total Price: $59.99

Cuts Received: 6 cuts of 5 different colors for a total of 10.72 yards. 1 cut teal (1.11 yards), 1 cut red (1.86 yards), 1 cut pale blue (2.42 yards), 1 cut maroon (2.67 yards), 2 cuts white (2.68 yards).

Price Paid Per Yard: $5.60

Overall Satisfaction: I liked all of the colors I received and was impressed with the fabric. The two cuts of white are will be more useful than the 2 cuts of tan suedecloth, but thats just a personal preference. I’m new to using this fabric, so I don’t know if I could find this fabric cheaper through fabric co-ops or not, so I’ll be keeping my eyes open in the meantime. The price paid per yard feels a little steep, still, but thats more because I’m a bit cheap.

Overall Satisfaction with Syfabrics’ Discount Lots
Overall, I’m happy with the quality of the materials I received. The fabrics were all first-quality cuts, as promised, and the colors and prints were a good variety. I am impressed that I liked the majority of the fleece prints and will probably consider purchasing the 5lb discount lot again.

I am slightly disappointed with the quantity of fabrics. I had visions of bigger lots and was looking for a great deal. Syfabrics delivered as promised, so this isn’t a complaint about their product or advertising. I was just hoping, overly optimistically, for a little more. Instead of “10+ yards”, I think “More than 10, less than 11 yards” would be a more telling description and will keep hopes in check.

- Our broccoli and unknown seedlings have started on true sets of leaves.
- We planted cabbage, brussesls sprouts, and more broccoli last weekend. We had to put a heating pad under the tray and they are now sprouting.
- This weekend, we started some asparagus seeds and thinned out some more of the unknown seedlings into individual trays.
- We picked up 4 strawberry plants while at Home Depot looking for seedling trays.

We were pretty disturbed to find that Home Depot sells seeds and potting soil, but no seedling trays — uhh!. Guess they aren’t used to people really planning out their gardens and extending their harvest by starting seeds indoors. But, while we were disappointed to come home without the trays, we were happy to have some locally grown strawberry plants in the car with us.

In other news, the plan is to bring home 5 baby chicks next weekend. We’re still a little unsure about what will become the brooder, but we’ve at least cleared out a space for them. I really want to order some 20-week pullets now that I know that means we’ll get fresh eggs sooner, but Chris isn’t as excited about that plan. So, we’ll keep with the starting small plan, which is probably the best plan.

A quick update on this year’s garden:

We ordered seeds from Territorial Seed Company on February 11 and they arrived within a week. At the same time, we also ordered from artisticgardens.com and the seeds never arrived. I contacted them after a couple weeks and our order had been lost, so I re-placed the order on March 4 and the seeds arrive on March 8 (sans one back-ordered packet of pumpkin seeds).

We started seedlings last Sunday (March 2): broccoli and mystery seeds. We set the broccoli seedlings on top of the office computer monitor and the mystery seeds hung out in the kitchen window above the radiator. The broccoli sprouted tall by Thursday (March 6) and the mystery seeds were pushing up a day later (March 7). Since sprouting, we’ve moved my wire craft shelving to the living room window and have put them there in hopes of getting a decent amount of sunlight. We’re also supplementing with artificial light, since the days aren’t quite long enough yet, and need a better lamp stand in. We may also add some white sheeting to help reflect more sunlight at the plants as well.

Yesterday, Chris and I went through his stock of seeds and added them to our spreadsheet (which I hope to make publicly available at a later time). We have 82 packets of seeds on hands and more than 52 different plant varieties, which includes companion-planting flowers and two specialty crops (luffa sponges and kale walking sticks). Some of Chris’ stock is many years old, so we’re not sure if they are all viable – but they have been properly stored cold and dry and there is a good chance they’ll all be good. The broccoli that sprouted were from one of the older packets since the ones we ordered from artisticgardens.com had not yet arrived.

In somewhat related news, We’ve been reading “Animal, Plant, Miracle” in the evenings before bed and I’m renewing my interest in eating locally AND adding interest in eating in season. The author basically journals her year in food and doing the same and I think we’ll incorporate as much locally grown and seasonally appropriate foods into our diet as possible, with hopes at being fully in-season by next year (which will also be easier when we have our root cellar, freezer, and jars of canned foods available to consumption). Reading this book has also shared new information, such as the connection between Monsanto and Territorial Seed company (no more ordering from Territorial for me) and heirloom versus hybrid seeds. I plan to order a few more seeds for this year from either Baker Seed Catalog or Seed Savers since getting more information on the importance of heirloom plant varieties and diversity in our food sources.

Items we still need to buy for our garden: seed potatoes, garlic, onions, strawberries.

Today gardening to-do list includes making up a gardening journal to help track data on seedlings, transplants, maturity dates, harvest, and all that good stuff. I may actually move my gardening journal over to my business site since it may be slightly more relevant there in terms of gardening in Carroll County and possibly directing more work my way — gotta love passive advertising, I guess. May also be moving all my crafting posts over there as well, but thats another subject altogether.

I get bogged down when I start browsing my crafting sites – there is just too much awesome stuff out there to look at and want to do. I jump from wanting to do one project to another before even starting. For years, I’ve been more content with just looking at projects than doing them — its about time to get over that and actually make some more stuff. I had so much fun with the secret santa swap I did and am working on a cloth diaper shower gift at the moment – but I just want to sew, sew, sew and not just read, read, read.

I’ve been working on increasing my sewing and have really umped into sewing for babies and children. What I need now is a really good neutral color scheme, or a collection of more than one. What I hate is pink/blue and the default yellow/green. Blah.

I’d love to have one, two, or three primary color schemes that I can constantly build upon that are gender neutral — haha. That sounds so easy, but it seems to always come out much harder than it should. Oh, and a primary color scheme isn’t about primary colors either. Brown seems rather popular these days, but it’s often softened with pairings with pink and blue to genderize it.

Oh to have an entire clothing line from 0 – 2T of completely gender neutral clothing — is that even possible or are people so driven to put that “Boy! Girl!” label on their child that they wouldn’t have use for an entire line of neutral clothing.

I know higher end stores often have children clothes that go beyond pink and blue, but they still often have very distinguishable boy/girl attributes. What to do to go completely beyond that…

I’ve been busy working on a secret santa gift the past couple days. Today I made the following two craft items:

- Cloth Tissue Holder: This was a pretty straight forward craft. I altered it a bit to add the finished edge I wanted and will post a pic as soon as I get some taken and uploaded.

- Cloth Snap Box: I made this out of some fun flannel that I had laying around. Instead of stitching and turning, I just put some decorative thread in my overlock machine and serged around the edges. I finally got to use my snap press machine to add plastic snaps and it seems like a nice enough toy/box for a little boy.

On Friday, I made four other gifts for the exchange:

- Cloth Grocery Sack: This was a bit different than a cloth shopping bag — instead of the paper-bag shape, this is modeled off a plastic bag and whips up right quick. This sewed up really fast and I might make a couple more just to keep in the car for when I leave my bag of cloth bags at home or for when I just need one bag.

- Bean Frog: This was made mostly just for fun, I wanted to add some sort of fun whimsical items and this pattern was super easy. I used some leftover toile from a previous curtain project and paired it with some wild, metallic gold dot fabric. It seems that this project really inspired Chris somehow and he spent part of today working on some machine tool plushies. While sewing this up, I tried a new suggestion I just learned — draw the pattern on the fabric and sew along the line drawn, then cut it out. This worked really well and I’ll probably try that again on other smaller items.

- Hot Cocoa Mix: I mixed up a batch of this hot cocoa mix and poured it into two caning jars. One is for us to try and the other is for my secret santa gift. She said that she likes dark chocolate so I hope she’ll enjoy this. I was hoping that we’d get to test it out before mailing this out, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I’m just gonna have to trust Alton Brown for now.

- Socks Turned Hand Warmers: I need to get a tutorial up on how to make these. This was my third pair and I changed several of the steps, making it much faster this time around.

All in all, it seems like it’ll be a nice little gift and now I’ve practiced several of the items that I’ll probably be making for some other people for Christmas too.

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I’m working on my first whole-wheat sandwich loaf right now. I decided to give the recipe on the side of the bag a try since it was accessible and simple looking. I was a bit shocked that this one recipe (doubled to make two loaves) took almost half the bag of flour – wow. If I keep this up, we’ll be needing some serious flour containers and purchases to make sure we always have some on hand. This is supposed to be our sandwich bread for the week, hence two loaves because I know we’ll end up gobbling up the first one for snacks.

In other bread baking news, I made some yummy Buttermilk dinner rolls from the Bread Bible Book. They were super fantastic and yummy, though Alex and Chris both commented about them having a slightly funny taste — maybe it was the homemade buttermilk (milk and vinegar) I used. Warm from the oven, they didn’t even need butter – but butter made them oh so yummy. They lasted for a couple days (just as good as the first day); the recipe called for 16 rolls that we’re actually much larger than they needed to be. Next time, I’ll opt for slightly smaller rolls.

A few days before that I made a recipe from The Bread Bakers Apprentice and shaped the loaves into rolls (Chris wants to know what’s up with this roll obsession) and they were very crusty and good. However, they would have been much better as larger loaves because of the crustiness. I think I ended up making about 16 rolls, but they ended up being way too dense after a day or two (they were more like french bread). I think Alex still ate them anyways, but next time I’ll make them into loaves. This bread called for a pre-ferment dough (basically a partially made dough that you let rise overnight) and the my first attempt was too wet, judging by appearances, so I made a second batch that worked perfectly. I just threw the first attempt away, it’d been resting away in the fridge for over a week now and didn’t seem worth testing out in a loaf.

Over obsessing as always, I jumped into this bread thing over my head. I read some awesome books: The Bread Makers Apprentice, Crust and Crumb, and a bok on multi-grain breads by the same author. These books really take bread making to a new, and time consuming, level. Striving for perfection, I wanted to start there and keep going. However, after my first recipe attempt and all the hoop jumping to make a truly excellent bread — I’ve decided to go back to simpler processes and recipes. I’ll retain the weights versus measures for scooping flour, but no more of this steam bath and spraying the oven walls with water to get the perfect crust. I’m sure I’ll be able to manage excellent bread without all that hoopla (and judging by the awesome buttermilk rolls, I know it doesn’t have to be so complicated).

I’m gonna try a sour dough bread next – I had french toast made with sourdough that was oh so yummy and want to see if I can make it at home. I also want to work on some multi-grain breads, but will wait and see how the whole-wheat loaf bread turns out. It doesn’t make much sense to spend all this time making bread if I’m just going to be turning out nutrition-lacking white breads.

I’m looking to make a period costume piece, preferably the 18th century time period. As always, I begin with research (and, sadly, often end there too).

From “Why do they dress that way?” by Stephen Scott

The Society of Friends (Quakers) – All through the 19th century a characteristic pattern of plain dress was recognized as distinctly Quaker. This consisted of a wide-brimmed hat, a standing collar coat and vest for light shawl, and a plain dress for women. Gray and brown were the predominate color. This distinctive costumer vanished rapidly in most areas after 1900.

In the Philadelphia Orthodox Yearly Meeting (arch Street) and among the Conservative (Wilburite) Yearly Meetings some were still wearing plain farb in the 1950s. A few dozen plain Quakers still survive, scattered mostly in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virigina, and Iowa. The Central early Meeting in Indian observes some conservative dress practices after the pattern of the holiness movement.

Bonnet Styles
From Dressed in Simplicity: Headgear: black hook over white cap often called the tunnel bonnet or “coal scuttle bonnet”. Quote: Later bonnets had a narrower brim meeting under the chin and with a soft crown, a Quaker version of the fashionable bonnet of the time. Caps were always worn under bonnets.

Colors:
Typically not black, perhaps grey, brown, sage greens, and cream etc.

Embellishments: None or limited, plainness can simply be the removal of embellishments such as lace and buttons to more modern styles. more on embellishments: The absence of adornments, such as ornamental buttons or lapels on the jacket (http://people.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/~ubcg09q/dmr/chap4.htm)

Website of information:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~quakers/dress.htm

Books for Further Reading:
Books of Discipline (1820s) b. David Hackett Fischer
Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer

The Transformation of American Quakerism by Tom Hamm – background section

A Study of Quaker Dress by Gummery

Sally Wister’s journal (1777-1778)
All in One Dress and One Colour by Margaret Fell

Other
Amelia Gummere – noted Quaker costume historian