Micronesian Skirts

I lived in the Pacific Island nation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands for many years.  In this country and the neighboring Federated States of Micronesia, women still make many of their clothes.  They are especially well known for their skirts.

In the Micronesian cultures, women never wear pants or shorts.  It's considered very immodest to show any part of the thigh, considered the sexiest part of the female body.  Skirts must be long enough to keep the knees covered, but not so long as to get wet and dirty in an environment where there's plenty of water (salt and fresh), sand, and mud.  They also have to be something that you can work in.  Micronesian women do a lot of physical labor in addition to child care, like washing clothes by hand.  They are also traditionally the gender that works in the fields, while the men fish and gather food by the shore.  The skirts also have to be tough enough to survive a lot of wearing and trips through the laundry -- these are very poor countries and people don't have a lot of clothes.

The Micronesian skirts are all hand made and all different from each other.  They are made using simple sewing machines and polyester-cotton fabrics, although the purple skirt shown above does include some polyester satin.  The decoration is with reverse applique and creative use of a handful of built in decorative stitches.  Check out the detail on the hem of the purple skirt from the island of Pohnpei.

The skirts are designed to be very efficient in the use of fabric.  The top section is 22", half of a 45" piece of cloth.  The flounce is 11", one quarter of the 45" cloth.  There's absolutely no wasted fabric here!  Since Micronesians tend to be quite short, a skirt constructed in this way is about mid-calf length on adult women.
On the neighboring island of Korsae, they have a slightly different twist on skirt design.

Instead of a flounce at the bottom, this skirt has a slit in the side seam.  I was told this is called lava-lava style, after the wrap that men wear in Fiji.

This skirt also has extensive reverse applique at them hem.  There are many layers of fabric in the bottom 6" of the skirt, which makes it hand differently than if only a sew small pieces of fabric had been used in traditional applique.

This green skirt, also from Kosrae, steps away from the strictly floral motifs to include an image of the island itself -- the sleeping lady ridgeline that gives the island it's name "Island of the Sleeping lady".  As with the other Kosraean skirt, the side seam slit isn't hidden, it's emphasized by running the floral motifs up the side of the slit.

The edge of the skirt itself at the slit is uneven.  The many layers of fabric used for the reverse applique make it stiff enough for this technique to work.

Of course, with this skirt style taking the islands by storm, there are some copy cats.

This blue skirt is from Yap, in the western most part of the Federated States of Micronesia.  It features sections from a printed fabric appliqued to the main section of the skirt and a flounce probably from the same printed fabric.  I suspect that this skirt was made not by a Yapese, but by a Filipino worker on the island.

The Chinese are active in the islands, and they created this skirt, most likely as a factory in China.  It's not hand made, but the embroidery and applique are done by machine.  The fabrics used here are nearly 100% polyester, which cuts the cost a lot.  The Micronesians do sometimes wear the Chinese made skirts, but greatly prefer the home made ones, which have cultural significance for them.

Come back next week and see how Micronesian skirt design influenced some of my projects.

Fun with Fleece Part 6

With temperatures warming a bit, it's time to think of transitional clothes for those cooler than average (or warmer than average, for northerners) days.

This final installment in the Fun with Fleece series features a sporty jacket that's a long way from fleece's origins as an active wear fabric.  It has facings, a real collar, and button closures.  It's made from the out of print, but still available Simplicity 4032.   This pattern was specifically made for fleece and takes advantage of it's no fray property on the collar and front band.   Yes, that collar is a double layer of fleece, not sewn together at the outer edge for a unique look.

I embellished the sleeves with designs from Embroidery Library with a tropical feel.  One has hummingbirds, the other parrots. 

The designs aren't identical, but they have the same theme and feel.  I also used common thread colors where possible and chose the thread for both designs at the same time.  The result is a delightful jacket suitable for a lot of occasions and the unpredictable spring weather.

Come back next week for more Fun with a Sewing Machine!

Fun with Fleece Part 5

It's March, so it's still cold in northern parts of the county, but the flowers are coming out in the South and Southwest.

 For those of you up north, it's time for a fun, flowery scarf to anticipate the coming season.   This simple fleece scarf is enhanced with fleece flowers.

There's lots of hand work making and attaching the flowers, but the hard work of doing all the cutting could be made a lot easier by using a cutter like the Cricut Maker.

Doesn't the fleece flower remind you just a bit of this camellia?

Came back next week for more fun with fleece!

Fun With Fleece Part 4

It's getting to be a good time for lightweight spring jackets -- a perfect application for fleece, especially since they don't absorb water from those spring showers. 

Here's a jacket in the currently popular hip length style.  It's made from Butterick 6329, which wasn't designed for fleece, but works well with the material.  For the fabric, I chose a hand-dyed look rather than a solid in a very spring-like bright green.

Of course, I couldn't very well just leave it alone.  I chose some designs featuring plumeria flowers and butterflies from Embroidery Library (They label the flower frangipani, another name for the same thing, popular in different regions.) It isn't a spring flower, particularly, since it only grows in tropical regions, but how many people know that?

The original designs had the flowers in white and yellow, but I know that they come in pink as well, so I changed the colors to contrast better with the green.  

The designs on both the center back and on the sleeves are on top of a seam.  Just the seams under the embroidery had to be sewn before the embroidery, with all the other seems sewn after.  This isn't exactly the order described in the instructions for the pattern, but it worked well enough.  Embroidering over seams can be tricky on some fabrics, but it works really well with fleece.  Just just a solid sew-in stabilizer to make sure the design doesn't come apart at the seam later.

I wanted a small design for the front to echo the others.  I extracted this single flower using my Florini Total Control software.  Having the flower the same scale at the others works well, rather than having a whole design made small.

Here's the back of the jacket.  It's fun having something bright and spring like to wear on these days that can still be a bit chilly.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine!

School of Fish

I've been working hard with my embroidery digitizing software, Floriani Total Control. 

I had this idea that realistic stuffed fish would make excellent baby gifts, especially when constructed with durable, washable materials.  So far, all of the recipients have appeared to like them, as shown by chewing on them.

(For the fish nerds, the orange one is a flame angelfish, the blue one is a juvenile emperor angelfish, and the black one is a clown triggerfish.)

Next, I had this idea that if the deigns could be perfected, they could distribute the designs.  They are definitely colorful and unique.  None of the designs were perfect the first time.  Honestly, they weren't even perfect the second time.

This little fish is clearly missing a spot.  When I originally digitized it, I didn't use enough points on the curves and the spots were pretty angular.  I redigitized all of the spots, but clearly I missed one.  Oops!

This fin works well with a gradient fill, but extra stitches show through. 

Sometimes, two elements that are supposed to meet, don't.

What did I learn?  Digitizing is hard and takes practice.  My later efforts were clearly better than my first ones.  There's truth in the sew out, and it might take 2 or 3 tries at sewing out a pattern to get it right.  In the future, I will not assume that it's going to be perfect the first or second time I try.  I'm not going to sew on expensive or hard to replace materials without a perfect sample first.

All my attempts have resulted in a whole school of fish.  I'm sure they will all find good homes, imperfections and all.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine!

School Club Banner

The School Club Roundup, an amateur radio event where schools and other amateurs all over North America attempt to contact each other by radio, is coming up next week.  One of the participating clubs will be the amateur radio club at Monrovia Middle School in Monrovia, AL.  I made a banner for the table where we'll have all the radios to help the students at the school know what we are up to.

The first task was to decide what to put on the banner.  Obviously, the club's call sign, KD4MMS, needed to be prominent.  Then, a bit of explanation.  The school mascot is the hawks, so Hawks Amateur Radio fit in the space and explained at least a little bit.  The school colors are yellow and black, which made choosing colors for the banner easy.  I used nylon canvas, a fairly heavy material typically used for flags.

The first task was to cut out all the letters.  There's a lot of ways to do this, but I chose to use my Cricut maker and a standard font for all the cutting.  The letters sure look a lot better than if I'd tried to design or cut them.

The letters in the call sign had to be in the design individually because they are nearly at the limits of the 12"x12" cutting sheet.  The smaller letters could be done several at a time. 

I laid out all the letters and tacked them down with a spray adhesive.  They wasn't quite good enough to keep them all attached during the sewing phase, but it was a good start.

Each of the letters was individually sewn to the banner.  I used a 4mm zigzag stitch with a 2 mm stitch length.  All of the sewing was hand guided.

The finished applique of the letters looks good.

Next, I applied a back sashing to finish the banner and deal with all the raw edges. 

The last step was to put grommets in each of the corners.

Let's hope the kids get good atmospheric conditions for next week and that a bunch of them see the banner and decide to come see and hear for themselves what's going on!

Come back next week for another adventure in sewing!

Mass Production

Last month, I discussed designing a patch for Makers Local 256, a makerspace I belong to.  When I passed around the patch I'd made, there was quite a bit of interest in it, so I decided to produce a number of them.

I made three different varieties --  sew on, velcro-backed, and iron on.  I obtained 3" die cut velcro circle and that set the size for all of the patches.  As before, the fabric I used was denim left over from making a pair of jeans.

I cut all of the circles with my Cricut maker.  This ensured that the circles were all perfectly round and exactly the right size.

My local Husqvarna dealer, S&R Sewing And Vacuum had some specialty materials for making patches.

I used a 6"x9" hoop so I could fit four patches in each hoop to use the heavy duty water soluble stabilizer efficiently.

It turned out to be most effective to line up the patch fabric on the sewn die line by looking at the underside of the clear stabilizer.

After the patches were sewn out, the stabilizer was removed by washing in hot water and then the patches were hung up to dry.

Finally,the iron on material was added to the iron on patches and the velcro backed patches.  In the case of the velcro backed patches, it was used to stick on the velcro circles.

The patches are a big hit!  While making them didn't involve a laser cutter, members like them.  It's a different set of materials and techniques than most of them use.  Makers Local 256 has a lot of diverse projects going on and I'm happy to add to that diversity.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine!