A little bit of work and I am easily amused

The time has come to create a binding for the atara begun here.  My client said he wanted a silvery blue to contrast with the white on white. I suppose that I could go scour the fabric district for exactly the right shade of silvery blue. Given that this is for the binding on a not very large piece it means that I would need to purchase a full yard and I only need a small fraction of a yard to nicely bind the atara it makes a whole lot more sense to take a piece of fabric that is sort of close in color and then make it read like it is the right color.

I had some lovely silk shantung in a silvery blue adjacent color.

I then mixed up a little pot of paint in a silvery blue and block printed the silk using a large rubber stamp.

I had a strip of block printed silk but what I needed was a bias strip of silk to bind the atara. For those of you who are not sewing geeks, a bias strip is one cut on the diagonal.  It is great to use for a binding because it is flexible and can go around corners without causing one to be forced to tear out their hair and curse.

Nearly every sewing book written has at some point in the book directions on how to create a bias strip.  Creating long, even bias strips can be tricky and can be done in as many ways as a cat can be proverbially skinned.

This is how I tackled the task today. 

I cut my strip of fabric into squares by folding the short edge of the fabric until it touched the bottom edge. If the edges lined up properly and the corner was perfectly bisected, the result was a square. This is how I was taught to square up paper in third grade. Perhaps you too were taught how to do this in third grade. 

I pressed the diagonal fold into the fabric with an iron.

So I could use that pressed in line as my cutting guide.

So now instead of a rectangle of fabric, I had a stack of perfect triangles of fabric.

I sewed the triangles together as indicated by my messy drawing, and had a nice bias strip.

I chose this method because it required the least amount of complicated figuring for the task at hand. This is just one of dozens of perfectly good methods of creating a bias strip.

Yesterday my husband and I were in a suburban supermarket and wandered by the international food shelves. 

Yes, I am always delighted to see the Jacob's products.

I have no idea why I found this brand name to be so amusing. if one or more of my kids were with me Mi Wadi would have been the subject of most of the ride home, because like me, my kids are easily amused.

When are canned peas NOT mushy? and who would see this as a desirable thing?

Tonight was another evening of dramatic skies from our living room window.