Bingo, Bango, Bongo!

That post title doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s a quote from the great Bill Schonely, the best play-by-play announcer of all time. When someone would do something really awesome, The Schonz would randomly shout, “Bingo, Bango, Bongo!” There were other things, too. Like, “Rip City!” or “Ocean to Ocean…” or “Lickety Brindle up the Middle.” I listened to him call Portland Trail Blazers games on the radio my whole life, and no on will ever be as awesome as The Schonz. Seriously, Josh and I saw him walking down the street last year and I literally started hyperventilating. He’s that rad of dude.

Anyway, this post is about a T-shirt I screen printed and embroidered, but you’re going to have to humor me a bit while I digress…

I'm not a crazed fan! Really. I'm not. I swear.

It’s been well established that I’m a crazy fan of Portland Trail Blazers basketball. And keep in mind, Trail Blazers fans are a special breed of crazy in general, so that’s saying something. This season, we are actually season ticket holders. We have seats waaaaaay up in section 322 to each and every game this year. This is going to sound cheesy, but this is actually a life-long dream of mine. When I was a kid it was nearly impossible to get tickets. When Josh and I moved back to Portland, no one was going to the games, because of the whole Jail Blazers thing, and we were able to score all kinds of free or deeply discounted tickets (great seats, too). So we went a lot. (An aside: for the longest time, I thought that if I was at the game, the Trail Blazers couldn’t lose–it wasn’t until Portland played the stupid Clippers that season that I attended a Blazers’ loss.) That year, 2006-07, was Brandon Roy‘s Rookie season–he eventually become Rookie of the Year, Ime Udoka made the team (he’s a Portlander) and Nate McMillan was coaching. The vibe was changing, and fans kind of knew that it was Zach Randolph‘s last season before he was traded. Portlanders knew the team was changing–and something good was going to happen. Then Portland won the #1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft.

It was amazing.

Blazermania was back.

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Crafts We Can Believe In

We hope you’ll humor us for a moment while we diverge ever-so-slightly from our regularly scheduled programming…

From the “Crafters for Obama” badge that’s been on our site since Julie Ree created “Crafters for Obama” back in January, you’ve probably noticed that we’re supporters of Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for the Presidency. We believe that his leadership can help our country move in the right direction. We’ve been personally affected by many of the tough issues that are facing our nation, and many of our friends and family have also been directing impacted by the poor economy, lack of accessible and affordable health insurance, the expense of a higher education, among other issues. We’re also fairly typical Gen Xers, we think, having never really been thrilled about the dialog and personalities in American politics, and generally feeling like politicians at all levels don’t speak to the issues that matter to us. We both went to college in Washington, D.C., and grew to loath many of the politicians on both sides of the aisle–since politics is so very “in your face” all the time (Joe Lieberman cut us in line at the supermarket once, so some of those loathings are more personal than others). We were both very excited by Senator Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004, and were thrilled when he became a viable candidate after his win in the Iowa caucuses in January.

This weekend, Sarah decided to take that enthusiasm for the candidate into our crafty/sewing/screen printing world, and made some old school pennants to hang in the window of her home office and support our candidate. (Everyone–and in our neighborhood we sort of mean everyone–has a yard sign, no one has craftastic handmade pennants.)

Sarah made these creating a pennant template, using our flag making book as a resource, pinking the edges so they wouldn’t unravel/look snazzy, and then screen printing the Obama campaign logo on each one in white. The screen was created using the stenciling technique from Printing by Hand, but utilizing Tyvek instead of mylar. The way the logo is designed, it was a relatively simple one to cut. The tough decision was, however, how to attach the pennants together. Twine just seem a bit lazy, bias tape seamed bulky, but rick-rack, that was just right. Sarah stitched the pennants onto the rick-rack a couple of times so that they’re nice and secure and the pennants hang flat.

They’re now hanging in the large window of Sarah’s office. They look pretty sharp.

(Once the campaign season’s done, Sarah’s wanting to make some Portland Trail Blazers pennants to replace these. With the retro logo, of course.)

We know we’re not the only crafters out there who have been making all sorts of items celebrate the historic campaign by Senator Obama–whether they’re knitted, sewn, printed, embroidered or some crazy plastic canvas. In fact, pretty much every day we see something new and fabulous on Flickr or one of the blogs we read. We thought it would be nice to have a central place to feature some folks’s work, so Sarah’s set up a quasi-photoblog over here, called “The Obama Craft Project,” where she’ll be featuring some fabulous Obama inspired crafts. Stop by and check it out. If you know of anything that we should feature, send us an email at sewersewist@gmail.com or pop it into the Flickr pool.

The Obama Craft Project is obviously focused on our support of this particular candidate that we believe in, and we know that not everyone who reads Sewer-Sewist agrees with us. However, that’s one of the beautiful things about our country on a macro level, and sewing and creating “stuff” on a smaller scale — it takes a diverse chorus to create a vibrant country and community.

“It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”

–Barack Obama

~S & J

Almost Famous

If you’re not familiar with Diane’s fantastic podcast and blog, CraftyPod, you should be. And what better time than right now to check it out? Josh is one of four crafty guys that are featured in CraftyPod #73: Men Who Craft.

You may not know this about Josh from reading this web site, but Josh is actually pretty shy, so I’m very proud of him for being interviewed for CraftyPod. When I told him I was going to post the link to the podcast, he said,

Just make fun of me or something.

Well, I’m not gonna. It’s a very interesting and thoughtful podcast episode, and I hope you all will check it out.

Good job, sweetie!

~Sarah

Sewn House = Fun House

As if the Tacoma News-Tribune telling us that “sewing is the new knitting” wasn’t enough, the new-found coolness of sewing is rearing its head in the latest Anthropologie Home catalog. Yep, the retailer that’s so great for sewing inspiration (love their styles, hate their pricing, really hate their bizarre fitting) featured a completely stitched together “Fun House” in the pages of their latest catalog.

If the Sewer ever neglected to trim his threads like Anthropologie did for this photo-shoot, he’d be in big trouble, but I guess that’s artistic license for you. Actually, I just bought The Alabama Stitch Book (I’ll review it soon, I promise) and while I really like that book, one of the things that drives me nuts is their not trimming their threads as a “design element.” I know this makes me profoundly uncool, but leaving threads untrimmed drives me nuts.

Anyway, my weirdness aside, it’s interesting to see sewing and general craftiness used in marketing. Sort of shows that even the illusion of handmade is appealing on some level, which in a sense is positive thing. (Even though I take issue with the fact that Anthropologie’s stuff is not, in fact, handmade, and is actually likely from factories in China or wherever .)

I do really like what they did with the walls in this shot, though…

Looks like they took fabric pieces and adhered them like wallpaper. Wouldn’t that we great in a sewing room? And if you didn’t want totally trash your walls, I’m thinking that you could stitch together some canvas the size of your wall and use spray adhesive to attach your fabric scraps to that, them tack the whole thing up on your wall for a similar effect. It would be a totally interesting backdrop for photos, too. Actually, that could be kind of cool on a small scale as well—sort of a fabric collage. Hmmmm… Something to think about, huh?

This is not how I store my spools of thread, by the way.

(You’ve gotta love that the sewn together house is the “Fun House.” As if you needed to tell us that!)

~Sarah

Sewing Emergency

Have your sewing troubles ever gotten this bad?

From the The New Zealand Herald:

A woman in a rush to get to a garden party called 111 to ask for help with her sewing.

The woman, who has not been identified, called police in Rotorua yesterday pleading for help to thread her needle.

Now our friend Bryan, who recently deserted us for the greener pastures of Auckland, New Zealand, tells us that dialing 1-1-1 is like dialing 9-1-1 here in the States.

But the best part is the police response to her panicked call:

No one was sent as the local police lacked the necessary skill, the spokesman said.

So are we to assume that if someone had known how to sew they would have responded? Perhaps the Sewing Police? What if they needed to call for backup? Like for a bound buttonhole or something? One can only imagine!

Well, aside from when Josh “Incredible Hulked” a shirt, we can’t say it’s ever gotten quite that bad here at Sewer-Sewist, but we’ve been close.

How ’bout you? Ever had a doozy of a sewing emergency?

~Sarah & Josh

If they’d only learned to sew…

Here you go, folks—another in our intermittent series of sewing-related tidbits in the news.

We knew it! Sewing is an essential survival skill. EarthSky blog is reporting that it turns out that Australian researchers have discovered that Neanderthals would probably not died out if they’d picked up a thread and needle and stitched themselves some warmer clothes.

…when the last ice age hit, modern humans were well-equipped to produce clothes warm enough to fend off the cold. Because Neanderthals… [had not developed] advanced sewing technology. When the temperature dropped, they were stuck with clothes that didn’t keep them warm enough and didn’t know how to improve on the clothes they already wore.

In the spirit of today’s game in which the Green Bay Packers take on the Seattle Seahawks, UniWatch Blog has a great interview with Marge Switzer, the Packers’ team seamstress. There’s some real gems in this interview, and Marge has a pretty tough job. Who knew that the players wear the same jersey all season, and Marge just keeps stitching them up? The rips and tears and battle scars of sorts. Turns out, she’s just as neurotic as the rest of us stitchers:

…there have been times when I’m watching the game and I’ll go, “Uhhhhh [deep gasp of shock], we missed a thread there!” So I do see that sometimes, and the average person, I’m sure, wouldn’t have a clue.

We’re so happy that our missed threads don’t face the scrutiny of tens of thousands of cheese-hat wearing Packers fans!

And finally, CNET is reporting that we sewers and sewists have finally hit the big time at the Consumer Electronics Show. (Note: Sewing machine reference and photo are at the very end of the post on CNET.) Turns out, Brother is showing their fancy new ultra computerized sewing machines for the first time at the annual geek fest of gadgets in Las Vegas this week. Gotta love how CNET (which is a great and very useful site, so no offense here) marvels at this fact.

And just in case you missed it, yes, they have sewing machines at CES. From Brother.

The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail is also amazed at this display at the CES.

Are we the only folks out there who are utterly baffled by these writers’ wonderment over the fact that sewing has evolved technology-wise right along with everything else in our lives?

I surf, so you don’t have to…

from sarah the sewist

I’ve been meaning to post some links for awhile, basically random sewing-related items that I’ve bookmarked and found interesting for whatever reason. I hope you do to.

Pantone’s recent color report. The definitive analysis of color for fashion fashion. I sure like the Chili Pepper Red and the the beautiful, elegant Dusk. The Lemon Curry should be illegal. Warning: You’ll need to view it in Preview or Acrobat.

The difference between High Fashion and ready to wear from a recent Wall Street Journal “Style” report.

Wardrobe planning—not that I actually practice this, but I do like to think about it.

Color trends through 2009. This has been really helpful for me in thinking about choosing colors that will be current for awhile.

Fashion trends (Including menswear!) for the next couple of seasons. Three trends really interest me: Rockabilly for men (this probably is due to my love of the Bakersfield Sound and the like), British textures (gotta love tweeds!) and women’s sporty chic becoming even more popular, with significant influences from the world of surfing/skateboarding (so you can embrace your inner poser—I sure do).

For that matter, check out theentire Fashion Trendsetter site, I keep going back to it, absolutely engrossed.

I’d never heard of this technique for creating gathers, but it’s sheer genius.

Sew,Mama,Sew! Handmade Holidays: 30 Days of Gifts to Sew. If you’re more ambitious than I, you can make a holiday gift each day of November.

In that same vain, the Handmade Holiday Pledge.