Omnibus

Omnibus |ˈämnəˌbəs| : (noun) an anthology of the works of a single author or a volume containing several novels or other items previously published separately. ¶ There’s your word of the day. This section just combines all the other sections of my site on one page in chronological order. Specifically paginated chronological order, ten articles to a page.

You just got a 2% pay increase! Use it wisely.

Posted on 22 Dec 2010 by Rae

…well, kind of, sort of. On Dec. 17, Congress agreed to extend many of the Bush-era tax cuts, which is generally pretty awesome in the more-money-in-my-pocket way but not so much in the holy-staggering-national-debt-increase-Batman! way. In addition to the extensions is what I’ll call Making Work Pay 2.0 (officially the Tax Relief Act)—a employee payroll tax decrease.

The payroll tax, more commonly known as the Social Security tax, is normally 6.2% of your gross income. Everyone who earns money by legal, non-tax-avoiding ways pays this, no ifs-ands-or-buts, although if you make more than $106,800, your maximum tax is $6,621. For 2011, the tax for employees is reduced to 4.2% (a max savings of $2,136). If you’re self-employed, you’ll still have to pay the full employer-side 6.2% for a total of 10.4% instead of 12.4%. And if you’re an employer, you still have to pay 6.2% for each of your employees.

So, that begs the question: what are you going to do with it?

I’ve already made my decision—it’s going straight into my retirement account. I figure I might as well save for my own retirement while I’m getting a reprieve from paying for someone else’s. The proper paperwork has been signed, sealed and delivered. I waffled about this or paying off debt faster, but I’ll have my over-5%-interest consumer debt all taken care of by the end of January, and I expect that my retirement returns will be higher than that in the long run. It just makes financial sense. After all, thanks to compounding interest, your early 20s is a great time to start saving for retirement.

What’s your plan, Stan?

One note of import: since it’s all very last minute, your employer has until Jan. 31 to fix their payroll system so that the money goes in your check instead of to the government. This means you may not see an increase until February. Then, your employer has until Mar. 31 to give you whatever they owe you from not having the system set up correctly in January.

Posted in My Life | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Small Treat Totes for Christmas Wrapping

Posted on 20 Dec 2010 by Rae

My sewing machine has been limping along, so my projects are all on hold while it gets serviced. I did manage to whip up one last thing before the machine went to the shop: a few gift bags for Christmas using allpeoplequilt.com’s Small Treat Totes pattern. With a finished size of 4″x4″x2″, they’re about perfect (if not almost too large) to house the jewelry I’m giving to my four older nieces, and the little finger puppets for the youngest.

The pattern differences

Image courtesy allpeoplequilt.com

I didn’t stick to the pattern 100%. The main change I made is the fabric layout. The original pattern calls for two fat quarters: a light pattern and a dark pattern. The result is four bags, two with the light pattern featured on the outside top and two with the dark featured.

None of the Christmas-themed fabric I picked up (50% sale at Joann) had small enough patterns to pair with each other, so I chose to use my holiday fabric on the upper outside and interior of the bags, and using a green dot fabric from my stash for the contrast on the bottom of the bags. I paid a very small amount of attention to fussy-cutting some of the exterior panels, but for the most part just cut the required rectangles from strips.

Construction notes

As usual, allpeoplequilt.com provided easy-to-follow directions for the project. They have you construct two panels: the lining, ribbon handle, and outer panel (of the focus piece and contrast). Then, you sew the two panels together, turning it inside out and pressing for the finished bag.

Treat Tote Panel

This is one of the panels. In the original pattern, the large piece on the left would be the same fabric as the smallest piece on the right.

In order to have a flat bottom, you fold the corners so that the two corner seams are touching, then press and sew a straight line across, creating a triangle of excess fabric (which you trim off).

Treat Tote Corners

View of the corners after pressing and stitching, but before trimming.

One thing that is not clear in the instructions is that you need to do this corner treatment to all four corners. I realized this during construction of the first bag, but decided to not flatten the lining corners for sake of time. It results in a baggy lining with excess fabric on the interior instead of a flat one. It doesn’t affect how the bags look, however.

Treat Tote Finished

A finished bag.

Verdict

This is a great quick project that is adaptable for just about any gift or treat-giving occasion.

This is a project where fabric size is important: you will need fat quarters to cut out all the pieces without wasting a ton of fabric. A normal quarter yard cut is not tall enough to fit two of the panels on top of each other. I was working with half-yard pieces that I’d picked up for various other project ideas.

This can also be a great project for scraps—who says you need to cut all the panels out of the same fabric? The pieces needed are: 2 5.5″ x 6.5″; 2 3.5″ x 6.5″; 2 2.5″ x 6.5″. If you can scrounge up those pieces, anything goes, right?

The handles could also be created from the fabrics you use. I grabbed a spool of 75%-off Christmas ribbon. The pattern recommends heavy grossgrain ribbon (which is what I bought), but depending on what you plan on putting in the bags, I don’t see why lighter ribbon wouldn’t work.

A group of treat totes

An unawesome photo of five treat totes for five awesome nieces.

Posted in Sartorial Stitchery | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Afterlight

Posted on 15 Dec 2010 by Rae

Afterlight by Elle Jasper

Book 1 of the Dark Ink Chronicles

Rating: 1/5

Mixing Gullah, vampires, tattoos and the streets of Savannah, GA should be a promising start to a great series. Unfortunately, debut author Elle Jasper fails to grasp the concept of description. The premise is okay: former-delinquent-turned-respectable-tattoo-shop-owner Riley Poe’s teenage brother and friends break into a crypt and disturb a spell keeping two bad vampires imprisoned. As her brother begins turning into a vampire, Poe’s Gullah grandfather-like figure introduces her to the “good” vampires that have been watching over Savannah for 150 years. Hopefully they can help Poe save her brother and defeat the baddies. It could be a great novel, if the characters weren’t two-dimensional and the attraction between Poe and the vampire Eligius didn’t just reek of Twilight-esque “my boyfriend stalks me and it takes ridiculous self-control for him to not eat me when we’re being intimate because I have awesome blood” issues. Even my fanatic devotion to finishing a series once I start it can’t convince me to pick up book 2 when it comes out, unless I see many reviews about immense improvement in Jasper’s writing style.

Form your own opinion: Buy from Amazon
or B&N

Posted in Ravenously Read | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

I’m not dead yet… but I may need service

Posted on 15 Dec 2010 by Rae

Despite reports to the contrary, I’m not dead yet. (Sorry, had to let my inner dramatic writer out for a sec.) What I am, however is unmotivated because my sewing machine is starting to act strange. It still works, but for some reason will only sew with a specific lot of needles. I keep telling myself that I’ll take it in for service after I finish the bargello quilt, but then I don’t work on the quilt, because it annoys me that my machine isn’t working at 100%.

I’ve known for a long time that I’m guilty of putting off those last difficult steps of a project—resulting in many unfinished ones.

I’ve learned in the past year or so that I can get into a funk where I want to do little else but escape in crappy romance novels. The latest spate have done little to inspire me to finish projects, although I do now want to go to Texas to escape the cold New York winter (and check out the scenery).

But the fact of the matter is, when my space is cluttered and my equipment isn’t working as it should, I have zero motivation. The simple answer is to resolve those road blocks, so that is my goal for the evening. Cleaning my space. Then, I’ll take my machine to the shop next week (service pickups are Tuesdays), even though it means not finishing the quilt or having my machine for a few weeks (Christmas/New Years) will surely delay the return). And I won’t feel guilty, because when I get it back, it’ll be awesome and I’ll have motivation again, right?

Afterall, I have 5.5 days of work left before 11 days of vacation. And said vacation not only includes visiting family, but possibly going to Texas. That means warmth and a break from the drudgery of programming and avoiding my broken machine.

It also helps that classes were cancelled for the month, because everyone is so busy, but we’re supposed to be done with the top by the second week of Jan. I’ll have to get motivated then.

What causes you to lose motivation on your projects?

Posted in Sartorial Stitchery | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Better Part of Darkness

Posted on 30 Nov 2010 by Rae

The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay

Charlie Madigan Book 1

Rating: 3/5

This debut—for the series and author—was average. Just average. Charlie Madigan is an officer of the law in modern Atlanta, tasked in part with keeping humans, Elysians, and Charbydons from stepping out of line. In Charlie’s world, two more worlds have been discovered. This relatively recent discovery has resulted in an influx of off-world immigrants to the larger American cities—like Atlanta. As the book progresses, Charlie and her partner, Hank—a siren from Elysia—must solve the mysterious introduction of a deadly (to humans) off-world drug, all while trying to keep their loved ones safe. There’s nothing especially unique about anything in the storyline. While Gay’s writing is easy to follow for the most part, for the first half of the book I was left wondering if I’d missed a prequel short-story. There is much mention about how Charlie died a few months back, and of her subsequent return to life (integral to the storyline), but Gay continuously refers to it as if we know the whole story from previous reading. By the end of the book, it can be pieced together, but it is not a good way to begin a series, in my estimation. Will I read book 2, The Darkest Edge of Dawn? Yes, but with hope that Gay improves with experience.

Form your own opinion: Buy from Amazon or B&N

Posted in Ravenously Read | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Organza vs. Organdy

Posted on 24 Nov 2010 by Rae

Is your fabric organza or organdy? What is the difference? The similarity in names for these two fabrics causes a lot of confusion. Both are sheer, crisp, plain-weave fabrics. The difference comes down to the type of yarn used to create the fabric.

Organdy, or organdie, is typically made of cotton fibers. The yarn is spun, meaning it is created by spinning together short fibers (called staple fibers) to create a long, continuous thread.

Organza is made of filament yarn, which is made from very long fibers, such as silk. Filament yarn is most often made of synthetic fibers in modern times, so most modern organza is synthetic, such as polyester, however silk organza can still be purchased.

That’s it. The difference is simply the type of fibers used: filament or staple.

Wondering what the difference between any other fabrics are? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to answer. Make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so that you get your answer as soon as I publish it.

Posted in Sartorial Stitchery | Tagged | Leave a comment

Gilding the Glass Ceiling

Posted on 19 Nov 2010 by Rae

Recently, I’ve been working on a project that deals with a lot of statistics. Many of the statistics I’ve come across in my research have lacked reference to any supporting data. Others had data that were—at best—questionable. I suspect that some of these statistics were blatantly untrue, but that seems to be a trend in modern “reporting.” At the same time, I’ve seen an abundance of stories harping on the glass ceiling for women. Stories about the injustice of vast pay differences between women and men in the workplace. Every story I’ve read is promoting fallacy.

Fact: the median annual salary for full-time workers ages 25-34 shows a significant disparity between women and men at every educational level. [source: US Department of Education]

Fallacy: the above statistic logically shows that “women make less money than men” working the same jobs.

The variables aren’t even. That statistic says that women have a lower median annual salary than men have: a median salary for every possible full-time job out there, with no reference to work experience, exact job type, or location. This statistic means very little.

Fact: some women are less likely to ask for a raise.

If a woman and a man work the same job with the same pay and same proficiency, and only the man asks for (and receives) a raise, the woman then makes less than the man. Prove that if she asks for a raise, she definitely won’t again be making the same salary as the man.

Fact: more women than men take time off from work to raise children, resulting in less work experience (in their chosen career) during their lifetime.

Work experience is a pay rate variable. More work experience generally results in higher pay. If all other variables are even, a person with 25 years’ experience will likely make less than a person with 30 years’ experience. A person who made the same amount at every experience point for 25 years will earn less during their lifetime than the person who worked for 30 years. There is no inherent gender bias in this.

Fact: many of the top paying jobs are male-dominated fields.

Many women work in fields that don’t pay as well as fields like engineering, which means they make less over the course of their career than men working in engineering. If you compare salary across all fields, and more men work in higher paying fields, the median pay for men will be higher. A teacher does not make as much as an engineer. There is no inherent gender bias in this.

Do I doubt that most women are paid less than men doing the same work with the same amount of experience? Not particularly. But, hysteric reports full of dubious statistics claiming that we need to STOP UNBALANCED PAY FOR WOMEN NOW! with no clear suggestion for effectual action accomplish nothing. If we want to work toward equal pay, we need to start promoting valid statistics that show the actual disparity—and determine why it exists. Only then can we begin to correct the cause.

Prove: that women in every field make less than men in that same field.

Prove: that if women were to request raises as often as men in their fields that they would still make less.

Prove: that if a man took the same time off to raise children as a woman, he wouldn’t have the exact same disadvantage in pay and experience when returning to the workforce.

Start proving some of those “facts” and your reporting might be persuasive.

And please, for all that is holy, stop saying that women make less over their lifetime than men while blatantly ignoring the fact that “lifetime” is a meaningless comparison when it comes to salary. Of course someone who works for 20 years will earn less during their lifetime than someone at the same pay who works for 30 years. Of course someone who works for 20 years as a server will make less than someone who works for 20 years as a doctor.

If you can provide a study that makes meaningful comparisons between pay for women and men, please pass it on. I appreciate reading meaningful statistics.

Posted in My Life | Tagged | Leave a comment

Bargello Pattern

Posted on 17 Nov 2010 by Rae

With the color runs done for the bargello quilt, it’s time to start cutting out the strips for the quilt top. On one hand, it sounds simple: the pattern from the book tells me the widths I need for each piece… I just need to cut, right? But, in practice, the color shift across the quilt, combined with my plans to insert the purple “pop” pieces meant graphing it all out was a superb idea—and also the next step in my homework, along with starting to sew the pieces together.

Seam alignment and graphing

My teacher suggested using Microsoft Excel or a similar program to graph it all out, so I started with that, but it wasn’t lining up in a way that made sense. When cutting and piecing together your strips for Bargello, you have two basic choices: line the horizontal seams up, or stagger them. The quilt pattern I’m using is a staggered pattern (think brick laying)—so when I blocked it all out in a spreadsheet, everything was misaligned. Working from a pattern that is not staggered would have severely thrown off my piecing, since it changes the starting color of each row.

Plan two, which I should have done in the first place (considering it is what I’ve done in the past) was to open up Adobe Illustrator and block it out in that program. (Your mileage—especially if you’re not familiar with the program—may vary.)

Here’s what I came up with.

The first image has no color shifting. The second is the result straight from the instructions. Before deciding to use the pattern as-is from the book (well, prior to purple-izing it), I spent some time playing around with the color shifting as well. It’s quite simple to just swap the color of the blocks, although the color is clearly a poor substitution for the actual fabrics.

Adding the purple twist

Once I had a good graph of the color run cutting and color shifting, it was time to plan out my purple accent rows. This required a lot more playing. I knew that I wanted to do a competing curve rather than simply follow the existing ones. Ultimately, I decided on this structure:

When the curve directly mirrors the main curve, adding in my accents simply requires swapping out blocks. However, when the curve happens to correlate with the main curve, that approach will result in the purple completely taking over another color for a few blocks, which I didn’t want. This results in some trickier half-block replacements in certain rows. Having this graph to guide me is immensely useful.

If you’re interested in making a similar quilt or want to see a more detailed explanation of these modifications, you can download this pdf of my adjusted pattern complete with cutting widths.

So, at present, I’m cutting out all of my columns and inserting the color shift blocks and purple accent blocks—which requires a lot of seam ripping. There’s no solid goal for next class—just to have started piecing everything together and to bring in any questions we’ve come up with. Next time I update, I’ll be showing you progress of piecing together the rows.

What tools do you normally use to plan out your quilts (bargello or other)?

This is part three in a multi-part series. Keep following along by subscribing to the Sartorial Stitchery RSS feed, or view the related posts.

Posted in Sartorial Stitchery | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Virals

Posted on 15 Nov 2010 by Rae

Virals by Kathy Reichs

Rating: 4/5

Reichs’ first foray into the YA genre was everything I hoped for. Although Reichs’ writing fell victim to the “must drop brand names in as descriptors everywhere” regime that defines current YA editing, the story retained a style that can easily appeal to many generations overall. Containing far more mystery than sci-fy—Reichs’ forte—the story line had perfect pacing and never fell flat. Main character Tory’s tie to Tempe Brennan (main character of Reichs’ other series, and yes, the same Tempe as in Bones), seemed an unnecessary addition to the plot line; were Reichs’ editors afraid she couldn’t sell without some connection to her existing bibliography? If you like light mystery and don’t mind a little sci-fy thrown in, this is a great read. If you want to ditch the sci-fy, check out Reichs’ other novels.

Form your own opinion: Buy from Amazon or B&N

Posted in Ravenously Read | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Bargello Color Runs

Posted on 11 Nov 2010 by Rae

Two weeks ago, I showed you my color choices and pattern for the bargello quilt I’m making as part of a bi-weekly class. Our homework before this week’s class was to create our color map and have all of our fabric cut into strips and sewn into color runs for the quilt.

The color map of all the fabrics. This is made from excess cut off while squaring your fabric prior to cutting strips. I simply taped each strip to a manilla folder, and wrote the strip number underneath. This helps you keep track of the order of fabrics. You can see my G/B designation for the two different color runs.

Bargello quilts are made by strip piecing, which means sewing together long strips of fabric, and then cutting the result to create the pieces used in piecing together the quilt. The foundation of the bargello technique is using strip piecing to create color runs: rectangles of fabric made from equal-width strips of your fabric. The color runs are then cut perpendicular to the sewn seams in different widths to create the curves of the quilt.

The pattern I chose has rather tall rows—3″. That means, all of my strips were cut to 3.5″ (for a 1/4″ seam allowance on both sides). Cutting was simple with a rotary cutter, mat and 6×24″ ruler. Then it was time to actually start sewing!

The green color run strips.

One place Wright and Edie differ is how to sew together your color runs. The most difficult part of this step is to create the color run without having the strips begin to dip in the center—called bowing. To counteract this tendency, both Wright and Edie recommend altering each seam direction as you create your color run. So, you sew the first seam in one direction and the next one the opposite, and keep switching back and forth.

Wright suggests sewing all of your strips in pairs with the same seam direction: 1 to 2, 3 to 4, 5 to 6, etc. Then, you sew your pairs to each other with seams going the opposite way, continuing to sew the groups together until the color run is finished.

Edie takes the sequential approach and has you sew each piece to the next in order, switching seam directions as you go. Wright’s recommended method is a bit faster I think, since you can chain piece all the pairs, and is the one I chose to use.

The strips paired up for the first direction of sewing

Another place Wright and Edie differ is how to place the ends of the strips. Wright proposes to line them up evenly on one end, creating only one jagged end (due to differences between manufacturer’s fabric widths). Edie counsels arranging the ends based off the shortest strip, creating two jagged edges that supposedly allows you to have more useable strips. I figure, the shortest is the shortest, regardless of how ends are set up and used Wright’s way instead. Only one jagged end also makes Wright’s method a little less confusing: when you sew the pairs, you sew from the side where the edges meet. When you sew all the other seams, you sew from the uneven side; this is an easy way to tell which direction you should be sewing your seam.

The two ends of the finished color run. (Okay, technically only half of the green color run.) I was amazed at the difference in widths of “42″” fabric!

Using Wright’s method, I didn’t experience notable bowing. In addition to the speed advantage that I spoke of, I also think that her method keeps you from making exponential errors. If you sew each piece to the next one, any previous bowing will continue to get worse as the issue is compounded down the line. When you sew the groups together, you don’t experience as much of an issue because you are working in smaller chunks that don’t inherit the mistakes of each previous piece.

Unfortunately, I missed Monday’s class (and a day of work) with some sort of bug. I did find out today that the homework is to start cutting the actual strips from the color runs and piecing them together, so I’ll be talking about that in my next post. Also, please forgive me for the poor quality images. My phone’s camera had to do, as the real camera was unavailable.

Do you have a preference for either of these methods? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

This is part two in a multi-part series. Keep following along by subscribing to the Sartorial Stitchery RSS feed, or view the related posts.

Posted in Sartorial Stitchery | Tagged , | Leave a comment