What Shall I Sew Next?

I finished the front of the crazy quilt pillow:

The pattern specified that SF101 or a similar medium-weight interfacing should be fused to the back of the piece. Amazingly, in my frenzy to stock up as Joanns was going out of business, I did not get a bolt of SF101, so I used fusible fleece instead.

I would have finished this yesterday, but I need a backing for it. I think I am also going to do some piping around the edge. I have the fabric for that.

This was a fun project, but I am not an improv person.

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I have a several patterns sitting on my cutting table. One is Butterick 6736 that I posted a couple of weeks ago:

I waited for it to go on sale at the Simplicity website. It arrived on Wednesday. I am itching to make this in one of the new cottons that came into the store. Those fabrics aren’t out on the floor yet, so in the meantime, I might make View B (left) in a floaty rayon.

Walmart carries a limited selection of patterns. I bought Simplicity 9376 the last time I was there:

Views A and B have a pintuck running down the front. View D has pleats and cuffed hems. These seem short to me, so I will have to check them against the StyleArc Linda Pants.

And lastly, Vogue 8977, long out of print. I found one on Etsy:

I like the pleats at the front neckline. I am hoping to mash this up with my perfect woven tee. I think the darts at the sides may be a bit redundant, but we’ll see. I probably won’t do that style of back, only because I don’t like my back to be cold. I will make the length of View C.

You might wonder why I am buying patterns when I could adapt the ones I have that fit me well. The short answer is that it is incredibly educational for me to look at and compare patterns. I laid my woven tee pattern on top of the Vogue pattern and was happy to see that the length of view C is the same as the length of my woven top. That is a good length for my height and proportions.

And that’s why I take fashion and styling advice with a grain of salt. If you look at the styling websites advising how to dress an “8” figure—sausage tied in the middle—many of them will tell you to wear belted dresses (ugh) or peplums (double ugh). I ran across one site last week that proclaimed tunics to be verboten. I’ve been looking at myself in the mirror long enough that I know what looks good on me and what doesn’t, and highlighting my short waist and high hip curve is not flattering.

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I cut the grass yesterday morning and then it did rain. I brought in zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The tomatoes went into the freezer for sauce. The extra zucchini and cukes may go to church with me this morning. I also dug up enough potatoes for potato salad to go with the spare ribs I made for dinner:

I think these are Red Pontiac (?). I didn’t label the potatoes this year. We will have a nice haul of potatoes to put in the root cellar.

Bring Back Common Sense

I went to Missoula yesterday to teach a serger mastery class. Only one student had signed up, but the store pays me to come and teach no matter what. I also had to register the husband’s new work truck. I can only do that at a place called MVD Express, because Flathead County will no longer process vehicle registrations for vehicles purchased by LLCs. You would think that there would thus be an MVD Express office in Flathead County, but you would be wrong. That would require using common sense. The closest one is in Missoula.

[I also found out the other day that local mail no longer stays here to be processed, like it used to. All mail now goes to Missoula to be processed before coming back to the Flathead to be delivered. Again, a complete lack of common sense, but that seems to be the theme these days. Never do anything efficiently that can be dragged out and made more complicated.]

My student had just purchased an L890 serger. We had great fun going over all the features and she went home excited to use her new machine.

I commented to the owner before class that every time I come to the store, they’ve added new items. She told me that they had to hire an additional staff person because their traffic has increased so much. I have no doubt that is a side effect of Joann Fabrics closing. I hope that continues for all the quilt stores.

After class, I stopped at Walmart; the store in Missoula is the only one left with a decent remnant rack. Our store still has a remnant rack but it’s usually empty or close to empty. I picked up a knit fabric for a future dress:

I still need to work on perfecting a good knit dress pattern for myself because I have a couple of lengths of knits like this in the stash.

I happened to arrive at the MVD Express office during a lull. Normally, one has to make an appointment, but they also take walk-ins if they aren’t busy. The earliest appointment I could make online was August 26th, so I was happy they were able to fit me in yesterday. Twenty minutes later, I walked out with the completed paperwork and a set of plates for the new work truck. Yay.

I also popped in to The Confident Stitch downtown. They had some lovely Robert Kaufman lightweight cotton in three colors: black, white, and navy blue. I bought black to make myself a nice black top and now I am wishing I had also gotten the navy blue. Next time.

Traffic was steady, but not awful despite it being a Friday afternoon in August. I stopped at the Amish store for a scoop of ice cream (Strawberry Cheesecake) on my way home. So good.

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Speaking of making things complicated, I didn’t think I hated QuickBooks enough but they have added so much junk and made the user interface so busy that I want to cry every time I log in. Dialog boxes and windows pop up every 30 seconds or so, interrupting my workflow. The stupid AI Assistant constantly asks me if I need help. I don’t know who thought that adding all this useless stuff was a good idea, but it’s driving me nuts.

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Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon, so I am going to cut the grass this morning. Hopefully, this will be the last time this season. The husband reminded me that we don’t have an HOA where we live and no one is going to send us a letter if the lawn isn’t manicured, but I want to do it. Riding the John Deere around the property for an hour isn’t a hardship.

Crazy (Quilt) Serging

My cutting table is a mess at the moment. I have about eight different projects underway.

I drove the BMW up to the equipment consignor yesterday. I had two routes to choose from to get there, and a little voice inside my head said I should take the lesser-used one. I always listen to that little voice because good things happen when I do. That route just happens to go near Tera’s house, and as I drove down the road, I passed a young couple walking a baby in a stroller and a dog on a leash. I recognized the dog, so I stopped the car and asked if they were Tera’s son and daughter-in-law. They were! Tera and her husband are on their mission trip. Their son and his wife just moved back here from overseas and are living in Tera’s house.

[Welcome to Montana. Random people will stop you on the road to have a conversation.]

Tera’s DIL wants to learn how to quilt, so I am sure I will get to see her again. And their baby is adorable. 🥰

The husband picked me up from the consignor’s and brought me home. I had lunch, then went to Thursday sewing because we also had a craft co-op meeting at 1 pm. Sarah and Beth H and I had a fun conversation about painting.

When I got home (again), I started working on a pattern I bought in Spokane last week. This is a crazy-quilt style pillow made on the serger using the flatlock stitch:

The fabrics are five fat quarters, some Kaffe, one Marcia Derse, and something else. I am making a pillow, although the same technique could be used for a tote bag or other item.

But, oh my!—this pattern needs to make the acquaintance of a proofreader or technical editor. There are formatting errors, the supply list doesn’t match what is actually used, steps are out of order, etc. I thought this might make a good class at the store, but I would be hesitant to ask students to pay $15 for the pattern. I was scratching my head to make sense of it. Thankfully, the technique is not difficult.

I got close to making the entire 16" pillow front last night.

The only problem with techniques like this is that there is a lot of trimming and more fabric waste than I like. The process is rather like eating potato chips, though.

*******

We are supposed to get some rain tomorrow but then it looks like we’ll finally have summer. the rest of August is supposed to be hot and dry. I made six loaves of zucchini bread to freeze the other day. I really need to pay more attention to the garden because I slacked off this year. I will have to find a better balance next summer. And I never could get more lettuce to grow after the ground squirrel invaded the herb garden. Lettuce should be easy. No doubt, a bunch of it will pop up just before we get the first snow. 🫤

Making My Brain Hurt Again

Some people are adrenaline junkies and search out every new adventure. Some people spend all day on social media looking for that next dopamine hit. I have decided that I am addicted to making my brain hurt. I am forever looking for something challenging to try next. The husband often asks me why I spend so much time on frustrating activities like fitting and making my own clothing. I do it because it’s difficult.

I have no idea if there is a clinical diagnosis for this condition, but there you go. This is also why my bedtime reading material consists of trashy romance novels. By the end of the day, my brain just wants to relax with fluff, although I’m usually editing in my head as I read.

Yesterday was painting class. Four students met in Sunnie’s yard at 9 am. We set up our easels and decided what to paint. Last year, I did a landscape. This year, I chose the small cabin that serves as Sunnie’s painting studio:

Painting is hard, y’all. I am mostly happy with this, though. Lindalee, our teacher, told me I need to have more grace for myself. She’s right. I shouldn’t demand perfection from myself in a one-day painting class. I really need to do this more than once a year, too.

I found it fascinating that four different painters could have four different styles and yet all were beautiful. I am (slowly) recognizing what I like and just have to trust myself. I don’t know all the “rules” but that may be a good thing.

[Do you see that little whitish blip in the upper right-hand corner of the painting? I’m not sure what I was doing there, but I decided to leave it. I told the husband that was wildfire smoke. 😬]

What an enjoyable day, despite the 90+ degree heat. Cooler weather returns tomorrow. Seattle is getting a rare-for-August atmospheric river late this week and it looks like we may get the remnants of that.

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I fed chickens when I got home, then finished the blueberry top:

I may make one more woven top. The time is almost here, though, to begin thinking about making cool-weather clothes. I have a stack of patterns I am itching to try.

This has been a busy week and I haven’t been here much. The poor husband is getting whatever I can cobble together for dinner. Zucchini is waiting to get made into zucchini bread.

We are consigning to the BMW to the same equipment seller that has the husband’s 2022 work truck. The husband and I will drive it up there tomorrow. I am sad that The Diva is going away, but I haven’t driven it since I got the Jeep. As much as I loved that car, I feel safer in the Jeep with all the idiot drivers out there. If BMW ever resumed production of a diesel station wagon, though, I might change my mind.

The Dryer is Dying

My dryer is 30 years old—produced back in the day when planned obsolescence wasn’t a thing and appliances lasted more than five years. It’s an Amana. The washer from that set has long since gone to appliance heaven, because washers are no match for the husband’s dirt- and concrete-encrusted clothing. (We’ve had two more washers since that first one.)

The dryer has been repaired twice, both times by the husband. The timer broke, so he fixed it with one he poached off a dishwasher at the green box site. That was back when dumpster diving was still legal in Flathead County. Believe me, he mourns the fact that he can no longer scrounge things at the trash sites. The second time, the dryer stopped heating and drying the clothes. He replaced another part, but he had to order that one.

The dryer is now making a funny noise and the clothes aren’t always dry at the end of the cycle. I asked him yesterday if it was possible that a bearing was going bad, because it sounds like a problem with the drum.

I know this man. He will take it as a personal challenge to keep this dryer working as long as possible. However, this literally is his busiest time of the year. (He left at 5 am today for a 7 am concrete pour.) I will use the dryer as long as it works, but there may come a time when I make an executive decision to purchase a new one. A non-functional dryer will affect him more than me, because I dry all of my clothing on the line. I have enough trouble with clothes being too short without shrinking them in the dryer.

******

I have not had a chance to finish the blueberry top. I was going to do it yesterday morning before leaving for a 9 am appointment, but the 880 decided to be a diva and demanded to be thoroughly cleaned and oiled. I ran errands in town and was home by noon but needed to record this week’s podcast episode. When I finished that, I had to retrieve the husband from the equipment dealer. He consigned his 2022 Dodge Ram 5500 work truck with them.

In a few weeks, the podcast will have its second anniversary. I am having great fun with it and plan to continue. I haven’t yet run out of topics, as I feared. My biggest problem, which happens more in the summer than the winter, is finding the time each week to record. Interview episodes require time to record the interview as well as time to edit. The episodes where I pontificate for 30 minutes still require an hour or two to prepare and record.

This is today’s activity:

We start at 9 am. The forecast high for today is around 90F, so I may be looking for a nice patch of shade in which to paint.

A Blueberry Top

I have so many tasks competing for my time that some days, it’s hard to know what to do first. I came home from a church service and potluck yesterday, called my mother, then said to the husband that I knew the grass needed to be cut, but I was going up to my sewing room to work on something. He gets it. He spent most of his weekend in the shop working on trucks. The world will not come to an end if the grass gets a bit longer.

A few weeks ago, I cut out a top from a rayon batik, intending to whip it up so I could wear it. That didn’t happen. (The Linda Pants are also waiting to be put together.) I sewed up the top yesterday afternoon. I still have a bit of work to do, but I knew better than to try to push through last night when was getting tired. I should be able to eke an hour out of the schedule today to finish it.

I like the private side of my garments to look as nice as the public side:

I prefer to finish my inside edges separately. They require a bit more attention when I press the top, but I think they lie better this way than they do when I finish the edges together. And I enjoy ironing. My ironing board never gets put away because I use it almost every day.

I am hoping to get those Linda Pants done soon.

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I got a request for a way to notify readers and listeners via e-mail when I have a new blog post or podcast episode. I have a Mailchimp account which I am not currently using but could reactivate easily. And I think it’s easier to automate those kinds of notices now than it used to be. Is that something that you faithful readers and listeners would like to have? My social media guru is willing to implement the feature if there is enough demand. Comment below or send me an e-mail (Janet at JanetSzabo dot com, which is the podcast e-mail account.) Right now, the only way to get notifications is to add the RSS feed to a blog aggregator like Feedly or Bloglovin’.

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The zucchini is coming on strong, as are the cucumbers. I will be making lots of zucchini bread to freeze this week. The Georgia Roaster and Burgess Buttercup plants have taken off. We may not get any cantaloupe this year because it hasn’t been hot enough, but we’ll see. I am curious to see if the 75-day butternut squash ripens in time. We are going to have a bumper potato crop.

I don’t like to rush time—it goes fast enough as it is—but I am always relieved when summer ends. I am thankful that this summer has been cool and we haven’t been smothered in wildfire smoke.

A Spokane Mini-Vacation

I had to shoehorn this trip into the schedule between teaching classes, but Sunnie, Robin, and I managed to get away to Spokane for a few days. We took a similar trip last summer and had a lot of fun. That was the trip where I found the BabyLock serger for $13.99 at Value Village. (Retail $400.)

We left Wednesday morning and took the northern route through Libby, Montana into Bonners Ferry, Idaho and down to Coeur d’Alene and Spokane. Along the way, we stopped at a few quilt stores and several thrift stores. My first purchase was this book:

I haven’t taken a good look at it yet but it only cost me a couple of dollars. I’m sure it will have some useful information.

That was it for major thrift store purchases for me. Sometimes you find lots of goodies—or one spectacular one—and sometimes you don’t. The fun is in the hunt.

We spent about an hour at The Quilting Bee on Thursday. (Sunnie is a good sport and doesn’t mind going to fabric stores with us even though she doesn’t sew.) The store had just received this month’s Palette color from Tim Holtz, which was Indigo:

Last month’s color was Blue, so I was a bit confused at first until I figured out they were two separate colorways. In keeping with my habit for this line, I bought two fat quarter bundles. The store was having their anniversary sale this week so we got 20% off our purchases. I also bought a yard of each of these low-volume prints:

The two on the right are Tim Holtz prints. The one at the upper left is 3 Sisters for Moda and the one at the bottom left is from Cathe Holden’s line Sable and Swan. I almost bought the fat quarter bundles for that line, too, because it was so lovely.

I overheard a customer asking one of the store employees if they had any apparel fabrics. I’m really hoping more quilt stores will begin to take up some of the slack in this area. Clearly, people want to sew clothing. The Quilting Bee does carry some rayons and several of the Kaffe shot cottons, but I’d love to see them expand their selection of substrates (and their color choices beyond muddy earth tones).

I am taking another oil painting class next week. Sunnie will be there, but our other friend, Lindalee, is teaching. We had such a good time when we did this last August. I may never take up painting as a serious hobby, but it’s fun to dabble in it here and there. (I told the husband that I needed a hobby to help me relax from my other hobby and he said I should stop turning my hobbies into businesses.) We stopped in at Spokane Art Supply on Thursday afternoon and Sunnie helped me choose a few additional supplies.

The weather on our trip was spectacular, the food was amazing, and our Airbnb was clean and comfortable. I only yelled at a few other drivers on the road 🙄. We’re already making plans for next year’s trip.

140 Days Until Christmas

I cut the grass in the garden yesterday morning, because we are supposed to get rain tomorrow and Friday. If I wait until the weekend, it will be too tall to cut. I was done and back in the house by 8 am.

I made serger samples for the rest of the day. I’m still working on sample cards similar to the ones we made at BU. Some of the techniques are familiar to me and some are not. Every time I think that we’ve found the limits of the serger, a new and different technique pops up.

I had the entire set of serger feet for my L860 machine, but they went with the machine when I traded it in because they won’t work on the L890. The L890 has its own set of serger feet. I am adding them one by one because Bernina presser feet are not inexpensive. One of the accessories that is available on the L890—but not the other machines, because the L890 is a combo serger/coverstitch machine—is the belt loop folder. Belt loops are made on coverstitch machines, which you may not know unless you make a study of clothing.

Gail Yellen, possibly the most brilliant serger instructor on the planet, has come up with all sorts of fun things to do with the L890. She uses the belt loop folder for everything except making belt loops. Last year, she came up with the idea to use the belt loop folder to make long strips with heavy decorative thread in the chain looper, then wind those strips around a styrofoam Christmas tree form. I’ve been wanting to try this for months now, so the belt loop folder was one of the first extra accessories I purchased.

I cut some Christmas fabric into bias strips using my Accuquilt cutter. Then I set up the largest belt loop folder on the L890 and made a bunch of test strips with plain thread to get the settings dialed in.

What is happening here is that the two sides of the strip get folded under as they go through the folder. The chain looper thread loops back and forth between the needle threads on the underside, catching the sides of the strip and holding them in place.

When I was happy with how my test strips looked, I switched over to my decorative thread—one spool of silver Glamore thread (Wonderfil) and one spool of gold Glamore. Both are 12wt threads. Both threads go through the chain looper together as one thread.

I actually began with three 12wt threads per Gail’s instructions, but I didn’t like how that looked, so I cut back to two. I also put thread nets on the spools to help keep the threads from tangling.

This is a close-up view of the underside of the folded strip. The two edges are covered by the decorative thread.

After pressing the strips, I began pinning them to the Christmas tree form:

And so on and so on until the entire form was covered:

Now I get to add baubles and charms and whatever else I want to the tree. Gail even added tiny lights to one of her larger trees. Mine is about 9" tall.

This probably will end up at the store as a display sample. I am not sure it would make a good class because not everyone is going to want to buy the belt loop folder. I could make this as a demo class, though—that would be fun and low stress.

I’m not yet done with the belt loop folder. Gail has some other uses for it.

Mastering the Mastery Class

Yesterday’s class was challenging, but in a good way. I had five students, all with different machines. We had everything from a Bernette—which is Bernina’s entry-level line—all the way up to a 790 PRO, which is not quite the top-of-the-line but close. (The 990 is the top-of-the-line machine.)

One student asked about updating the firmware on her machine—Bernina released a computer upgrade in July for many of the models—so I began class by helping those students who needed upgrades to perform them on their machines. I did the upgrade on my 880 last week. I downloaded the upgrades onto my laptop, copied them onto flash drives (helpfully provided for each student by the store), and showed them how to do the updates. After that, we moved on to oiling and machine maintenance.

The trickiest part for me, as the teacher, was balancing how to demonstrate the features of the higher-end machines without leaving the students with machines that didn’t have those features in the dust. Everyone was engaged and considerate, though, and we got through most of what I wanted to cover. Thankfully, the machine interfaces are all very similar.

Bernina puts a different foot or accessory on sale every month. Sometimes it’s a serger accessory, sometimes it’s a sewing machine accessory, and sometimes it’s an embroidery accessory. August’s sale items are the hemmer feet, so we played around with one of those.

I’ve used hemmer feet on other machines. It’s a bit tricky to get the hem started, but once it’s dialed in, the hemming is beautiful.

After yesterday, I’m going to start calling this class “Boot Camp” in my head. You may not know anything about your machine when you come in, but by the time you leave, you will have tried out every single feature on your machine whether you wanted to or not. 😂

I was mentally exhausted by the time I got home. I don’t think it will be like that every time; I remember feeling this way when I first began teaching the serger mastery classes and now I could do them in my sleep. There is just a tremendous amount to know about these machines.

Ashlee resurfaced yesterday; she got married a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t see her since we got back from BU. She stopped in to the classroom at the beginning of class and we chatted about adding another learn to sew class to the calendar.

Speaking of BU, episode 117 of the Bernina Sew and So podcast is a recap of this year’s Bernina University. I had such fun listening to it—it almost felt like being there all over again. And if you’re watching Project Runway, keep an eye out for some Bernina machines.

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I am home all day today. It is cool and overcast right now. I may work out in the garden or I may sew. I haven’t decided yet. It feels weird to be having to cut the grass all the way into August but it’s a relief not to have 90-degree weather. I started cleaning the basement but that’s going to be a longer-term project and it’s going to require some muscle from the husband.

More Mending and Alterations

I needed a break from pattern alterations, although I did get out this book and read through parts of it:

I like this book because it tackles complicated fitting issues on real bodies. Reading it is almost like drinking from a fire hose, but I need to remember that it is in my arsenal so I can refer to it. I’ve had the book for a couple of years but it makes more sense now that I’ve taken a class from Kenneth.

He does say that once you get a couple of basic pieces that fit well, you can add details to them to change the look of the garment. I’m still hoping to get over to Tacoma to take a day-long private class with Ryliss Bod at the Sewing and Design School this fall. I’d like to make up a couple of muslins ahead of time, then have her help me pin them out and transfer the changes to the patterns. That is going to be way more efficient and accurate than me trying to do it myself.

Also, DD#1 and DSIL are probably moving back to Washington state from Alaska in September, and I want to spend some time helping them get settled.

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The husband came home from work the other day annoyed that the button on a brand-new pair of work pants had pulled off.

I was equally annoyed. These are not inexpensive pants and this shouldn’t have happened. (That other button is for his suspenders.) I replaced the button yesterday afternoon:

I took a couple of scrap pieces of Cordura and burned the edges with a lighter so they wouldn’t fray, then sandwiched the fabric between them. The front piece of Cordura also has a piece of stiff Peltex interfacing behind it for added strength. I sewed on the patch using the Juki 1541 and set another button with my rivet press. Total time: About 20 minutes. I hope this holds. If nothing else, it looks good. 😇

One of the perks we give our employees—in addition to free eggs—is providing them use of the husband’s shop to work on their vehicles. (As he will point out if you ask him, he has a vested interest in them being able to get to work every day.) They can put their vehicles up on the lift and make use of all the tools. He only steps in to help if they get stuck; otherwise, he lets them figure it out for themselves. A couple of them were here this weekend. One of the guys who is working for us this summer just graduated from high school and is off to college in a few weeks. He “worked” for us about 10 years ago—he and his brother occasionally came to work with their dad, who was our employee at the time. The husband would keep the boys busy running and back and forth to the trucks to get tools. It’s been good having this kid back as an actual employee. He is very sharp and works hard.

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I am teaching my first sewing and embroidery Mastery class today. I’m flying a bit blind with this one only because I don’t know a) who is going to show up; b) what machines students are bringing; and c) what students are going to want to learn. I am taking all of my guides, samples, and supplies, and we’ll figure things out together if we have to.

Fitting Help From the Universe

I think I have the answer to this fitting issue. Let’s recap:

• I started this process with a woven top pattern that fits me very well. The darts are the correct size and their placement is perfect. The shoulders don’t bind. I’ve made four tops using this pattern and all of them are in heavy rotation at the moment.

• I lengthened the top pattern into a dress, mashing it up with the Amarena Dress pattern from Liesl + Co. The first muslin had the very obvious problem of drag lines running diagonally from underneath the bust to the sides of the dress.

• I consulted the Jan Minott drafting book, the Sarah Veblen fitting book, and some archived posts in the Sewing Pattern Review online forum. The diagnosis accompanying the wrinkle chart in the Minott book indicated that “The front is too short in relation to the back length OR the front may be correct, but the back might be too long.” The Veblen book indicated that the darts needed to be adjusted/taken in. The consensus of the forum posts was that the drag lines indicated that the dart intake needed to be increased.

• I spent the next two days and several muslins attempting to correct the problem at the dart level and succeeded only in making a few dresses that would have fit Dolly Parton nicely.

• Completely by accident—because the universe is in the habit of leaving bread crumbs here and there for me to follow—I unearthed this book in the basement while looking for something else:

What the heck, let’s see what Bonnita and Lois have to say.

Under the section about bodices, it says, “Some patterns need to be altered in length only at the center front or back because of a prominent stomach or curved back.” I have neither of those issues, but I do have a mountain range in the center of my chest over which the fabric has to traverse. And when I put on the muslin and looked in the mirror, the solution was blindingly obvious. I needed more fabric, but only in the center front. Lengthening the entire bodice—per the Minott book—would not have solved the problem because the sides needed to be preserved at their current length. I got a pair of scissors and sliced a horizontal line across the center of the dress just under the bust and dropped it about an inch and the drag lines disappeared.

🤦🏻‍♀️

Bonnita and Lois’s book gives three methods for altering patterns: the internal method, the slide method, and the seamline method. Which one to use depends on the situation and personal preference. I used the internal method, which directed me to slice the pattern to the seamline, leaving a “hinge,” and move the center of the pattern down the required amount, like this:

I then had to true up the center front and redraw the grainline.

I made Yet Another Muslin with this adjusted pattern and it worked. Hallelujah. At that point, I had no desire to sew anything else so I sat down and read a book. I still don’t have a dress, but I am hopeful.

What have we learned from this little exercise?

1. The adage “Drag lines and wrinkles point to the problem” is useful only insofar as you can identify which part of the pattern needs to be altered. Commenters in the SPR forum kept saying that drag lines like the ones I was seeing indicated that the garment was trying to create its own darts, which is sort of true. But there were darts in the pattern that fit me well, so why would I want to change them? The solution was actually found at the other end of the drag lines, in the center of the garment.

2. It helps to consult several resources, because some of them may be incomplete or—heaven forbid—give inaccurate information. I like the Minott book especially because of the wrinkle charts, but it wasn’t until I got to the Concepts of Fit book that I found a solution.

3. A full bust adjustment may not be enough. The bodice of my custom woven top pattern is based on the Cadence Top from Love Notions. I used the full bust option of that pattern, which already had the FBA baked in, but clearly, I needed an additional adjustment.

4. I am too stubborn to give up.

I’ll probably go back to my woven top pattern and make a similar center front alteration just for the sake of completeness. This adjustment will be added to the list of alterations I might have to make before I use a pattern. And I think the next project may be the French Dart Shift. I know I am going to have to do an FBA on that pattern, so I’ll be curious to see what happens.

Beth H., I hope you enjoyed this post. 😄

Dart Drama

I went back to the muslin-fitting issue yesterday afternoon and looked at the dress again, and then I had an epiphany. The advice to “increase the dart intake” was only half the answer. That pulls up excess fabric from the sides, but only within the dart. I still had extra fabric length in the side seam above the dart.

Most sewing patterns are drafted for a B-cup bra size. It’s possible to use a larger pattern size with more room around the bust, but that is almost always accompanied by wider shoulders, which results in the top of the garment sliding around annoyingly instead of staying put. The key is to choose a size based on the “high bust measurement”—the measurement a few inches above the bust—and make a full bust adjustment. I will refer you to this excellent tutorial so that I don’t have to redraw all the steps. Basically, you slash the existing pattern along several drawn-in lines, leaving the pieces connected with tiny hinges of paper. By moving the separated pieces down and out, you increase the area around the bust without affecting the shoulder width.

One of the things that happens during this process is that the armhole also changes shape. That was the part I was missing as I was making the dart larger. (I know many of these principles, but keeping them all together can be tricky.)

I went back to my pattern piece and made the dart larger, but I also made a corresponding tuck in the armscye.

This is a typical fix for the armhole gap that bustier women sometimes get—pin out the excess in the armhole and rotate it into the bust dart, making the bust dart larger. I’m just doing that in reverse here. Interestingly, I did not have much of an armhole gapping problem in my original muslin or that might have clued me in sooner. (Or not, who knows.) What this also does is to pull up the side of the garment above the dart.

I ran up a quick muslin with this fix. I may have gone too far; I don’t think I need that much of a dart increase but the drag lines did disappear. However, the armhole is much tighter now.

Sarah Veblen’s book has wonderful photos and explanations on making these kinds of alterations on the body, where it’s easier to see what needs to be done, but that’s hard to do without a helper. At one point, I asked the husband to help me pin some things in place, but he’s so worried about stabbing me with a pin that it’s almost easier to do it myself.

Now I just need to find the sweet spot for this adjustment. It’s a good thing I have lots of old sheets.

I wish I had figured this out sooner—like four muslins ago—but going through the process helps to cement it into my brain. (I hope.) Someone out there who has been doing this for decades may be reading these blog posts and cringing at all this thrashing around, but we were all beginners once.

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I signed up for the Mountain Brook painting class again this year. A friend of ours named Lindalee is teaching instead of Sunnie, but Sunnie will be there to help out. I had such fun last year that I thought I would try it again this year. I was supposed to teach that day, but we moved the class to later in the month.

August will be full, but a lot of it is sewing. The pigs go to the processor at the end of the month. And then it will be fall.

Baby Birds, Tomatoes, and Fitting Conundrums

The husband and I are aware that the animals are in charge and we’re just renting space in their forest. I came down from the sewing room to make dinner yesterday afternoon and heard cheeping coming from the fireplace. We have swifts nesting in the chimney and a little bird had fallen down. It was clinging to the screen inside the door. I carefully removed it and texted Sarah, who knows far more about birds than I do.

Sarah said it looked big enough to fledge and that I should take it outside and see if the adults came for it or if it would try to fly. (I see the adults circling the chimney every day.) I did just that and it immediately flew off. Perhaps it was trying to fly out of the chimney and went down instead of up.

We need to put a screen on that chimney opening, but it’s 40' up and to get to the top requires the use of the forklift. It’s not something we remember to do until a bird shows up in the fireplace. And we have to wait until nesting season is over.

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I have some ripening Oregon Star tomatoes:

These plants always look so sickly. Their leaves are thin and curled. After over a decade of growing them, though—and seeing them look the same every year—I have accepted that they will not win any beauty awards. They produce heavily and that’s what I want. All the other tomato plants look lush and beautiful. I harvested my first cucumber the other day, too.

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I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two days messing around with darts. The muslin for the Amarena dress has some faint drag lines running diagonally from underneath the bust to the side seam, and while I doubt anyone else would find them noticeable, I want to eliminate them if I can before I cut into the good fabric.

I checked my fitting books. The Jan Minott book says those drag lines mean there is more length in the front than the back. The Sarah Veblen book says the darts need to be adjusted. The consensus of the Sewing Pattern Review online forum on that topic was that the dart intake—the amount of fabric folded up into the dart—needs to be increased. Indeed, I could pull those drag lines out and make them disappear by pinching the fabric up with my fingers, and the dress hangs perfectly when I do that.

I experimented with splitting the existing dart into two slightly larger darts. Eh. I’d probably like that better if I could refine the angles of the darts. I tried increasing the dart intake. All that accomplished was to make the cups too large. The darts on my existing woven tee bodice are perfect for me, which I confirmed by putting on each of those tops and looking at how they fit. I have been wearing those tops a lot because they fit so well. I don’t think the issue is the darts.

I am learning (slowly) that when the proposed solution to a fitting problem doesn’t fix the problem, the problem actually may lie somewhere else. (Reason #397 for why people hate fitting patterns.) After making a couple of bodice muslins with suggested fixes—using old sheets from the thrift store—and not getting satisfactory results, I am beginning to think the issue is somewhere in the side seam. Perhaps, in the process of frankenpatterning my woven tee bodice with the Amarena dress, the side seams got out of whack.

I am going to run up another muslin of the Amarena dress to test this theory. The first muslin has been hacked up too much to be useful.

Lettuce Destruction

We set up a rodent trap in the herb garden. The husband said it was too difficult to shoot in there without putting holes into my raised beds from the birdshot. However, I will not allow some stupid ground squirrel to eat all our lettuce. This is just a sample of the damage it has wrought this week:

It’s even eating the lettuce I left to go to seed after it bolted.

(Yes, some of the lettuce seed ends up in the gravel paths.) This would be comical if it didn’t make me so angry. I hate ground squirrels with a passion. Why God put them on the earth is a mystery to me.

Interestingly, it has not touched the arugula. 🧐

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Back when Zede and Mallory Donahue were still doing the Sewing Out Loud podcast, Zede used to talk about the temptation to overfit garments. She said that some sewists get so obsessed with eliminating every wrinkle and drag line that they end up with garments that don’t allow them to move.

I am trying not to fall into that trap. I also know that garment sewists are probably the only people who walk around looking at the drag lines in other people’s clothing. (I do, because I am trying to figure out why they are there.) No one expects ready-to-wear to fit perfectly—far from it. On the other hand, we shouldn’t accept poorly-fitted garments if we know how to fit them properly. There is a happy medium.

I ran up a muslin of the Amarena dress yesterday afternoon. I like it a lot. It could be the base for a lot of different styles. I do need to lengthen it—shocking, I know—and I want to tweak the bodice a bit. It’s going to be a keeper, though, once I redraft the shawl collar to work with the more modest V-neck.

The bodice tweak is an experiment. I want to see what happens if I divide the existing single dart into two smaller darts at the side of the bodice. Sarah Veblen had that suggestion in her fitting book, but finding a formula for making that change has been nearly impossible. (I love when books say, “Try this,” but don’t give any further information.) After much searching, I found a tutorial that shows how to divide and place the darts. I don’t know that such a change is absolutely necessary, but I won’t know if I prefer two darts versus one unless I run up a muslin. That is on the schedule for today.

And I still have the French Dart Shift on my list of dresses to try. I am hoping to get to that one this week, too. August is going to get a bit nuts and my sewing time is going to take a hit.

Learn to Sew

Our beginner sewing class yesterday was so much fun. We filled the class at eight students but squeezed a ninth one in at the last minute. Ages ranged from 16 all the way to early 70s, with one mom-and-daughter duo. Class began at 10 am. Everyone had finished a pillowcase by noon and a few students stayed after lunch to make a second one. I only wish I had remembered to get everyone together for a class photo at the end.

I try to make my classes enjoyable and stress-free. I told the students at the beginning that “No one is going to die if a seam is crooked.” Although I want them to develop good habits from the start, if I put too much emphasis on perfection, they aren’t going to learn anything.

Hopefully, some of them will come back for additional classes. At the very least, we want people to know that the quilt store isn’t just for quilting.

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I finished the Geranium Dress on Friday and took it with me to the store when I went to prep for class.

I am happy with it. I could use a bit more practice with small garments. My buttonholes are on point, though:

I am not a beginner when it comes to buttonholes, but I don’t do them often because I don’t wear many button-up shirts. My very first sewing machine was a White—a mechanical model—and I had to make buttonholes in four steps. My Janome 6600P had a buttonhole foot into which you set the button, and it would make the buttonhole to size automatically. The Bernina 880 has an on-screen calibration system. You hold the button up to the screen and adjust the knobs until the circle matches the size of the button. The machine adds 2mm to the size and stitches the buttonhole in one pass.

[Ashlee and I were in a class together at BU where we had to make buttonholes in our project, and she got such a kick out of watching me play with that buttonhole feature on the 790.]

As for this week’s sewing, the other Janet asked me about a good pullover dress pattern for a summer dress, which reminded me that I have been wanting to make the Amarena Dress from Liesl + Co.

I traced the pattern some time ago but haven’t looked at it since. Now that I have the woven top pattern that fits me so well, I got out the dress pattern to compare. I’m using the bodice of my woven top pattern almost as a sloper and it is saving me so much time. I would have to do a broad back adjustment on every pattern if I didn’t have it.

I can tell that the V-neck on this dress is too deep—I don’t want my bra to show—so I am going to use the V-neck from my woven top pattern. I’ll have to redraft the shawl collar piece, though, if I want to include that. (I’d like to, because it’s a nice detail.) I am ambivalent about the pockets. I like welt pockets, but I am not a huge fan of pockets in dresses.

Basically, I’m lengthening my woven top pattern into this dress. I want to run up a muslin out of an old sheet before I cut into the good fabric, however, just to double-check the fit. For the final version, I have some gorgeous red Brussels Washer Linen that I think would be perfect. I have to be careful about reds, because if they have even the tiniest bit of orange cast to them, I look like death warmed over. The BWL is a clear, true red.

Deep Sewing

I have trained myself to sew or in small bits of time here and there, but it’s not my favorite way to sew. I much prefer the days when I can devote hours to a project (or two). I think the current buzzword for that is “deep work.”

I was done cutting the grass in the garden by 8 am yesterday. It only takes about 45 minutes but I prefer to get it done while it’s still cool. I cleaned up and headed for my sewing room. The other Janet—the class coordinator at the store—had mentioned to me that there was a beautiful knit fabric in stock, so I picked up two yards a few weeks ago. I had in mind to make Gail Yellen’s Wrap Me Up pattern. The fabric worked perfectly:

This fabric is what I would call a “hacci knit.” One side—the knit face—is typically brushed and fuzzy. The pattern itself is not complicated, although I might make a few changes if I make it again. It only comes in one size and it’s a bit too small for me. The sleeves end about halfway down my forearm. I know that Gail probably sized it that way so it would fit on two yards of a 54"/60" width of fabric. (What looks like a seam down the center is a fold line that I need to steam out.) To make it larger would require twice as much fabric and seams down the front and back. Still, I thought it would make a nice store sample.

[I am on a mission to make store samples from the garment fabrics currently in stock because we want people to know that the store carries more than just quilt fabric. If some of these garments end up as classes, so much the better, but at least we have the samples.]

After I finished the wrap, I got out the Geranium Dress pattern by Made by Rae. Kaffe Fassett is coming to the store in September for a two-day workshop. (I got a spot in one of the quilt classes!—so excited.) When we were at BU, Ashlee and I talked about making clothing using some of the Kaffe fabric. I’ve already made a couple of tops using the cotton sateen widebacks, and now we have the Free Range Slacks in shot cotton. I thought it would be fun to do a child’s garment using some of the Kaffe quilt cottons, and I know the store can get Made by Rae patterns because I made the Emerald Dress last summer.

I am making a size 6, which is the smallest size in the girls’ size range. By mid-afternoon, I was ready to turn the bodice after clipping all those curves.

I chose to add the flutter sleeves, which were a bit tricky.

The flutters are cut in a spiral. The pattern suggests finishing the raw edge with a zig-zag stitch, but I have a serger so I did a rolled hem, instead. Next time, I will use a piece of stabilizer at the beginning, because getting the point of the spiral under the needle so the thread would catch took some effort.

[Sorry the lighting is so awful—it was late afternoon when I took these.]

The skirt is ready to gather and attach to the bodice. I am kicking around the idea of adding some piping between the bodice and the skirt if I have enough of the blue fabric left. 🧐 Or maybe not.

While I was working on this, the other Janet and I were texting and talking by phone about some upcoming classes. Around 1 pm, Starlink went down and was out for about four hours. I haven’t heard what caused the outage, but even in an outage, Starlink service is a thousand times better than CenturyLink. I have an app on my phone to monitor our network, and when I checked it, I saw the message about the outage. And a four-hour outage is nothing compared to two weeks without CenturyLink service.

I have got to be more intentional about building at least one day a week of deep sewing into my schedule. Two would be better, but I’ll try not to be greedy. Some weeks, that will be easier than others.

Study Hall

I spent yesterday at the quilt store getting to know the Bernina 990. Bernina created a series of workbooks on the sewing, quilting, and embroidery features of that machine. I worked my way through the sewing workbook and started on the embroidery workbook, but will have to go back to finish that one. I don’t mind—I enjoy being in the store. Those workbooks will be good references for class, too.

I’ve played around with machine embroidery enough now that I am itching to get my 700 PRO. We had to order it. In the meantime, I can do embroidery on the 990.

I took the finished Free Range Slacks and the Remy Raglan with me. Becky was working yesterday and she is the exact size of the store samples, so she tried them on. She really liked the Remy Raglan top.

The owner of the store told me that a couple of women who were visiting Kalispell stopped in the other day. Apparently, they listen to the podcast and said they had to come and see the store that I am always talking about on the show. I wish they had left their names or a note!

The husband has a couple of big concrete pours tomorrow so he’s been working a bit later than usual this week. There were leftovers in the fridge and no need for me to cook dinner. When I came home from the store, I cut out a pair of Linda pants from some black stretch cotton, another top out of some rayon woven fabric, and made the neck binding for my Remy Raglan. Those will be on the sewing schedule for today.

I want to make a store sample out of some of the new fabrics arriving at the store. I really like this pattern:

I think that blue version with the asymmetric tiers is lovely. I am very much missing Joann Fabrics now. Hobby Lobby doesn’t carry Butterick patterns, so if I want to make this one, I’ll have to order it. Ugh. First world problems.

This morning, though, I need to get out and cut the grass, at least in the garden. All that rain is making everything grow. It looks like we’re in for a stretch of warm and dry weather—low to mid 80s—for the next week.

Blooming July

We’ve had two days of cool, overcast skies with occasional rain showers, some quite heavy. I’m going to have to mow soon. Usually, the grass goes dormant by the middle of July and I put away the mower.

This summer very much reminds me of the summers we had when we first moved to Kalispell in the early 1990s. I don’t mind—I’ve always said I didn’t move here for the heat. The flowers in the herb garden are blooming and are so pretty. This is a petite bee balm:

I submitted my Sew Expo class proposals yesterday and have an appointment to talk to the class coordinator later in the month. I added a few new sewing classes to the proposal this year, mostly stitch technique ones. I also set up payroll in Gusto, although I am still dithering about whether to use it or continue with my spreadsheets. We’ll see.

After lunch, I finished the Free Range Slacks store sample:

Ashlee asked for a sample in the Kaffe shot cotton. You might be thinking that I should have ironed these pants—I did. This stuff wrinkles worse than linen. It wrinkles almost as soon as you pick it up off the ironing board. Oh, well. The fabric is light and airy and the pants are perfect for hot weather.

Also, the fact that the turquoise stripes are balanced on the front of each leg is a complete accident. Flashes of brilliance . . .

The cooler weather has me thinking about fall sewing already, but August could still be a scorcher. I am going to make a few more tops, but I am also going to start sewing some pants. I won’t break out the sweater knits quite yet. Before Joanns went under, I loaded up on all the stretch cottons and bengalines I could find. The pants I made from the Style Arc Linda pattern are some of the ones I reach for again and again in my closet, especially for church. I’d like to make a few more of those. Style Arc replaced the Linda pattern with the Barb pants. I have both, but I compared them yesterday and I think I am going to stick with the Linda pants. The main difference seems to be the width of the leg; the Barb pants have a narrower leg.

I am teaching my beginner sewing pillowcase class at the store on Saturday. I’m excited about that one—teaching beginners is fun because they don’t have any bad habits to break. And hopefully, we can make some new students and customers out of the group.

Gifts from Guests

Deana made us a couple of lovely gifts and left them in the rental house. One was a beautiful crocheted afghan:

She had been working on this throughout the trip but I didn’t know she finished it until I saw it on the couch. I adore the color. 😘

The other was this very useful hanging towel for the stove. Thank you, Deana!

I love receiving handmade gifts.

I don’t have anything exciting to report. Yesterday was errand day and I spent most of it in town. I am on the Advertising Committee for our craft co-op sale at the end of September, so I met with the other two members and we planned our strategy for this year’s market. The co-op sale has increased in size over the past few years and is experiencing some growing pains. Not everyone is happy with some of the decisions that have been made recently, but they were necessary to keep the co-op financially solvent.

After the meeting, I picked up some chicken feed. At the quilt store, I got orange thread for quilting the table runner and another half-yard of the Kaffe shot cotton so I could finish the Free Range Slacks store sample. The new addition to the building—which will include space for receiving and an area for the sewing machine tech to work—is almost done. At the moment, though, there are boxes of new fabrics under the longarm machine. waiting to be checked in. I got a sneak peek at some of them, including a line of cottons that would make lovely skirts and tops. I am going to spend a day in the store this week learning the features of the Bernina 990 machine so I can teach the mastery classes going forward.

I popped into Hobby Lobby because I need more 1/4" organza ribbon and it’s on sale this week. I use that to stabilize the shoulder seams when I sew knit garments. I can’t quite figure out what is going on with Hobby Lobby and its lack of apparel fabric. They haven’t had any for almost a year now.

Traffic in town is just insane. Everything takes twice as long. I didn’t arrive home until almost 2 pm but got the groceries inside before the heavens let loose with a good rain shower for about 30 minutes. We are supposed to get more rain—and possibly thunderstorms—today. That’s good because I need to tie myself to my office chair and stop procrastinating. I have a couple of projects that need attention if I want to do any more sewing this week.

Time for Cleaning and Organizing

My friends left yesterday to go home to Tennessee and I miss them already. We had such a great time together. They are planning to come back for at least a month next summer and have a long list of things they want to do and see. And hopefully, the other members of our high school friend group will be able to come out and join us so we can all be together.

I have been in Energizer Bunny mode for the past few days. I worked out in the (sadly neglected) garden for a few hours on Friday morning. The cabbages look fabulous, but they like this cooler weather. The squash and tomatoes are coming along slowly. I organized the pantry and rotated the canned goods; even if the crop yield is lower than usual this year, I think we’ll be okay. We still have quite a bit left from last year. The husband and I picked another four gallons of raspberries last night after dinner. We have to do something about that berry patch, though. It is almost too overgrown to get into. I pruned it way back last year but that just seemed to make things grow. I seem to be forever pulling out raspberry suckers in places they shouldn’t be growing.

There is a ground squirrel in my herb garden. 🤬🤬🤬 I spotted something brown scooting around in there on Friday but couldn’t tell if it was a regular squirrel or a ground squirrel. I saw it again yesterday and it is definitely a ground squirrel. A few lettuce seeds sprouted in the gravel paths between the beds and I think it has been enjoying the salad bar. The husband has promised to dispatch it if he sees it.

I cleaned and organized my sewing room, too, although that is an ongoing process. I collected and organized all my fitting books and teaching materials so they are all in the same place. I am not sure what it is about this time of year, but this urge to purge excess stuff always hits around the middle of the summer.

And there has been sewing! On Friday afternoon, I worked on quilting the Halloween table runner:

I need to get some orange thread, though. That is not a color I keep on hand.

Yesterday, after my friends left, I got out the Free Range Slacks pattern and cut out a store sample. I am using some Kaffe Fassett shot cotton, which is a lovely fabric but very lightweight—almost like a cotton lawn. I assembled the pants to the point where I need to sew the crotch seam, which I will do today. I also have to get another quarter-yard of fabric, because I didn’t have enough to cut the waistband.

We found out that someone shot and killed the grizzly bear that has been roaming the neighborhood. While it makes me sad for the bear, that bear had developed a taste for chicken and the person who shot it did so because the bear was trying to get into his chicken coop. We would have done the same thing.

I have two entire weeks coming up with nothing on the schedule except my pillowcase class next Saturday and I plan to keep it that way. I’ll work outside or do paperwork in the mornings and sew in the afternoons. I have to get my class proposals in to Sew Expo but I also want to keep chipping away at my sewing to-do list.