So Very Many HSTs

I’m up to 18 blocks on the Ritzville quilt. I am going to limit my update photos to milestones in the quilt as I don’t want the blog posts to become tedious. I did resupply of white fabrics for the setting triangles yesterday while in town. Cutting those will probably be the last thing I do before putting the rows together. The setting triangles will have bias edges, and even though I’ll starch the living daylights out of them, I don’t want to risk them stretching out of shape.

[Also, I still have a lot of HSTs. Many, many HSTs. I am wondering if they multiply when I am not looking.]

The new ironing board cover is finished. I had a length of poplin in the stash and was able to cobble together a long enough piece of bias tape from a bunch of shorter pieces to enclose the nylon cord on the edge. (I just reused the cord from the previous cover.) In case you were wondering, I have made covers out of that metallized material they sell at Joanns, but I found that they got too hot. I prefer poplin with a thick padding underneath.

I made this:

It’s a faux rabbit fur neck cowl. My sister has one—she wore it at Christmas—and because I bought that length of faux rabbit fur in a moment of weakness, I thought I might try making one. The burgundy was a remnant of stretch velvet from Hobby Lobby. My sister sent me the measurements of her cowl. I made mine a tad shorter (hers was 34” around) because both the faux fur and the stretch velvet were 60” wide and I figured I could get two out of one cut. I also cut the fur about an inch wider than the velvet so it wrapped around a bit.

Thankfully, no one took a picture of me after I cut the faux fur. It looked like a rabbit had exploded all over me. Even though I was very careful to cut just the backing fabric, the pile on this faux fur is so short that little pieces of it went everywhere. I had to vacuum myself off afterward. The actual sewing of the cowl was easy by comparison. I used a ball point needle and the walking foot on the Janome. The fabrics fed easily with no slipping. (I sewed with the stretch velvet on the bottom.) This will be nice to wear with my long black wool coat, but I am not sure I will make another one.

[I wore my grandmother’s black wool coat to church on Christmas Eve. It is a very elegantly-cut coat with Persian lamb trim on the collar and cuffs. Many years ago, I asked her to leave it to me when she was gone and she did. The Persian lamb trim needs to be replaced but the coat still looks good. I bring it out on special occasions.]

While I was working on the Ritzville quilt blocks last night, I watched Men of The Cloth, a documentary about three Italian tailors, two in New York and one in Italy:

I need to watch it again. It was really good. I was hoping to spot a Necchi or two (and I think I did), but because the emphasis is on tailoring, with a lot of handwork, there wasn’t a lot of machine sewing. The process of constructing a tailored suit is absolutely fascinating, though.