Complicated Rectangles

I’ve made two of the four insulated shades for the living room. The first one tested my resolve to make four of them. From a sewing standpoint, these are utterly simple: two side seams, a top casing for the tension rod, and a bottom hem. This is not an heirloom christening dress. The issue is that I am working with six yards of 54” wide insulated fabric and two 60” x 108” chunks of fabric for the covers, none of which fits easily on my cutting table. Instead, I’ve had to lay everything out on the floor of our bedroom and cut there. The insulated shade piece needs to be 46” wide by 44” long. The fabric cover needs to be 48-1/2” wide and 56” long. The wider cover fabric is sewn to the insulated fabric at the sides, and because it’s larger than the insulated fabric, it wraps around each side edge to form a facing on the back.

The whole process is just very cumbersome. I’m sewing on the Janome with the even-feed foot engaged. I really ought to have my small table set up behind it to help hold the extra fabric—that’s the table I use when I machine quilt—but it is currently in the living room, covered with tomatoes.

The finished shades, however, are a huge improvement over the previous version:

These fit nicely inside the window frame. The fabric is a very light beige print. (I may release and re-sew the hem on this one because it looks a bit wonky here. The second shade turned out much better.)

Each shade takes about two hours start to finish. I’ll definitely finish the other two for the living room, but I need to think about whether or not I want to make eight more.

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We are butchering tomorrow, which is why I am writing this blog post on Friday afternoon instead—I won’t have time in the morning. After lunch, I got the scalding pot and the huge cooler out of the storage shed and cleaned and sanitized both of them. I brought a hose and nozzle over from the greenhouse and hooked them up to the spigot on the side of the house. The new fridge is plugged in and cold. Barring any torrential downpours in the morning, we should be good to go. I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I am looking forward to a much calmer and less crowded chicken coop, though. Even just moving those two roosters out of there the other evening has made a difference.

Our pastor is coming to help—the three of us have butchered together several times before and we have a very efficient system. Elysian and WS said they would like to come help, too, and bring some of their chickens. WS asked if he could run the chicken plucker and I said sure. He’s not afraid to jump in and help.

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And I whipped up—literally, because it took less than half an hour—this darling little beanie for Susan’s grandson.

The fabric is a knit remnant from Joanns. The piece wasn’t very big, about 10” long by the width of the fabric (54”, I think), and I could probably get three or four more beanies from it. I sort of fussy cut the top pieces so they would have complete dinosaurs, but I wasn’t paying attention and put the band on upside down. Ooops. I don’t think this child (or his parents) will care. The pattern is a free download from Made For Mermaids. I ran it up on the serger. Easy-peasy.

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The second Squash Squad embroidery pattern was released this morning. This one is for the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. I had never heard of such a thing, so I looked it up. Turns out that this is also known as the Cinderella pumpkin, which is a variety I grew a few years ago. Huh.

I might have to build a fire in the fireplace tonight and wheel my embroidery cart in and finish one of my current projects so I can start embroidering squash.