Skill Building

I did not coin the term “time confetti”—that honor belongs to a woman named Brigid Schulte in her book entitled Overwhelmed: Work, Love, And Play When No One Has The Time. I did not read the book, so I must have picked up that phrase from reading a review.

I do sometimes feel overwhelmed, but certainly not as much as I used to when my kids were growing up and I was producing books and knitting patterns. I am far more cognizant now of that feeling creeping up on me and therefore better about nipping it in the bud. I am also painfully aware that my time problems—such as they are—stem from the fact that tasks take longer in real life than they do when I am doing them in my head. A quilt takes longer to make than the 30 minutes I spend laying it out in EQ8.

And even with years of teaching experience, class prep still takes time. I have found no way around that. Just because I know how to do the technique does not mean I am prepared to teach other people how to do it. A lesson always sticks better with a tangible project. A handout provides support during and after the class. All of this takes time to find and assemble.

I kissed the husband off to work yesterday morning and went straight to my cutting table where fabric and an apron pattern were waiting for me. Most of the serger and sewing machine manufacturers have free project tutorials on their websites. BabyLock has some really good ones, including two apron patterns designed by Deb Canham. I’m thinking of teaching one of these next spring at the quilt store north of town—the BabyLock dealer—but I needed to make the apron, first.

The instructions were reasonably well written. I appreciated that the order of operations had been arranged to minimize thread changes, although there were still several throughout the pattern. This is a good skill-building pattern. The bodice features pintucks, the pocket has reverse flatlocking, and the bottom ruffle is attached with the gathering foot. Again, I wish it had been written in a less machine-specific manner, but I understand that the manufacturers want to highlight their machines. I had to do a bit of translating from BabyLock-ese to Bernina-ese.

Even knowing my serger as well as I do, the apron took most of the day to make. The design is not simple. I was working slowly and deliberately and I had to change threads and needles half a dozen times. The gathering foot took a bit of practice to master. I think the apron turned out well, though:

The fabric is 30’s Playtime by Chloe’s Closet. It has little spools of thread all over it. This was a thread-intensive project and used up most of a 400 meter spool of 12wt thread. I’m going to have to put in a WonderFil order soon. And I added several stitch swatches to my record book:

I made up this record sheet so I could have a place to write down stitches, thread, and machine settings. This book has been a lifesaver. I hand out copies of this record sheet to the students in all my classes so they can make their own record books.

It felt very good to have an entire day to do nothing but sew. I also pulled fabric for the other apron pattern. That design features piping and cording techniques, so I’m eager to try that one. Now that I am playing with new serger techniques, I have even more project ideas swirling around in my head.

*****************************

The mouse problem seems to have been solved, but now there is a rodent larger than a mouse running around in the ceiling. I hear it early in the morning and I heard it again the other night while we were watching TV. The husband seems unconcerned. He suggested it was a chipmunk but I think it is more on the order of a squirrel. Hopefully it will not die up there.

Little Bunny Foo-Foo is starting to turn white. The husband saw him outside the kitchen door the other morning and alerted me. It’s too bad these animals don’t talk. I’d like to interview some of them and find out what they think about the coming winter. They know things we don’t.

*****************************

I pulled a bunch of knit fabric remnants to take to one of the young women who works at the quilt store south of town. She bought the Juki serger I traded in when I got my Bernina. She’s busy making headbands and I am happy to give her my leftovers. I freed up an entire storage bin yesterday.