An Atmospheric River

Before I get to the rest of this blog post, may I suggest that if you are looking for a tangible way to help the Ukrainian people, please consider donating to Mennonite Central Committee. MCC actually has its origins in helping the people of Ukraine in the early 20th century and knows how to get help where it is most needed. You have heard me talk about MCC here on the blog, as our church participates in several of their relief sales held annually here in the US.

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This winter has been a bit of a bust, moisture-wise, especially as we were told it was going to be a La Nina winter that would bring us a lot of snow. Apparently, we are going to get all the precipitation this week. We are under what is known as an atmospheric river—a continuous stream of moisture coming in off the Pacific. It started raining Sunday afternoon, and then temperatures dropped overnight. The roads were a skating rink yesterday morning. The husband spent several hours helping one of our employees who had slid off the road on his way to work. (He took the old truck out and left the new one parked here.) Today looks to be a carbon copy of yesterday. And we marvel at the fact that it worked out for us to go to Tacoma when we did, because Snoqualmie Pass was closed for 15 hours yesterday.

I’m not going anywhere until I have to. Yesterday morning, I attacked this project:

The generator needed a cover. The husband has this same model generator on the white truck, and I made a cover for that one a few years ago. I spread the Cordura fabric out on the cutting table, started measuring, and got to work. Things were not going as smoothly as I remembered, though, and I couldn’t figure out why. Finally, the husband said, “I think you used a different material for the other cover.”

He brought the other cover in for me to look at. Sure enough, I had used a different material for that one. I pulled out my set of fabric swatches to check. The other cover was made of what’s called Traveler nylon, which is a thicker urethane-coated fabric with a looser weave. For the new cover, I had ordered polyurethane-coated 500D Cordura. The Cordura is also waterproof and will do what he needs it to do—protect the generator—although I told him that if it doesn’t hold up, I’ll order the other material and make another cover.

This cover turned out well despite my attempts to screw it up:

If I were going to do this on any kind of consistent basis, I would be shopping for a different industrial sewing machine. The Necchi BV handled the Cordura with some coaxing, but I don’t like to stress my machines.

I crossed that project off the list. After lunch, I started another Bear Paw baby quilt, then sewed binding onto the red Candy Coated quilt so I would have something to work on during a Zoom meeting I attended last evening.

[I got roped into being on the fundraising committee for our local Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. This is an organization that the husband and I support financially, which also sponsored the plant sale and garden tour that I participated in last year. This year, I am in charge of the plant sale (Susan is helping me) and I’m also on the roster for the garden tour again this year, in mid-July. I mentioned to the husband that our committee had a meeting scheduled for last night, and he very helpfully said to me, “What is that word you’re always telling me to learn? You know, the one that starts with ‘N’ and ends with ‘O’?”]

I also played around with some doodle quilting while I was waiting for dinner to cook:

I had a couple of reasons for wanting to try this. It is hard to tell from the photo and because this was a batting scrap cut off from the tumbler quilt, but I switched to Aurifil 50wt thread in the top instead of the Signature 40wt that I’ve been using. I like the heavier thread because it looks more like hand quilting to me, but I had a niggling suspicion that things like swirls and paisleys would be easier using a thinner thread and a shorter stitch length. This quilting definitely has a more delicate appearance, and those flowing lines are smoother and easier to stitch. I don’t think it’s a matter of one style being better than the other; rather, it’s a matter of adding more techniques to the toolbox. Some quilts benefit from some types of quilting more than others, and I can’t keep using the same technique on everything just because I am comfortable with it.

I also wanted to try the doodle quilting to see if I could get my brain to switch quickly from one pattern to another. I think I did okay.

And finally, please check out the Pinovations Quilt Tutorial on the Missouri Star Quilt Company’s YouTube channel! The guest is none other than Charisma Horton, who hosted the embroidery workshop in Ephrata, Washington, that I attended back in the fall of 2019. I had such a good time at that workshop. Charisma is one of the sweetest people I know and also one of the hardest working. She absolutely deserves the success she is experiencing. I enjoyed watching her and Misty Doan making this quilt together.