Snow is On the Way

Poof!—Just like that, October came and went. We had our first significant snowfall yesterday, enough to cover the grass. I should have taken a picture but I didn’t, so I looked back in the archives and found this one:

The timestamp says January 2015. Their father always was very accommodating about making large snow hills for sledding. We had some good ones over the years.

I finished the Ramona skirt. The waist is too large, so I checked the pattern against my pants sloper and adjusted it accordingly. Kenneth told us in class that once we have our pants sloper, we’ll never need to use a commercial pattern again, but sometimes I just want to sew and have most of the drafting work already done for me. I expect to use the pants sloper the same way I use my bodice sloper, by checking it against commercial and indie patterns to help decide on a size and to determine if anything needs to be altered at the beginning. I should have done that before starting the Ramona skirt, but the body measurements given in the pattern were so close to mine—both hips and waist—that I thought I’d be safe making the corresponding size. I think there may be a bit too much ease built into the waist; either that, or the pattern was drafted for the waist to be at a different point on the body.

I can still wear the Ramona skirt I made, although it’s hanging from my hip bones (which are high) and not hanging from the waist. And I do like the skirt. It’s a great length to wear with boots in the winter.

Sinclair Patterns just released a new design:

This is not something that I would put on my “to sew” list based on the line art, but I’ve been seeing photos of the ones made by the pattern testers in the Facebook group and this design looks good on everyone. Who knew? I’m not crazy about that seamline halfway down the skirt portion—is that a design element or put there for shaping?—but the overall silhouette is flattering. Seeing the finished tester dresses was a good reminder to me that sometimes garments look better on the body than they do rendered as two-dimensional art and that I need to keep an open mind.

The quilt store wants more clothing classes. The owner’s daughter is working there now and she’s a marketing whiz. Carrying apparel fabric in a quilt store is a fine line to walk, but the owner has always been willing to bring in pontes, linens, and rayons. They would like to get more people into the store who sew but don’t quilt. (And our Joann Fabrics, at least, is lame when it comes to apparel fabrics.) I have a few ideas and will need to make class samples at some point.

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My friend Anna, who has the catering business, came and got some of the pumpkins and butternut squash while I was gone. She brought over a batch of cupcakes she made with the pumpkins. The variety is Winter Luxury and I think I’ll be growing those again. Believe me, real pumpkin is as different from canned pumpkin—which is actually a squash—as vine-ripened tomatoes are from the bland ones in the grocery store. The flavor was amazing. Susan used one for a batch of pumpkin bread and says she also wants to grow it next year.

Canning pumpkin for pie filling is on the schedule for next week. So is making more ham and chicken stock. And canning beans. A lot of that can cook and process while I am doing other things.