Sewing and Growing

I taught a sewing class at the community center yesterday morning. I do these periodically and donate the class fee to the homestead foundation. They are always a lot of fun. I set up a couple of sewing machines and my ironing board and bring all the fabric and supplies. Yesterday’s class had three students: a woman about my age and two 20-something girls. Each of them made two pillowcases during the three-hour class.

We make the pillowcases using the burrito method, which is always rather magical. Along the way, I try to teach good sewing and pressing habits.

Halfway through the class, the older lady mentioned that she had a sewing machine and had brought it with her, so I asked her if I could look it over. It turned out to be a serger! All she could tell me was that she had bought it at an estate sale. I threaded it up and got it to make a serger chain, but I’d need to tinker with it a bit more to get it to stitch properly.

The pillowcases turned out well. We do simple ones without the flange between the header and body because I’ve found that beginning sewists have enough trouble keeping three layers of fabric together (even with pins), let alone five.

After class, I packed up my supplies and came home. The husband is doing some concrete work at the hospital and went to work yesterday with a couple of our employees. He said it was much easier to work on the weekend when fewer people were there.

I was going to finish quilting the hexie wallhanging, but I don’t have the correct thread color for the border. I’ll get some this week. I started working on the jelly roll quilt, instead:

This one is getting a loopy meander in the center. I know that’s my default free motion quilting pattern, but it’s fast and relaxing. I don’t want to take the time to do rulerwork or custom quilting on this top.

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The husband has been queuing up seed starting and garden planning videos for our evening viewing, but I’m not ready to think about planting yet. He found an interesting channel called Montana Mid-Valley Farm, which is produced by a young couple living somewhere near Helena. We watched their videos about building a root cellar. The husband says that building one here is on his to-do list for this summer. We’re using a spot in our basement as a root cellar, but it would be nice to have a larger one for more storage. He also said it would make a good fire shelter in the event of a wildfire, although I don’t like to think about that.

In any case, it’s going to be about six weeks before I can get into the greenhouse to do anything. The lettuce in the basement is about ready to cut, and I need to start the next round in the rooting plugs.