Oh, How I Love Deadlines

I am very motivated by deadlines. I prefer the ones that I impose upon myself, but external ones are good, too. Now that the payroll stuff has been filed, getting classes ready for Sew Expo has taken priority over everything else. Two of them are ones I have taught before, but two are new and need samples, handouts, and kits.

I usually start prepping for a new class by doing the sewing version of a literature review. What techniques are already out there and have I mastered them enough to teach them? For my cording foot class, I began with Bernina’s wonderful series of videos on individual presser feet. Doris Brechbühl, a member of Bernina’s European staff, hosts these videos. Doris was at BU in Salt Lake City. I also checked to see if Gail Yellen had done any videos on specific techniques. All of these resources go into a list at the end of the handout.

This process is great for revealing potential pitfalls. I’ve already run into one with the cording foot class. When I searched for “cording foot,” a lot of information came up for piping feet, instead. Bernina and Janome have specific cording feet for their machines, which are separate from their piping feet. BabyLock uses the terms piping and cording interchangeably and—as far as I can tell—they only have a piping foot, not a cording foot, but they call it a cording foot.

No confusion there. I hope that people don’t sign up for this class expecting me to teach them creative ways to do piping. 🫤

The next step, once I’ve identified what I want to cover in the class, is to make samples. This gives the students something to hold and examine, but it also lets me note any tips I want to share. When I did the shoelace class a couple of weeks ago, I made about a dozen shoelaces in the process of figuring out the best way to feed the fabric into the machine on the second pass because the first pass left a point on the fabric that didn’t feed well. (I used a stabilizer.) That helped cut down frustration in class.

Prepping new class materials is a lot of work, but it’s work I rather enjoy.

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My friend Elaine asked me if I would repair a coat for her. It belonged to her dad—I knew him and thought very highly of him—and she wants to keep using it. Save for the hole that needs to be patched, there is nothing wrong with the coat. In fact, it is very heavy and warm. The husband and I were admiring it last night. We think the fleece is real, not synthetic. Too bad no one makes coats like this any longer.

Elaine provided a piece of heavy denim that I will sew over the hole using the Juki industrial. She doesn’t mind if the stitching shows on the outside. Were I a better seamstress with more time, I might consider re-lining the entire coat, but that’s a bigger job than I want to tackle. This is on the list for tomorrow. Today, I am teaching a machine mastery class.

And the husband informed me last night that I need to re-upholster the seat for the golf cart. He bought that golf cart from a neighbor down the road and has completely tricked it out. It has off-road tires, a new clutch cable, a new battery, a complete set of tools for the back (shovel, rake, etc.), and a hitch so I can hook the wagon from my John Deere tractor to it. The seat looks fine from the top, but apparently, the plywood underneath has rotted and took some of the vinyl with it.

I will get some nice marine vinyl from Sailrite and make a new cover. I told him that probably won’t happen until after Sew Expo, however. That’s going to be the kind of project that I have to start and finish in a day or two because he won’t want to be without the golf cart. He likes to drive it around the property. And who knows what I am going to find when I take off the old cover.