Working With Challenging Fabrics

I’ve decided that dedicating a week to sewing Christmas gifts is the best strategy for me and one I will use in the future, although I will work harder at scheduling it earlier in the season. If I try to intersperse gift-making in between other projects, I get too distracted. I knocked out several items yesterday and I’m just about ready to get back to aprons and pattern development.

As it turned out, all of yesterday’s projects involved working with some very challenging fabrics. Thankfully, the requested items were not complicated. If I had had to deal with construction issues in addition to difficult fabrics, I might have given up sewing altogether.

I don’t have pictures of the actual items as they are all gifts, unfortunately. Project #1 was a pillow for DD#2 out of fake fur. This is to match the seat cover I put on her makeup table chair last year and she knows she is getting this, so I can talk about it. The fake fur was still in the stash. To make it “easier” on myself, I thought I would back the pillow with something plain and only have the fur on the front. I had a remnant of some fake suede and decided to use that for the back, making an envelope closure that required two simple hems.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that fake suede behaves like real suede. It doesn’t. Also, some kinds of fake suede are actually knit fabrics. Yes, you read that correctly. Check carefully before you begin sewing. If it’s a knit, a leather needle is going to be worse than useless. Use a ball point needle. (Zede and Mallory, at Sewhere.com, recommend a Microtex needle for some of the newer synthetic knits. Experiment.) However, even with a ball point needle and the even-feed foot on my Janome 6600P engaged, the fake suede was sticky enough that it didn’t want to feed easily.

My Necchi industrial machine has a Teflon foot and a Teflon needle plate, so I moved over to that machine. I don’t have ball point needles for that machine, but the material fed much more easily and the type of needle wasn’t really an issue. (As the husband says, sometimes you just need a bigger hammer.) If you don’t have a machine with a Teflon foot, you can also try sewing with a layer of tissue paper between the fabric and the feed dogs and/or putting a piece of tape on the bottom of the presser foot to make it slicker.

After I had hemmed the two pieces of backing material, I cut the fake fur to the appropriate size. The trick to cutting fake fur is to cut only through the backing—which is a knit—and not the pile. Use a pair of very sharp-tipped scissors. I went back to the Necchi industrial, increased the stitch length, and sewed the front to the backs. It worked best to have the fake suede on the bottom where it was feeding along the Teflon needle plate. I tried it on the top, first, and it stretched too much despite lightening the presser foot pressure.

The pillow turned out really well. I think if I were to do this project again, though, I would use a more stable fabric like linen or twill for the backing. Learn from me.

Project #2 featured some rayon challis. Sewing with rayon challis is like ice skating. The coefficient of friction of that fabric is zero. It wants to slide everywhere. I was using a remnant and had to piece two sections together—matching the print across the seam!—but rayon challis also frays like nobody’s business. Rather than make a French seam there, I serged the two pieces together. I’ve come up with a system for my serger threads: The needle threads are a neutral taupe-y gray color that is invisible on most fabrics. Those threads don’t change. I swap out the looper threads as needed so they match the color of the fabric. I’ve gotten good at tying on the new looper threads and running them through the machine, so changing looper colors only takes a minute or two.

I went back to the Janome for the remainder of the project, swapping out the ball point needle for a thinner Microtex needle. I had no issues with the sewing other than I had to sew slowly and keep a death grip on the material.

Project #3 was a minky pillowcase for my sister. (She knows she is getting one and even saw the material over Thanksgiving because I wanted to make sure it was the right color.) Minky is also a knit fabric. It will shed little bits all over the place when you cut it so keep a vacuum and a lint roller handy. I’ve got a fair bit of experience with minky, having made a number of baby blankets with it, and I know that sewing with the even-feed foot engaged, a longer stitch length, and a ball point or universal needle makes the process go much more smoothly.

[The default stitch length setting on my Janome is 2.2 (mm) which I find awfully short, even for piecing. When machine quilting, I bump it up to at least 3.0 or even 3.2, and for minky, I increase it all the way up to 4.0.]

What did I learn from all of this? The right combination of equipment—machine, needles, thread—contributes hugely to the success of the project. As much as I love my vintage sewing machines, they don’t handle newer synthetic knit fabrics well at all. Vittorio, my Necchi BF, pitches a fit if I try to sew minky on him. Very few vintage machines have walking foot attachments, and while it’s possible to Rube Goldberg a walking foot to some of them, I’d rather just use a machine I don’t have to argue with.

If you’re contemplating a project using an unfamiliar fabric, it goes without saying that you should Google some background information. There is a wealth of it out there. Two of my favorite sites for tips on sewing with specific fabrics are ThreadsMagazine.com and Sew4Home.com.

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I know some of you are only here for the manly shop content, so here is your update. The husband and his crew are going to be putting plywood on the ceiling in preparation for the insulation company to come and blow insulation up there. The scaffolding is in place:

I am going to go to town so that I won’t be here obsessing about people falling off scaffolding. That is not helpful.

I haven’t been inside the new shop since the doors went in and the lights were installed. That is one big-ass garage door:

This will be a lovely space for the husband to work in.

Website Development

The husband’s new website is about 80% done. My grasp of concrete and framing is limited to what I’ve gleaned from running the business side of things, so I completely understand the frustration of web designers who have trouble getting their clients to provide the content. Fortunately, I don’t have that problem. The husband looked over the first iteration and added and changed a few things. Now I need him to look it over again with those changes in place. He is also better at “big picture” stuff. I had made a list of services—including, of course, of all the specific tasks he does—and he added “consulting” to it. That never occurred to me, but it is an important part of what he does.

He has often said that if I weren’t running the business end of things, which he doesn’t enjoy, he’d be part of the underground economy. I depend on him, though, to keep me from getting bogged down in the details. When I start obsessing about minutiae, he manages to distill everything down into something much less overwhelming. He is the keeper of the five-year plan and the overall vision. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have input—we do have an Architectural Review Committee, after all—but projects go far more smoothly when he says, “Let’s do XYZ,” and I figure out how to pay for it. The division of labor works well for us because each of us is playing to our strengths.

However, I do have days when my job would be much easier if I could get inside his head. When I do the monthly billing, I organize all the invoices according to supplier, then he goes through each invoice and writes the job it pertains to on it. That is so I can track expenses in Quickbooks according to specific jobs. In theory, it works; in practice, sometimes not so much. Each job has a general contractor, a physical address, and a homeowner name. Sometimes he does more than one job for the same contractor at the same time. Sometimes the homeowner is acting as the general contractor. Sometimes he knows the general contractor and physical location of the job, but not the homeowner’s name. He has all of this stuff arranged in his head so he knows what jobs he is working on at what time for which person—i.e., the big picture—but the details don’t always sift down to me. I might get the general contractor’s name and a vague location of the job, but it turns out that the job he’s doing for that GC at Eagle Bend (the golf course) is different than the job he did for that GC at Eagle Bend last spring. If all I get is the contractor name and “Eagle Bend,” chaos ensues. It also happens that he might do part of the work, like the foundation, at the beginning of the project and the remainder—a driveway—at the end of the project several months later, so sometimes it is the same GC on the same jobsite.

I ask a lot of questions.

I used a Squarespace template for his website. The irony is not lost on me that his website looks far more artistic than mine do, but that’s just how it worked out. His website template is based on a handyman/craftsman site, and it worked well to incorporate those artistic touches even though one doesn’t normally think of a house foundation as being artistic. (The husband does not do stamped or other decorative forms of concrete.) Building a house for someone tweaks specific emotional strings, though, that buying a knitting pattern doesn’t, and I think the site needs to reflect that. But we’ll see—some of those template features may find their way over to my websites.

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This came in the mail the other day:

I want to plant ALL THE THINGS. (It’s snowing this morning; nothing like a big dose of reality to squelch those plans.) I will make a big wish list and then whittle it down to something realistic. I do know that I want to incorporate more herbs and flowers into the big garden. Some of them will get moved from the existing herb garden, but I’ll likely add some new varieties, too.

I can’t get distracted by gardening just yet. This week has been a bust thus far, productivity-wise, for a variety of reasons. I did get some Christmas gifts mailed yesterday. I have a few more to make today so they can be shipped tomorrow. Once the Christmas sewing is done, I am going to get back to making inventory for 2020. I would like to try at least a couple of craft show/farmer’s markets in the spring to see how that goes. If it works, it works; if not, it doesn’t, but I can’t do those events if I don’t have anything to sell.

I am Not Alone in the Struggle

I got quite a giggle over my coffee when I read Barbara Emodi’s Sewing on the Edge blog this morning. Her post is entitled Flypaper Thoughts Illustrated From the Production Room. She nailed how it feels to be a sewist at this time of year. And the funniest part is that “in the middle of all of this,” her husband has learned to sew. He bought himself a Singer Touch and Sew machine.

I don’t think I need to worry about the husband taking up sewing. Thank goodness.

That mystery item from yesterday’s blog post was a potholder. I took four of them to church for some field testing during our fellowship meal yesterday. They were deemed suitable by all of the experts there, so I am going to stick with that design. That was as close to sewing as I came; we had our church service, then a fellowship meal, then a business meeting to approve the 2020 budget, and finally, choir practice. I didn’t get home until 3 p.m. This is a typical Sunday in December. The good news is that my small but mighty choir of 10 people (we were missing some personnel) gamely accepted the challenge I set before them. The piece we are working up for the Christmas Eve service is an acapella arrangement.

[I was selfish this year in choosing a choir piece; I never get to sing because I am the accompianist, so I chose an arrangement that doesn’t come with accompaniment. The Mennonites have a long tradition of acapella singing, so this isn’t as shocking as it might have been to another group of singers. It remains to be seen whether I will sing alto or tenor or bounce back and forth. Much depends on who else comes to practice.]

I also got the list of songs for the Christmas Eve service, so I’ll spend some time this week getting my music in order. I like to keep it all together in one binder so I’m not fumbling around with multiple books, but that requires making copies. And we have Christmas caroling scheduled for next Sunday evening.

I had sewing on the schedule for today, but something has come up and I will have to spend some time in town. I am hoping that resolving this particular issue won’t take too long.

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The husband and I went out to dinner Saturday night, and while we were waiting for our food, I attempted to explain Instagram to him. The husband makes only occasional visits to the world of social media. Much of it is foreign territory to him. I probably wouldn’t spend as much time there as I do, either, but being fluent in these areas is somewhat necessary to running a creative business. When I am feeling sorry for myself, I lament the pace at which technology is forcing us to move. I started my creative business in the heyday of print desktop publishing. A few years later, I had to morph everything to digital publishing. I’ve built websites. I could retire this week if I had a nickel for every person who told me blogging is dead. Now it seems that Instagram is where it’s at. The older I get, the less enthusiasm I am able to muster for adding these things to my life. I can do it, but there are other ways I’d rather spend my time.

[Did anyone else notice that today has been dubbed “Green Monday” by the marketing people? I’ve seen it in several places already. What is this about?]

Speaking of websites, it looks like I’ll be building one for the husband. That was the other item of discussion over dinner the other night. He hasn’t needed to advertise because all of his work is either repeat customers or word of mouth, and he has plenty to keep him busy. One of the services he offers, though, is concrete cutting. He has specialized tools for this. There is one other guy in the valley who does concrete cutting. However, this guy doesn’t answer his phone or call people back. Eventually, most customers find their way to the husband. We would like to make it easier for them to do so.

He doesn’t need a fancy website, just a couple of pages with information and a contact form. I told him that he has to write the content for me, though; I sort of know what he does but I don’t want to make a hash of it. He’ll know what he needs to communicate to potential customers.

I have no current pictures to show you, but I did run across this one from a few years ago:

This was right after Christmas—we had gotten a huge snowstorm that dumped several feet of snow in a short period of time. The husband and I had to go out with the roof rakes and pull the snow off the porch roof. The snow was deep enough that we needed snowshoes, but I was a bit of a snowshoe novice at that point. A few minutes before this picture was taken, I had been out in front of the house attempting to turn around on them when I fell over and landed on my back like a turtle. In a snowbank. (DD#2 said, “One moment you were there and then you were gone!”) The girls had to pull me up. They found me because I was laughing so hard at myself.

I think I’m a bit steadier on my feet now. We’ll see if we get another storm like that this winter.

The Annual Struggle

Cue yearly agonizing over Christmas gift making…

I’ve said before that Christmas is not my favorite time of the year. Most of the work to get ready for the holiday traditionally has fallen on me, and while I don’t want our friends and relatives to think that we didn’t enjoy having them be part of our celebrations (we did), I am not going to gloss over the fact that it added a lot of stress to an already stressful time of year. I have yet to meet a church musician who is happy during the month of December. There is no getting around that.

I also hate the overwhelming commercialization and consumerism. I am someone who tends to buy things for people whenever I see something I think they would enjoy. “Hey, I saw this and it made me think of you,” is a much better reason for getting someone a gift than, “Hey, I had a list of people I had to buy for so I got you this thing out of a sense of obligation.” I’ve started picking up gifts throughout the year and setting them aside to gift at Christmas, although I’d much rather gift them in the moment.

And finally, as someone who enjoys making things, I’d much rather give a handmade gift, especially if I can figure out what I can make that the person will actually enjoy receiving and using. (I do not want to be the aunt or grandmother who makes the pink rabbit PJs for Ralphie for Christmas.) I love it when people tell me what they’d like me to make for them. My sister wants a minky pillowcase. DD#2 has put in an order for a faux fur pillow to match the faux fur cover I put on her makeup table chair last year.

It is the curse of makers, I think, that we cannot go to the store and buy a cheaply-made Chinese product when we could make something like it that would be so much better. It’s hard to spend money on something that you suspect will disintegrate after the first trip through the washer.

I think I am getting closer to finding a balance this year. Some people on my list are getting books, ones I’ve picked up as I’ve run across them. Other people have asked for specific (purchased) items and I am happy to get them what they want. And that leaves a few people for whom I will be making something this year. That was the focus of my sewing over the past couple of days and I’ve really enjoyed myself. Of course, it means that I can’t show you much of what I am working on. I can show you this, however, which is a bit of product development thrown in as an attempt to use up some larger fabric scraps:

I am feeling the itch to do some more machine quilting.

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The husband got the estimate for insulating the new shop and I am pretty sure that’s going to get done some time in the next couple of weeks. He tells me that once that’s done, he can sheath the walls with plywood and begin moving stuff over there from the old garage.

He has the plans for the bathroom tacked up on the wall:

I probably will never use the bathroom in the new shop because that round thing on the left side of the picture is the air compressor. I hate that air compressor. It is a huge air compressor that exhausts itself—very loudly—every 10-15 minutes, usually right at the moment I have come into the garage to get into my car. The surprise of it exhausting has just about put me into cardiac arrest on more than one occasion. The day it gets moved from the old garage to the new shop will be a happy day for me.

And this means that I can start thinking about creating an actual sewing machine workshop out in the old garage. I have a few ideas; I’ll probably start in the spring by gathering all of my machines from their existing locations and putting them on shelves so I can inventory what I’ve got.

Practicing My Hand Quilting

The first Thursday of every month is our Mennonite Women sewing day and meeting at church. Our ladies hand quilt on commission to raise funds that are donated or used for special projects. Not everyone enjoys quilting, so we also try to have a comforter ready to tie. Those usually get donated to Mennonite Central Committee.

Yesterday, we worked on two projects. Mennonite Central Committee is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2020. As part of the celebration, they would like to collect at least 6500 tied comforters. They have asked churches to consider hosting a comforter-tying party. We ordered bolts of plaid flannel for the front and a poly/cotton broadcloth for the backing, and yesterday morning, Elaine and I cut enough fronts and backings for seven comforters. I’ll put them together with batting some time between now and the middle of January, and on Saturday, January 18, we hope to have a comforter-tying party and potluck dinner at church.

[January in Montana requires that we come up with creative forms of entertainment.]

Pat and Holly also put in a new quilt on Tuesday. Holly bought the top at an auction a few months ago, but it was a bit wonky. She had to take it apart and sew it back together to straighten it out. We’ll quilt it and probably donate it back to a relief sale like the one in Ritzville. It’s a very pretty quilt:

Most of the fancy quilting is being done in the sashing strips between the blocks and in the corners of the blocks. (It looks fancy when it’s done, but it’s a lot of straight lines, so it’s actually quite easy to do.) After Elaine and I were done cutting fabric, I gave in to peer pressure and sat down and helped quilt. My hand quilting is getting better. I am nowhere near as good as Margaret, but I no longer quilt like a beginner, either. Shirley lent me a needle that had belonged to her mother. Her reason for using it is not just sentimental—when compared with more modern needles, that vintage needle is a bit thicker and less prone to bending. I found it much easier to quilt with her vintage needle than a modern one, so I am going to go through my collection of old needles and see if I can find a similar one. We do tend to get very attached to particular tools. I have one thimble that fits me perfectly and if I ever lose it, I’ll be so sad.

Quilting is also a great time for visiting and telling stories. Karen, who is Shirley’s daughter and about my age, asked me if I had ever made lefse. Lefse, if you’re unfamiliar, is a traditional Norwegian food made from riced potatoes that are made into a dough, rolled out, and cooked on a grill. We have a lot of people of Norwegian heritage here in the Flathead Valley—the Lutheran church I play for during Advent and Lent is called Eisdvold Lutheran—and lefse is a popular offering. I told Karen that yes, I had made lefse once or twice. Back when the husband first joined the fire department, I joined the corresponding Ladies’ Auxiliary. At that time, the Ladies’ Auxiliary was made up of wives of firefighters and other community women. (It has since morphed into a different kind of support group for the fire department.) Most of the women were many years older than me. They quilted, cooked, and helped with the annual fundraising auction. Lefse was one of the foods sold at the auction, so we had to get together several weeks ahead of time and make it. Pat, who is one of the quilting ladies at church (she quilted the quilt I made for the Ritzville sale in October), was also in the Ladies’ Auxiliary because her husband was a firefighter. The first time I went to lefse making, Pat was walking around behind all of us brandishing a rolling pin and yelling, “Roll it thinner!” because thick lefse is not appetizing. I remember thinking to myself, “Who is this woman?” and I went home and told the husband I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back.

Pat laughed when I told that story (she remembered that day). She and I have similar working styles so we get along just fine. She’s one of the few people I can stand to share a kitchen with.

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It’s back to the sewing machine for me today. I want to get the Christmas sewing done and out of the way so I can go into 2020 with a clear idea of what I want to do. Or perhaps that should say, “Go into 2020 with a clear idea of what I want to do so the universe knows exactly where to screw up my plans,'“ because clearly I wasn’t expecting to go back to work as a transcriptionist, even part time. Stay tuned.

Out of Print Prints

The rest of the Thanksgiving trip was fine; we had a relaxing day at the Airbnb on Thursday before braving the crowds on Friday. I was feeling optimistic as my mother, sister, DD#1, and I headed for University Village, because traffic was light and shoppers seemed cheery. A few hours later, though, we got caught up in a mess on our way to see DD#2 at the Nordstrom where she works. Someone had driven up onto the sidewalk and hit a pole on the access road next to the mall, shutting down that road for several hours. I ended up dropping everyone off and going to fuel up the car. By the time I got back, traffic was marginally better but still not great. There is nothing to do in those situations but be patient and avoid contributing to the problem. We managed.

Saturday was my mother’s 78th birthday. Because my birthday is so close to Thanksgiving, we often end up celebrating together, but none of us could remember the last time we were all together for my mother’s birthday. My sister and I treated her to dinner at a lovely French restaurant. They both flew home on Sunday and I headed for Spokane.

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Fabrics go out of print just like many other items (yarn, patterns, books, etc.). I have learned that if I find something I absolutely love, I should buy as much of it as I can. We’ve all heard stories of a bolt of OOP fabric selling for some outrageous price in eBay. Ever since Joanns stopped carrying many designer prints and switched to a house brand (a dumb idea, in my opinion, but I don’t run the company), it’s been a lot harder to find specific fabric designers, especially in my neck of the woods. Occasionally, I’ll visit a Joanns that has a stock of older prints. The store in Moses Lake, for example, which has only been open for about two years, has some fabrics I haven’t seen in quite a while. I picked up the last of a bolt of Tim Holtz fabric in the entomology print. Our store hasn’t had any Tim Holtz fabric for several years. And I ran across some of this Quilter’s Showcase fabric, which also has been out of stock at our store for a long time:

(Not the best representation of the colors, but I do love the print.) I had a yard of this fabric and used it for the Mary Apron class I took at The Quilting Bee in Spokane last February. Alas, that was the class where the pattern was full of errors. I ended up wasting quite a bit of that original yard of fabric because the pattern said to cut each piece 17” long when each piece only needed to be 10” long. The leftovers went to the scrap bag, but I was a bit annoyed. When I spotted this at the store in Moses Lake, I bought what was left.

I haven’t been to Missoula lately to see if it is still open, but there was a quilting store there that had so much back stock of fabric that some of the bolts never had their plastic wrapping removed. It has gotten rather ridiculous in recent years. New fabric lines used to come out once or twice a year. Now, some fabric manufacturers are releasing new lines once a quarter, and smaller quilt stores have a hard time rotating inventory that quickly.

The last time I was in Spokane, I picked up a fat quarter of this fabric at Sew E-Z, Too, a fabric store north of downtown:

Don’t ask me why, but I think it’s charming. I’ve discovered that fat quarters are a good way to see if I like a fabric. If I buy a fat quarter and then decide I should have bought yardage, I’ll look for a supplier. I could have ordered more of this online, but I popped into the store when I went through Spokane last Tuesday. They still had it, so I bought a yard. I think it’s going to end up being a quilted cover for one of my sewing machines.

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I spent Tuesday catching up on paperwork, cleaning and organizing, and running errands to stock up on feed for everyone, husband included. And then I had a moment of anxiety when I realized that there are only three weeks until Christmas. Yikes. It almost always sneaks up on me anyway, but this year, with Thanksgiving being so late in November, I am way behind the curve. It’s time to manage expectations:

• No one is getting a quilt from me this year.

• Some of you will get handmade gifts. You may get them AFTER Christmas.

• I did wrap half a dozen presents yesterday—bought throughout the year—so YAY ME.

Going back to work will throw a wrench into the works, but how big a wrench remains to be seen. It is one of those strange paradoxes that when I have a lot of free time in my schedule, I am less productive. Having to work a couple of hours a day will no doubt help me to better prioritize some of my activities.

I went down to the organic market Tuesday to pick up some veggies for a salad and to drop off a supply of business cards. I noticed how nicely the owner had displayed my aprons! They were in a basket with the apron ties done up in fancy bows, and a hand-lettered sign to indicate that they were done by a local maker. The local paper did a profile on the store this week if you’d like to read more. (And from the small world department, the Mary Jo mentioned in the article is the sister of my computer guru, Greg.)

Winter Driving Conditions

I had one eye on the weather forecast last week; I am no stranger to bad weather road trips, but I like to know what I’m getting into. There are three mountain passes between here and Seattle. I’ve driven over each of them in a snowstorm at least once (and once over Snoqualmie in a snowstorm in the dark). Thankfully, the drive over on Tuesday was through mostly bare and dry conditions. I didn’t actually hit any snow until Spokane, and then it was just light flurries. While watching the news that night, though, I found out that there had been a 60-70 car pileup on I-90 just west of Spokane earlier in the day. A snow squall had come through around 2:30 p.m. bringing whiteout conditions. That stretch of highway is congested anyway because the speed limit drops from 70 mph to 60 mph there. The resulting pileup closed the highway in both directions for several hours. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries (besides to the cars).

I’ve got some opinions on winter driving. In 38 years of driving in general, I’ve never been in an accident of my making. I was rear-ended twice in the Jetta, both times because someone else wasn’t paying attention. I am a good, defensive driver. I watch the road conditions, and when it’s bad, I slow down. We have a saying in the fire department that “slower is faster.” I’d much rather arrive an hour late than not at all.

Contrary to popular opinion, driving at highway speeds on icy roads is not the mark of a skilled driver. It’s the mark of an idiot—and hopefully an idiot that doesn’t cause an accident. On my way out of Seattle and up toward Snoqualmie Pass, the wind picked up and it started to snow. I positioned myself in the far right-hand lane going 60 mph (the speed limit there is 70 mph) so that I could ditch onto the shoulder if someone in front of me lost control. A reader board over the road flashed the temperature—32 degrees—with a warning for ice and snow up ahead. I watched as car after truck after SUV, all with Washington plates, passed me in the left lanes doing 70-80 miles an hour. I doubt many of those vehicles had snow tires, let alone studded ones.

I made it over the pass without incident and stopped in Moses Lake for lunch. When I got to Spokane, though, I found out that I-90 east of Moses Lake—the spot I had driven through just an hour or two earlier—was closed because of another big pileup. (No doubt another batch of overconfident Washington state drivers.) And I-90 near Ritzville was closed again yesterday morning due to a collision between three semis.

I’m not worried about my own abilities. I worry about the stupid people I have to share the road with.

Meanwhile, back at home, the husband was dealing with a wicked windstorm. I’ve got an app on my phone that notifies me when our fire department gets paged out on a call. It works anywhere I have cell service (including in foreign countries, which is a bit disconcerting). As I headed out of Spokane Wednesday morning on my way to Seattle, that app alarm kept going off. When I checked in with the husband at lunch, I discovered that we had another half a dozen trees down in the woods and the power was out. He said that the wooded area about two miles south of us looked like someone had taken a machete to it.

[I also got a text from him at one point saying Your woodpecker tree is history, by the way. The “woodpecker tree” was the skeleton of a long-dead pine that has stood on our property since we bought it. It was the tallest dead tree out there and a favorite perch of the pileated woodpecker; hence, the name. Several men have tried to cut down that tree over the years, but I steadfastly refused to allow them. It came down in the windstorm.]

I don’t want to get into a debate on climate change; that topic is too politicized and emotionally charged to have a reasonable discussion. I will say, though, that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to note that weather patterns have shifted in the 26 years we have lived here. It used to be that we had maybe one or two of those bad windstorms a year. We’ve had three since August. And more of this:

I felt bad that I wasn’t here to help him out. I hate wind, though. This storm was so strong that it broke one of my wind chimes. The fishing line holding the pipes together snapped and I am going to have to re-string it.

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The new shop has electricity!

The electrician was here yesterday installing large overhead lights in the lean-tos and inside the shop itself. Now the husband can see to unload the trucks and trailers.

And I picked up my new bifocals yesterday. They will take some getting used to, but I already appreciate not having to take off and put on my glasses like I used to. Distance is great. Middle vision is a bit tricky; I am having trouble seeing my computer screen with them on. The optician said to give them a solid two weeks, though, before giving up, so we’ll see what happens. They will adjust the prescription if I am still having trouble.

A Turkey Trip to Seattle With Quilts

One of the side effects of having adult children is a change in how we celebrate holidays. DD#2 is currently an assistant manager at Nordstrom in Seattle, so it was a given that she was going to have to work Black Friday.

[One of my cousins also lives in Seattle and is a buyer at Nordstrom. She has been a wonderful mentor to DD#2 and has encouraged her to think about applying for a corporate job at the mother ship downtown, so this may be less of an issue in the future.]

DD#1 usually spends Thanksgiving with her boyfriend’s family, but his parents went to visit relatives in the midwest this year. I said I would come to Seattle and spend Thanksgiving there. My mother and sister also made plans to fly in from the east coast.

Driving from Kalispell to Seattle takes about nine hours in good weather. I’ve done that trip many times. During the winter, though—and with only about seven hours of daylight—I prefer to break it up into two days and stay in Spokane overnight going and coming.

On my layover in Spokane over last Tuesday, I made a visit to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture to see the Memory and Meaning: Textiles from the Permanent Collection exhibit. I confirmed that photos (without flash) were allowed, so I took some pictures to share. This is not a huge museum and the exhibit only featured about ten quilts, but I enjoyed seeing and reading about the quilts that were on display. The first one was pieced by a young woman named Rene Snider between 1900 and 1902. Sadly, she died in childbirth the following year, but her sister-in-law, Trissa Snider Moore, finished the quilt in 1928 with the help of her own children:

People, this is at least a queen-sized quilt made up of alternating plain and pieced 3” squares, all pieced by hand. Look at the detail of these tiny hourglass units. No scrap left behind, indeed!

Amazing.

Several other quilts were hung in a group:

That appliquéd flower quilt (second from right) invited closer inspection. It was another tour de force of handwork:

Those stitches are TINY. On the order of Margaret-quilted-them tiny. And there are a lot of them.

I haven’t tried making a crazy quilt, although they are becoming more popular these days. The quilt store in Spokane has offered some classes on making them. This one was pieced and embroidered by Eudora Parker Mead, who worked as a dressmaker in Spokane to support herself and her daughter while her husband was off prospecting.

That embroidery. Oh, my goodness.

The highlight of the exhibit was the Bengali quilt. This quilt is so old and fragile that it was not hung, but instead laid out horizontally on a high platform. I had a hard time getting a good picture:

Quilt historians have dated this quilt to the 17th century. It likely is one of the oldest surviving quilts in the United States. Apparently, it came over with a family who settled in Massachusetts and was passed down through the descendants, finally ending up in the possession of a man who came to Spokane and started the company that eventually became Avista Power. As with many family heirlooms, its story became embellished through the years, so historians had to sift through what was legend and what was truth. Family history held that it had been embroidered by a couple of Queen Elizabeth’s attendants, but the timing was wrong. (I am paraphrasing all of this and I think I have it correct.) It appears to have been made in Bengal‚ which has a long history of producing and exporting fine textiles to European markets in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It is one thing to see artifacts of metal and stone dating back several hundred years—they do not deteriorate quickly—and quite another to stand in the presence of a textile piece that age, especially one of this scope and detail. Whose were the hands that created this piece? What were their lives like? I forgot to ask, but I don’t think this quilt is going to be part of a traveling display, unfortunately.

The museum also had a number of embroidered pieces on display. I know I’ve dismissed embroidery as being a bit of “frippery,” but it really did have a practical application. Back when textiles were time-consuming to produce, they were considered valuable household items. Being able to label your household’s textiles with an embroidered name and date ensured you could keep track of them. (Fabric markers hadn’t been invented yet.) And if you’re going to go to all that work, why not make it pretty, too?

Off to the side, in one of the smaller display alcoves, I found the delightful story of Pearl Allen:

Widowed in her twenties after only three years of marriage, she filled lonely hours tatting and sewing. She remarried in 1922, but money was tight. Pearl often used cloth from chicken feed and flour sacks to make tablecloths and other objects. She made many of her own clothes and sewed for her children.

Her work took a creative turn when she developed a method of “writing” with thread. Using her old treadle sewing machine, she decorated potholders and other items with favorite poems and sayings, recipes, and historical information, often giving them as gifts.

This is a a tea towel embroidered with a recipe for cocktail sauce:

I find machine quilting difficult enough with a modern sewing machine. I can’t imagine doing this with a treadle.

Speaking of sewing machines….

I really am trying not to add to the collection. You probably all think I doth protest too much, but it’s true. After I left the museum, I hit up a couple of thrift stores in the area. I’m looking for vintage apron patterns now, not sewing machines. At the Union Gospel Mission thrift store, however—which almost always has a couple of vintage sewing machines for sale—I found this:

No, it’s not a vintage machine, but it is valuable (to me) nonetheless. This is a Janome Jem. A few years ago, these machines were elevated to the same status as Featherweights. Everyone wanted one. Janome, oddly enough, makes even their lower-end machines with beefy metal guts. Despite being small and having a plastic case, this machine weighs about 12 pounds. Quilters wanted the Jem models as portable machines to take to quilting classes (and indeed, this one had a quarter-inch foot on it). These machines retail for between $150- $200. This one was $16.00, so I scooped it up. I’ve been looking for a machine that I could take back and forth to Seattle with me, because it seems that DD#2 always has clothing in need of mending or alterations.

On the way home from Spokane yesterday, I made a quick stop at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in Coeur d’Alene, another place known for having a lot of vintage machines for sale (although I was looking for vintage patterns, remember?). In the furniture section, I spotted a Singer case on the floor, likely with a vintage machine in it, and knelt down to take a peek inside. A man behind me said, loudly, “I’m buying that machine!” I stopped what I was doing and stood up. “You can look at it if you want,” he said, a bit less forcefully. “No worries,” I responded, and headed off to see what else there was. I found a table with half a dozen machines in cases—including some good vintage models—but nothing I wanted to take home. When I turned around, though, I spotted this hiding on the floor underneath another table:

There are some machines I will not leave in thrift stores whether I need them or not, and that includes any of the Singer 400 or 500 models. This is a Singer 401. I love these slant-shank machines. (I wondered briefly if the man buying the other Singer had seen this one, but I didn’t stop to ask him.) It needs a thorough cleaning and a foot pedal, but I expect it works just fine.

I’ve got more to share, but this post is long enough. Look for more in the next couple of days.

December Already

I’m back after a week of traveling—I will post a comprehensive review of my activities in tomorrow’s blog post, but I will note that literally 15 minutes after I walked in, the phone rang. It was my supervisor’s supervisor from my old transcription job. One of the transcriptionists who stayed on the account after I was let go has just given notice, and before they started looking for a replacement for her, this woman wanted to know if I was interested. I said that yes, I definitely was interested. It will only be part-time, but it keeps me in the industry and gives me some spending money. I don’t really want to go back to work full-time anyway, and this way, they don’t have to train someone because I know the system. I start the 23rd of December.

That was a lovely surprise. I do need to get my feet back under me this week, though. I have a lot to do between now and then. To keep you entertained until tomorrow’s blog post, here is a picture of some (but not all) of my pre-holiday fabric shopping:

I’ll be back soon.

Serged and Sewn

The apron I was hoping to assemble entirely on the serger didn’t work out that way, because I forgot that there is a not insignificant amount of topstitching to be done. Oh, well. It’s good exercise to get up and move between the serger and the sewing machine, especially as they are in different rooms.

This is not a reversible apron, so the back needs to look nice. And I do have to say, that serged edge is really pretty:

I like my sergers. The more I use them, the more uses I find for them. I am going to try gathering on the serger when I do another apron from the Lori Holt One Yard Apron pattern. The Seasoned Homemaker has an excellent tutorial. At some point, I may spring for the gathering foot for my serger, which will allow me to gather and attach to a second piece of fabric in one fell swoop.

Ali came over with the boys last night—Elysian wasn’t feeling well, but she sent her little guy over with a birthday present for me (my birthday was yesterday):

It’s a meat grinder and a bean slicer! Elysian has been processing turkeys and grinding the meat, and I mentioned that a meat grinder was the one appliance I didn’t own (amazingly enough). The bean slicer is pretty cool, too! We will have to make sure we try it out next season.

I keep a basket of toys here for the kids to play with when they come over. It holds a whole collection of Matchbox cars and a set of blocks that my father made when I was pregnant with DD#1. The boys know they are welcome to go and get the basket and strew things all over the living room floor. My father also made a set of wooden trucks and equipment. Ali and I sat and visited while the boys played on the floor. I said to her that I thought my father would be very happy to see those trucks and blocks still being used. The boys love them.

Ali has the same serger that I do but hasn’t used it much. Her little guy was wearing a great little fleece raglan top that he had had on for three days straight. She wants to make him a few more like it and I said I’d help her get started. It’ll save some time if she doesn’t have to re-invent all the wheels that I did. Elysian has been sewing, too. Between the three of us, we ought to be able to keep these little boys outfitted with lots of warm clothing.

The husband replaced the lock mechanisms on the BMW for me this weekend, too, so I don’t have to worry about them failing and me getting locked out of my car completely or not being able to lock the car at all. That was a lovely birthday present.

The Tuck Marker Foot

That bag of attachments for the Singer 9W contained a foot I had never seen before:

I’m familiar with hemmers and binders and rufflers (oh my), but I had to study up on this one. I first checked this book, which is a comprehensive guide to all things sewing machine attachments:

The foot is called called a tucker or a tuck marker. Back in the days when clothing featured decorative tucks and other details, seamstresses needed a good way to mark the fabric so the tucks would be evenly spaced. Enter this little gadget. It’s a bit hard to see, but that bottom arm has a raised edge underneath. Once the proper distance between tucks has been established, the machine stitches the first tuck (on the other side of that spring) and the raised edge on that bottom arm marks a line on the fabric to indicate the position of the fold for the next tuck.

It always helps to see some of this machinery in action. This YouTube video has an excellent demonstration of a similar Singer-made foot being used on a 15-30 treadle.

(Side note—that treadle is gorgeous and I had never seen the owl decal set before.)

The tuck hemmer I have is a slightly different design than the tuck hemmer she is using in the video, but the concept is the same.

While surfing YouTube, I ran across Bernadette Banner’s channel, a young woman who specializes in historical costuming. She lives in New York City. The first video I watched was the one where she documented the creation of her sewing space in her tiny little apartment, including how she built a cutting table from a couple of Ikea dressers and a countertop. I have no desire to do historical costuming—and certainly not at the level she does it—but her videos are great fun to watch. I especially like the ones where she films her search of stores in the garment district when she is sourcing material for a new project. I will get to Mood Fabrics one of these days.

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I cut and sewed yesterday. I cut four more aprons and assembled two of them, although I was working on parts of all of them as I went along, sewing batches of all the pieces that needed thread of a particular color. I’ll add the new aprons to the store this weekend. The two I finished were from more of my chicken fabric. I think that may be the last of it, but I need to go through the fabric bins again. It’s a bit chaotic in my sewing rooms and things need to be cleaned up and re-organized.

And Vittorio, my Necchi BF, needs a spa day before I sew with him again. I have been working him hard. He has not complained, but he deserves a bit of pampering.

I’d also like to mess around with a different half-apron pattern, one that I think can be assembled mostly—perhaps entirely—on the serger. That’s mostly for curiosity’s sake.

The husband, I suspect, will be spending most of his day out in his new shop. I’ll be sure to take pictures if anything exciting happens.

The Pheasant 127

As I mentioned, I bought two machines this week: the Singer 9W and also a Singer 127. The Singer 127 has the “Pheasant” decal set:

I bought this machine just because I didn’t want it to get scrapped, but I am not sure what I’ll do with it. It is what is known as a “vibrating shuttle” machine. Instead of the hook-and-bobbin assembly found in modern machines, it has a shuttle that moves horizontally back and forth:

The good news is that both the shuttle and the slide plates are intact on this machine. They tend to go missing on this model.

I don’t have any particular bias against vibrating shuttle machines; they sew nicely and some people prefer them. I just never made a habit of seeking them out. This one has been a bit beat up, too, but I think it would clean up beautifully. I love the big, heavy handwheels on these old treadle heads. I’d love to find one to fit my industrial, but they are few and far between.

The Singer serial number database indicates that this machine was one of a run of 70,000 Singer 127s produced in July, 1907.

[Five or six years ago, I bought an old Singer model 15 with that same Pheasant decal set. It was old enough that it didn’t have a motor boss on it and also had the heavy handwheel. I cleaned up that machine and paired it with an appropriate treadle base and sold it. I wish I could describe how beautifully that machine sewed when I tested it out. The closest I can come is to say that it was singing. That machine sang. It was a sound I will never forget, because it was the sound of a sewing machine happy to be sewing again.]

I contacted Still Stitching about restoration of the 9W. They currently have a waiting list of about a year. I’ve also done some more sleuthing on that machine. Finding the production date is trickier as there aren’t really any records. NeedleBar did a survey of 9W owners and—based on those responses—extrapolated production ranges for serial numbers. The serial number on my machine is 3144259, which puts the date of manufacture some time around 1910-ish.

The bobbin case and bobbins are missing. Singer had a habit of stamping the part number on its parts (you have no idea how helpful that is until you start looking for parts made over 100 years ago) and the hook in my machine is part #202063. That indicates that it takes an old Wheeler and Wilson D9 bobbin case without latch. Now I can start looking for one of those (that part may indeed be a unicorn, but we’ll see).

For now, these machines are going to sit on the shelf in my office and look pretty. I’ve got aprons to make.

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I went to the eye doctor yesterday and passed with flying colors, but I had to give in and order bifocals. I stopped wearing my bifocal contacts a few months ago because they just weren’t working for me anymore. My eye doctor has a strong bias against bifocal contacts and I didn’t feel like arguing for a new prescription for them as I only wore them a couple of times a week. The new glasses may not come in until after the holiday, but I still have my distance glasses for driving. I ordered a pair of regular glasses and a pair of sunglasses.

And when I got home, the other garage door was finished:

The color was advertised as “brown” but it’s really more of a putty/taupe color. I’ve decided that is a good thing, as I didn’t think dark brown doors, a dark brown metal roof, and dark brown siding would be a good look. That man door will be painted, too—I like the idea of a red door, but dark green might be a bit more sedate. Decisions, decisions.

The copy shop called yesterday to tell me that the “Tom’s Shed” sign is ready. I’ll pick that up next week.

The whole property looks much neater now and I know the husband appreciates having places to park equipment in out of the weather. Next up is insulating and finishing the inside. He will have plenty to keep him busy this winter when he can’t pour concrete.

I finished binding another comforter last night. Last week, I ordered fabric so we could make half a dozen comforters for the comforter-tying party we are planning to have in January at church. That will be to make comforters for Mennonite Central Committee’s 100th anniversary. I ordered 15 yards of plaid flannel, making sure to choose a plaid that will make tying knots every 5” really easy. The backing will be a poly/cotton broadcloth. Both fabrics are 60” wide. We’re going to put these together a bit differently, as we only have one frame for tying comforters. I am going to sew flannel, backing, and batting together around the outside edge, turn them inside out, and topstitch the outer edge. That way, people can sit around a table and knot them instead of working around a frame, and I won’t have to bind them when they are done.

Bait

The universe felt it was necessary to remind me this week that it still has a robust and functioning sense of humor.

It has been some time since I shopped for any vintage sewing machines. I’ve been good and have not looked at Craigslist, LetGo, or Facebook Marketplace. Part of that is an acknowledgement that I need to do something with the machines I have and part of that is because prices have gone through the roof. Everyone thinks that Grandma’s old machine is worth thousands of dollars.

[Someone just listed a vintage Necchi for sale on the Kalispell Craigslist. For $200. The description tells me everything I need to know—it came with the original bill of sale, so they likely extrapolated that price to today’s dollars. The pictures only show the machine tucked into the cabinet. I can’t tell much other than it is either a Necchi BF or BU and it’s missing some parts. The listing claims “Will sell fast!” I am just going to sit over here munching on popcorn while I wait for the price to drop.]

On Tuesday, I peeked at Craigslist just out of curiosity. Besides the Necchi, there were also two Singer sewing machine heads for sale, one of which was a Singer 9W. The Singer 9W is not exactly a unicorn, but it’s uncommon enough that it’s still on my (very pared-down) want list. And this one was cheap, at $20. I hemmed and hawed. Ultimately, though, I didn’t call.

The machine was still listed yesterday morning. I had to run errands, so I wrote down the seller’s number in case I decided the machine was worth checking out. My first stop was the organic market in the town just south of us. The owner bought four of my aprons at wholesale to carry in the store. Add to those the one I sold from the website at the beginning of the week and I am now out of inventory. Guess what is on the schedule for the next couple of days?

On my way out of town, I stopped at a little thrift store to see if they had anything interesting. I’ve scored a couple of really nice items there. This box was sitting on top of a sewing machine cabinet (no machine inside, though):

Hey, I have an industrial sewing machine! I scooped up the box. I didn’t even bother to look inside. It was only $1.50 and I figured it would be a nice surprise. I also found a bag of sewing machine attachments for a dollar.

[There are days when I am sure I have tapped into some kind of energy stream. I know this because the back of my neck gets a bizarre tingling sensation. Those are the times when I run across some really big finds. I’ve walked into a thrift store and gotten that tingly feeling and the next thing I know, I’ve tripped over a Necchi sewing machine priced at $10. It doesn’t happen often, but I have learned not to ignore it when it does.]

“Well,” I thought to myself as I headed up to Kalispell, “this is turning out to be a good day.”

I was on my way to Joann Fabrics when I passed the Goodwill store and decided to stop. I’ve found some good stuff there, too. I am not thrilled with the way they package craft items—in plastic bags hanging on pegboard—but I suppose it keeps things neater for them. And hanging in front of me was a large plastic bag full of more sewing machine attachments! Yay! And they were half price! Double yay!

The universe had been plenty generous by putting all of these sewing machine attachments in my path. I decided that I should be grateful and go home and forget about the sewing machines, so I headed for home. There, I unloaded all of my treasures and started looking through them to see what I had bought.

The box with the industrial attachment held a binder:

Nice.

There were three Singer walking feet:

A buttonhole foot that looks like it might fit a slant shank machine? Needs more research.

A darning attachment:

Price, $1.00. LOL.

And there was this collection of feet:

I puzzled over these for a few minutes. I knew what the feet themselves were for; I was confused by the way they attached to the machine. Back-clamping feet are not unheard of. Some of the Singer 66 models have back-clamping feet. They don’t look like this, however. I went over to the computer and started Googling “back-clamping sewing machine feet” and sifting down results from there. It took a few minutes, but I found pictures that looked like these feet.

And wouldn’t you know it—I had purchased a bag of sewing machine feet for a Singer 9W machine. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

All I could do was laugh. This bag of feet was bait. “Bait” is a well-documented phenomenon in the vintage sewing machine world. It’s what happens when someone acquires the odd attachment or part and, within hours or days, finds the very machine that attachment belongs to. I’ve seen it happen to other people.

I don’t need to be hit over the head twice. I picked up the phone, called the Craigslist seller, and asked if the machines were still available. “Yeah,” he said, “I got about 15 calls right after I listed them, but nobody ever showed up to look at them or buy them.”

“I will be there in half an hour,” I said, and jumped into the car and went back to town. I came home with this:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Singer 9W. What makes this model special? The Singer corporation purchased the Wheeler and Wilson Manufacturing Company in 1905. W&W had been selling a model known as the D9 for domestic use. (They also made industrial machines.) Rather than junk the existing stock of already-cast blanks, Singer rebadged the W&W D9 as the Singer 9W, with a few minor changes, and continued to sell the machine. This one has been “rode hard and put away wet,” as we say out here, but I’ve seen this model restored and I know its potential.

[Check out this blog post from Still Stitching, which does sewing machine restoration, to see their completely restored and repainted Singer 9W. It’s down toward the bottom of the post. What a gorgeous machine.]

The bobbin assembly is missing and I’ll have to find a replacement. The feet I bought do indeed fit on the presser bar, although the thumb screw is missing:

The bag of feet doesn’t include a straight-stitch foot. Those are still available, however. I may run across some other missing parts when I get a chance to work on this machine. I’m not sure if I’ll try to restore it completely myself. I might contact Still Stitching and have it restored as a gift to myself. The machine is old enough that there is no motor boss, so I can’t attach a hand crank. I have no shortage of treadle bases, however.

I asked the seller how he had ended up with these machines. (I did buy the second one, too, which will get its own blog post.) He owns a custom cabinetry shop and had just finished a big install for someone who wanted the bases from these machines for his decor but not the heads. I have opinions about people who separate machines from bases, but I kept them to myself. And I have no way of knowing if the bag of feet I bought were the ones that originally went with this machine and just got separated in the process, or if they truly were put there as bait. I am inclined to think they went together, as the machine isn’t that common, especially in a place like Kalispell, Montana.

I hear the universe laughing.

Chickens Everywhere

It’s been all aprons all the time this week. Yesterday, I pulled out the One Yard Apron pattern from Lori Holt at Bee in my Bonnet. I’ve got a few remnants of fabric in my stash that aren’t quite big enough for a full-length apron but make perfect half-aprons. The One Yard Apron pattern requires one yard of fabric in total, but that can be made up of several different pieces. The design provides a lot of opportunity to be creative.

The amount of chicken-themed fabric in my stash is rather alarming, even to me. I did not realize how much I had accumulated. (Cow fabric is running a close second.) The apron turned out nicely, I think.

I am not a big fan of half-aprons, as a rule. I am messy enough that I need a full coverage apron. These are fun to sew, though. And that chicken wire fabric is a great accent—I’ve got several yards in both red and yellow.

[The pattern does not call for topstitching the upper edge of that waistband, but looking at this photo, I may go ahead and do that anyway, just for neatness’s sake.]

I am going to have to have a marathon scrap-cutting session soon. I’ve been sorting leftovers into piles as I go along: pieces large enough to be used for other projects, pieces to be cut into 5” squares, pieces to be put into the string pile, etc. My supply of 5” squares is running low thanks to the tied comforters we have been making at sewing, so an infusion of fabric there will be most welcome.

I’m still carrying around my Metro Hipster bag that I made from brown waxed canvas. I love the style of that bag and it gets a lot of comments. That top zippered opening, though, continues to drive me nuts. I want to make it again, slightly larger, with a plain top opening with a magnetic closure. But check this out:

This is the newest pattern from Anna at Noodlehead, The Hillside Tote. I bought the pattern 10 seconds after it was released (no lie—I was sitting at my computer waiting for the blog post announcing its availability). She describes it as kind of a mashup between her Wool + Wax Tote (I’ve made that one) and the Redwood Tote (the one I carried most of the summer). I want to make this bag, too.

The big garage door is supposed to be installed on the new shop today. I know the husband still has lots of work to do in that building before he can move all his stuff over there, but every so often, I like to fantasize about my workshop space that’s going to be in the old garage when it’s all cleared out. Perhaps I’ll start a Pinterest board with some ideas.

The Buttercup Made Store

The store is live. I still wonder if I should have my head examined. This is not the path I envisioned taking when I quit working as a medical transcriptionist, but there it is. I might not sell anything, but this is kind of like buying a lottery ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play, and you can’t sell anything if you don’t have a way for people to give you money.

Frightfully optimistic, aren’t I?

I have even more stuff to add thanks to a plastic bin full of pillowcases that was stashed in the back of the closet, but I worked on this for five hours this morning and I can’t do any more. At least an hour was spent finding a good spot to take pictures of the aprons, then another half an hour to set up the lightbox for taking pictures of the pillowcases. The lightbox—this one, from Amazon—was an impulse purchase using reward points, but I think it may end up being a game changer. I prefer natural outdoor lighting when it’s available, which is not often in winter in Montana. This way, I get consistent staging. The lightbox is not small, but it does collapse to a slim profile for storage behind a door.

I also started using Adobe Lightroom, which is useful if you don’t need or want to learn Photoshop. Thankfully, setting up this store went quickly, as I learned much of what I needed to know about e-commerce in Squarespace when I did the Big Sky Knitting Designs store. The husband noted that I probably saved a bundle over having to pay someone to do all of this for me. I am glad I was able to host it myself instead of having an Etsy store.

If nothing else, we’ll see what kinds of items the organic food store would like to carry. Or what sells at the Monday Market.

I may be too brain dead for sewing this afternoon. I might just do laundry instead.

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Mice have been snacking on some of our chicken feed:

We keep one bag in the coop, securely stored inside a garbage can with a tight lid. Another 3-4 bags, including these, are on the porch. This is the first time I can remember that we’ve had mice chewing on the bags on the porch. I said to the husband that I don’t find this terribly distressing, because if the mice are eating the feed on the porch, it is less likely they will come inside to find things to snack on. Still, I think we may need to put some traps out there. We have half a dozen traps scattered throughout the basement and the first floor and we catch a mouse or two every couple of weeks.

The weather has been mild enough for people to be out hiking, and hikers on the state land across the road have been reporting sightings of fresh grizzly bear tracks. I would have thought they would be hibernating by now. Our neighbors have also caught pictures of one on their game camera.

The wildlife was here first. As far as they’re concerned, we’re in their space, not the other way around, although I do not feel as charitable toward the mice as I do toward the bears.

A Weekend of Food and Fun

November always fills up faster than I expect, and it seems like the weeks between now and Christmas are a toboggan run of activities. Our church held its annual Ten Thousand Villages gift sale this past weekend. I did three shifts in the kitchen in addition to helping prepare food ahead of time by chopping onions and carrots and making applesauce. That may sound like a lot of work, but there were other people who put in a lot more time than I did and I know they’re exhausted. (Margaret, we missed you in the kitchen; I learned how to make the chai tea but I think yours is probably better.) I did more than my share of socializing and I need some quiet time by myself this week to recharge.

This is the 20th year that our church has hosted this sale. This year, with the help of a young woman in our church who has a background in graphic design, we made a big push on social media. (She has also taken over maintaining the church website, for which I am very thankful.) That focus on newer ways of reaching people seems to have worked, as we saw many new faces and especially young families.

In addition to shopping, people can eat at the Village Cafe, where we serve three different kinds of soups, homemade rolls, homemade applesauce, and homemade pies and cookies. People will come just for the food. This year, we served African Groundnut Stew, Indian Dhall, and chicken noodle soup. It was a toss-up between the Groundnut Stew (it has peanut butter in it) and the dhall. They were both very popular, as were the pies:

Our church is in an odd position. We have transitioned from a church that was started and grew because of a few large farming families into a church where most of us are not “ethnic Mennonites” but people who have come from other faith traditions. And farming is no longer the primary means by which people make a living here. I would call our church fairly progressive. Women are a key part of leadership and have been for a long time. (I’ve been both an elder and chairman of the church council.) Service is a huge part of what we do. We think that the way we practice Christianity would be attractive to those who are turned off by more fundamental approaches, but “Mennonite” still carries a traditional meaning to most people. (Some are very surprised to find out we have electricity and cars.) Also, our church is outside of town and people have to make an effort to get to us. Still, I am hopeful that we’ll be able to continue as a congregation for a good long while yet.

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I always think it’s fascinating how the universe drops little breadcrumbs in front of me here and there. I didn’t get much sewing done this weekend, obviously, but I was able to listen to several podcasts and I picked up some useful pieces of information. Friday’s episode of The Sewing Out Loud podcast was about the creative process. I love to hear how other people approach design. I especially love to hear that there is no one right way to approach design. Everyone’s brain is wired differently. It’s taken me a long time to gain confidence in my designing skills, but every time I see something designed by a person lacking a basic understanding of layout and (especially) text leading, I am reminded that I do know a thing or two.

I was happy that we could have an “old people night” last night, which is what I have started calling the evenings where we sit in our respective recliners and watch TV. We like the Essential Craftsman YouTube channel, and I found out last night that they have also started a podcast. I thought their rationale for adding a podcast was very solid. YouTube has to be heavy on content because most people have the attention span of a gnat. The Essential Craftsman and his son are currently in the midst of framing a spec house, and most of the videos focus on that process. The podcast allows them to dig deeper into some of the behind-the-scenes issues and talk about design and construction choices. The husband did framing for many years before he switched to concrete, so he knows that process inside and out. I ask a lot of questions.

I plan on doing a lot of sewing this week. There is a difference between design and construction that I feel keenly when I am sewing items from other people’s designs. I do not want “just” to sew, as enjoyable as that is. I want to design, too, but I have to remind myself that even when I am making something from someone else’s pattern, I am making design choices in terms of fabric, pattern hacks, and other details. I’m not a factory.

Garage Door Progress

One garage door is up on the new shop:

It’s more brown and less gray than it appears in the picture. The front door is similar but bigger, and I think it has two rows of windows. The guy is coming back to install that one next week. This door exits onto the easement between our properties. The husband will be able to drive trucks and machinery straight through.

I stopped at Kalispell Copy yesterday morning and ordered the “Tom’s Shed” sign for over the front man door. The husband notes that I have a thing for metal signs. I’ve bought several over the years with which to decorate the old garage, and I really have to restrain myself when I go to Hobby Lobby. They have one that says, “Can’t Fix Stupid,” which is next up on the list, although that one may end up in my office. I just think that garages and metal signs go together.

The Architectural Review Committee needs to start thinking about siding colors.

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I had a lovely conversation yesterday with the owner of the organic market in the town just south of us. That store is carrying my canvas grocery bags. She said people are starting to shop for holiday gifts, so I am going to take some aprons and other small items down there next week. The store also has a “Monday Market” from 4-6 p.m. with vendors. I’m not quite ready for that this week, but I’m going to try to participate in that the following week.

And now I have to think about display racks and business cards and mobile payments and a thousand other little details. I have no desire to do the craft show circuit, but I do want to take advantage of some of these holiday opportunities. I’ve missed most of the big shows, which were in October and early November. I think that’s okay, though, as I need to start small and see how this plays out. (Also, I would need much more inventory for a multi-day show.)

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I called the BMW dealer in Spokane yesterday to check on the status of those recall parts. When I was there last month, they said the parts would be in some time in November. Now they aren’t scheduled to arrive until January. The service guy said the car is still safe to drive despite the alarming wording of the recall notice. (“Your car could catch on fire.”)

The door locks have been acting squirrely, too, so the husband did some research and it appears that there is a known issue with the actuator failing. I’m really rather shocked and dismayed at how much we have had to fix on what is supposed to be vehicle from a solid brand with a premium price tag. The husband says he can order the part and fix the locks, but I shudder to think how much more I would have had to spend on this car if he couldn’t do the work.

So I won’t have to tack on a visit to the BMW dealer when I go to Seattle for Thanksgiving, but I am going to try to fit in a visit to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane either on the way there or the way back. At this time of year, I prefer not to do the drive to Seattle in one day. We only have about 6-7 hours of daylight, so I’d be driving in the dark for at least part of the trip. I have no desire to hit a deer or an elk.

This is the exhibit I want to see:

The description reads:

Selected pieces from the museum’s collection illustrate how textiles convey social status, personal identity, history, and much more. This exhibition showcases a rare 17th century quilt that may be one of the oldest surviving quilts in the United States. In addition, 19th and 20th century quilts, handwoven coverlets, and pieces from the American Indian collection will be on display.

It sounds fabulous. The museum is also offering a 90-minute seminar this afternoon on “Quilts: A Brief History and How to Care for Them,” but obviously, I’m going to miss that. Oh, well. I’ll be happy enough to see the exhibit before it closes.

Fabric Explosion

The upstairs of my house looks like a bomb went off. There is fabric everywhere: remnants I’ve pulled from the stash, pieces too small to put back into the stash but too large for the scrap bin—I’m getting the urge to make potholders—and all the small pieces that will show up in a scrap quilt one of these days. I’ve got all three boxes of thread and bobbins out where I can see them. The fence in the hallway is draped with pieces waiting to be assembled and with finished products waiting to be hung up. It is a good thing that the husband and I are the only people living here at the moment, and that he only comes up there to sleep.

[I am actually very organized—all of my supplies are in labeled plastic bins, but those bins are spread throughout four different rooms. Some time this winter, when the husband is here and can help me, I really need to rearrange some furniture and make this setup a bit more efficient.]

I made four aprons yesterday (the top one on this pile still needs topstitching, but it’s assembled):

I set up my production line so that I was changing thread colors as few times as possible. I use a medium gray for assembly; it’s the topstitching that matters most. Vittorio is performing admirably—I’ve always said that that machine only needs me to operate the foot pedal because he knows how to do everything else.

I am feeling the need to manage expectations. I’ve gotten a few questions from knitters about whether the re-launch of the Big Sky Knitting Designs website means that I am going to start designing knits again. The short answer to that question is “no,” although it is lovely to be wanted. While I am happy to help knitters with existing patterns, I feel absolutely no pull in that direction, which is odd because there was a time when I ate, slept, and breathed knitting and loved every minute of it. Times change.

And yes, this website has space for a store, but I’m still working out how that will happen. I’m trying to live in the space between having all the details worked out and leaving room for serendipity. Part of my brain is screaming “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” and the other half is yelling, “The universe always throws a wrench into the works!” There are also some things happening behind the scenes. For now, I am going to sew—with a loose plan—and see what happens. I accumulated all of this fabric for a reason and I am enjoying working with it.

In other news, the husband tells me that the doors are going up on the new shop in the next couple of days. That will be huge as he will be able to work in there and be out of the weather. The electrician still needs to do the wiring and install the lights, but this is another big step toward finishing this project.

Kalispell just got a Smart Foodservice store. I stopped in there the other day. Holy cow. I need to make a list and go back. I thought Costco was a great place to shop, but Smart Foodservice has food in husband-sized quantities. If you’re not familiar, Smart Foodservice supplies restaurants, although it is open to the public. This is a commentary on how much food the husband consumes that I should have been shopping at a restaurant food supply store all these years.

The Lutheran church called yesterday to make sure I am available to play for their Advent services. How weird to think that we’re halfway through November already.

And the eye doctor appointment I thought I had scheduled for last month is actually next week. I am getting tired of having to switch glasses—or take them off altogether—so often. Hopefully we can get that addressed.

New Technology and Old Sewing Machines

I was paging through the latest Joanns circular the other day and noticed they are now selling these (list price $599.00):

I have no need for a 3D printer and no plans to get one, but I thought it was interesting that they have become mainstream enough to sell at Joann Fabrics.

I follow a woman up in Edmonton who has done some great YouTube videos on sewing machine repair under the name ArchaicArcane. She also has a Facebook page, and she posted there last week about having made a replacement needle plate for a customer’s vintage Kenmore using her CAD program and 3D printer. (I suspect her model is a bit more sophisticated than the ones Joanns is selling.) On that particular Kenmore model, there is a separate needle plate that fits into the throat plate. It can be flipped around for either straight-stitch sewing with a small needle hole or zig-zag sewing with a wider opening. Many times, that needle plate goes missing or it’s so chewed up as to be useless. She successfully made a replacement needle plate for her customer’s machine.

Making replacement parts for vintage sewing machines has long been a topic in the vintage sewing machine groups I frequent. The problem is that even if your mother owns a metal stamping plant and could—theoretically—make just about any part you needed, the quantities are so small as to be impractical. A 3D printer is a way around that, and I expect to see more hard-to-find parts coming to market as the price of these printers comes down.

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Vittorio, my Necchi BF, got a workout yesterday. We listened to sewing podcasts and ran up apron pieces.

I am getting a lot of use out of the two French terry Nancy Raglans I have made so far. The second one is out of some royal blue French terry that I ordered from Raspberry Creek Fabrics. The fabric was a bit of a disappointment, which is always a risk when ordering fabric online. I always wash and dry my fabric before sewing with it, even if I plan to line dry the garment when it’s finished. (Very little of my RTW wardrobe goes into the dryer because I have trouble finding garments that are long enough to begin with.) When this fabric came out of the dryer, it was stiff and rough and had picked up thousands of little pieces of white lint. It was almost too ugly to sew with. I went ahead and made the top and washed it again when it was finished, although I line dried it instead of putting it in the dryer. It came out somewhat softer and much less linty. I probably won’t buy fabric from that line again, however, and that’s too bad because it comes in all the bright jewel tones that I love.

I also bought a length of some heathered pink French Terry from Raspberry Creek. That fabric is by a different manufacturer and it feels much nicer. I haven’t sewn with it yet, but I am not expecting any problems. And I can safely say that while the coverstitch machine and I are not yet BFFs, we are well past the awkward new friend stage.

I am intrigued by this new design from Closet Case Patterns:

It’s called the Sienna Maker Jacket. Do I need a jacket? Not really, but I like this design. And I like the idea of wearing something like this instead of an apron when I am sewing, although it’s rather akin to wearing a chef’s hat while cooking dinner. After all, I am not working in a studio with other creatives. It’s just me and the dogs here. We’ll see. I may put it on the list. I especially like the closure even though I usually have trouble with anything belted. My torso is long enough that my natural waist doesn’t fall at the spot where belts are usually placed. I’d probably have to adjust that. The pattern also includes a cropped, non-belted version of the jacket, but cropped and I don’t get along for the same reason that belts are an issue. The proportions aren’t flattering for my shape.

I managed to find some sew-in industrial 2” wide Velcro, so fixing the husband’s gaiters is on the list for today. We got several inches of snow yesterday afternoon. I had gone upstairs to sew after lunch—and all of our windows are covered with insulated curtains, so I can’t see outside—and when I came down to make dinner, the landscape was completely white. He did say that it is wonderful having a “shed” to store all of his equipment in so he’s not shoveling snow off every morning.

Apples and Onions

I spent several hours at church again yesterday chopping vegetables and making applesauce. Libbie and Valeri are in charge of the kitchen for the upcoming gift festival, but making enough of three kinds of soup to feed hundreds of people is a huge job. Chopping onions is not fun or glamorous. It needs to be done, though, and Susan and I were happy to help out.

[Susan was commenting on my onion chopping skills on Saturday and how fast I was. Everyone thinks I like to cook. I am a good cook, but it is one of my least favorite things to do. I told her it was like the scene in one of the Little House on the Prairie books—or maybe in one of Laura’s memoirs—where someone commented on the speed and perfection of her (hand-bound!) buttonholes. She responded that she hated to do buttonholes, so she learned to do them quickly and well. That’s kind of how I feel about cooking. It needs to be done, but I don’t linger over it.]

Making applesauce is rather fun. Susan, with her master’s degree in botany, is something of an apple expert and loves to tell us about the different varieties. All apples are not the same. Some ripen early, some mid-season, and some are only really good after a frost. Some only keep for a few days and some keep for months. Some make good pies and some make better cider. Susan has 40+ varieties in her own orchard and knows about many more.

She brought New York 12, an old experimental variety, for us to use in making sauce yesterday. We’re way past the early apples that are really good for sauce, like Yellow Transparent or her Summer Rambo apples that we’ve used in the past. The New York 12 apples are a deep burgundy red with red-streaked flesh inside, and they make the most beautiful sauce:

This is not a doctored photo. The applesauce was exactly that color, the color of raspberry sherbet. We added a tiny amount of sugar—because we’re all picky about our sauce tasting like apples and nothing else—and that was it. This sauce, along with homemade rolls, will be served with the soup in the Village Cafe at the gift festival.

I am knee-deep in chasing down punch list items for both businesses now. The new Big Sky Knitting Designs website went live yesterday morning and I’ve already gotten some pattern orders, so at least the e-commerce part of it is working properly. Trying to manage two Instagram accounts is maddening—particularly because I had to add extra software to be able to post to IG from my desktop instead of my phone—so I am trying to move everyone from my personal IG account to the one for Buttercup Made. I need to post to the BSKD Facebook account, and I should probably set up one for Buttercup Made, too. Getting all of these ducks lined up, though, is keeping me from the one thing I want to do, which is sew. (The oft-heard refrain of owners of small creative businesses everywhere.) I did manage to sneak in some time late yesterday afternoon to do some cutting:

We’ve got a farm animal theme happening at the moment. I have an obvious weakness for chicken fabric. That’s only some of what’s in the stash.

I also sewed the binding onto the comforter that Elaine and I tied last week at sewing. Forward progress.