Waiting to Plant

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional planting time here in Montana. We could still get a frost—or even snow­—but conditions usually have warmed up enough that plants are safe in the ground. Yesterday was gorgeous, with sunshine and temps into the low 70s. Unfortunately, today isn’t supposed to get much above 50, with wind and rain. The rest of the weekend looks good, though, and next week is supposed to be sunny and warm. I took advantage of yesterday’s nice weather to cut the grass and run the weedeater around the garden so I could get to the garden this weekend to plant. It is so amazing to me how the weeds and the grass outpace everything else. 

The potatoes and peas are up. The potatoes need to be weeded (of course), but it’s a small area and won’t take long. The black plastic in other parts of the garden helps considerably. I try to keep tilling to a minimum. 

These are the plants that need to go in:

• About 60 tomatoes, including Amish Paste, Oregon Star paste, Indian Stripe, Cherokee Purple, Dirty Girl, and Purple Russian paste.

• Cauliflower

• Corn

• Cucumbers

• Watermelon

• Cantaloupe

• Lettuce starts

I also need to plant beans, but I am not sure the soil is warm enough yet. The berry bushes look amazing, and the grapes are about to leaf out. 

Once I am finished with the planting, I get to try out the John Deere tractor in the yard. The husband mowed while I was gone and said that we should have gotten a tractor like that years ago. Huh. 

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DD#2 and I visited the Nordic Museum in Seattle last weekend. The husband has Norwegian ancestry on his mother’s side. Of course, I was most interested in the fiber-related displays, like the spinning wheels:

And the clothing:

And this dress, which the display said was knitted from fiber spun from plants and moss. I am surprised it has survived and survived in such good condition.

This was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning.

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In other news, I think the BMW is headed over to Spokane next week via car transport, hopefully to be fixed with the recall work. I haven’t decided what to do about it after that. I need to have a reliable car and that one has proven that it isn’t. I’d prefer to have a vehicle without all of the bells and whistles, because bells and whistles break. I really wish that human beings were better at recognizing the point of diminishing returns. Technology is great, but overly complex systems break more often and cost more to fix when they do.

Cars, Quilts, and Knits

I got back to Seattle late Wednesday afternoon (the 19th) and headed to the Airbnb. The little studio space in the other half of DD#2’s duplex wasn’t available, so I stayed at a different one a few blocks away.

The backup camera on DD#2’s Jetta stopped working a couple of months ago. She had made an appointment at the dealer to have it looked at and asked me if I could take it in for her on Thursday morning so she didn’t have to miss work. I had nothing pressing on my schedule, so I didn’t mind sitting and waiting while they looked at it. Unfortunately, all they could tell me was that it was a break in the wiring somewhere between the dash display/radio (which still works) and the camera, and that to take it apart and hunt down the cause would be a day’s labor at $150 an hour.

I have lots of thoughts about vehicles right now, none of them charitable.

The husband is willing to take a stab at fixing this camera issue, but the car has to be in Montana for him to do that. More on that in a moment.

I spent the rest of Thursday visiting various stores on my list to pick up mundane necessities like socks and underwear. I went to Half-Price Books and found up a blacksmithing book for the husband. I am familiar enough with Seattle that I am quite comfortable keeping myself occupied during the day while DD#2 is working.

Friday’s schedule included a trip down to Puyallup, about 40 miles south/southeast of Seattle and not too far from Pacific Lutheran, where DD#1 went to college. I know this area, too, and there was a quilt store I wanted to visit.

The Quilt Barn in Puyallup is a lovely store, chock full of all sorts of fun things for quilters. I bought two new Handi-Quilter longarm rulers for the Q20 and a wool/cotton quilt batt.

I also stopped in at Joanns, where I hit the motherlode on the remnant rack. I had gotten an e-mail earlier in the week from the quilt store here in Kalispell. They put my serger class on the schedule for June and decided to go ahead and make it a monthly event. We had talked about doing that, but not until the fall. It really doesn’t matter either way to me as I have plenty of ideas for additional serger classes. The remnant rack at this Joanns had half a dozen pieces of juvenile knit fabrics that will be perfect for making up samples for future classes. Kids’ clothing doesn’t require much fabric. (And any grandchildren that might come along are going to have plenty of cute Grandma-made outfits.) The quilt store owner and I talked about fabric for the classes and she knows some of it will come from Joanns as she doesn’t really want to carry a line of knits.

[I related all of this to the husband later that day and mentioned that I had not planned on teaching serger classes, but here I am, because this, apparently, is how the universe has decided I should spend my summer. Whatever. I just go where I’m told.]

On the way back, I stopped at Ikea, another Half-Price Books store, another Joanns, and got some lunch. I try to time my trips so I miss the worst of Seattle traffic, although it’s never great no matter the time of day. DD#2 met me at the Airbnb and we ordered in pizza for dinner.

My original plan had been to stay in Seattle until Monday. DD#2 had some other stuff going on, though, that she needed a break from, so between those things and the car issue, we decided that she would come home to Montana for a week. She’s telecommuting until this fall and can work from anywhere. We left Seattle Sunday morning. She followed me to Spokane and then continued to Kalispell. I stayed in Spokane overnight because I needed to stop in and visit with the BMW dealer and also retrieve my sewing machine from the quilt store where I had left it for service.

Musical Cars and a Trip to Alaska

Not everything on this latest adventure went as planned. The BMW was all packed and ready to go on the morning of May 13, but as I started to pull out of the driveway, the car made a very strange noise, followed by a warning chime and this message on the dash:

Drive train malfunction! Drive moderately!

Sigh.

Almost exactly two years ago, on May 1, 2019, the CV joint/transfer case in the BMW blew up (literally, with a bang), rendering the car undriveable. Fortunately, I was only five miles from home at the time. We had the car towed back here. The husband took it apart and discovered that, due to a design and manufacturing defect, that part had failed spectacularly at only 70,000 miles. Long story short—he ordered the replacement parts, changed them out, and I’ve driven the car for an additional two years and 32,000 miles with no issues.

It appears that the replacement part also may have failed. I said a short prayer of thanks that this happened at the end of my driveway and not somewhere between here and Spokane with no cell phone service. The husband helped me transfer all of my gear to DD#1’s car, which we’ve had here since the wedding. My FIL gifted her his 2001 Acura RSX when she graduated from college. It’s a terrific little car, but not very practical for Alaska. After that short delay, I was on the road to Seattle.

[The Acura has a manual transmission. Driving a stick is like riding a bike. The skill comes back quickly, but that car did take a bit of getting used to. The last manual transmission car I drove was my Jetta station wagon, which had a terrible clutch. Everyone who ever drove that car— including the husband, who can drive anything—stalled it at least once. You had to rev the engine while letting the clutch out very slowly, because it wouldn’t catch until it was almost all the way out. Hills were lots of fun in that car.]

I made it to Seattle without further incident and was on a flight to Ketchikan on Friday morning. The airport is actually on an island, so I had to take a quick ferry ride to get to Ketchikan proper, where DD#1’s smiling face was waiting for me at the top of the gangplank. We drove to their house, which sits on the edge of a small bay. This was the view out of my bedroom window:

A storm was starting to move in, and by the time I got up the next morning, that little bay was churning and angry. At high tide, the water comes about halfway up the rock seawall. At low tide, about 50’ of beach is exposed. Seals make frequent appearances in the bay, and DD#1 told me that they had also seen a whale out there.

This was not my first visit to Ketchikan. I had been there in September of 2009 when JC Briar and I taught on a Craft Cruises Alaskan knitting cruise. The town’s tourism industry has taken a big hit because of the pandemic. Also, the week before I arrived, the entire town went on high alert due to a covid outbreak that was traced to the high school wrestling team, so most everything was closed.

[I understand that cruise ships will start calling there again in July, which sounds like it will be just in the nick of time, although many businesses weren’t able to survive the year-long shutdown and have ceased business permanently.]

Ketchikan reminds me a lot of what Kalispell was like in 1993, but with internet. I don’t require a lot of entertainment, so the kids and I spent most of our time hanging out at the house—that view is better than television—and catching up. I had been hoping to go to church with them, but the service was canceled for Sunday morning, so we went to a hiking area on the north end and walked around.

Ketchikan’s climate is very similar to Seattle’s. They do get snow, but not as much as you might think when you hear “Alaska.”

We went to a small state park called Totem Bight for our picnic lunch on the beach:

And walked around to look at the totem displays:

We finished up the day with a visit to a nearby nursery to get a few flowers and herbs to plant around the house. The kids are renting a place from a friend of DSIL’s family, but it hasn’t been occupied for a while so they’ve been cleaning up the yard.

DD#1 had all the supplies on hand for making S’mores. DSIL built a fire in the fire pit and we sat out there after dinner and enjoyed the sunshine.

DSIL has settled in to his new position as a dentist in Ketchikan, but DD#1 hasn’t yet found a job. She suffers from a double dose of being unable to sit still—she got it from both her father and me—and while she’s had fun setting up housekeeping, I think she’s a bit restless. I bought her a small Cricut machine and she’s been learning to use that. It is a bit of a family joke that she has always loved her Dymo labelmaker. The Cricut is an extension of that and I am pleased that she has a creative outlet.

I would visit my children no matter where in the world they might be living, but they’ve done us the great (unasked-for) favor of locating themselves in the same geographical area. I flew back to Seattle on Wednesday, the 19th, to spend a few days with DD#2. I’ll talk more about that part of the trip in the next blog post, because it also involves malfunctioning vehicles.

The Sweet Spot

I sewed my nine Providence blocks into a wallhanging on Sunday. I picked up some fabric for a border yesterday and now that’s done. The top still needs to be quilted, but I like the end result enough that I think I will go ahead with a larger quilt size. I’m keeping that one under wraps for the moment.

The supply list and photos for the serger class are done and should be going up on the quilt store’s website soon. I have started working on the handout.

And I hit the sweet spot with the hem on the tops I made over the weekend:

I have one of the first-generation Janome coverstitch machines. This particular model has been plagued with problems—so much so that I doubt Janome will ever recover their share of that market now that other manufacturers have come out with their own coverstitch models. Thank goodness for the internet and for people willing to share their experiences. When I joined the coverstitch group on Facebook, I discovered that many Janome coverstitch owners had to raise the feed dogs. I opened the machine, oiled it thoroughly (it was tight and noisy), adjusted the feed dogs as directed, and put the machine back together. That helped considerably, but I had still had issues with the tension. The machine works well on thicker cotton and woven fabrics, but when it came to hemming lighter, slinkier knits, I had all sorts of problems.

Are you wearing a T-shirt or other knit top? Look at the hem. It probably looks similar to the one in the photo above. A coverstitch has several variations, but often consists of two needles with a looper thread that swings back and forth between them. Unlike a serger, however, the coverstitch has no knife and doesn’t cut the fabric. On the front side, the stitch looks similar to what you would get using a twin needle on a sewing machine. Done correctly, a coverstitch “covers” the raw edge of the hem. The kicker is that you have to sew with the front side of the garment facing you, and hope that you’re catching the hem properly underneath.

The machine balked at hemming lighter knits like rayon/spandex. The most noticeable issue was “tunneling,” where the looper thread pulls too tightly on the backside and creates a raised ridge of fabric between the two needles on the front. Common sense would dictate lowering the looper tension to keep that from happening—except that it happened even when the looper tension was on 0. Can’t get much lower than 0.

The other problem was that I could never keep the hem from shifting out of place as I sewed. I tried washable hem tape, a hem guide attachment (not cheap) and a few other fixes, with mixed success.

I’ve got a chart showing suggested thread tension, looper tension, stitch length, and differential settings for different weights of knit fabric. I had the presser foot pressure knob at the suggested 3/8” height. Before I hemmed the two tops I made on Saturday, though, I went back to the hive mind for any additional suggestions. I ran across a post on one forum, authored by someone with industrial coverstitch experience, in which she commented that most domestic coverstitch machines come out of the factory with the presser foot pressure set way too high. On industrial machines, apparently, the foot pressure is very light. Hmmm.

I took some scrap fabric to the machine and started messing around with the presser foot pressure. By the time I was done—and happy with the stitch I was getting—the presser foot pressure knob was set at a height of 5/8”. The tunneling disappeared, although it came back as soon as I set the looper tension higher than 0. (I might be able to fix that if I took the machine apart, but I think I’ll just live with it.) The best—and most unexpected—benefit, though, was that the hem no longer shifted out of place as I sewed. I was able to keep my left index finger on the fabric as it fed into the machine, feeling the hem edge underneath and guiding it between the needles. (I can’t see it, remember?) Hemming was almost effortless, where before, it had been an unpleasant fight with the machine. And it required nothing more than a quick press with an iron to set the hem in place.

Replacing this machine doesn’t make much sense given that I only use it for one specific task. I know what adjustments I need to make to get the results I want. I suspect, though, that a lot of these Janome machines—the 900cpx and the 1000cpx, which is the model I have—were either junked or donated to thrift stores. (The 2000cpx model doesn’t have quite as many issues.) If you can find one cheap, they are worth having once they are adjusted properly.

Depending on the interest, I might teach a coverstitch class at the quilt store in the future.

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I’ve got an appointment to leave my Janome (speaking of) sewing machine at the quilt store in Spokane on my way to Alaska/Seattle and pick it up on my way back. Part of the reason I bought the Janome coverstitch machine was because my 6600P sewing machine has been such a joy. This is its yearly service appointment. I won’t take it to the Janome dealer here in Kalispell. The owner is a class A jerk. I stopped in there a few weeks ago to get some quilting thread and happened to let slip that it was for my Bernina Q20. He doesn’t hesitate to trash talk the brands he doesn’t carry, and he made sure I knew what a poor decision he thought it was that I had bought that machine. (Belittling a customer is an interesting marketing technique. I am not sure how he stays in business.)

And Tera and I have a quilting trip planned for September. She mentioned that she was going to Garden of Quilts in Salt Lake City and asked if I wanted to come with her. I’m going to fly down for two days and meet her there. We both signed up for an English paper piecing class on Thursday afternoon, have tickets to the special event with Jenny Doan (Missouri Star Quilt Company) on Thursday night, and tickets to the quilt display on Friday. The quilts are hung up in a botanical garden and Tera says it’s quite a sight.

Leggings and Tops

I made two pairs of baby leggings on Friday and tried out a couple of different construction techniques:

The pair on the right has hemmed leg openings, which I did on my Janome coverstitch machine. One of these days, I may get around to replacing that machine, but I’ve got it adjusted perfectly now and it makes a good stitch. That pair also has an elastic waistband. The pair on the left has a “yoga band” waistband with no elastic, and cuffs on the bottom. The longer cuffs on baby clothes make more sense, as they can be folded up and let down as the baby grows.

I used the last of the dinosaur knit print for one more knot-top baby beanie. That one and the green one both have a ribbed knit band. I might run up another pair of baby leggings and use the same black ribbed knit for cuffs.

Tera called and offered to come help with the serger class next month, an offer I happily accepted. She knows a lot about serging and sewing with knits and will be a big help as an extra pair of hands. I’m not planning to include the baby leggings in this first class; these were more for me to play around with construction techniques. A leggings class really needs to be a class unto itself.

The weather yesterday was awful—it hovered around 30 degrees all day and alternated between rain and snow. The poor husband was out stripping a foundation in the morning and came home soaking wet. I spent the day making some tops for myself. This is a pattern I drafted off a Liz Claiborne top—Liz Claiborne used to be my favorite brand because it fit me well and looked good, especially back when Isaac Mizrahi was designing for that label. Alas, ever since the Liz brand was taken over by JC Penney, the quality has gone way downhill. Everything is now too short, the sizing is capricious (will I wear a size 6 or a size 12 in this pair of pants?) and the quality has suffered. I took one of my favorite Liz tops and copied it and made myself a top last fall. I wear it all the time because it is so comfortable. It’s a simple tunic-length pattern. When I make these long-sleeve versions, I add a turtleneck, but I also have pattern pieces to make it with short sleeves and a plain neckband.

I made a cheery flower version:

And a black one with small white flowers.

Each of these takes about two hours, start to finish. It’s so nice to have a top that is long enough on me. I’m about comfort, not fashion. I also know that the clothes I make won’t fall apart after one wash.

I’ve got a nice supply of knit fabric laid up. I might make a few more of these. I’ll need some summer versions eventually, if it stops snowing.

After the husband came home yesterday, he put new front brake pads and sensors on the BMW. I need to get the snow tires taken off this week and then I can put that car back in sport mode.

And We Meet Again

According to the minutes, our last Mennonite Women meeting was March 5, 2020. We haven’t met for over a year, so our first get-together in more than 13 months was cause for rejoicing. Some of the women worked on the quilt that Pat and I set up on Tuesday:

They are doing a form of quilting called “prairie stitch,” which is done with a single strand of crochet cotton. It looks especially nice on this cheater top:

Elaine and I got out a comforter and spread it out on a table between us so we could tie it. She worked from one side and I worked from the other and we got most of it finished.

Holly showed us some wallhangings she put together. She said that one benefit of the pandemic was being able to get out and finish a whole bunch of kits and works-in-progress. I think that resonates with many of us. She’s going to send the wallhangings to Margaret in Indiana, who will hand quilt them and forward them to Mennonite Disaster Service. MDS gives each homeowner a hand-quilted wallhanging at the completion of a project.

I have missed this so much.

Yesterday was a gorgeous spring day with temps well up into the 70s. We’re back to cooler and rainier weather today, though, so I’ll be inside working on a few more serger projects. Out of curiosity, I went into the Old Navy store in Kalispell yesterday. The store opened just a few months ago, and while I stopped buying clothes from Old Navy when their inventory deteriorated to poorly-made goods that fell apart after one washing, I wanted to see what kinds of kids’ clothes they had. I picked up a pair of baby leggings so I could analyze the construction and possibly re-create them for a future serger class. I also found a top for myself made from knit fabric—the kicker is that this knit fabric is a blend of 55% linen and 45% cotton. I knew these plant fiber knit blends were out there, but I hadn’t seen any in person.

Clothing research. It’s about time to make myself some summer T-shirts, too.

Serger Class Prep

I spent most of yesterday running up projects on my serger. I’ve now got a nice stack of class samples and also a good grasp on what concepts I think will be most important for students to learn. The class isn’t for another month yet, but we need to get the information onto the website and make the supply list available for students.

I sewed with double gauze for the first time. That makes great lightweight summer baby blankets. I tried a couple of different beanie patterns with knit fabric. The one in the picture, above, is from Made for Mermaids and takes a grand total of 10 minutes, start to finish. Bernina also has a free beanie pattern with a knot top, but I wasn’t happy with my first iteration. I need to get more knit fabric and possibly change the settings on my serger.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t like wooly nylon. I am trying to decide how to approach that in the class, because I think that people automatically assume “serger + wooly nylon,” and while it is widely used in the clothing industry, I have good reasons for avoiding it with newbies. Several of my class samples show both regular serger thread and wooly nylon so that students can see the difference.

[I try not to be dogmatic in my classes, but if I am going to recommend one practice or technique over another, I want to have valid reasons backing up that recommendation. And I always tell students they have the option to disagree with me and do what they think is best.]

Wooly nylon is a “thread” that isn’t spun like regular sewing thread, but is instead a lot of parallel stretchy fibers. It can be made out of either nylon or polyester. When it’s used in the loopers of a serger, it spreads out and covers the edges of the fabric. Because it’s not spun, per se, some people find it softer against the skin. Wooly nylon is used a lot in baby knits, lingerie, and for decorative serger edgings. When you’re just learning how to use a serger, though, I think it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity. It tends to get static-y and flyaway—which can be controlled with a thread net—and it requires much different tension settings. I’ve made tops for myself using just regular serger thread in needles and loopers and been very happy with the results.

I watched a lot of serger videos on YouTube while I worked, including an overview of the Bernina sergers, as those are what this store sells. I want to be familiar with the models that might show up in class. And I think I am going to borrow the Bernette serger, circa late 1980s model, that I found for my friend Marcie at a thrift store for $22, and take it to class with me. It is a fine little serger for all that it is 30 years old.

And of course, we’re going to run into the issue of fabric availability here in Kalispell. The quilt store has a couple of bolts of knit fabric and some double gauze, but the owner is, understandably, reluctant to lay in an inventory of those fabrics and then get stuck with them. (If I do my job, though, and get people excited about sewing with knits, she may start carrying more.) When we talked, she said she understood that students would probably bring Joanns fabric to the class. I looked at what was available at Joanns when I was there on Tuesday. The selection of polyester/spandex and rayon/spandex knits is good, but I wasn’t delighted with the cotton/spandex juvenile knits. That navy blue dinosaur fabric in the photo, above, was a Joann’s remnant (and nice to work with), but I couldn’t find any more of it at the store. I’m going to see about compiling a list of sources.

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The brake pad warning light went on in the BMW a few weeks ago. The husband ordered new front pads and sensors and is going to put those on this weekend. The brakes are not in danger of failing as the warning light goes on well in advance of catastrophic failure. I’ve been driving the police cruiser more than the station wagon, though. Driving the police cruiser is like riding around on a couch, but I miss the cargo capacity of the wagon when I need to haul something.

Today is our first Mennonite Women/sewing meeting at church in more than a year. We’ve got some catching up to do. Our pastor is back from his sabbatical, too.

Quilting, Serging, and Sewing

Pat and I met at the church yesterday morning to set up a quilt for our sewing group to work on now that we’re meeting again. I’ll get a picture of it tomorrow. It’s what we call a “cheater” quilt, because the pieced design is printed onto a single piece of fabric. Once it’s quilted, though, it will look lovely. I haven’t seen Pat in person in months—only on Zoom church—and it was good to catch up. Getting the quilt into the frame took us about an hour and then I went to town and ran errands.

I met with the owner of the quilt store to talk about serger classes. We’re aiming for a Thursday evening class in mid-June. We both agreed that having actual projects to work on will be more interesting than sitting there listening to me talk or two hours of making swatches, so I’m going to come up with a couple of baby projects to illustrate basic techniques. I’m walking into this one blind, never having taught a serger class to multiple people before. I am confident in my teaching and troubleshooting skills, but any class of 6-8 rank newbies bringing their own (unfamiliar) machines is guaranteed to come with some unforeseen pitfalls no matter who is teaching it.

When I got home from town, I pulled out my bin of baby fabric and ran up some samples. I started with a couple of flannel receiving blankets.

I am going to make a few more items today. I’m doing this not only to have visuals for the class, but also so I can work through how I want to approach the class and what needs to be in the handout. Teaching a class is going to hone my own skills and that’s never a bad thing. Long term—if this class goes well—the store owner would like to add more classes and perhaps a monthly a “serger club” for next fall and winter. Lots of possibilities there.

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I’ve got nine 10” Providence blocks—three assembled and six waiting to be assembled—which is enough for a wallhanging. I used just about every square inch of the fabric I had pulled to make those blocks, too. I am still undecided about where to go with that block and need to let it marinate for a bit.

Back at the beginning of February, I ordered myself a new cutting table from Tracey’s Tables. Each table is custom-built so I knew it would take a while to get here. After not hearing anything for almost two months, I contacted the company and got a message back that it was going to be shipped this week. I have the tracking number but no further information. I think it’s heavy enough that it’s going to be freighted, so I’m expecting a call from the freight company to arrange a delivery time.

I’ve been using one of the cheaper cutting tables from Joann’s and I am ready for an upgrade. The one I’ve got now tends to torque back and forth and the screws have to be tightened every couple of months.

Klum House, which sells waxed canvas, patterns, and bag-making supplies, is having a Me-Made May event in their Facebook group. They are encouraging people to start (or finish!) one of their bag patterns during the month of May. I thought about doing the Slabtown Backpack as I’d like to get that one done so I can start using it, but May has already filled up with other activities. Once this cutting table arrives, though, I may at least commit to cutting the pattern pieces.

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The husband beefed up security around the chicken coop in light of recent bear activity:

He added a wire across both ends of this walkway between the coop and the old herb garden. We’re still planning to expand the chicken run into that area. He has to make some infrastructure modifications, though, before that happens. We call this a “coop,” but if it had any kind of plumbing and heating system, it would be nicer than some homesteading cabins I’ve seen.

Ready to Run

The dealer delivered my John Deere tractor on Friday but forgot to bring the wagon with it. I ran into town yesterday morning to pick it up. (I love that all the farm-related stores open at 7 or 8 in the morning, so I can do my shopping before the crowds come out.) The husband assembled the wagon when he got home from doing a concrete job—yes, he works on Saturdays—although the wagon isn’t hooked up to the mower yet. He wants to fabricate an extended tongue for it. I have a bagging attachment on my mower and we’d rather not have to take it off every time we want to hook up the wagon. The bagging attachment is quite the thing (picture from the John Deere website):

I look at this and think that my father would be very impressed by this bit of engineering. In the 1970s, he built a bagging attachment for our riding mower from a set of Popular Mechanics plans. It consisted of a wagon with a framed and screened box over it hooked up to a flexible hose attached to the mower deck with a hose clamp. He loved to ride around in the fall and suck up all the leaves in the yard.

Bring on the grass. The husband says that the little boys and I can start our own lawn maintenance business.

Garden cleanup is done. We’re ready for planting. I pruned the grapevines—pretty heavily, now that I have a better sense of what I am doing and can “see” what needs to be removed. Every time I prune them, they produce like crazy, so I anticipate another good crop this fall. I just need to figure out how to keep the turkeys from eating the grapes. I planted peas and visited with our neighbor, Mike, who was out working in his garden. We looked at the seedlings in the greenhouse and I admired the planters he put on his porch. We had a couple of large pots in the greenhouse that weren’t being used, so I suggested he take them and fill them with some flowers. They look nice.

I’ve seen a few trilliums scattered around the property:

The robins have forsaken the porch rafters as nesting sites in favor of the rafters at the new shop. I assume they know what they are doing, although those rafters are higher up off the ground. The babies will be safer from Lila, however.

We finished off our day with an excellent dinner at a local restaurant. The husband had an appetizer of three beef sliders—fancy little hamburgers—a salad, another hamburger, and a slice of cheesecake with whipped cream for dessert. He also finished off part of my meal. I think the waitress was a bit stunned to see someone eat that much food.

I’ve put together a total of three Providence quilt blocks and am trying to decide how far I want to go with this one as it’s not a simple block. There are 12 half-square triangle units and four quarter-square triangle units in a 25-unit block (5 x 5 grid). This is not the fiddliest block I’ve ever made, but neither is it quick and easy. Would anyone (me, especially) have the patience to make an entire quilt? I’ve already pulled the fabric for it, but I’m having second thoughts. Stay tuned.

Flighty Leghorns

The husband brought the group of Leghorns home Wednesday evening. That night, several of them refused to come inside the coop. They slept outside. Yesterday, the entire group of Leghorns refused to come out of the coop, even for scratch grains.

The husband reminds me—frequently—that chickens have brains the size of peas.

These are some of the new chickens. It is hard to tell in the photo, but the ones in the middle are the ones I am calling “lavender” colored. They are actually a purple-tinged gray (use your imagination).

The one to the far left has more brownish coloring. Up close, the color differences are fairly dramatic. Leghorns are so flighty, though, that it was hard to get a good shot. That yellow rope in the middle of the picture is there to hold a metal cover over the waterer and feeder so the birds don’t roost on them.

The chicks now have their big chicken feathers. They are, however, the smallest creatures in the coop and tend to cower in abject terror when someone comes in.

The morels are up—this one was a mere 1” tall, so it will be a few more days yet to harvesting.

My new tractor is supposed to arrive today, complete with bagging attachment. I am eager to put it to work. Garden cleanup is mostly done save for moving a few pieces of black plastic around. I might plant some rows of lettuce, too. I had to kill off our perpetual lettuce patch last year because of weeds and I’d like to re-establish a new one somewhere else. The tray of lettuce in the greenhouse is coming along nicely, though.

Lavender Chickens?

The husband is doing a concrete job down in the valley. The owners put in a big hops farm and processing center last year and now they are building a sales office. The wife also breeds show chickens. She had 10 hens, each a year old, that she didn’t want to breed, so they came to live here. I am hoping that having a few more hens will be a distraction for the roosters. She told the husband that they were all Leghorn varieties, including some lavender ones. Lavender is a recognized color in some chicken breeds—like Orpingtons—but I am not sure how stable the genetics are. These almost look like Ameracaunas to me, so they may been crossed with lavender Ameracaunas at some point to get the coloring. I’ll take some pictures today.

I live in a zoo. No bear sightings, fortunately. And the hummingbirds came back. They seem to be late this year,—I expect them at the beginning of April—but at least they are here.

The weather was nice yesterday afternoon, so I went out and worked on the second half of the garden. I replaced the cardboard around the berry bushes and pruned the currants, then raked up all the debris into a couple of piles. (I also displaced a family of voles, which did not bother me in the least.) When the husband got home, he burned the piles for me while I cooked dinner. He also fixed the grape trellis as it was starting to come down under the weight of the vines. I’ll work on what’s left today and tomorrow, and we’ll be all ready to set plants out the last weekend in May.

The greenhouse is such a beautiful place right now with all our seedlings. I’ve got about two dozen Dirty Girl tomato plants:

These all came from the one seed I got from Susan last year. It grew into a plant and I saved all the seeds. I will plant some of these, but I will also make them available to other people. I love the potato leaves on this variety. Many heirloom and open-pollinated tomato varieties have these kinds of leaves.

I saved seed from my biggest Oregon Star paste tomatoes. I’ve only got a dozen of those, though, so they will all be planted here.

Fortunately, I also have Amish Paste and Purple Russian paste tomatoes started, so I should have plenty for sauce.

Things are looking good and we are right on schedule. Yay! I need to call the John Deere dealer today, though—they have my tractor but were waiting on the bagging attachment to arrive so they could install it. I’m going to ask them if they can deliver the tractor anyway and install the bagging attachment later, because who knows where it is being held up or how long it will take to get here. We’re going to need to cut the grass in another week or so. The mower comes with a mulch setting, so the bagging attachment isn’t critical.

Sewing is on the back burner for the moment, although another weather system is supposed to come through this weekend.

Tumblers and Testing

I’ve got several bins with die-cut scraps—one with 5” charm squares, one with 2-1/2” squares (although that one is a bit thin at the moment), and one with tumblers. I pulled out a bunch of tumblers a few weeks ago intending to get them sewn up into something. Totally scrappy tumbler quilts look like a jumbled mess to me, so I imposed a few rules: I limited myself to three colors of dark blue, bright yellow, and aqua, and I alternated the dark blues and the aquas as well as the dark blues and the yellows. I’m hoping that the placement of the dark blues will keep the rioting in check. So far, it seems to be working. I sewed the tumblers into pairs, then the pairs into quads:

Then ironed them open:

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I think this will be at least enough for a wallhanging, or perhaps a lap quilt with the addition of some borders. (I see that it is probably time to wash the ironing board cover, too.)

I found a block in BlockBase+ to play with. This one is called “Providence” and is attributed to Nancy Cabot. It’s on a 5 x 5 grid of 25 squares. This website has instructions for making it in 5”, 7-1/2”, and 10” sizes. I chose to do the 10” size (I am having trouble wrapping my head around making quarter-square triangles that finish at 1” square, although I might try it sometime.) The block has several variations depending on how you choose to color each square. Mine looked like this:

I did it in Christmas colors just because the fabric was handy. This block has some potential. Despite the number of units, it went together easily. With a solid sashing to tie everything together, I think it could also be made scrappy.

We’ll see. where it ends up. BlockBase+ has a huge number of blocks that don’t seem to have made it into many quilt designs. I love playing with the more obscure ones.

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Dave, the younger rooster, has decided that he wants to be King of the Coop, so he and Baby (his dad) have been duking it out. When I went into the coop yesterday, Baby was a bit bloodied up and wandering around dazed and confused. (The husband said the same thing happened last spring, when Baby and the black rooster got into it.) I don’t care who is in charge. And I don’t think Dave will get aggressive toward me. He is a year and a half old and he knows the coop routine. He won’t eat out of my hand, but he will come and stand next to me until I get the scoop of scratch grains, at which point he hustles the hens out to the chicken yard. In terms of rooster behavior, he does exactly what he is supposed to.

Hopefully they won’t kill each other, but I am not going to stand out there and referee.

Our neighbor, Mike, had a bear in his yard the other night. The bear left a calling card:

Clearly, it has been raiding trash cans somewhere. The husband said that the homeowner he’s been working for a couple of miles south of here saw a grizzly sow with two cubs. The bears are awake and looking for food.

Putter Putter Putter

I did not do a good job of managing projects in the pipeline after all, because now I have nothing in the pipeline. And while it feels good to have finished so many projects, I was at loose ends yesterday, which does not feel good. I hesitate to start another big project, because I am sure that as soon as I do, the weather will improve and I will need to be spending my time outside.

I played around with BlockBase+ and EQ8 for a while and came up with a few more quilt designs. I boxed up the Guidepost sweaters to mail this week. I went out to the greenhouse mid-morning because Ali and her little guy were over there re-potting some of their seedlings, so I organized my tomatoes and planted a few more trays of seeds (flowers, mostly) and visited with them. We are all a bit concerned about the upcoming fire season. Our fire department was called to an out-of-control grass fire on Wednesday because the homeowner—someone who moved here from out of state—had been advised NOT to burn but went ahead and did it anyway. I saw the aftermath when I took some supplies to the crew. The fire had burned an area the size of two football fields in just an hour or so, and threatened not only this homeowner’s land, but neighboring properties as well.

A large part of Ali’s job is homeowner education on fires and fire behavior, but we worry that some people just aren’t educable. This particular homeowner may think twice, however, about burning again in the future. And while snowpack is near or above normal in the mountains, we need more rain than we’re getting at the moment.

I wanted to sew, so I got out the bin of 5” squares and started putting together some comforter tops for us to tie at our monthly sewing meetings at church. Finished comforters will get donated to Mennonite Central Committee. Our sewing group is meeting again May 6 after more than a year.

I’m still poking around the Newspapers.com website. I ran across a “quilt designer” whose name was unfamiliar to me—Hetty Winthrop. Interestingly, I found her name on a clipping from the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

A Google search led me to Barbara Brackman’s site for her Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. In the entry for May 25, 2020, she notes that Hetty Winthrop seems to have “lifted liberally” from other pattern designers of the time (ironic, given the copyright notice in the newspaper ad). She goes on to say:

So who was this pattern pirate? Of course Hetty Winthrop is a pen name, evoking Colonial ladies and old New England families for the Bell Syndicate, a large newspaper company in business from 1916 to 1973. They distributed many comic strips and fiction other than needlework. But quilt patterns were hot in 1932 and '33. I would imagine Hetty was an artist working for Bell recruited for this needlework task at which s(he) was not too talented.

Wilene Smith has posted a page on Hetty, noting four US papers that bought the column in the first go-round beginning in December, 1932. It was revived in 1938 & '39 for Canadian papers through Dominion News Bureau, which also printed it in the early 30s.

Wilene Smith’s page can be found here. This stuff is fascinating.

A few months ago, I set up an online library card in the Montana library system and have been borrowing and reading books on my iPad. I just finished one by an incredibly well-known romance author—so well known that when I said her name to the husband, he responded, “The woman who writes all those romance novels?” As he is not in the habit of reading romance novels (or monitoring my reading preferences, for that matter), that should tell you how well known this person is.

I can’t believe this person got published, let alone written more than several dozen books. The writing was awful. I don’t do much creative writing, but one rule I do know is “Show, don’t tell,” which means to set up the scene so that the reader can imagine it in his or her head. This novel consisted of several hundred pages of “And then this happened,” followed by “And then this happened,” etc. The storyline was interesting, which was why I finished the book, but it was like going to a fancy restaurant expecting a delicious meal and being served a McDonald’s hamburger instead.

My gold standard for excellent storytelling is a woman who writes historical fiction under the pen name of Sara Donati. She has spoiled me for anything less.

Quilt Research

I have been working on patterns, but in the process, I fell down a rabbit hole at Newspapers.com. And I found some fun stuff.

First up, the Kansas City Star listing for Noon and Night, dated January 29, 1934. This was the earliest newspaper date I could find for this pattern. Others were dated February and March of that same year.

This one, from the Madison, WI Capital Times, indicates that it is a “Laura Wheeler” design and also includes a coupon for ordering.

I am still baffled as to why Noon and Night—and several dozen other patterns—were left out of compilations of Kansas City Star quilt blocks. Was the first compilation incomplete, and then the ones that followed simply propagated the mistake? That block was ridiculously hard to hunt down.

Here is Alice Brooks’ Three-Patch, the block that inspired Under the Big Top, from the Billings Gazette, May 27, 1937:

“Start soon, and have it all ready to show at the fall fair.” LOL.

And finally, the one I went looking for: Beginner’s Choice, another Laura Wheeler design, from the Palm Beach Post, November 9, 1940.

This is a good, clear, graphic and satisfies me that the block is composed of four chisel-shaped pieces and two trapezoid pieces. I need to stop thinking of old quilt block piecing in terms of 21st century techniques. That’s a failing on my part. A “beginner” in 2021 might find those shapes and the accompanying Y-seams difficult, but a “beginner” in 1940 would not. Changing the piecing to squares and half-square triangles does simplify the construction, though, and that’s how I am writing the pattern.

I am almost afraid to keep looking through the listings at Newspapers.com. “Laura Wheeler” also designed a bunch of knitting patterns, too. If I fell down that rabbit hole, I might be gone for weeks.

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I finished sewing the last two rows of the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt together; I didn’t mean to leave that one languishing so long. I’ll piece the backing and think about how I want to quilt it.

We moved the chicks last night. I spent an hour yesterday morning mucking out that area of the chicken coop because we let the big chickens roost in there when we don’t have chicks. I did that first thing so I could then come in and take a shower. When the husband got home, he spread out a bale of pine shavings and then we moved the chicks in two batches—putting them in a deep Rubbermaid bin for transport—from the garage to the coop. The chick’s area is closed off from the rest of the coop, so even though they can see the big chickens and the big chickens can see them, the chicks are safe.

Notes From the Neighborhood

We have a whiteboard in the greenhouse where we can make lists or write notes. I noticed one day that Ali had written something on the board. The next day, the husband had written another note underneath:

I love going out to the greenhouse—it smells wonderful in there with all the little plants coming up. Ali, Mike, Elysian, and I all have plants started and sometimes we have short confabs when we’re out there at the same time. It’s a great gathering place.

And just for the record, I have zero qualms about disposing of pests that are competing for my food. If it comes down to me eating or the rodents eating, I am going to win that battle every time.

I think the peeps may get moved in with the big chickens this weekend. We have a separate area within the coop where we put the babies when they are too big for the brooder box. They have just about doubled in size and it’s getting crowded in the box. One also tried to escape yesterday. I have to scoot the wire lid over to replace their food and water and one chick got a bit too curious about what I was doing.

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I parked myself in my office chair yesterday morning and worked on patterns for most of the day. Once I get into a groove, I hate to stop. The layouts are started for Big Top, the wallhanging, and the green and purple quilt, and most of the verbiage for Big Top is written. Next up will be making the illustrations and doing the math for different sizes.

One of the issues I struggle with in these quilt patterns is whether or not I should try to write them for precuts. The Big Top quilt could be done with charm square packs and jelly rolls, but the instructions for doing it that way are completely different for the instructions for cutting it from yardage—so much so that I would be writing two separate patterns. I don’t use a lot of precuts, so I am inclined not to write patterns for them even though I know how popular they are.

We’ll see. Patterns tend to evolve along the way, just like quilts.

I also figured out exactly how that not-White Kona got into the purple and green quilt. I was writing through the process of making the Big Top blocks and remembered that after I cut those, I had some of that background fabric left. (It was Kona Natural.) It was lying on the cutting table and I grabbed it thinking it was Kona White. Note to self: Do not cut fabric for two quilts with similar background fabrics simultaneously. Or just don’t make quilts with white backgrounds.

My new cutting table is scheduled to arrive next month. I ordered it from Tracey’s Tables on February 5 and knew that it would take some time as each one is custom built, but I hadn’t heard anything from them since. No updates, nothing. As the order involved a fair chunk of money, I decided to e-mail them and see what was going on. I got a very nice, very prompt reply from customer service with the anticipated delivery date.

I’ve noticed that tiny quilt blocks are starting to become a thing now. Fat Quarter Shop has been running their Sewcialites sewalong for several months, with the option to make 3”, 6”, 9”, and 12” blocks. Sherri McConnell of A Quilting Life has been making the 3” blocks. And yesterday’s Accuquilt launch party on Facebook Live was for their new 4” Qube system. I thought making those 6” blocks was tough—I can’t imagine making 3” or 4” blocks. I’d have to buy a 55-gallon drum of Best Press.

Laugh With Me

“Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused,'" Gabriel quoted. "One of the unrecorded Beatitudes.” ―Terri Garey, Devil Without a Cause

I provide myself plenty of entertainment. Yesterday, for example, I finished binding the wallhanging and decided I would take it and the purple and green quilt out to photograph. I finally got a new battery for my Sony Alpha-100 DSLR camera. That wasn’t a cheap camera when I bought it 15 or so years ago, and I really ought to be using it instead of the iPhone. I have several nice lenses for it, too.

I did the wallhanging first:

Adding that black binding helped finish it off. The border doesn’t look like it’s floating in space now. And that swag quilting along the edges absolutely was the right choice.

Then I hung up the purple and green quilt. And I looked at it. Do you see it?

These blocks were all supposed to have Kona White as the background, but somewhere along the line, I must have pulled a chunk of Kona not-White (Kona Bone or Kona Snow are the most likely suspects) out of my stash and used it instead. I have been working on this quilt for the last two months—including two days of quilting it under the bright LED lights on my Q20—and never noticed the difference in the shades. If the creamier white were evenly distributed among the blocks, I would have called it a design element, LOL.

All I could do when I saw this was laugh. I’m not upset. I had planned all along to remake this quilt in a different colorway at some point. And I do like the addition of the creamier white, so that may get factored into the remake of the quilt, although I will be sure to place it in a more controlled manner.

Some days I am a good example and some days I am a horrible warning. Learn from me. I really ought to get into the habit of cutting all my fabrics at once instead of piecemeal. I also need to figure out some better lighting for my cutting area.

I also had an epiphany about quilt names while I was standing outside laughing at myself. Quilt names need to reflect the design of the quilt and not necessarily the colors, so calling this design something like “Lilac Chain” isn’t going to work. What if a quilter decided to make it in Christmas colors? (Yes, quilters can use their imaginations and not get stuck on a particular colorway, but I can tell you from my experience as a knitting designer that it doesn’t work that way.) “Thistle Chain” is a bit better, but not much. “Pokey Stars” is nice and descriptive, but perhaps not in the best way. Needless to say, I’m still thinking about a name for this one.

So. The wallhanging can get written up as a pattern, although I still want to play around with that block and perhaps do a larger version. The purple and green quilt will be re-made, too, but with more careful attention paid to fabric shades and placement. I also have the design to make that I am calling Duck Duck Goose. I may set aside a day or two later this week for some marathon cutting sessions. I’ve got some new dies for the Studio cutter that will help with the prep work.

Binding in a Windstorm

I don’t have a hero shot of the purple and green quilt yet. I finished sewing down the binding yesterday as a windstorm was blowing outside, so there was no chance for a picture. The windstorm was intense, although not on the order of the one in March 2020. We didn’t lose any trees. The lights flickered a few times but the power stayed on.

I had a heck of a time finding a good binding for this quilt. I wanted something a shade darker than the outer purple border to pick up the dark purple in the chain blocks. My stash of Kona purples didn’t suit, nor did any of the stores in town have the right color. I looked at Moda Grunge. I looked at Moda Marbles. I held up my swatch of border fabric against every purple fabric in the quilt store and finally one popped out. It was a geometric print (Kimberbell), which didn’t fit with the floral design at all, but when I folded it on the bias, it looked enough like a flower to me that I went with it.

I like the way it looks on the quilt. It’s dark enough to pick up the purple in the chain, but it’s also got a lighter purple in it that is the same as the border color.

And it looks nice with this giant floral-y watercolor print on the back:

Done and done. This design needs a pattern. If the weather forecast holds for the week, we may be getting cold temps and snow again by next weekend, so I’ll be looking for some indoor work. And it’s probably a good thing I never got the peas planted. On Saturday—which was gorgeous—we pulled the black plastic off a section of the garden and I raked up all the dead vegetation and burned it.

Before the storm hit yesterday, the husband and I went out and pulled the plastic back and secured it with bricks and rocks. That half of the garden is now ready for planting. I’ve still got a few weeks, yet, to tackle the other half.

While I was in the garden, the husband was doing more yard cleanup with the backhoe. That was a frustrating process, though, because our fire department kept getting paged out for out-of-control grass fires. We had something like three calls in the space of two hours. He’s got one or two days a week to get things done here, and when our volunteer firefighters—no one gets paid, not even the chief—spend big chunks of their days off putting out other people’s fires, nothing gets done at their own homes. We had slash piles burning, too. I also felt bad for the dispatcher. She was paging out rural fire departments left and right and you could hear it in her voice that she had had enough. The husband finished out the day on a mutual aid barn fire call down the road with the neighboring fire department. He also went to an out-of-control grass fire that got into the timber just as the windstorm was ramping up yesterday.

Grass fires happen, I get it. The wind shifts or increases and things get away. (Yesterday’s windstorm had been in the forecast for several days, however.) People assume that when there is an emergency, “someone” is going to show up in a timely manner. This is especially true of people who move here from larger metropolitan areas. With so many people moving into our valley, our resources are getting stretched thin.

I started the binding on the wallhanging last night. I’ll have it done this evening. I have one more quilt basted and ready to quilt—a charity quilt, not my own design—and it might be a good one for practicing more ruler work designs.

Hero Shots

The weather finally has cooperated enough for me to take some outside photos of my quilts. When I was a guest on the DIY Channel show “Knitty Gritty” way back in 2004, the knitted object that was the topic of the show—in my case, an Aran-themed afghan—was referred to as “the hero,” so you may think of these as the hero shots of my quilts.

The lighting inside our house is abysmal. I much prefer outside shots in diffuse light, either an overcast day or in the late afternoon, but in Montana, those conditions are only available from about March to October. The rest of the time, the snow is reflective, it’s too hard to get to certain spots to hang things, or the light is too weak. One of my favorite places for photos is the side of the woodshed. The north side has just enough of the right kind of light in the afternoon. (I did not edit any of these photos and the colors are fairly true.) I also like the rustic backdrop. I started with the Bear Paw baby quilt:

As much as I love the spiral square quilting, I think it did cause the linen/cotton fabric to stretch a bit around the edges. Oh, well, it’s a baby blanket, and it feels amazing. Again, it’s a great pattern and one I’ve added to the “go-to patterns” pile.

This is the Under the Big Top quilt:

I still have a soft spot for this quilt. It may never be my most popular design, but it’s one of my favorites. I need to finish this pattern.

And I finally got a good outside shot of Cobbles and Pebbles:

I plan to take as many outside and close-up shots as I can this summer so I can add the photos to my patterns.

The Beginner’s Choice wallhanging is trimmed and waiting for binding. I took it with me to the quilt store yesterday to do a “show and tell” with the ruler class instructor. I was the only customer in the store, so the staff and I stood there and looked it over and did a post-mortem on my quilting. (They had lots of positive comments.) The instructor asked me to bring it to the class in May. I also chatted with the owner of the store about possibly teaching some classes, but I won’t say more than that until and unless it happens.

[We were having drinks on the veranda last night and after I told the husband about my conversation with the quilt store owner, he said, “You just want to teach, don’t you?” I guess I can’t get away from it.]

I’ve got about half the binding sewn down on the purple and green quilt. I need to write that pattern, too. And the one for Beginner’s Choice. Writing patterns involves a completely different part of my brain and I have to be in the mood to do it. I got a good laugh from a Facebook post yesterday by a fellow knitting designer. She was writing a pattern and decided it was a good time to take a break after she had written “Figure it out your own self” on the pattern. LOL. We’ve all been there.

Ruler Work Synthesis

This is a long post, so pull up a cup of tea and settle in.

The other day, I felt compelled to get the basted Beginner’s Choice wallhanging out to be quilted. If you will recall, this is a Laura Wheeler block that I believe was intended to be simple—a nine-patch composed of squares and half-square triangles, which would indeed make it suitable for a beginner—but somehow morphed into a much more complicated block consisting of trapezoids and chisels. I have not been able to find the simpler block anywhere, but the more complicated ( = not beginner) version appears in both Jinny Beyer’s Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns and in the BlockBase program.

I made a wallhanging featuring this block using Christmas fabrics. I was mostly playing around, although this is on the “to be re-done and published” list for a future date. I can’t tell you exactly what motivated me to get it out and work on it, but clearly my brain had some itch that needed to be scratched. I know that wanting more practice with my longarm rulers factored into the decision.

One of the first things Angela Walters said in the class I took from her was that no one gets better at machine quilting without practice. (That holds true for most things.) I have worked hard at adopting a mindset that will allow me to play around with my quilted stuff without assigning super-high expectations of perfection. Angela Walters is in my head a lot:

• Practice, practice, practice!

• Done is better than perfect!

• Every master was once a disaster!

I very much appreciated the video in which Angela shared some of her very first longarmed quilts and pointed out just how awful they were.

The last couple of months have been a journey of getting to know the Q20 and forcing myself to quilt things other than loops. But I find myself getting caught up in quilting design decisions—as if designing the actual quilt top itself wasn’t fraught with a myriad of choices—and having to fight my way through the various pieces of conflicting advice I am hearing. I said to the husband yesterday that I know why some people buy longarm machines on frames and hook them up to computers. Letting the computer quilt an edge-to-edge design is infinitely easier than custom quilting.

But I am determined to master this.

I’m going to take a short detour here. A phenomenon I saw in knitting also appears to have infected the quilting universe. I started knitting in the 1980s. Somewhere around the early 2000s, a group of younger people found the craft, but they wanted everyone to know that what they were doing was “not your grandmother’s knitting.” I found that phrase annoying and ungrateful on so many levels. It is possible to be modern and edgy without denigrating what came before you as primitive and unsophisticated (which it most certainly was not). That attitude has made itself known in quilting, too, and it has caused me no end of whiplash:

“Don’t use polyester batting—it makes your quilts look like 1980s comforters,” only to discover that most quilt designers use either two batts, one of which is polyester or wool, or a 50/50 blend of cotton and polyester. (The explanation is that they travel and hang better on display without wrinkling because of the polyester.)

“Don’t stitch in the ditch—that’s for grandmothers” only to discover that a lot of custom quilting relies heavily on stitching in the ditch.

I am juggling a whole lot of conflicting information in my head and trying to gel it into something that makes sense for me. Read that last part again. FOR ME.

I spread out the basted wallhanging and looked at it. Amanda Murphy advises to “quilt the bones” of the design first. Quilt the structural elements and the parts you want to emphasize and then go back and add embellishments. I knew I wanted the black ribbon-y pieces to stand out, so I started there.

You have to remember that I was trained by a group of Mennonite quilters, and my personal aesthetic has always been more traditional than modern. I very much like the look of quilting 1/4” from the seamline better than stitching in the ditch. I quilted inside the “star” that was formed by the black fabric ribbons:

My first thought was to do some kind of filler within the star I had just outlined. I don’t like dense quilting, though. Quilts with so much thread in them that they could stand up by themselves don’t appeal to me. That was too large an expanse to leave unquilted, however. I spent a solid couple of hours looking through Amanda Murphy’s books and watching YouTube videos and looking at my collection of longarm rulers, hoping that inspiration would strike.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the wall of longarm rulers at the quilt store when I saw the Handi-Quilter “swag” collection. These are four rulers that can be used alone or in combination to make swag patterns. I had no idea why at the time, but I sensed that I needed those rulers, so I bought them. Lo and behold, the two largest swag rulers have cutouts in the middle that can be used for making other designs, too. (I love tools with more than one use.)

The largest swag template had this teardop cutout. I got out a sheet of paper and a pencil and started playing around. (Did anyone else have a Spirograph growing up?) If the pointed end is placed in the center of a circle, a flower forms. If the rounded end is placed in the center of a circle, a different kind of flower forms, one that reminded me of a poinsettia.

I placed these in the center of each star, which added enough quilting to satisfy me. I quilted partial flowers in the partial stars along each edge. That left just the border to be quilted. Once again, the swag templates came to the rescue:

The border wasn’t deep enough for me to use all four, but the three smallest swag templates worked perfectly. I finished off the quilting with rays of straight lines in each corner. I’ll get it bound this weekend and take a picture.

This simple wallhanging—which was made as a way to test a block—feels like a milestone to me. Ruler work and custom quilting are becoming good friends of mine. That’s a bit unexpected but certainly welcome.

I should have several finishes to show off next week, so stay tuned.

Ruler Club and the Swish Template

I had a nice chat with our pig supplier yesterday morning. I am planning a trip to Alaska to see DD#1 and DSIL and wanted to make sure that the dates of my trip don’t coincide with more livestock arriving on the farm. We confirmed the order and the dates and I went ahead and made my travel plans. I will have to get a covid test before I go, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

It was sunny yesterday, but still cold. I got a bunch of paperwork sorted and organized in the morning, then went to town and ran errands. The farm store is awash in chicks now—oh, the irony—and the cashier tried to get me to take 10 more at 30% off. I hope they don’t decide to stop carrying chicks because it has been such a hassle for them the past two seasons. Apparently, after two months of not being able to get chicks delivered on a regular schedule, they got a chick shipment every day last week.

[I would have taken more chicks, but our brooder box is full.]

I ran into my friend Debbie at one of the nurseries. (She did the flowers for DD#1’s wedding.) She was buying some shrubs and I was there just to see what they had. I was surprised to see that their stock is much thinner that it used to be and I wonder what is going on. I think the owners want to sell and retire, so that may be the reason. I wandered around the greenhouses and enjoyed seeing and smelling the flowers and herbs.

The traffic, though—I know people in big cities laugh when they hear me complain, but as I explained to the husband over dinner, I have an idea in my head of how long errands should take based on having lived here for 28 years. That schedule has gone all to pieces in the last year or so. It took me 15 minutes to drive a one-mile stretch of road yesterday. Part of the problem is (special) people who insist on trying to drive and park in places where they don’t belong, which gums up the traffic flow for everyone else.

I made it to the quilt store in time for my ruler class, though. This month, we got the “Swish” template, which joins the On-Point template from last month.

Handi-Quilter runs these ruler classes in six-month blocks, from September to February and then again from March to August. I probably will keep taking them as long as the store keeps offering them. Each series has a theme. The theme for this series is “Borders,” which is great because I can never figure out how to quilt designs in a border. Our instructor showed us some very cool ideas for this curved-line template, though, so I might try it out soon. (I really need to learn to quilt feathers.) I picked up a “center-zero” tape measure at this same store, which will help me lay out and mark my designs.

I think I like ruler work because unlike free-motion quilting—which is done without a net—ruler work provides some underlying structure to the design. “Quilting,” as it pertains to putting designs into fabric with thread, will never be my strong suit, however. For me, it’s a means to an end, not a way to express my creativity. That happens with the fabric and piecing.

The husband watches a YouTube channel put out by some guy in southern Oregon who owns a heavy equipment/big rig repair business. He drives up and down I-5 in Oregon and California fixing stuff. I can tell just from the few episodes I’ve watched that the guy is brilliant, although I wish there were subtitles because half the time it’s like watching a film in a foreign language. I ask the husband a lot of questions. Last night, I learned how to chase down a broken solder joint in the electronic control module of a logging truck. Who knew. The husband reminded me that every trade has its own terminology.