Thrift Store Score

I stopped in at one of the thrift stores in town yesterday and found a few goodies. I like this particular store because they always have a lot of sewing supplies. A Singer 404 in a case was sitting on the floor with a note that said “Runs, but needs tension adjusted,” and I was so very tempted—cleaning and adjusting the tension mechanisms on those machines is not difficult—but I have to be realistic about the time I have to spend on machines. I am re-homing one next week and I need to keep the inventory moving out, not in.

However, in a dresser drawer marked “Quilt Projects,” I found a bag of twenty-four 9-1/2” churn dash blocks:

They are red with low-volume cream/white print backgrounds. Just add sashing and a border and poof!—instant quilt top! I might make one additional block so I can do a 5 x 5 setting. Margaret would be proud of me, I think. She often bought half-finished projects at Mennonite relief sales, finished them, then donated the quilt back to the sale the following year.

I also picked up an Easy Circle Cut Ruler and a thimble. I am irrationally happy about finding that thimble. I have such fat, stubby fingers that most thimbles are too small. I have one that fits me perfectly and I am so afraid I am going to lose it. Now I have two.

I popped in to Kalispell Copy—they are the big construction plan copy center in town—to have the Style Arc Kristin Dress pattern printed on their large-format printer. I’ll trace my pattern from that master.

I chose this dress pattern because it’s very similar to a couple of favorite dresses I bought at H&M, of all places. I especially like that this pattern has bust darts, which hopefully will give the dress some shape and help to keep it from looking like a potato sack on me. One of the three lengths of ponte knit in the stash—navy blue, periwinkle blue, and hot pink—will be perfect. Before I use one of them, though, I’ll make up a muslin to make sure I like the fit. This pattern also has gotten good reviews on the Sewing Pattern Review website. That’s a great resource. I read the reviews and noted that everyone who made this dress said the zipper was optional, so I will try it without.

Before leaving town, I stopped at Joann Fabrics (of course) and discovered that a big chunk of their juvenile knit fabrics have been put on clearance. New fabrics are starting to arrive. I talked to Deb, the manager, while she was cutting my fabric, and mentioned that I was teaching serger classes in town. She said that was great because people don’t often know how to sew with knit fabrics, which is why so many of them end up in the clearance bin. Now I feel like I am on a mission.

I also dropped the construction company tax information off at the accountant’s office. That item has been (happily) crossed off the list. I am a favorite client of our accountant, because I don’t leave things until the last minute. I think the only time we’ve had to file an extension was when I was in the hospital in February 2018.

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When I got home from town, I finished quilting the center of the tumbler quilt. Now it’s on to the border, although I need to make up a quilt sandwich and test the motif I plan to use so I can make sure the spacing is correct.

I may take a break from quilting next week, after I finish my homework for Ruler Club. That won’t take long. But then I need to give some attention to the pile of projects that need to be machine appliquéd. I’ll set up the Janome to do those so they can move forward. I’m trying to batch my projects for efficiency. I’ll probably cut sashings and borders for a couple of quilts, as I might as well do those together, too.

The Tumblers Are Tumbling

I am close to finishing the center of the tumbler quilt. The lines on either vertical side of the tumblers are all quilted.

I need to spend another hour quilting the horizontal lines on either side of each row, and then it’s on to the borders. I loved watching the look and feel of this quilt change as I worked on it yesterday. What a difference the batting makes. This batting is Warm and Natural. The quilt is going to be nice and cozy.

I listened to Amanda Murphy’s Facebook livestream yesterday while I worked. That was the perfect background for quilting. She talks a mile a minute because she has so much going on, and the livestream lasted for more than an hour. She talked about her business, about teaching, about rulerwork, and about dealing with disgruntled Facebook followers. I absorbed everything by osmosis. One comment she made really resonated with me. She was talking about when (and when not) to take out mistakes, and she said to remember that the goal of the quilting is to add texture to the overall design. I love texture. My knitting designs always focused on texture—cables—so for me to think of quilting as adding texture makes so much sense. I think that keeping her words in mind will help me to answer the question of “How much quilting is enough?”

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My friend Cristina of Bumbleroot Design just released a new pattern, the Big Rock Tote Bag!

Cristina is a former technical writer, and let me tell you—her patterns are thorough. This one is 30+ pages and comes with accompanying videos to help you get through the tricky spots. If you’ve ever wanted to try making bags, her patterns are great ones to help you get your feet wet. She has some really clever construction techniques. If you visit her website, be sure to check out her page of vintage sewing machines. She and I bonded over our Necchi BV industrials. I have enjoyed watching her business grow. And she is donating 10% of each Big Rock Tote pattern sale to The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.

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I’ve got a broody hen. I wonder if it’s the same Buff Orpington who hatched out a chick last year. This hen has been parked in the same nesting box for the past week, and she pitches a fit if I get too close. (I tried to sneak a few more eggs under her, but she wasn’t having it.) We’ll see if any babies show up in a couple of weeks. If she’s going to hatch out chicks, it would be nice if she had more than one this time.

Dave has a big job out there, keeping all those hens happy. Chickens don’t like to go out in the snow, so they spend a lot of time inside the coop and there is a fair bit of squabbling. I’ve know I’ve said this about most of my roosters, but Dave truly is the best rooster I’ve ever had. He’s not as friendly as some of them have been, but he’s not aggressive, either. He just does his job. We’ve had the heat lamps on this week because it’s been so cold. I said to the husband that it’s interesting to me that the hens that are always sitting under the heat lamps are those diva Leghorns that we got from the show chicken farm last year.

My first batch of lettuce is going to be ready to cut soon:

What a great system this is.

Retreat planning is underway. Finding a date that works for all of us will be the big challenge, but I think we can do it. And who knows?—maybe this will become an annual event.

Looking at the Forest Instead of the Trees

Part of what makes the husband and I such a good team—once we sort out who gets to be in charge—is that he is really good at systems-level thinking and I am a master of details. Building his new shop is a perfect example of how we work together. He managed the overall vision of what he wanted and I figured out how to pay for it (without taking out a loan). The problem I have is that sometimes I get stuck looking at all the pretty trees and can’t find my way out of the forest.

I watched the latest episode of the A Quilting Life podcast on YouTube the other day, and Sherri McConnell mentioned a new app she had on her phone for managing her life. It’s called AnyList. She’s also got a new quilt planner out, as does Lori Holt. I thought about what I needed to help me manage all of my projects. I don’t want a phone or tablet app. I want something low-tech, because I like to add notes, doodle, and make liberal use of my collection of highlighters.

The husband has a whiteboard in his office. It’s divided into four sections: Bid, Sold/Pending, In Progress, and Done. The job name starts out under Bid and moves to each successive category as it goes to completion. It gives him a higher-level view of what he’s got going on at any moment in time. I looked at that and decided I needed something similar for all my quilt projects, because what I really need is a way to track them through the pipeline, from idea to finished quilt. I’m not a fan of whiteboards, though. I really need something portable.

I picked up a binder, some tabbed dividers, a pack of loose-leaf gridded paper, and a new pack of highlighters in town yesterday and made myself a project management notebook. So far, I like it. I even woke up in the middle of the night and remembered a couple of projects that are languishing, unfinished, in bins, so I’ll dig them out and add them to the notebook for accountability.

In addition to listing each project in the appropriate category, I also physically stacked projects under the same category together. If I have to set them aside for any length of time, at least they can keep each other company.

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I pieced the backing for the latest red Candy Coated quilt and basted that one Monday afternoon. I have a whole roll of that Fairfield batting that I don’t like very much. I think I don’t like it because it’s so thin. I much prefer the Warm and Natural or even the Warm and Plush when I can find it. I need to use up this roll of batting, though, so I used it in the Candy Coated quilt, but I used two layers instead of just one. Two layers made a much nicer batting. The Candy Coated quilt is now in the queue for quilting. I plan to do an allover free motion design—probably loops—instead of rulerwork.

I set the wallhanging aside and started working on the tumbler quilt:

I am echoing the seam lines with stitching on either side. This goes quickly—almost as quickly as free motion loops. Because of how I have to hold the ruler and move the quilt under the machine, I’m doing all the stitching lines on one side of the seams, then turning the quilt around and doing the stitching on the other side of the seams. I quilted a good chunk of the center in about an hour yesterday afternoon. Once the center is done, I’ll do the rulerwork in the border. The thread is a variegated blue/turquoise Signature 40wt that I picked up in Spokane last week. I think it’s going to look really nice in the border. I am getting braver about having my stitching show.

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Pat made a third comforter top with the 5” squares, so when I get mine done, we’ll have four to tie. I ordered backing for them using my Joann+ account, which gives significant discounts when buying in bulk. I thought I would also order more of that modal sweatshirt fabric they just started carrying. I’d like to make up a Simplicity jacket pattern to see if that might work for a serger class next fall. The pattern calls for three yards, though, and when I bought some of that modal sweatshirt fabric in Missoula, I only got two yards.

This is how maddeningly difficult the Joann website is to use: I’ve already filled out their feedback form and asked them to stop listing fabrics that are no longer available (some haven’t been available for two years now) or provide a way to filter them out. It makes the search process clunky, and if the fabric is no longer available, why list it? And forget about the inventory listed on the website matching what they claim is in the store. I don’t think those two systems actually communicate with each other.

I put both the modal sweatshirt fabric and eight yards of a wideback (108”) into the cart. There was a coupon for 50% off a cut of fabric, but when I went to apply it to the cart, I got a message that “Discounts cannot be applied to tiered items.” (Tiered items are the bulk items.) Fine, but why can’t it be applied to the other item, which isn’t tiered?

I took the wideback out of the cart, applied the coupon—which worked that time—then added the wideback to the cart again. The coupon disappeared and I got the same message again about discounts not being valid.

Arrrrrggggghhhhhhh.

One would think that a national chain would invest in a robust e-commerce system, particularly because they are actively pushing people toward buying online. (That doesn’t work well for fabric, by the way, unless you know what you need.) The in-store POS system is about a decade behind, too, but at least they are making an effort to upgrade that.

I ended up having to place two orders. That’s hardly the end of the world, just annoying.

Leftovers Put to Good Use

Our church’s sewing group would like to have another comforter-tying party, perhaps this month or early in March. We hosted one two years ago and everyone had a great time. Just before Christmas, I took my bin of 5” squares to church, and Pat took it home and put together a couple of tops, this one:

And this one:

They are so colorful and cheery! She said there are still enough squares left for two or three more comforters. I also have a bag of squares here—I meant to take it with me to Spokane and work on it there, but I forgot to put it with my sewing supplies. I’ll get those sewn together. We have plenty of batting in our sewing supplies at church, I think, so I will order backings and get the tops basted together and ready to tie.

This makes me so happy. That was not a small bin of 5” squares, and it’s so gratifying to know that they have been put to good use. The comforters will be donated to Mennonite Central Committee.

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Robin, Tera, and Sunnie are all in for a retreat. I’ll start planning that soon. I think we should include a visit to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture as part of our trip. NWMAC always has such interesting exhibits. They also have a respectable textile collection. I wanted to stop in last week, but, they were closed due to staffing shortages. I am excited, though, about an exhibit that is scheduled to start this week and run through October, entitled Golden Harvest: Flour Sacks From the Permanent Collection. The website states:

These graphically striking cloth sacks date primarily from the first half of the 20th century and most are in pristine condition. Several vintage objects made from recycled flour sacks, including a rare dress c.1880s, will also be on display, as well as art and images from the MAC’s permanent collection.

The NWMAC website currently is hosting an online exhibition entitled Quiltscapes, which is also worth checking out, and the good news is that you can do it from the comfort of your computer!

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I’m still quilting away on the wallhanging. I haven’t reached the level of quilting competence that I want and that’s causing me no end of frustration. Technically, I know what I am doing. Design-wise, I am still struggling with how much and where and what kind of quilting to do. This is one of those situations where there is no one right answer—just a series of choices—and learning to distinguish between the choices takes time and experimentation unless you happen to be one of the lucky people for whom that comes instinctively. For future projects, I do need to get into the habit of making some quilt sandwiches with the leftover blocks so I can experiment with designs on them, rather than on the quilt itself.

I quilted around the octagons, then added circles inside the diamonds formed by the sashing (they are hard to see):

Those circles were difficult to do because of the size of the ruler. Were I to do it again, I would probably make diamonds, instead, but I was trying to contrast the angular nature of the piecing with some curves. I might echo those curves by doing some kind of circular quilting in the border, too. Right now, I am stitching in the ditch around the squares in the center of each octagon, because I felt like those needed to be anchored down.

Here’s the thing: When this is finally hanging on the wall, the piecing and overall design is going to be what people see, not the quilting, so I don’t want to spend hours and hours custom quilting this. This is all part of the learning process. I’m getting close to the “finished is better than perfect” stage of this project. I am going to set it aside for a few days and work on something else while I consider what I want to do in the border.

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Our Joann Fabrics is still on reduced hours, but they have hired a few new employees. I stopped in yesterday because I need about a quarter yard of a specific fabric to finish a project, but realized when I got to town that I had left my phone—and thus, all my Joanns coupons—at home. They had the fabric I needed, so I’ll pick it up later this week.

Quilt Store Crawl

My plan for Thursday was to visit the Joann Fabrics and Hobby Lobby stores on the north end of Spokane before heading even further north to check out some quilt stores in Deer Park and Chattaroy. I also threw in a stop at Trader Joe’s because it was on the way and they open early at 8 am. As I suspected, the Simplicity patterns were on sale at Joanns, so I picked up three that I had earmarked the day before, including a new vintage apron pattern and one for a knit fabric cardigan that might make a good serger class next fall.

Deer Park is about 20 miles northwest-ish of Spokane. Urban sprawl hasn’t gone that far, and once outside the city limits, the landscape quickly becomes rural farmland. I stopped at the first of two quilt stores in Deer Park—Sew-Into-Quilts—which is a small but nicely-stocked store whose owner is friendly and sports bright purple hair. I looked around for a bit but really couldn’t find anything to buy that I needed. Still, it’s nice to know that store is there. She is a Handi-Quilter dealer and had quite a few of the HQ longarm rulers.

Literally a stone’s throw away is Ed and Jean’s Quilt Shop. Ed was there and informed those of us in the store that Jean was currently enjoying the sunshine in Mexico. This is a tiny store, made even tinier by the fact that there were two longarm machines in the front room. I think longarming is their primary business. The rest of the store was crammed full of fabric and probably would have given the fire marshal heart palpitations, but Ed knew exactly where everything was and how to put his hands on it if someone asked. I was delighted to find a bolt of the exact fabric I was hoping to use for the sashing of the Sunbonnet Sue quilt and bought a couple of yards. Yay! Now I just need to finish the last four blocks and make the sashing and that one will be ready to quilt.

I had to travel about 10 miles east over to Chattaroy to find the last store, called As The Crow Flies:

This store popped up in my Facebook feed a few weeks ago because I follow the Washington State Quilters page and As the Crow Flies was one of their featured retailers. It is the most adorable store. The owner has a wonderful eye for interior design and the inside is as cute as the outside. She specializes in wool embroidery as well as quilting and I could have spent several happy hours (and lots of money) there. She also designs and has a line of her own patterns. I know I saw only a fraction of what she’s got.

I spotted a sign in the store that mentioned a quilting retreat. Thinking it was an annual retreat she hosted, I asked her about the dates. She informed me that the sign referred to the retreat center next door, The Crow’s Nest, which she rents out. The old farmhouse sleeps seven and comes with a large quilting studio with plenty of room to set up machines and work on projects. Kalispell peeps, what do you think? A group of us could rent a van—I’ll drive, as I know my way around—and go over for a couple of days. We could spend one day there working on projects and spend another day visiting all the quilt and thrift stores in and around Spokane. I suspect Robin and Sunnie and Tera would be up for the adventure, and we could probably persuade a few others to join us.

I would like to get back to doing wool embroidery in the evenings. I bought three pincushion patterns because pincushions are small, discrete projects that work up quickly and make good gifts for fellow sewists. I also have 25 pounds of crushed walnut shells to use up. This was one of the patterns I bought at As The Crow Flies:

It went together quickly and now I just need to work the embroidery on the sewing machine motif. I bought the kit for this pincushion because those are reproduction Civil War-era fabrics and they don’t feature prominently in my stash.

I left Spokane at first light Friday and arrived home around 1 pm. The husband had taken an early weekend and was waiting for me when I got here.

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This week, it’s back to business. I have to start working on Auction stuff. The pile of tops is still here waiting to be quilted. I ordered the rest of the rulers from Amanda Murphy’s website. They should arrive tomorrow.

I need to look into better ways to track my sewing projects. It’s not that I’m losing them in the chaos, but more that I have periods of time where it looks like I’m not getting anything done. I need a good way to reflect my progress. Checking things off a list is part of what motivates me.

[From the “slower by the minute but faster by the month” department—I have something like 43 hexie flowers made. I am rethinking what I want to do with them as they would be more than enough for an appliqué quilt design of some sort, like this one.]

I’m going to look like a finishing maniac when I get this pile of quilt tops done. I’ve got a bunch of table runners and other small items lined up behind them that also need to be quilted. And DD#2 asked me last night if I could make a batch of makeup pads for the friend she’s visiting in San Diego, so I’ll knock out another batch of those. They’re a good mindless serging project for late in the day.

Please Read the Supply List

The Quilting Bee always has a full roster of classes, and I had planned this trip partly so I could take one. There were two scheduled for Wednesday. The morning class was on making a threadcatcher pincushion. I didn’t need a class for this—I actually drafted a pattern and made one last year—but it’s fun to be a student instead of the teacher, so I signed up. The afternoon class was on making a byAnnie travel bag. The only reason I didn’t take that one as well was because it required some work to be done ahead of time and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get that work done and come to class prepared.

Coming to class prepared apparently is a foreign concept to some people. I’ve experienced it in my own classes, when people express surprise that there was a class supply list on the store website. On Tuesday evening, I got a call from the store asking me to confirm my attendance at the class Wednesday morning and asking if I needed a machine. “No,” I said, “I am bringing one with me.”

[I have a little Janome Jem 639 that I picked up at one of the thrift stores in Spokane for $15.00. The machine is nothing fancy—it only has three pre-set stitch lengths—but it’s solid, with metal innards, and it’s a great class machine. I cleaned and oiled it before I left so I knew it would be ready to sew. The machine and all my class supplies travel in a milk crate on wheels that I got at Staples. I also use the milk crate to tote my serger to class when I teach.]

Just in case you were wondering, this is how big a destination quilt store is:

The store has been in this location for a couple of years. Before that, they were crammed into a tiny space in a strip mall about a mile away.

I arrived at the store around 9:45 am and was directed to the classroom. There were a couple of machines already set up at some of the workstations. The store will provide a class machine if you ask ahead of time. They are often the latest and fanciest models, though, which is not always ideal. Using an unfamiliar store model means the student spends more time learning how to operate the machine than learning the technique being taught.

I was the first one there. Gradually, the rest of the students wandered in, and as I was setting up my workstation, I was listening to the conversations happening between them and the teacher.

“Were we supposed to bring a machine?” Well, yes, you should always bring a machine to a sewing class.

“But a sewing machine wasn’t on the supply list.” (I could not help myself. I rolled my eyes at that one.)

“I didn’t bring a rotary cutter/ruler/cutting mat. Do I need one?” Yes, that was specified on the supply list, but I have an extra you can use.

“Was there a supply list?” Yes, it was on the website.

“Can you help me wind a bobbin? I don’t know how to use this store machine.” Yes, you wind a bobbin this way . . .

The instructor, a retired fifth-grade teacher, was very patient and gracious. Eventually, she was able to introduce herself and hand out the instructions. I took off and got started on my project. I did have the advantage of having made one before, but I also came prepared with a cutting mat, ruler, rotary cutter, and a machine ready to sew—in other words, everything that was on the supply list. By the time the class was half over, I had finished one threadcatcher and started a second one.

“You left everyone else in the class in the dust again, didn’t you?” the husband remarked when I talked to him that evening. Yeah, well, it’s not hard to show up prepared for a class. Or life, for that matter. I wonder, sometimes, if I am being too hard on other people by expecting them to be even moderately competent, but I don’t think so.

In any case, here is my finished pincushion threadcatcher.

I still have to stuff the pincushion. Some people did that in class, but I have a 25-pound bag of crushed walnut shells that I need to use up.

I left the store, went and got lunch, then headed up South Hill to visit one of the three Joann Fabrics stores and the other quilt store. I spent a quiet half an hour thumbing through the new Simplicity pattern catalog and writing down pattern numbers. I knew that a new Joanns weekly flyer was coming out on Thursday and I suspected the Simplicity patterns would be on sale.

The quilt store on South Hill is small, but well stocked. It’s so well stocked, in fact, that the owner would like to move into the space next door and expand, but she told Tera and me how much she is currently paying in rent and I think it’s astronomical. And she’s not even downtown. This store carries Juki machines. I was the only one in the store, so I casually mentioned how much I love my Juki sergers and that I was teaching serger classes in Kalispell. I asked if she ever had requests for serger classes—I’ve never seen them on her class calendar—and she said that she would love to offer some, but she just doesn’t have time and doesn’t know other machines well enough to troubleshoot problems.

[You see where this is going, don’t you?]

I offered to send her my teaching information. She seemed eager to schedule at least a basic serger class to see if there was interest. If the universe wants me to teach serger classes, I might as well embrace the opportunity. It’s not like I have a lot of competition.

I was back at the Airbnb by 4:30 pm in order to miss the evening rush hour, and spent a relaxing couple of hours working on my EPP and reading. On Thursday, I went further afield to two new quilt stores, so stay tuned. My Kalispell quilting peeps will be especially interested as I may have found a place for us to have a retreat.

Itinerant Stitcher on the Road Again

I went on a road trip. I usually take one toward the end of January or beginning of February. In years past, several of us have gone to Portland for a denominational get-together—and I’ll often act as chauffeur—but that meeting has been Zoom-only since the pandemic and will be again this year. Next Saturday, a group of us is getting together at the church and attending the Zoom meeting together. I am making a batch of BBQ pork and either cole slaw or potato salad. My schedule starts to fill up soon and I probably won’t be free to go anywhere until after the Auction, so I took advantage of this opportunity to travel. I might have gone to Seattle, but DD#2 also needed to get away and is in San Diego visiting her best friend from high school.

My friend Susan was going to go with me on this trip. Her daughter lives about an hour south of Spokane and had planned to come up and meet us and take Susan home with her for a few days to visit the grandkids. Susan texted me Monday night, though, to tell me that she had gone to town with another friend of ours, and by the time they got back, our other friend was experiencing fever and chills. She later tested positive for covid, so Susan decided to play it safe and stay home. We were both disappointed, but she didn’t want to risk exposing anyone else.

This was my haul from the trip, and I’ll explain what I got as I go along:

I left Tuesday morning at first light. About halfway to Spokane, I noticed that I no longer had heat coming out of the vents. “Hmmm,” I thought. “That’s new.”

[Honestly, nothing about this car surprises me anymore. The husband thinks it is possessed. I said that wasn’t rational, because it’s a machine, but he stands by his assertion.]

I was plenty warm with just the seat heater on, so it wasn’t a huge issue. I fiddled with the controls so that I could explain to the husband exactly what was happening. Basically, the fan works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t, and even when it’s working, the air that is coming out of the vents can best be described as “lukewarm.” He said that didn’t really help him to diagnose the problem, but he’s going to put the car in the shop and look at it. I might be driving the Acura for a few days. The replacement starter solenoid also arrived and he needs to put that in. I don’t want to buy another car, but I told him that he needs to tell me when working on this car has gotten to be too much of a hassle. He says he hasn’t reached that point yet. If I didn’t have my own personal BMW mechanic, I would have traded this car in for a reliable Honda a long time ago.

I got to Spokane around noon on Tuesday and headed for the two quilt stores in Spokane Valley. One—Heartbeat Quilting—is a dedicated longarm store. They rent time on their machines and have all sorts of supplies for longarm quilters (except rulers—more on that in a moment). They also carry the entire line of Signature thread. I stopped there, first, and picked up some thread colors I needed. (I went on this trip armed with a list, which is the only way I can shop at quilt stores without getting overwhelmed by all the pretties.)

My next stop was The Quilting Bee. This is a huge store. Huge. It’s what is referred to as a “destination quilt store,” because people (like me) make actual pilgrimages there. This store is also a Janome and Bernina dealer, and it’s where I take my Janome 6600P every June to have it serviced. They sell Bernina machines but don’t rent time on their longarm machines, preferring to send people to Heartbeat Quilting. The last time I was at The Quilting Bee, they had the whole line of Amanda Murphy longarm rulers, so I was excited about rounding out my collection with the ones I hadn’t been able to find locally. Unfortunately, when I went to look for them and couldn’t find them, the saleswoman that was helping me said that they had put all of them on clearance at their sidewalk sale.

That sound you hear is me wailing with disappointment. I was hoping not to have to order the rulers, because I wanted to come home and finish the tops I’ve got stacked up and waiting. I moved on to the next few items on my list, which were a ruler foot for Robin, an Oliso mini-project iron for me, a set of Bernina gripper rings for my Q20 (for free motion quilting), some Aurifil thread, and a backing for the red Candy Coated quilt. I managed to find a bolt in the sale section with five yards on it, so I got a screaming deal on that backing.

[I had a mini project iron—one I bought at Wal-Mart—but I cannot for the life of me find it in my quilting supplies. I’ve looked for it everywhere. I might have left it somewhere after a class. Oliso recently came out with those little project irons, so I bought one to replace the one I can’t find, which just about guarantees that the other one will resurface soon.]

After I finished shopping, I took the car through the carwash—it might be a diva, but it’s going to be a clean diva—and hit all the thrift stores on that side of town before heading to the Airbnb. I stayed at the same Airbnb where I stayed last October, because it was so convenient and comfortable. It was also $38 a night, so three nights cost me less than one night at a hotel and I was able to make breakfast and dinner there.

Tomorrow, you’ll get to hear about the class I took at The Quilting Bee, and my discovery that there are students everywhere who come to class not having read the supply list.

A Couple of Days of Mindless Activity

My brain needed a couple of days off. I’ve been asking it to learn new quilting skills, crank out ideas, and teach people, and it was tired. We got an unexpected “winter storm” on Thursday—perhaps it was the one that we were supposed to get Monday which never materialized—with a few inches of new snow followed by a messy rain/snow mix. I decided it would be a good day to stay put.

[The husband poured a footing at a property around the corner on Thursday. They got it done, but he came home cold and soaking wet and then had to go to CPR refresher class.]

I spent Thursday morning sorting paperwork into file folders, a mindless activity if ever there was one. I’ve got a few entries to make in Quickbooks and then last year’s financial information will be ready to send off to the accountant. Yay. I am glad to have that taken care of. My Accuquilt cutter is back in place and ready to cut fabric.

After lunch on Thursday, I pulled out my red, pink, and orange bag of strips and did nothing but sew strips together. Miles and miles of strips. I started a Candy Coated quilt from that bag a few months ago, but the bag is still overflowing and needs to be dealt with. I sewed Thursday afternoon and again yesterday morning. I gave myself until noon yesterday to see how far I could get. I finished all the rows:

These just need to be sewn together, basted with batting and a backing, and added to the queue. I didn’t empty the bag completely, but I put a significant dent into it. The next bag of strips I tackle will either be the cream/white ones or the blue ones.

I need to finish quilting the wallhanging, though, and then start quilting the tumbler top. While I was sewing, I was also watching Amanda Murphy videos and now I have a whole collection of new ideas to try out. I’ve got something fun in mind for that tumbler quilt.

In one of her videos, Amanda demonstrated how to combine free motion quilting—she was quilting loops, my favorite—with rulerwork motifs like stars and flowers. I can’t wait to try that combination. In one of her books, she made the comment that rulerwork tends to appeal to quilters who love piecing. That totally makes sense now that I think about it. I am not an improv/free motion kind of quilter AT ALL. I can do it, but rulerwork makes my brain happy.

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I have two trays of lettuce seedlings:

I’ll start the next tray in a couple of days. Once it’s all up and growing, this should keep us in lettuce until I can get some planted in the greenhouse or outside.

Our fire department is planning to have its annual fundraising auction again this year. We’ve had to cancel it for the past two years because of the pandemic, but we’re trying to build a new station and we need to get money coming in again. My auction job for the past decade or so has been to run the Finance Trailer, where all the money comes in, because I like counting pennies. The husband has a new job, though, as the person in charge of the equipment sale portion of the auction, so I am moving over there to be his assistant. I need to get up to speed on the equipment sale software and the whole process of verifying titles and checking in equipment. The sale is the first weekend in April.

Can we work together? LOL. Sometimes there are too many generals and not enough foot soldiers in our relationship, but he knows more about the equipment coming into the sale than anyone else, and I’m good at administration. It makes sense for me to be his assistant. I am the closest thing to a mind reader he’s got.

Making T-Shirts

T-shirt class went very well. I had six students, including one from the Serger 101 class at the beginning of January, three who had been in my serger classes last summer, and two new students. One of the new students really should have taken the Serger 101 class because she was not familiar with her machine—and she acknowledged that—but she managed. Thankfully, all the machines were well behaved.

I am glad I structured the first class the way I did. I started with an overview of different kinds of knit fabrics and passed out samples for each student to take home. The quilt store owner had ordered a bolt of Laguna Cotton for me, so the students had quality fabric to work with in class, but we also talked about what they could expect to find online and at Joann Fabrics. It’s unrealistic to expect a quilt store owner to carry a wide selection of garment fabrics, and this owner knows that people may be buying garment fabric elsewhere.

We moved on to discussing patterns and pattern tracing. I had downloaded my pattern, printed it, and taped it together at home. One of the students had taken hers to Kalispell Copy and had them print it on their large-format printer, so everyone was able to see the two options. We talked about tracing paper and Pellon Easy-Pattern. I showed them how to use a dressmaker’s curve and why it’s best to cut out knits using a rotary cutter rather than shears.

I had cut out the pieces for a child’s T-shirt before class and brought my machine to class with me. I demonstrated how to serge the shoulder seams and add either clear elastic or 1/4” ribbon to stabilize them. I do have an elasticator foot for my serger, but I pointed out that on my serger, my regular presser foot has an adjustable opening for feeding elastic/ribbon. We checked everyone’s machines to see if others had that option.

I laid out the front/back, now serged together at the shoulders, and we talked about the relationship between armscyes and sleeve caps and how to pin in the sleeve using small Wonder Clips. I love that some of my knitting design experience has transferred so nicely to sewing. When I serged the first sleeve, part of the seam was a bit wonky, which gave me a chance to show them how to remove that part of the seam and re-do it. (Everything can be a learning opportunity.) I made a neckband, showed them how to divide it into fourths and clip it into the neck opening, and attached it. I serged the two side seams. The T-shirt was done except for the hems. I promised to bring my old coverstitch machine to next month’s class so they could try it out and hem their finished T-shirts.

That was the first half of the class. During the second half, everyone traced their patterns and some students even got their pieces cut out. Others wanted to take the fabric home and wash it, first. I had told them at the outset that there might be homework. Everyone went home happy and satisfied and I expect to see a batch of T-shirts at next month’s class. Next month, we’re going to trace an existing shirt and draft a pattern from it.

And some of them are already asking about a leggings class.

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I decided to cut out the rest of the circles for the makeup pads before sorting tax stuff. I serged the rest of them yesterday morning before class so I could take them with me to sewing today.

Securing and trimming serger tails will be a good activity to do while sitting and visiting. I might throw this batch in the washer and dryer when it’s done to get rid of more of that lint.

The husband bought a new Honda generator for his other truck and asked if I could make a cover for it. I made a cover for the first generator out of some 500D Cordura. That one has held up well. I need more Cordura, though, so I ordered some from Seattle Fabrics on Monday. Their website notes that that they will be opening to the public again soon. That news makes me happy. The store has been closed to walk-in traffic for almost two years. I got a shipping notice within a few hours of submitting the order on the website, so I expect the Cordura to arrive soon.

The husband also ordered a new scan tool. This is a small tablet that hooks up to a vehicle’s computer and reads and diagnoses error codes. Scan tools range from very simple ones that just spit out the code to sophisticated systems that come with expensive subscriptions to a database with detailed information on virtually every make and model of vehicle. I’m not sure he’s at the expensive subscription level yet, but he’s close, thanks in part to The Diva. I am all for anything that makes it easier for him to work on my car.

Ultimate Broken Machine

I called Kevin at the BMW dealer in Spokane to give him the code that the husband picked up with the code reader in case they needed to order a part for the car. When I gave him the code, he said, “Ohhhh, hold up—a recall on that part just came out.” He ran the VIN and sure enough, my car is included in the recall. I told the husband and the husband said, “But you had that part replaced already.” (Indeed, I did.) Here’s the kicker: the part is being recalled (again) because the “recall component was not produced with sufficient long-term durability characteristics,” according to documentation filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

As of yesterday, Kevin said, they don’t yet have a fix. He suggested I just drive around with the check engine light on until they do have one, at which point I can bring it in and they’ll do the recall work for free. We canceled the appointment I had made. The husband said that it’s nice that BMW will do recall work on a car with 111,000 miles on it and I responded that I thought it would be better if BMW stopped trying to cut corners and made parts that didn’t self-destruct before they were supposed to. (This makes two, the other one being the transfer case that failed, spectacularly, at 70,000 miles.)

“Ultimate Driving Machine,” my ass. It can’t be an ultimate anything if it doesn’t work.

At least the brake pad sensor issue has been fixed. I am still getting the drivetrain malfunction warning, but that’s related to the recall issue.

Between this car and all the car repair videos I watch with the husband, I know way more about cars than I really need to. Last night I learned how to change a brake line in a 2014 Dodge Caravan.

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I spent yesterday morning getting my T-shirt class stuff together. This has been a difficult class to organize, not because I don’t know how to teach it, but because what the store wanted—or thought they wanted—wasn’t what I thought lent itself well to a class, so there was a lot of back-and-forth about number of sessions and scheduling. The initial request was for a T-shirt class where every student could go home with a T-shirt that fit him or her. That would work if every student were the same shape and size. We compromised on a three-session class over three months. (I am discovering that stores like classes that run over a period of time, which keeps students coming back to the store, but requires some adjustment in how I plan my classes.) In the first session, which is tomorrow, we’re all going to trace, cut out, and assemble a kid’s T-shirt. Children basically have zero fitting issues, so we’ll be able to concentrate on the basics of making a garment with a serger.

The second and third classes are somewhat dependent upon what happens with this first class. I like to joke that “No class outline survives first contact with the students.” I hope that everyone will get a T-shirt made or at least well underway tomorrow, even if they have to finish it at home. We will then be able to focus on pattern drafting and fitting in the second and third classes.

Wish me luck. I’ll report back later in the week.

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I made several dozen makeup rounds yesterday which just need to have the serger tails secured and trimmed. I was cutting the rounds with the Accuquilt cutter, but I had to put the cutter away because the table that it sits on is the place where I sort and organize paperwork for tax season. Our construction company is a partnership, and partnership tax returns have to be filed by March 15. I like to have the information to our accountant by the end of January. Most of it is in Quickbooks and the reports are easy to pull, but I have to tease some things out of the mound of paperwork that I am too lazy to sort during the year because I hate filing.

So no more fabric cutting until taxes are done. I know how to motivate myself, trust me.

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The second tray of lettuce is planted. I am going to wash the totes I was using in the previous system and give them to Ali so she can try setting up a system at her house. We are all fond of salads here in the neighborhood.

Binding continues apace.

A few more car videos and this one should be done.

Designs in the Wild

One of my blog readers—hi, Elizabeth!—made the Cobbles and Pebbles quilt and shared a picture of it with me on Facebook yesterday.

Elizabeth made this with remnants of the “Jane Austen at Home” fabric line by Riley Blake Designs. (She said that the rest of the fabric went into an English Paper Piecing quilt.) I love how it turned out! The overall look is soft and subtle, and even though it’s made from a single fabric line, it looks scrappy. Seeing my designs out in the wild is so much fun. Thank you, Elizabeth!

[Funny story—I was teaching at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival some years ago and a student came into my class wearing an Aran sweater. I complimented her on how nice it looked and she said, “This is your Son of Aran sweater from the knitalong!” (I hosted an Aran sweater knitalong 20 years ago on the Aranknit Yahoo group.) I didn’t even recognize one of my own “children,” sadly.]

If only I could clone myself. I know I get a lot done, but I wish I could do everything I want to do. I have about 20 quilt designs in my head waiting to come out. I joked to the husband that I should have had a few more kids, because many of the productive quilt designers out there have family-run businesses. Or perhaps the problem is that I am interested in too many things.

I made and attached binding to the squares quilt yesterday and sewed one side down while watching the cliffhanger end of the San Francisco-Dallas playoff game. (I thought Tony Romo was going to blow a gasket, LOL.) The O’s wallhanging is back on the Q20. That one shouldn’t take long as it’s all straight-line rulerwork. I’d like to quilt the turquoise tumblers quilt after that—I am thinking that one might lend itself well to a combination of rulerwork and free motion quilting.

I looked for this Amanda Murphy book while I was in Missoula on Friday but couldn’t find a copy:

I have her Ultimate Guide to Rulerwork Quilting book that just came out—and it’s great—but I’d like to have the rulerwork idea book, too. The husband has Kindle Unlimited with Amazon. I downloaded a copy for free to his Kindle so I could look at it, but that’s not a convenient place to have it. I’m going to have to order a hard copy.

So much to learn and so much to do.

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The low tire pressure light came on as I was leaving church yesterday, so I called the husband on my way home to let him know I would be bringing The Diva over to the new shop to have it filled up. He told me just to pull the car into the shop so he could put it up on the lift and look at it. A bit later, he came in and said he had replaced the brake pad sensor because it had a broken wire. And one tire has a very slow leak, which we suspect is the same problem it had last winter. The tire place didn’t get the bead seated properly and I had to take it back and have them re-seat the tire on the rim. I might stop in there this week. That leaves only a bad EGR sensor—for now—and when I take it in to the BMW dealer in Spokane, I’ll have them replace the sensor if they have the part in stock. I’m going to drop the car off at 8 am and get a ride to the quilt store so I can take a class in the morning. The quilt store has open stitching in the afternoon, so I could spend the whole day there if I needed to.

Another One Quilted

I finished quilting the square-in-a-square top yesterday. This one was a learning experience in several ways.

• Custom quilting, either free-motion or rulerwork, takes a lot longer than a free-motion edge-to-edge design. That’s why custom quilting costs more. I said to the husband that I probably wouldn’t quilt a top like this with rulerwork again in the future if it’s destined to be donated, although I might custom quilt a top if it were to be donated to the quilt auction in Ritzville and I wanted to ensure it brought top dollar. This is not that kind of a top. This is a humble, scrappy, square-in-a-square quilt whose main purpose will be to keep someone warm. Because it is a heavily geometric design, though, it lent itself well to practicing rulerwork. I could practice rulerwork on quilt sandwiches made just for that purpose, but I’ve found that the learning process is more likely to stick—and I am more likely to put forth my best effort—if I practice on an actual quilt top.

• Custom quilting requires that one think about the design as well as how to quilt it and in what order to quilt it. There is all sorts of advice floating around out there about how to quilt a top: Start in the middle and quilt out. Start at one side and quilt to the other side. Quilt in one direction and then in the opposite direction. Divide the top into quadrants and quilt one section at a time. I think the answer really depends on the top. I do like Amanda Murphy’s advice to “quilt the bones” first. That helps to stabilize the design and provide a foundation for additional quilting.

• I have learned that there are different kinds of rulerwork. This top wanted rulerwork that complemented the geometric nature of the piecing. Some designs want rulerwork that emphasizes a motif or motifs within the top, perhaps motifs that are appliquéd on or printed on the fabric. I suspect I am going to do more of the former, but I’m learning some of the latter, too, because we’re working on a motif-printed top in Ruler Club. Also, it’s not an either-or situation. Some tops feature both kinds of rulerwork and free motion quilting. Robin pointed out such a quilt to me on Friday. It was hanging in the hallway at The Confident Stitch in Missoula and featured a top comprised of 6” equilateral triangles, each of which had been quilted a different way. The end result was very striking.

Overall, I am happy with the rulerwork I did on this top and I think it complements the piecing well. The center has curved “orange peels” around the large squares and within the small squares. I quilted 1” round circles within the white border, and finished up with simple piano key quilting in the outer border:

I thought about doing another rulerwork design in the outer border—I have lots of good rulers for border designs—but I was tired and wanted to cross this top off the list. Sometimes, enough is as good as it gets. This top is ready to be trimmed and bound and added to the “to be donated” pile. I am going to move the O’s wallhanging back to the front of the queue and finish that one next.

Or maybe I’ll take a break and just serge makeup pads for a while. T-shirt class is this Wednesday and I need to do a bit of prep work for that, too.

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Lettuce seeds sprout quickly in that new growing system:

I must have missed putting seeds into that rooting plug in the back. Oops.

I’ll get another tray started today, I think, so we have a rolling supply.

Teaching, Teaching Everywhere

Robin and I went to Missoula yesterday. The roads were bare and dry, the weather was clear, and each of us had a list of things we wanted to get.

We started at the store where I bought my Janome 3000 coverstitch machine. I don’t know all the details, but I am pretty sure that the current owners bought/took over the Bernina and Janome dealerships from the woman who had them previously at a store located near Joann Fabrics. That store went out of business last May and this one popped up shortly after. The last time I was there, I saw that this store had the entire line of Amanda Murphy rulers. Our quilt store in Kalispell also carries them but has a smaller selection.

I bought a few more sets to round out my collection:

While I was paying for my purchase, Robin made an offhand comment to me about teaching rulerwork. The store owner, who was ringing up my purchases, got very excited. “Do you teach?” she asked. “We’re looking for people to teach classes here—any kind of classes. What do you teach?” I told her that I am currently teaching serger classes in Kalispell and she invited me to send them some proposals.

The universe has such a sense of humor.

We made our way to the other side of town to Joann Fabrics. I was curious to see if the Missoula store was in dire straits, too. It does not appear to be. This is a well-stocked and well-staffed store with regular operating hours. The spring fabrics are starting to arrive, including the spring knits. I looked at the selection of those and then spotted a large rack of fabric that needed further investigation.

This Joanns had about 20 bolts of a rayon/poly/spandex sweatshirt fleece, definitely a new fabric for our stores. How exciting! UNFORTUNATELY, ALL THE COLORS WERE MUDDY EARTH TONES. YES, I AM YELLING. There were bolts of sage green, mustard yellow, brown, taupe, etc., none of which look good on me. Where is the royal blue? Emerald green? Hot pink?

In the end, I bought two yards of a deep purple. Purple is not a favorite color of mine, but it was the closest I could get to something wearable. I will make a hoodie out of this fabric to see what I think.

By then, it was lunchtime. We drove downtown and scored a parking spot right in front of a small BBQ restaurant, so that’s where we ate. After lunch, we walked down the block to The Confident Stitch.

I really want to like this store, but it’s so hard. The selection is wonderful. They carry both quilting fabrics and garment fabrics. I’ve ordered from them online and been there in person. The atmosphere inside the store is just weird, though. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s not an enjoyable place to shop. I did get some Robert Kaufman Essex Linen because they had it in colors I need for a project and this saves me from having to order it online.

We headed back to Kalispell mid-afternoon with a stop—of course—at the Amish store in St. Ignatius. I had a cup of coconut ice cream. Robin had Mountain Berry. I also scored a half-gallon of Wilcoxson’s Peppermint Stick ice cream there. Wilcoxson’s is a Montana company (Bozeman, I think) and I am a bit addicted to Peppermint Stick ice cream with hot fudge sauce on it. Unfortunately, that flavor is a seasonal offering and our grocery store is out.

I was back home just before 5 pm. We had a good day and I scratched my road trip itch temporarily. The Diva is running just fine despite all the dash lights, so I am fairly confident it will get me to Spokane.

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In other news, I cracked the serger problem—it was, indeed, an issue with that microfiber terrycloth. I switched to rounds cut from the washcloths I bought at the Dollar Store and they work just fine.

I’ll bust out about 50 or 60 of these in odd moments here and there in the next week and send them off. Robin also asked for a couple to try.

A Mystery at the Fabric Store

Something strange is going on at our Joann Fabrics. Their pre-pandemic operating hours were 9 am to 9 pm every day. About six months ago, they pushed back their daily opening time to 10 am. A few weeks ago, they pushed it back to 11 am. This week, I noticed a sign on the door indicating that “due to unforeseen circumstances,” they would be closing at 4 pm every day this week.

I know they have been having trouble finding employees. This seems a bit drastic, though, and makes me wonder what exactly is going on. I said to the husband that I did—for about 10 nanoseconds—consider asking Deb, the manager, for a green apron and telling her I would pitch in and help. They wouldn’t even have to train me.

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A few weeks ago, the husband pulled up a YouTube video on scissors. It was on a channel that he subscribes to. The guy devises all sorts of elaborate tests to compare brands of tools and then tortures the tools to see which brand performs best.

I knew at the outset that the Kai scissors would probably come out on top—they are the preferred brand of many sewists—and they did, but the Heritage brand came in a close second. They are made in the USA. The husband ordered himself a pair for his shop and they came yesterday. These are a hefty pair of shears (my Fiskars kitchen scissors are for comparison).

He said to me, “I bet these would cut Formica,” which is kind of a joke (not really) because 30 years ago, when renovating our first house in Pennsylvania, he used my good Fiskars to cut a piece of Formica. I just about had a stroke. He also killed several of my hair dryers using them as heat guns. Now he has his own tools.

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Our local Army-Navy store has ice cleats for 20% off this week, so I stopped in yesterday and bought a pair for my muck boots.

The Yaktrax don’t fit my mucks, although I really only wear my mucks to go back and forth to the chicken coop. (My daily winter boots are a riding boot style with a lug sole.) There is a slight slope down to the door of the coop, however, and it gets a bit treacherous when it’s icy. I’ve needed some cleats for my mucks, and when I saw the ones the husband had for his, I decided to get some for myself.

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I think that if Susan and I end up going to Spokane in a few weeks, I am going to call Kevin and ask him if they can run the super-duper diagnostics on The Diva and figure out why my dash is lit up like a Christmas tree. The check engine light won’t go off, I am still getting the drivetrain malfunction message, and now a brake sensor is telling me I need new brake pads despite the fact that the husband looked at all four wheels and determined there is plenty of brake pad left. (He was the one who replaced them last time, so he knows how long they’ve been on there.) We’re also still waiting on that starter solenoid. I realize that I am an unusual customer because I don’t replace my BMW every two years like most people who drive them, although Kevin has told me repeatedly not to get rid of it because they aren’t making diesels anymore. Part of me wishes these cars weren’t so heavily computerized, because the technology fails long before the mechanical parts do.

The car runs fine, and I plan to drive it until I can’t anymore. I don’t want to spend the money on a new-to-me vehicle right now.

Circling Around

I did not have a lot of time to work on this quilt yesterday because I spent the afternoon in town running errands and at Ruler Club, but I got a few of the smaller squares quilted with the new circle rulers:

I like this a lot. I’m still wondering if it’s “enough” quilting, though, or if I should add some fill. I might take it to Ruler Club next month and ask for opinions there. We had a good Ruler Club class yesterday. There are about 15 women signed up for this six-month session. Some are quilting on domestic machines, some on sit-down machines like mine, and some on machines on frames. The instructor uses a different machine in each session. Yesterday, she demonstrated on the same machine I have, but on a frame. It is fascinating to see the differences. (As much as I love teaching, it is also great fun to be a student.) I also took the Kindness quilt for show-and-tell, because I used one of the rulers we’re using in Ruler Club to quilt the narrow red border on that one. I think it helps to see how other quilters use the rulers on actual quilts, not just on the practice piece. I spread it out and we looked at it and people asked questions and offered suggestions.

The more I use rulers, the more I love them, which is a bit of a surprise to me. I thought, when I bought the Q20 last year, that I would be using it mostly for free motion quilting and edge-to-edge designs. I am also glad I got the table for the Q20 instead of a frame, because I think I would be frustrated trying to quilt on a frame.

The store owner suggested that those of us with sit-down Q16 and Q20 machines start another club and meet monthly, but I am running out of room in my schedule, LOL. She and I also discussed the idea of making the Serger 101 class a standing monthly class, which is fine with me. If I have students, I’ll teach it, and if no one signs up, we won’t offer it that month.

I still have to schedule some serger classes with the other quilt store. And the T-shirt class is next Wednesday. Sometimes I think about my mother taking Stretch and Sew classes in the 1970s and I just laugh. Who knew.

My friend Susan and I are planning a trip for the end of the month, but we’ll have to see if the weather cooperates and if The Diva will behave. Susan’s daughter lives in Pullman, Washington, which is about an hour south of Spokane. I would take Susan as far as Spokane and her daughter would drive up to meet us and retrieve her for a few days. The big quilt store in Spokane has a class I’d like to take, so we’re looking at scheduling the trip around that.

Everyone wants to travel with me, LOL.

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I got the first tray of lettuce planted yesterday:

The way this works is that those rooting plugs sit in “net cups” suspended in the liquid growing medium. (I use Texas Tomato Food.) As the lettuce plants grow, their roots come down through the openings in the net cups to access the growing medium. I’ve got the lights adjusted so that they are fairly close to the tray, which keeps the plants from getting leggy. I can move the lights up as the plants get bigger. The lettuce I’ve been using is a variety called Green Ice that I had left over from last summer.

I’ll plant another tray in a couple of days. The shelving unit has room for six trays of 18 cups each, so we’ll have plenty of lettuce. I also might do a tray with some herbs like basil or thyme.

I picked up some different washcloths at the Dollar Store yesterday—these are cotton, not microfiber—and will experiment with using those to serge makeup pads for DD#2.

Tomorrow is sewing at the old schoolhouse up the road. I haven’t been for almost a month, so I should put in an appearance for a bit. Maybe I can finish binding the Kindness quilt.

Where is the Problem?

Troubleshooting is a process. When something isn’t going well, what is causing the problem?

• Is it the pattern? (ahem, Little Poppins Bag)

• Did you chose a project beyond your current skill level? While it’s good to challenge onself, challenging oneself too much just leads to frustration.

• Is it the materials? Are you trying to make a pattern with a woven instead of a knit?

• Is it the tools? Does your sewing machine need to be adjusted or serviced?

Of course, some of these categories overlap, which makes pinning down the problem even tougher. One thing I have noticed is that makers almost always assign blame to themselves, first: “I must not be understanding this correctly,” or “I’m a terrible sewist.”

[I, on the other hand, have plenty of confidence in my skills (too much?), and usually assume it’s a problem with the pattern or the presentation—or, in the case of sewing, the materials or the machine.]

DD#2 needs more reusable makeup pads. I made a batch for her a couple of years ago and they’re about worn out. I got a yard of the same organic cotton fleece I used last time as well as half a dozen microfiber washcloths. Because I was cutting up scraps yesterday with the Accuquilt cutter, I took the opportunity to cut circles of the appropriate size from both fabrics. Two circles—one of each fabric—get serged together around the outside to make the pads.

I’ve made these before. This is not unfamiliar territory, but I was having a terrible time with this batch. I checked the needles. I checked the thread. I vacuumed out the serger. I serged with the microfiber circle on the bottom. I serged with the microfiber circle on the top. I adjusted the presser foot pressure. I adjusted the differential feed. No matter what I did, the microfiber circle was scooching and stretching as I serged and the circles looked more like amoebae than circles.

I suspect it’s the microfiber cloth. It’s very thick and springy. I am going to see if the Dollar Store has some thinner microfiber cloths that might be more suitable. Making these shouldn’t be this hard.

[Microfiber fabric generates a lot of lint. I made extensive use of my lint roller while cutting. In a very strange bit of serendipity, DD#2 texted me mid-afternoon to let me know that she had been at Ikea and picked up two more packages of lint roller refills for me there. They were out of stock when we shopped at Thanksgiving. My kids are so thoughtful.]

After the makeup pad debacle, I thought I might experiment with making a neckwarmer from some cushy black microvelvet I found on the remnant rack. I paired it with a length of flannel, also from the remnant rack. Again, this is something I’ve done before, although with jersey knits rather than microvelvet (which is still a knit). I tested—always—and adjusted the settings to where I thought they should be, but when I serged one long side, I realized that the serger was gathering the microvelvet faster than the flannel. Ugh. I cut the stitching on that side, adjusted the differential feed, and tried again.

It took more fiddling than it should have, although it’s done. I like the neckwarmer and will use it, but by the end of the afternoon I had started to ask myself if maybe I should give all of this up and become a greeter at Wal-Mart.

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My Amanda Murphy circle rulers came yesterday:

I will spend this morning with the Q20 again. I have to do my homework for Ruler Club, which meets this afternoon, and I want to practice with the circle rulers on that yellow, green, and purple sample piece.

The rest of my lettuce-growing supplies arrived, so getting them set up is on the to-do list for this morning, too.

We are at the “skating rink” stage of winter, when it snows, then melts, then freezes. One of our friends on the fire department gifted these ice cleats to the husband a few weeks ago. These are a different design than the Yaktrax he usually uses.

The husband tried them out yesterday and said they worked well, so he’s just going to leave them on his rubber boots. The boots are on the boot dryer, in case you’re wondering why they are upside down like that.

Bacon Deliveries

Friday was messy, weather-wise, because it warmed up enough for the precipitation to come down as rain. And there was some wind. Still, it was nothing out of the ordinary for January in Montana. I do like it when it stays colder, though, because the snow looks prettier longer. As soon as it warms up even a bit, the snow on our 12’-12’ pitch roof starts coming down, and when the snow falls off the upper roof and hits the porch roof, it sounds like we’re under attack.

Seattle was cut off from the rest of Washington state for a brief period on Friday when I-5 was closed between Seattle and Portland due to flooding. Hopefullly, Snoqualmie Pass will open today. DD#2 informs me that the grocery store shelves are getting a bit bare because trucks can’t get through, although she’s okay for now.

We appear to be in for a stretch of dry weather, if the long-term forecast is any indication. That’s good, because I am itching for a road trip. The husband and I drove about an hour south to pick up the pork orders, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I need a long stretch of open road. Missoula is doable. Spokane might be a bit trickier, but possible. Clearly, I am not going to drive to Seattle any time soon.

I delivered pork orders to Cathy and Tera after lunch on Friday. They had to get the pork into their freezers so there wasn’t much time for visiting, but Tera and I did discuss a possible quilt-related trip in April. Even a few moments together is sufficient time for us to come up with some kind of plan to get into trouble.

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I think I have decided how I want to quilt the smaller squares on the square-in-square quilt:

I roughed that in with disappearing marker. Unfortunately, I do not have the correct ruler for making those curves and don’t want to freehand them. I ordered myself a set of Amanda Murphy circle rulers, which should be here on Monday. I set this aside and got another basted top from the pile. I chose my wallhanging one, because I didn’t have to change thread. I am quilting a quarter inch outside the Os and inside the Os:

I likely will do something similar around the center squares. The diamond-shaped sections in the sashing might also get a motif. It’s a lot of start-and-stop quilting, which many machine quilters don’t like because it requires knotting and burying ends. Meh. I was a knitter for a long time and that requires a lot of darning in ends. I prefer that to “travel quilting” to get to the next section. I keep a pincushion with self-threading needles next to the Q20 and bury the ends each time I quilt a circle. That keeps the work neat and doesn’t leave them all to be dealt with at the end.

I see it all as part of the process. You can either enjoy the whole process or not, and I am choosing to enjoy all of it.

If you can’t find joy in the snow, you will have a lot less joy in your life but the same amount of snow.

Thus far, I like the 50/50 cotton/poly batting. It certainly beats that Fairfield stuff I used in the Kindness quilt. I just do not like that batting. I’m sewing down the binding on the Kindness quilt right now. I decided to use the backing strips that I cut off when I trimmed the quilt to make the binding. Had I been thinking ahead, I simply would have left enough backing on for a self-binding edge. Oh, well. This was only a little extra work.

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The husband finished assembling the lettuce shelving unit. It fits nicely into the same spot as the old one.

I moved the old shelf into the yarn room for more storage. The whole basement needs to be cleaned and a load of stuff donated to one of the thrift stores.

Those two totes on the top shelf were part of the original lettuce system. I had to cut the lettuce again because the totes didn’t fit under the lights otherwise. I am not sure how many cuttings one can get from each batch—theoretically, it should be several as long as the roots are growing in the medium, but I did have to empty and clean those totes yesterday because there was salt buildup from the growing medium as well as some algae growing in it. I filled the totes with fresh growing medium. We’ll probably get another cutting of lettuce in a week or so.

I need to start lettuce seeds in the rooting plugs today so they are ready to go when the trays get here. I’ll take a picture and explain that setup in more detail in a future blog post.

Thus Far, a Nothingburger

Six inches of snow does not a “storm” make, in my book. Maybe I’ve lived here too long. The storm warning is in place until 11:00 am, but looking at the radar, the blob of precipitation seems to have stalled over Spokane. Missoula is getting freezing rain. We’ll have to see what happens when it’s time for us to go pick up the pork.

Snoqualmie Pass is closed until Sunday. I cannot remember that happening in recent years. Some of that is a shortage of plow drivers, to be sure, but the pass also has gotten an insane amount of snow and wind which is causing avalanches over the roadway.

The husband spent most of yesterday plowing, some with the plow truck and some with the track loader. He plows out the nearby neighbors’ driveways and they bring him beer in return. It’s a good system. He also makes sure the fire hall is plowed so he and the other firefighters can get the engines out for calls.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t truly snowed in, I stayed home from sewing. I was out Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and needed to stay here and get some work done. I finished quilting the Kindness quilt and trimmed it for binding. I am a bit stuck. I auditioned about 15 different colors of Kona for binding and wasn’t happy with any of them. The quilt wants an aqua binding and I don’t have the right color Kona. (Shocking, but true.) I will dive into my stash of turquoise prints today and see if I have enough of something suitable. A black stripe cut on the bias might also work.

I then chose one of the remaining four tops that are basted and ready to quilt. This is a top that I worked on two years ago when my MIL was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. It’s a very simple quilt made up of squares in squares; I made this one mostly to mess around with some color and fabric combinations. And now it’s a good one to practice rulerwork on.

[Most of my “practice” quilts probably will go to Ritzville next fall. At Ruler Club last month, we had a short discussion about what to do with our practice quilts. Finished is better than perfect, yes, but we don’t want to donate things that are obviously flawed. I think I take good care even when I am “practicing” a new skill, but that is something to keep in mind.]

In any case, I looked at the top and considered how to quilt it. There is no one right answer to this question except that it needs enough quilting not to fall apart. An allover design would work. So would quilting with rulers. I wanted to practice my rulerwork, so rulers it was. Which one(s)? I got out my box of rulers and looked through them.

Squares often look good with arc quilting—think orange peels—so I found a curved ruler of the correct size and arc shape. That would do for the larger squares. The other two will work for the smaller, inner squares, but I haven’t decided on which one yet. Or I could use both and alternate them.

Once I settled on thread—a pearl gray 40wt cotton thread for the top and a pearl gray 40wt Aurifil for the bobbin—work went quickly. I got all the curved quilting done on the large squares yesterday:

Is that enough quilting in those areas? I think so—keep in mind that I still have to quilt inside the smaller squares—but I’m not sure. I could quilt those orange peel areas with a small filler. Right now, I am leaning toward the on-point template for the insides of the smaller squares. I’ll do those and reassess.

[Looking at this photo now, as I write this bog post, I see that I also could carry through on the arc theme and echo the same kinds of arcs inside the smaller squares. So many decisions.]

This quilt also has borders, and I am thinking ribbon candy again. That’s fun to do with the ruler and gives a lot of bang for the buck.

I know that the batting is part of where I’m getting hung up. Most of the quilting instructors use either a polyester batting or a layer of cotton batting and a layer of polyester batting. Using polyester gives a much different appearance to the stitching, and I think it’s why so many of those instructors also quilt their tops so densely. Angela Walters noted that using polyester batting makes her quilts less wrinkly and allows them to hang better for display. If you’re a quilting instructor who doesn’t want to arrive at an event with a suitcase full of wrinkled quilts, you use polyester batting.

I love the old-fashioned look of crinkly cotton quilts, and as mine are going to be used and not hung up for display, I prefer cotton batting. At most, I might use 80/20 cotton/polyester, although one of the tops still-to-be-quilted has a 50/50 batting as an experiment because it’s the wallhanging for the upstairs hallway. I’ll let you know what I think.

Awaiting a Storm

We’re under a winter storm warning through tomorrow, for what that’s worth. The problem is that the National Weather Service has been issuing “winter storm warnings” for months for minuscule amounts of snow (in Montana, 1-2” is not a “winter storm,” sorry), so it’s hard to take these predictions seriously after a while. I’m inclined to believe this one may have some teeth to it just because Snoqualmie Pass is literally impassable at the moment. The WADOT Twitter feed noted that there is no way to get from the east side of Washington state to the west side right now because all three passes are closed.

[As a mother with a kid in Seattle, that makes me slightly nuts.]

The pork processor called yesterday to tell me everything is ready to pick up. Clearly, we are not going to try to do that today. The husband and I will go down there tomorrow morning if the roads are clear.

A package was waiting for me when I got home yesterday:

This is my new lettuce-growing shelving. The husband said he would put it together today as he is not planning to go to work. He’ll probably be out plowing at least part of the day.

I am a bit defensive about this shelving only because I don’t want to field comments like, “You could build that cheaper yourself.” Those kinds of comments tend to pop up in homesteading groups that pride themselves on bootstrapping and doing things on the cheap. I get it. I am also keenly aware that I am not the kind of person who would be able to build that cheaper myself. I cobbled together the existing system and it was a pain in the butt. A cobbled-together system the size we need would be an even bigger pain in the butt.

I’ve decided that my response to those kinds of comments is to point to some of that person’s clothing and say, “You could make that cheaper yourself, you know.”

Figuring out the best ROI on our time and money is a personal decision and one that differs depending on the situation.

I might sew today, but I might also make some curd. I have enough eggs to try out the blackcurrant curd recipe that Cathy sent me. I put all of the appliquéd Sunbonnet Sue blocks up on the design wall yesterday to assess what I need to do next. There are 26 finished blocks and another six completed motifs that just need to be appliquéd to the background fabric. I think I will finish four of those for a total of 30 blocks. I can do a setting of five across and six down—with sashing between—and make a quilt that finishes at roughly twin size.

The blocks are very cute, and because I knew the woman who made them, working on this quilt has a lot of special meaning.

Sergers and Circles

I thought yesterday’s serger class went well. Machines included a couple of late 80s-vintage Bernette sergers—one three-thread and one four-thread—a couple of older Husqvarnas, and two brand-new air-threading models (Janome and Bernette). I can safely say now that Husqvarnas are my least favorite sergers. I have never seen such needlessly complicated machines with such badly written manuals.

I was able to guide everyone in getting their machines threaded and making a chain. One student—there is one in every class—took off like a rocket and had three flannel baby blankets done by the end of class. Several others got at least one blanket done. Only two students never got past the threading and chaining stage. One was an older lady with a vintage Bernette four-thread serger that had belonged to her late sister. She said it was difficult with her eyes and her hands to thread the machine, and she knew coming in that she might have problems. The other lady’s machine made a beautiful three-thread chain, but we couldn’t get it to pick up the left needle thread. After class, I saw her talking to the store owner about a new machine, LOL.

Truly, for a beginning serging class, getting students grounded in the basics of needles, thread, and fabric and walking them through threading their machines is about all you can expect in three hours. That’s assuming, too, that everyone comes in with a working machine. The vintage sergers don’t scare me, but they do have some quirks. The newer air threading machines are quite nice if you have the budget for one, but my Jukis are good, solid, inexpensive machines and I plan to keep using them for a long while yet.

I stopped in at the other quilt store yesterday and talked to the owner there about some serger classes. She also wants to offer a Serger 101 class. I will look at their class schedule for the next couple of months and see when they have some open dates.

Next up is the T-shirt class, two weeks from today.

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I picked up the other set of ribbon candy rulers at the store yesterday, as well as another spool of red Aurifil thread for the bobbin thread of the Kindness quilt. The borders and corners are done, and yesterday morning, I experimented with a pattern in the narrow red border:

I like it and will use it in the rest of the border. I made these with one of the Amanda Murphy Mini Lollipop rulers that we’re using in Ruler Club (which reminds me that I need to get my homework done on the practice quilt before next Tuesday’s class). I think I might have liked these a bit closer together, but I am not taking this out. I do tend to err on the side of less rather than more and need to work on finding a happy medium of quilting density.

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I’m slowly working on finishing up the projects I started last year. I would like to get back to the Slabtown Backpack at some point. I’m also in the middle of another Little Poppins Bag. I started it almost as soon as I finished the first one. This one is going much more quickly now that I’ve deciphered the horrible instructions, but I had to fix a pocket yesterday because I put it on upside down. The exterior is a directional print and I forgot to check the orientation when sewing on the pocket. Oops. Oh well, it’s fixed now.

It looks like we have a winter storm coming in tonight. I’ll have to see if I can make it to sewing tomorrow at the old schoolhouse up the road. If not, I’ll just hunker down here and work my way through the list of projects. I’ve researched some setting ideas for the Sunbonnet Sue blocks and I am pretty sure I know what I want to do with those blocks. That top should go together quickly once I’ve got the sashing made.