What Makes a Good Class?

I will say one thing: Getting up at 3:30 am and having the husband out of here an hour later leads to a very productive day.

[I actually woke up at 2:30 am because the pager went off for a medical call. Once I’m awake, I can’t get back to sleep. And we had a worship team meeting at 6:00 pm last evening, so yesterday was a Very Long Day.]

I started working on this pattern after he left, thinking it might make a good class:

I love Amanda Murphy—I have every single one of her quilting rulers and use them frequently. This is a wonderful design. I am just not sure it would make a good class. There are a lot of steps and I found them a bit tedious. The trees feature decorative chainstitching using Glamore metallic thread. The chainstitching has to be done before the tree gets cut out. And chainstitching has to be done from the back side of the fabric, so the design has to be drawn out ahead of time on interfaced fabric:

(In case you were wondering, all of my machines are set up as flatbed machines. I hardly ever use the free arm.)

The result is very attractive, but it’s not quick:

I soldiered on until lunchtime, then put the project away. I still have to chainstitch two more trees.

My rule is to multiply how long it takes me to make something by three to determine the length of the class. At this point, we’re already at a 12-hour class. 🫤 The pattern includes instructions for placemats, too, so those might be a better choice.

I heard from the Sew Expo class coordinator yesterday. She has chosen four of my classes—only one of which is a knitting class!—and said she may add one or two more as she rounds out the schedule. I am delighted. I taught six classes last year and that was a lot, so even if I only teach four, it will be worth the trip. I have to complete my formal proposals now for the chosen classes and submit them to her.

After lunch, I worked on the Place For Everything Tote. I can see the finish line:

All that is left to do is to assemble all the parts. I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t find the pieces to make the zipper gusset, but I located them hiding under another piece of fabric. Whew. I am hoping to have this done by the end of the weekend. The inside seams have to be bound and I expect that to take some time.

I had enough of this pink quilted fabric left over to cut out the byAnnie Running With Scissors pattern, so that one will be next up in the queue.

Early Morning Concrete Pours

We are up early again this morning because the husband is pouring at 6:00 am. This is a hard time of year for him; all the contractors are calling because they want their foundations in before the weather turns. He is not a morning person. These kinds of days require copious amounts of coffee.

I spent yesterday morning on (never-ending) paperwork and phone calls. Our insurance agent is working hard to find us—and probably several other businesses—another carrier.

After lunch, I finished the Kaland Weekender Tote. It came together quite nicely. I really liked the way the inside pockets were made. They have little pleats at the bottom:

I would give this design and pattern a solid A. The only change I made—and it was a minor one—was in the zipper casings at the top of the bag.

I compared this bag to my travel tote to see what kinds of mods I might need to make. My travel tote is much deeper, but the sizes are otherwise comparable. Re-creating that travel tote is going to be a winter project for sure.

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I’ve been overdosing on zucchini bakes for the past week:

This is just zucchini, cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, and Italian seasoning. It makes a great breakfast food.

Here is the tomato report thus far: The Oregon Star and Northern Ruby paste tomatoes are coming on strong. Northern Ruby has become a very close second favorite to Oregon Star. The tomatoes aren’t as large but there are tons of them.

Cherokee Chocolate may have taken over from Cherokee Purple as another favorite. These are huge! I’ve had several that are over a pound each. I got a variety called Earl from Sarah, which is also producing enormous and very tasty tomatoes.

I cannot find my green tomato varieties. I know I have Cherokee Green and I may also have Aunt Ruby’s. I have been squeezing the green tomatoes on all the vines—which is the best way to find the ripe green ones—with no luck. They may not be ready yet.

The Blue Boar Berry plant is loaded and those are just beginning to ripen, as are the Red Pear. I think I also have Yellow Pear but haven’t seen any ripe ones yet. I’ve gotten a ton of yellow tomatillos but the other tomatillos, the ground cherries, and the cape gooseberries are a bit further behind.

The weather looks to remain hot and dry for another week, at least, so I won’t have to worry about an early frost. Unfortunately, I don’t think the monsoon moisture coming up from the southwest is going to make it this far north.

Our Local Treasure

I may be biased because I teach there, but the Quilt Gallery truly is a wonderful store, and much of that is due to the owner, Marianne Buller. She is my special guest on today’s podcast episode. It took us a few months to coordinate our schedules, but we sat down last week for a conversation and talked for almost an hour. You can download the episode at Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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We received a notice in the mail yesterday that the company that underwrites our commercial liability policy for the construction company is not going to renew it. They claim that insuring concrete work is no longer “within their appetite.” The fact that we have never filed a claim with them seems to be immaterial. I will call our insurance agent today to see if we can get coverage with another company.

That’s just one example in the pile of stuff on my desk at the moment. I’ll be tied to my office chair for most of the day.

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I ran errands yesterday morning and that always takes longer than I think it will. The only sewing that happened was making part of the tote lining:

I worked a bit on the zipper facings for the top of the bag, but I think I am going to do them slightly differently than instructed.

I harvested all the apples from the State Fair tree last night after dinner. Our trees are not huge; they are only about 15 years old and are on semi-dwarf root stock. Unfortunately, that means that the deer can get the low-hanging fruit, and we have had a couple of determined young bucks stripping the lower branches. I was able to get a big box full of beautiful apples. I don’t spray my trees—more out of laziness than anything else because I barely get them pruned in the spring—and I have very few problems with insect damage. I am of the opinion that spraying trees selects for resistant pests and lowers the ability of the tree to fight them off. People have told me the bugs just haven’t found the orchard yet, but if they haven’t found it after 15 years, they must be very stupid bugs.

The Honeycrisps and Red Wealthy apples need another couple of weeks yet. My Lodi tree did not produce this year. Susan offered me a box of Duchess of Oldenburg apples for pie filling, so I’ll can those up this week. The husband will eat the State Fair apples.

3D Printing is Amazing

I think 3D printing is the coolest thing ever because it provides solutions for all sorts of problems. I have many presser feet for my Bernina 880. That machine came with a storage case for accessories, but it only has room for about a third of the presser feet I own. Bernina also used to make a storage tower for its feet, but for some reason, it is no longer available. Enter Utah3D. Utah3D’s Etsy store offers all sorts of cool 3D-printed accessories, including this storage tower:

This rotating storage tower can be customized with lots of different foot holders, trays, and other nifty add-ons. My regular feet fit in one holder (top) and the coded feet fit in a different holder (bottom). I love it. A specific foot is easy to find when I need it and they aren’t rattling around in a drawer.

Last week, while transporting my Sterilite tote full of serger class samples to my class in Missoula, one of the handles broke off. Arrrgggghhh. How annoying. I came home and googled for replacement handles and DesignCraft3D’s Etsy store popped up. I ordered a set of handles and they came within a few days:

They are much sturdier than the original handles, and they have a screw where they fit into the tote instead of the cheap plastic piece that is prone to breaking.

I have no desire to get a 3D printer. I will happily give money to the geniuses who come up with these useful solutions.

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The Kaland Tote is coming together surprisingly quickly. I finished the exterior yesterday afternoon:

The zipper tape is from Sallie Tomato. It’s black #5 zipper tape with gold nylon teeth. I have to say, the zipper pulls went on SO MUCH MORE EASILY than the byAnnie zipper pulls. I’m using beefier 1-1/2" wide webbing for handles because I think they are appropriate for the size of the tote and because I had that size in my stash. The waxed canvas that Quilt Gallery is carrying now is lovely to sew. I did most of the assembly on my Necchi BV industrial. The 880 would have handled it, but I wanted to sew on the BV.

I need to pick up a few things in town today and then I can finish this tote. I’ll keep plugging away on the Place for Everything project, too, because I know I am about two-thirds of the way there.

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I felt sorry for the poor woman working dispatch yesterday. I was listening to the scanner while I sewed on the Necchi BV. She was fielding an insane number of accident and fire calls, some of them really bizarre. South of us, in Lake County, highway patrol had to chase some idiot in a pickup truck who was screaming down the highway; he eventually crashed, but not until after they closed the highway and put down spike strips. Thankfully, he didn’t kill anyone. I know I sound like an old fart, but this is not the valley it used to be. And it’s why I try not to go anywhere on the weekends, because weekends seem to be the time when the crazies are out on the roads.

Puttering on a Saturday

I finished the crazy quilt pillow Friday afternoon. I am quite pleased with it:

If it doesn’t go to the store for display, I will use it as a class sample. The backing is Grunge in a color that matches the thread in the quilting.

I was a bit at loose ends yesterday. Some of that was because the husband’s schedule got messed up, and what I do occasionally depends on what he is doing. He was here when I thought he was going to be out cutting concrete, so he went out to his shop while I recorded the rest of Tuesday’s podcast episode. (That was no hardship for him.) After that, I attached the embroidery module to the 700 and was going to play around with some simple designs, but I need to watch a few more videos.

I spent the rest of the day puttering around on a few projects. I’d like to finish my byAnnie Place for Everything Tote especially because Annie Unrein is coming to give a lecture at the store on September 2. My PFE tote stalled weeks ago at the point of making straps. I don’t like to make straps, but the project can’t move on without them. I sucked it up and made the straps. The next step is to make front and back pockets. I could have started those yesterday, but I need one more zipper. A pile of cut bias strips was staring me in the face so I sewed them together instead.

And finally, I gave in to temptation and cut the pieces for the Kaland Weekender Tote by SOTAK Handmade:

I know I am going to have to recreate my beloved traveling tote at some point, and this pattern is the closest to it in both design and size. (I still will have to make some mods but I’ll have the basic foundation.) I am using some Moda canvas for the upper portion and a chunk of black waxed canvas from the store for the base. The interior lining is a remnant of some Bonnie and Camille fabric from their Vintage Modern line, which tells you how old it is because Camille Roskelley hasn’t designed fabric with her mom for several years now.

I got all the pieces cut and labelled just before dinner. I made a HUGE bowl of potato salad for the husband because he loves potato salad and we needed something to go with the leftover meatloaf from Friday night.

I will tell you something about my workflow: I have what some people probably would call an insane amount of supplies, all in labelled bins. I am not a minimalist who buys only the supplies I need for a given project. I have a “deep pantry” of sewing supplies precisely because I can’t just run out and get what I need when I need it. That is even more true now that Joann Fabrics has closed. When I decided to make that Kaland Weekender Tote yesterday, I was able to pull literally every single item on the supply list from what I have on hand.

The husband is much the same way. He has a shop full of tools and a wall of bolt bins and everything else he needs because he can’t just run to Napa or the hardware store in the middle of a project.

The estate sale our kids hold after we’re gone is going to be a DIYer’s dream. 😂

Fun With Piping

I have most of the accessories for my Bernina serger, including the XL Piping Foot. Piping is easy to make on the serger and I prefer to do it that way because it keeps the fabric from fraying. Smaller piping is made using the small and large piping feet, but Bernina has an XL foot that allows for jumbo piping using 6, 8, or 10mm cord.

For fun—because I can—I decided to make some 10mm piping for the crazy quilt pillow. I cut black-and-white striped fabric on the bias using the Accuquilt cutter. Gail Yellen has a wonderful video demonstrating how to use the XL piping foot, so I followed her instructions to set it up.

It took just a few minutes to make enough piping for the pillow. I still have to make the pillow back, but I’ve got the piping clipped in place:

I am hoping to finish this pillow today. I need to get some projects crossed off the list before I start anything else. The problem is that I have so many ideas. 🤯

I set up the 700 PRO yesterday, too, although I didn’t have time to play with it. My next mastery class isn’t until September 8, which gives me some time to go up that learning curve. The Bernina We All Sew website features many free projects designed to help sewists—and teachers who have to teach these classes—learn new techniques. I think I might make some of the embroidered pincushion projects.

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It is very windy here this morning. The wind changed direction last night and is coming out of the east, back off the mountains. Hopefully, no trees will come down. We’ve been up since 3:30 am because the husband is pouring at 6:00 am and had to be at the jobsite bright and early. I’ve got a long list of tasks I want to tackle today, but I also have a podcast interview to record at 11:00 am.

I feel like I fell down on the gardening stuff this summer. Part of that was my schedule—I chaired the plant sale at the very end of May, then June was stuffed full of meetings and big events right when I should have been planting and tending to the garden. I want to get as much prepped this fall as possible so I don’t have to do it next spring. I need to prune out this year’s bearing canes from the raspberry patch. If the husband has time, I’d like to have him bring the track loader out to the garden to do some leveling and to plow under a couple of rotted stumps. The area where I am growing tomatoes this year needs to have the black plastic pulled up so we can amend the soil with rotted straw and pig manure.

Every year is different, and this year just wasn’t a big production year.

More Parrot Clothing

Sewing in bits and pieces is not my preferred way to work, but the schedule is going to be like this for at least another week. I’m just trying to keep things organized in my sewing room. That way, if I have some time, I can pick up a project and keep it moving forward. I’ve got the backing fabric for the crazy quilt pillow and the fabric for the piping. Making piping won’t take long and neither will making an envelope back for the pillow. I had an hour before dinner last night and was able to get close to finishing this latest Kaffe top:

All that left to do is the bottom hem and the elastic for the sleeves. I chose to make this one with the longer puff sleeves from the original Burda 6146 pattern.

I think this is my most favorite Kaffe print ever. Love love love.

DD#2 texted me a photo of a dress she bought to wear to a wedding next month. It’s a lovely turquoise blue with a large—but not loud—flower print. I told her how pretty she looked in that color and that she should wear it more often. She tends to dress in a lot of neutrals, but she looks lovely in beiges and browns, unlike her parrot of a mother.

I find it so interesting that I have Winter coloring but I ended up with one child who (we think) is a Spring and one who is a Fall.

I watched this YouTube video yesterday and was delighted to discover that the sewist had made herself a top using a Kaffe Fassett wideback in the blue Millefiore print. I also have a top in that print. When Kaffe visits the store next month, I may drop some not-so-subtle hints about adding apparel fabrics to his line. I suspect the fact that I will be wearing my Kaffe tops made from widebacks will be a not-so-subtle hint.

I asked the owner of the quilt store where I teach if she’d sit down for a podcast interview with me. She was more than willing, but it took a couple of months for us to get our schedules coordinated. We recorded it yesterday afternoon. I loved hearing more about her life and how she ended up owning a quilt store. That interview will be next week’s episode.

And I got my new Bernina 700 PRO embroidery machine on Tuesday but haven’t had time to unbox it. I bought one because I am going to be teaching the sewing and embroidery mastery classes. The 880 came with an embroidery module—which I can use on the 700, so I didn’t have to buy one—but I use the 880 so much for regular sewing that I didn’t want to tie it up on embroidery projects. I am hoping to get that machine set up this weekend to begin learning what I need to know.

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The squash and cucumbers are at the height of production. I am watering every day because we are in a spell of hot and dry weather that looks like it will last until the end of August. My friend Debbie stopped by yesterday morning to get some dill. It’s all over the place out in the garden. Some things I’ve only had to plant once.

Squash Roundup

No matter how carefully I label plants, I always seem to end up with some mysteries in the garden. I have some squash I can’t identify.

Anna asked for Georgia Roasters again this year, so I have two of those plants:

I grew Winter Luxury Pumpkin again for pies:

I threw in a white pumpkin just for fun:

I have no idea what this is.

It sort of looks like a zucchini—both plant and product—but not really. These may end up going to the chickens. Sarah might know.

I’m also growing Burgess Buttercup and Butterbush Butternut. The plants are growing, but not as vigorously as in past summers when it was really hot. This year has been cooler and rainier. We’re supposed to have a week of hot weather, so perhaps they will catch up.

Every year is different.

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I had a whole day at home yesterday. I tackled all my paperwork in the morning, recorded today’s podcast episode, then spent the rest of the day in my sewing room. I am trying very hard to finish some existing projects because I have a terrible case of startitis. I traced off clean copies of my woven top patterns and the Amarena dress pattern. I have to make one final muslin of the dress to make sure it fits properly before I cut into the good fabric. I need a few more thrift store sheets.

As soon as I get some backing fabric, I will turn that crazy quilt serger project into a pillow.

I did cut out and start making another top from a Kaffe Fassett wideback, mostly because I had the correct color thread in my serger. I can rationalize anything. 😇

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DD#1 called in the late afternoon. She and her husband were in Washington state last week because he was interviewing for a job there. He has been the dentist at the Coast Guard station in Ketchikan, Alaska, for the past four years. He would have liked to stay in the CG, but the two of them wanted to come back to the lower 48. His only option, really, would have been to transfer to Cape May, New Jersey and no one wanted that. He has taken a job in Port Angeles, Washington. They are beginning the process of moving back and finding a place to live.

Some time in the next two months, all of the kids will be in Washington. That will make traveling a bit easier for all of us.

What Shall I Sew Next?

I finished the front of the crazy quilt pillow:

The pattern specified that SF101 or a similar medium-weight interfacing should be fused to the back of the piece. Amazingly, in my frenzy to stock up as Joanns was going out of business, I did not get a bolt of SF101, so I used fusible fleece instead.

I would have finished this yesterday, but I need a backing for it. I think I am also going to do some piping around the edge. I have the fabric for that.

This was a fun project, but I am not an improv person.

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I have a several patterns sitting on my cutting table. One is Butterick 6736 that I posted a couple of weeks ago:

I waited for it to go on sale at the Simplicity website. It arrived on Wednesday. I am itching to make this in one of the new cottons that came into the store. Those fabrics aren’t out on the floor yet, so in the meantime, I might make View B (left) in a floaty rayon.

Walmart carries a limited selection of patterns. I bought Simplicity 9376 the last time I was there:

Views A and B have a pintuck running down the front. View D has pleats and cuffed hems. These seem short to me, so I will have to check them against the StyleArc Linda Pants.

And lastly, Vogue 8977, long out of print. I found one on Etsy:

I like the pleats at the front neckline. I am hoping to mash this up with my perfect woven tee. I think the darts at the sides may be a bit redundant, but we’ll see. I probably won’t do that style of back, only because I don’t like my back to be cold. I will make the length of View C.

You might wonder why I am buying patterns when I could adapt the ones I have that fit me well. The short answer is that it is incredibly educational for me to look at and compare patterns. I laid my woven tee pattern on top of the Vogue pattern and was happy to see that the length of view C is the same as the length of my woven top. That is a good length for my height and proportions.

And that’s why I take fashion and styling advice with a grain of salt. If you look at the styling websites advising how to dress an “8” figure—sausage tied in the middle—many of them will tell you to wear belted dresses (ugh) or peplums (double ugh). I ran across one site last week that proclaimed tunics to be verboten. I’ve been looking at myself in the mirror long enough that I know what looks good on me and what doesn’t, and highlighting my short waist and high hip curve is not flattering.

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I cut the grass yesterday morning and then it did rain. I brought in zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The tomatoes went into the freezer for sauce. The extra zucchini and cukes may go to church with me this morning. I also dug up enough potatoes for potato salad to go with the spare ribs I made for dinner:

I think these are Red Pontiac (?). I didn’t label the potatoes this year. We will have a nice haul of potatoes to put in the root cellar.

Bring Back Common Sense

I went to Missoula yesterday to teach a serger mastery class. Only one student had signed up, but the store pays me to come and teach no matter what. I also had to register the husband’s new work truck. I can only do that at a place called MVD Express, because Flathead County will no longer process vehicle registrations for vehicles purchased by LLCs. You would think that there would thus be an MVD Express office in Flathead County, but you would be wrong. That would require using common sense. The closest one is in Missoula.

[I also found out the other day that local mail no longer stays here to be processed, like it used to. All mail now goes to Missoula to be processed before coming back to the Flathead to be delivered. Again, a complete lack of common sense, but that seems to be the theme these days. Never do anything efficiently that can be dragged out and made more complicated.]

My student had just purchased an L890 serger. We had great fun going over all the features and she went home excited to use her new machine.

I commented to the owner before class that every time I come to the store, they’ve added new items. She told me that they had to hire an additional staff person because their traffic has increased so much. I have no doubt that is a side effect of Joann Fabrics closing. I hope that continues for all the quilt stores.

After class, I stopped at Walmart; the store in Missoula is the only one left with a decent remnant rack. Our store still has a remnant rack but it’s usually empty or close to empty. I picked up a knit fabric for a future dress:

I still need to work on perfecting a good knit dress pattern for myself because I have a couple of lengths of knits like this in the stash.

I happened to arrive at the MVD Express office during a lull. Normally, one has to make an appointment, but they also take walk-ins if they aren’t busy. The earliest appointment I could make online was August 26th, so I was happy they were able to fit me in yesterday. Twenty minutes later, I walked out with the completed paperwork and a set of plates for the new work truck. Yay.

I also popped in to The Confident Stitch downtown. They had some lovely Robert Kaufman lightweight cotton in three colors: black, white, and navy blue. I bought black to make myself a nice black top and now I am wishing I had also gotten the navy blue. Next time.

Traffic was steady, but not awful despite it being a Friday afternoon in August. I stopped at the Amish store for a scoop of ice cream (Strawberry Cheesecake) on my way home. So good.

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Speaking of making things complicated, I didn’t think I hated QuickBooks enough but they have added so much junk and made the user interface so busy that I want to cry every time I log in. Dialog boxes and windows pop up every 30 seconds or so, interrupting my workflow. The stupid AI Assistant constantly asks me if I need help. I don’t know who thought that adding all this useless stuff was a good idea, but it’s driving me nuts.

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Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon, so I am going to cut the grass this morning. Hopefully, this will be the last time this season. The husband reminded me that we don’t have an HOA where we live and no one is going to send us a letter if the lawn isn’t manicured, but I want to do it. Riding the John Deere around the property for an hour isn’t a hardship.

Crazy (Quilt) Serging

My cutting table is a mess at the moment. I have about eight different projects underway.

I drove the BMW up to the equipment consignor yesterday. I had two routes to choose from to get there, and a little voice inside my head said I should take the lesser-used one. I always listen to that little voice because good things happen when I do. That route just happens to go near Tera’s house, and as I drove down the road, I passed a young couple walking a baby in a stroller and a dog on a leash. I recognized the dog, so I stopped the car and asked if they were Tera’s son and daughter-in-law. They were! Tera and her husband are on their mission trip. Their son and his wife just moved back here from overseas and are living in Tera’s house.

[Welcome to Montana. Random people will stop you on the road to have a conversation.]

Tera’s DIL wants to learn how to quilt, so I am sure I will get to see her again. And their baby is adorable. 🥰

The husband picked me up from the consignor’s and brought me home. I had lunch, then went to Thursday sewing because we also had a craft co-op meeting at 1 pm. Sarah and Beth H and I had a fun conversation about painting.

When I got home (again), I started working on a pattern I bought in Spokane last week. This is a crazy-quilt style pillow made on the serger using the flatlock stitch:

The fabrics are five fat quarters, some Kaffe, one Marcia Derse, and something else. I am making a pillow, although the same technique could be used for a tote bag or other item.

But, oh my!—this pattern needs to make the acquaintance of a proofreader or technical editor. There are formatting errors, the supply list doesn’t match what is actually used, steps are out of order, etc. I thought this might make a good class at the store, but I would be hesitant to ask students to pay $15 for the pattern. I was scratching my head to make sense of it. Thankfully, the technique is not difficult.

I got close to making the entire 16" pillow front last night.

The only problem with techniques like this is that there is a lot of trimming and more fabric waste than I like. The process is rather like eating potato chips, though.

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We are supposed to get some rain tomorrow but then it looks like we’ll finally have summer. the rest of August is supposed to be hot and dry. I made six loaves of zucchini bread to freeze the other day. I really need to pay more attention to the garden because I slacked off this year. I will have to find a better balance next summer. And I never could get more lettuce to grow after the ground squirrel invaded the herb garden. Lettuce should be easy. No doubt, a bunch of it will pop up just before we get the first snow. 🫤

Making My Brain Hurt Again

Some people are adrenaline junkies and search out every new adventure. Some people spend all day on social media looking for that next dopamine hit. I have decided that I am addicted to making my brain hurt. I am forever looking for something challenging to try next. The husband often asks me why I spend so much time on frustrating activities like fitting and making my own clothing. I do it because it’s difficult.

I have no idea if there is a clinical diagnosis for this condition, but there you go. This is also why my bedtime reading material consists of trashy romance novels. By the end of the day, my brain just wants to relax with fluff, although I’m usually editing in my head as I read.

Yesterday was painting class. Four students met in Sunnie’s yard at 9 am. We set up our easels and decided what to paint. Last year, I did a landscape. This year, I chose the small cabin that serves as Sunnie’s painting studio:

Painting is hard, y’all. I am mostly happy with this, though. Lindalee, our teacher, told me I need to have more grace for myself. She’s right. I shouldn’t demand perfection from myself in a one-day painting class. I really need to do this more than once a year, too.

I found it fascinating that four different painters could have four different styles and yet all were beautiful. I am (slowly) recognizing what I like and just have to trust myself. I don’t know all the “rules” but that may be a good thing.

[Do you see that little whitish blip in the upper right-hand corner of the painting? I’m not sure what I was doing there, but I decided to leave it. I told the husband that was wildfire smoke. 😬]

What an enjoyable day, despite the 90+ degree heat. Cooler weather returns tomorrow. Seattle is getting a rare-for-August atmospheric river late this week and it looks like we may get the remnants of that.

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I fed chickens when I got home, then finished the blueberry top:

I may make one more woven top. The time is almost here, though, to begin thinking about making cool-weather clothes. I have a stack of patterns I am itching to try.

This has been a busy week and I haven’t been here much. The poor husband is getting whatever I can cobble together for dinner. Zucchini is waiting to get made into zucchini bread.

We are consigning to the BMW to the same equipment seller that has the husband’s 2022 work truck. The husband and I will drive it up there tomorrow. I am sad that The Diva is going away, but I haven’t driven it since I got the Jeep. As much as I loved that car, I feel safer in the Jeep with all the idiot drivers out there. If BMW ever resumed production of a diesel station wagon, though, I might change my mind.

The Dryer is Dying

My dryer is 30 years old—produced back in the day when planned obsolescence wasn’t a thing and appliances lasted more than five years. It’s an Amana. The washer from that set has long since gone to appliance heaven, because washers are no match for the husband’s dirt- and concrete-encrusted clothing. (We’ve had two more washers since that first one.)

The dryer has been repaired twice, both times by the husband. The timer broke, so he fixed it with one he poached off a dishwasher at the green box site. That was back when dumpster diving was still legal in Flathead County. Believe me, he mourns the fact that he can no longer scrounge things at the trash sites. The second time, the dryer stopped heating and drying the clothes. He replaced another part, but he had to order that one.

The dryer is now making a funny noise and the clothes aren’t always dry at the end of the cycle. I asked him yesterday if it was possible that a bearing was going bad, because it sounds like a problem with the drum.

I know this man. He will take it as a personal challenge to keep this dryer working as long as possible. However, this literally is his busiest time of the year. (He left at 5 am today for a 7 am concrete pour.) I will use the dryer as long as it works, but there may come a time when I make an executive decision to purchase a new one. A non-functional dryer will affect him more than me, because I dry all of my clothing on the line. I have enough trouble with clothes being too short without shrinking them in the dryer.

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I have not had a chance to finish the blueberry top. I was going to do it yesterday morning before leaving for a 9 am appointment, but the 880 decided to be a diva and demanded to be thoroughly cleaned and oiled. I ran errands in town and was home by noon but needed to record this week’s podcast episode. When I finished that, I had to retrieve the husband from the equipment dealer. He consigned his 2022 Dodge Ram 5500 work truck with them.

In a few weeks, the podcast will have its second anniversary. I am having great fun with it and plan to continue. I haven’t yet run out of topics, as I feared. My biggest problem, which happens more in the summer than the winter, is finding the time each week to record. Interview episodes require time to record the interview as well as time to edit. The episodes where I pontificate for 30 minutes still require an hour or two to prepare and record.

This is today’s activity:

We start at 9 am. The forecast high for today is around 90F, so I may be looking for a nice patch of shade in which to paint.

A Blueberry Top

I have so many tasks competing for my time that some days, it’s hard to know what to do first. I came home from a church service and potluck yesterday, called my mother, then said to the husband that I knew the grass needed to be cut, but I was going up to my sewing room to work on something. He gets it. He spent most of his weekend in the shop working on trucks. The world will not come to an end if the grass gets a bit longer.

A few weeks ago, I cut out a top from a rayon batik, intending to whip it up so I could wear it. That didn’t happen. (The Linda Pants are also waiting to be put together.) I sewed up the top yesterday afternoon. I still have a bit of work to do, but I knew better than to try to push through last night when was getting tired. I should be able to eke an hour out of the schedule today to finish it.

I like the private side of my garments to look as nice as the public side:

I prefer to finish my inside edges separately. They require a bit more attention when I press the top, but I think they lie better this way than they do when I finish the edges together. And I enjoy ironing. My ironing board never gets put away because I use it almost every day.

I am hoping to get those Linda Pants done soon.

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I got a request for a way to notify readers and listeners via e-mail when I have a new blog post or podcast episode. I have a Mailchimp account which I am not currently using but could reactivate easily. And I think it’s easier to automate those kinds of notices now than it used to be. Is that something that you faithful readers and listeners would like to have? My social media guru is willing to implement the feature if there is enough demand. Comment below or send me an e-mail (Janet at JanetSzabo dot com, which is the podcast e-mail account.) Right now, the only way to get notifications is to add the RSS feed to a blog aggregator like Feedly or Bloglovin’.

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The zucchini is coming on strong, as are the cucumbers. I will be making lots of zucchini bread to freeze this week. The Georgia Roaster and Burgess Buttercup plants have taken off. We may not get any cantaloupe this year because it hasn’t been hot enough, but we’ll see. I am curious to see if the 75-day butternut squash ripens in time. We are going to have a bumper potato crop.

I don’t like to rush time—it goes fast enough as it is—but I am always relieved when summer ends. I am thankful that this summer has been cool and we haven’t been smothered in wildfire smoke.

A Spokane Mini-Vacation

I had to shoehorn this trip into the schedule between teaching classes, but Sunnie, Robin, and I managed to get away to Spokane for a few days. We took a similar trip last summer and had a lot of fun. That was the trip where I found the BabyLock serger for $13.99 at Value Village. (Retail $400.)

We left Wednesday morning and took the northern route through Libby, Montana into Bonners Ferry, Idaho and down to Coeur d’Alene and Spokane. Along the way, we stopped at a few quilt stores and several thrift stores. My first purchase was this book:

I haven’t taken a good look at it yet but it only cost me a couple of dollars. I’m sure it will have some useful information.

That was it for major thrift store purchases for me. Sometimes you find lots of goodies—or one spectacular one—and sometimes you don’t. The fun is in the hunt.

We spent about an hour at The Quilting Bee on Thursday. (Sunnie is a good sport and doesn’t mind going to fabric stores with us even though she doesn’t sew.) The store had just received this month’s Palette color from Tim Holtz, which was Indigo:

Last month’s color was Blue, so I was a bit confused at first until I figured out they were two separate colorways. In keeping with my habit for this line, I bought two fat quarter bundles. The store was having their anniversary sale this week so we got 20% off our purchases. I also bought a yard of each of these low-volume prints:

The two on the right are Tim Holtz prints. The one at the upper left is 3 Sisters for Moda and the one at the bottom left is from Cathe Holden’s line Sable and Swan. I almost bought the fat quarter bundles for that line, too, because it was so lovely.

I overheard a customer asking one of the store employees if they had any apparel fabrics. I’m really hoping more quilt stores will begin to take up some of the slack in this area. Clearly, people want to sew clothing. The Quilting Bee does carry some rayons and several of the Kaffe shot cottons, but I’d love to see them expand their selection of substrates (and their color choices beyond muddy earth tones).

I am taking another oil painting class next week. Sunnie will be there, but our other friend, Lindalee, is teaching. We had such a good time when we did this last August. I may never take up painting as a serious hobby, but it’s fun to dabble in it here and there. (I told the husband that I needed a hobby to help me relax from my other hobby and he said I should stop turning my hobbies into businesses.) We stopped in at Spokane Art Supply on Thursday afternoon and Sunnie helped me choose a few additional supplies.

The weather on our trip was spectacular, the food was amazing, and our Airbnb was clean and comfortable. I only yelled at a few other drivers on the road 🙄. We’re already making plans for next year’s trip.

140 Days Until Christmas

I cut the grass in the garden yesterday morning, because we are supposed to get rain tomorrow and Friday. If I wait until the weekend, it will be too tall to cut. I was done and back in the house by 8 am.

I made serger samples for the rest of the day. I’m still working on sample cards similar to the ones we made at BU. Some of the techniques are familiar to me and some are not. Every time I think that we’ve found the limits of the serger, a new and different technique pops up.

I had the entire set of serger feet for my L860 machine, but they went with the machine when I traded it in because they won’t work on the L890. The L890 has its own set of serger feet. I am adding them one by one because Bernina presser feet are not inexpensive. One of the accessories that is available on the L890—but not the other machines, because the L890 is a combo serger/coverstitch machine—is the belt loop folder. Belt loops are made on coverstitch machines, which you may not know unless you make a study of clothing.

Gail Yellen, possibly the most brilliant serger instructor on the planet, has come up with all sorts of fun things to do with the L890. She uses the belt loop folder for everything except making belt loops. Last year, she came up with the idea to use the belt loop folder to make long strips with heavy decorative thread in the chain looper, then wind those strips around a styrofoam Christmas tree form. I’ve been wanting to try this for months now, so the belt loop folder was one of the first extra accessories I purchased.

I cut some Christmas fabric into bias strips using my Accuquilt cutter. Then I set up the largest belt loop folder on the L890 and made a bunch of test strips with plain thread to get the settings dialed in.

What is happening here is that the two sides of the strip get folded under as they go through the folder. The chain looper thread loops back and forth between the needle threads on the underside, catching the sides of the strip and holding them in place.

When I was happy with how my test strips looked, I switched over to my decorative thread—one spool of silver Glamore thread (Wonderfil) and one spool of gold Glamore. Both are 12wt threads. Both threads go through the chain looper together as one thread.

I actually began with three 12wt threads per Gail’s instructions, but I didn’t like how that looked, so I cut back to two. I also put thread nets on the spools to help keep the threads from tangling.

This is a close-up view of the underside of the folded strip. The two edges are covered by the decorative thread.

After pressing the strips, I began pinning them to the Christmas tree form:

And so on and so on until the entire form was covered:

Now I get to add baubles and charms and whatever else I want to the tree. Gail even added tiny lights to one of her larger trees. Mine is about 9" tall.

This probably will end up at the store as a display sample. I am not sure it would make a good class because not everyone is going to want to buy the belt loop folder. I could make this as a demo class, though—that would be fun and low stress.

I’m not yet done with the belt loop folder. Gail has some other uses for it.

Mastering the Mastery Class

Yesterday’s class was challenging, but in a good way. I had five students, all with different machines. We had everything from a Bernette—which is Bernina’s entry-level line—all the way up to a 790 PRO, which is not quite the top-of-the-line but close. (The 990 is the top-of-the-line machine.)

One student asked about updating the firmware on her machine—Bernina released a computer upgrade in July for many of the models—so I began class by helping those students who needed upgrades to perform them on their machines. I did the upgrade on my 880 last week. I downloaded the upgrades onto my laptop, copied them onto flash drives (helpfully provided for each student by the store), and showed them how to do the updates. After that, we moved on to oiling and machine maintenance.

The trickiest part for me, as the teacher, was balancing how to demonstrate the features of the higher-end machines without leaving the students with machines that didn’t have those features in the dust. Everyone was engaged and considerate, though, and we got through most of what I wanted to cover. Thankfully, the machine interfaces are all very similar.

Bernina puts a different foot or accessory on sale every month. Sometimes it’s a serger accessory, sometimes it’s a sewing machine accessory, and sometimes it’s an embroidery accessory. August’s sale items are the hemmer feet, so we played around with one of those.

I’ve used hemmer feet on other machines. It’s a bit tricky to get the hem started, but once it’s dialed in, the hemming is beautiful.

After yesterday, I’m going to start calling this class “Boot Camp” in my head. You may not know anything about your machine when you come in, but by the time you leave, you will have tried out every single feature on your machine whether you wanted to or not. 😂

I was mentally exhausted by the time I got home. I don’t think it will be like that every time; I remember feeling this way when I first began teaching the serger mastery classes and now I could do them in my sleep. There is just a tremendous amount to know about these machines.

Ashlee resurfaced yesterday; she got married a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t see her since we got back from BU. She stopped in to the classroom at the beginning of class and we chatted about adding another learn to sew class to the calendar.

Speaking of BU, episode 117 of the Bernina Sew and So podcast is a recap of this year’s Bernina University. I had such fun listening to it—it almost felt like being there all over again. And if you’re watching Project Runway, keep an eye out for some Bernina machines.

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I am home all day today. It is cool and overcast right now. I may work out in the garden or I may sew. I haven’t decided yet. It feels weird to be having to cut the grass all the way into August but it’s a relief not to have 90-degree weather. I started cleaning the basement but that’s going to be a longer-term project and it’s going to require some muscle from the husband.

More Mending and Alterations

I needed a break from pattern alterations, although I did get out this book and read through parts of it:

I like this book because it tackles complicated fitting issues on real bodies. Reading it is almost like drinking from a fire hose, but I need to remember that it is in my arsenal so I can refer to it. I’ve had the book for a couple of years but it makes more sense now that I’ve taken a class from Kenneth.

He does say that once you get a couple of basic pieces that fit well, you can add details to them to change the look of the garment. I’m still hoping to get over to Tacoma to take a day-long private class with Ryliss Bod at the Sewing and Design School this fall. I’d like to make up a couple of muslins ahead of time, then have her help me pin them out and transfer the changes to the patterns. That is going to be way more efficient and accurate than me trying to do it myself.

Also, DD#1 and DSIL are probably moving back to Washington state from Alaska in September, and I want to spend some time helping them get settled.

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The husband came home from work the other day annoyed that the button on a brand-new pair of work pants had pulled off.

I was equally annoyed. These are not inexpensive pants and this shouldn’t have happened. (That other button is for his suspenders.) I replaced the button yesterday afternoon:

I took a couple of scrap pieces of Cordura and burned the edges with a lighter so they wouldn’t fray, then sandwiched the fabric between them. The front piece of Cordura also has a piece of stiff Peltex interfacing behind it for added strength. I sewed on the patch using the Juki 1541 and set another button with my rivet press. Total time: About 20 minutes. I hope this holds. If nothing else, it looks good. 😇

One of the perks we give our employees—in addition to free eggs—is providing them use of the husband’s shop to work on their vehicles. (As he will point out if you ask him, he has a vested interest in them being able to get to work every day.) They can put their vehicles up on the lift and make use of all the tools. He only steps in to help if they get stuck; otherwise, he lets them figure it out for themselves. A couple of them were here this weekend. One of the guys who is working for us this summer just graduated from high school and is off to college in a few weeks. He “worked” for us about 10 years ago—he and his brother occasionally came to work with their dad, who was our employee at the time. The husband would keep the boys busy running and back and forth to the trucks to get tools. It’s been good having this kid back as an actual employee. He is very sharp and works hard.

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I am teaching my first sewing and embroidery Mastery class today. I’m flying a bit blind with this one only because I don’t know a) who is going to show up; b) what machines students are bringing; and c) what students are going to want to learn. I am taking all of my guides, samples, and supplies, and we’ll figure things out together if we have to.

Fitting Help From the Universe

I think I have the answer to this fitting issue. Let’s recap:

• I started this process with a woven top pattern that fits me very well. The darts are the correct size and their placement is perfect. The shoulders don’t bind. I’ve made four tops using this pattern and all of them are in heavy rotation at the moment.

• I lengthened the top pattern into a dress, mashing it up with the Amarena Dress pattern from Liesl + Co. The first muslin had the very obvious problem of drag lines running diagonally from underneath the bust to the sides of the dress.

• I consulted the Jan Minott drafting book, the Sarah Veblen fitting book, and some archived posts in the Sewing Pattern Review online forum. The diagnosis accompanying the wrinkle chart in the Minott book indicated that “The front is too short in relation to the back length OR the front may be correct, but the back might be too long.” The Veblen book indicated that the darts needed to be adjusted/taken in. The consensus of the forum posts was that the drag lines indicated that the dart intake needed to be increased.

• I spent the next two days and several muslins attempting to correct the problem at the dart level and succeeded only in making a few dresses that would have fit Dolly Parton nicely.

• Completely by accident—because the universe is in the habit of leaving bread crumbs here and there for me to follow—I unearthed this book in the basement while looking for something else:

What the heck, let’s see what Bonnita and Lois have to say.

Under the section about bodices, it says, “Some patterns need to be altered in length only at the center front or back because of a prominent stomach or curved back.” I have neither of those issues, but I do have a mountain range in the center of my chest over which the fabric has to traverse. And when I put on the muslin and looked in the mirror, the solution was blindingly obvious. I needed more fabric, but only in the center front. Lengthening the entire bodice—per the Minott book—would not have solved the problem because the sides needed to be preserved at their current length. I got a pair of scissors and sliced a horizontal line across the center of the dress just under the bust and dropped it about an inch and the drag lines disappeared.

🤦🏻‍♀️

Bonnita and Lois’s book gives three methods for altering patterns: the internal method, the slide method, and the seamline method. Which one to use depends on the situation and personal preference. I used the internal method, which directed me to slice the pattern to the seamline, leaving a “hinge,” and move the center of the pattern down the required amount, like this:

I then had to true up the center front and redraw the grainline.

I made Yet Another Muslin with this adjusted pattern and it worked. Hallelujah. At that point, I had no desire to sew anything else so I sat down and read a book. I still don’t have a dress, but I am hopeful.

What have we learned from this little exercise?

1. The adage “Drag lines and wrinkles point to the problem” is useful only insofar as you can identify which part of the pattern needs to be altered. Commenters in the SPR forum kept saying that drag lines like the ones I was seeing indicated that the garment was trying to create its own darts, which is sort of true. But there were darts in the pattern that fit me well, so why would I want to change them? The solution was actually found at the other end of the drag lines, in the center of the garment.

2. It helps to consult several resources, because some of them may be incomplete or—heaven forbid—give inaccurate information. I like the Minott book especially because of the wrinkle charts, but it wasn’t until I got to the Concepts of Fit book that I found a solution.

3. A full bust adjustment may not be enough. The bodice of my custom woven top pattern is based on the Cadence Top from Love Notions. I used the full bust option of that pattern, which already had the FBA baked in, but clearly, I needed an additional adjustment.

4. I am too stubborn to give up.

I’ll probably go back to my woven top pattern and make a similar center front alteration just for the sake of completeness. This adjustment will be added to the list of alterations I might have to make before I use a pattern. And I think the next project may be the French Dart Shift. I know I am going to have to do an FBA on that pattern, so I’ll be curious to see what happens.

Beth H., I hope you enjoyed this post. 😄

Dart Drama

I went back to the muslin-fitting issue yesterday afternoon and looked at the dress again, and then I had an epiphany. The advice to “increase the dart intake” was only half the answer. That pulls up excess fabric from the sides, but only within the dart. I still had extra fabric length in the side seam above the dart.

Most sewing patterns are drafted for a B-cup bra size. It’s possible to use a larger pattern size with more room around the bust, but that is almost always accompanied by wider shoulders, which results in the top of the garment sliding around annoyingly instead of staying put. The key is to choose a size based on the “high bust measurement”—the measurement a few inches above the bust—and make a full bust adjustment. I will refer you to this excellent tutorial so that I don’t have to redraw all the steps. Basically, you slash the existing pattern along several drawn-in lines, leaving the pieces connected with tiny hinges of paper. By moving the separated pieces down and out, you increase the area around the bust without affecting the shoulder width.

One of the things that happens during this process is that the armhole also changes shape. That was the part I was missing as I was making the dart larger. (I know many of these principles, but keeping them all together can be tricky.)

I went back to my pattern piece and made the dart larger, but I also made a corresponding tuck in the armscye.

This is a typical fix for the armhole gap that bustier women sometimes get—pin out the excess in the armhole and rotate it into the bust dart, making the bust dart larger. I’m just doing that in reverse here. Interestingly, I did not have much of an armhole gapping problem in my original muslin or that might have clued me in sooner. (Or not, who knows.) What this also does is to pull up the side of the garment above the dart.

I ran up a quick muslin with this fix. I may have gone too far; I don’t think I need that much of a dart increase but the drag lines did disappear. However, the armhole is much tighter now.

Sarah Veblen’s book has wonderful photos and explanations on making these kinds of alterations on the body, where it’s easier to see what needs to be done, but that’s hard to do without a helper. At one point, I asked the husband to help me pin some things in place, but he’s so worried about stabbing me with a pin that it’s almost easier to do it myself.

Now I just need to find the sweet spot for this adjustment. It’s a good thing I have lots of old sheets.

I wish I had figured this out sooner—like four muslins ago—but going through the process helps to cement it into my brain. (I hope.) Someone out there who has been doing this for decades may be reading these blog posts and cringing at all this thrashing around, but we were all beginners once.

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I signed up for the Mountain Brook painting class again this year. A friend of ours named Lindalee is teaching instead of Sunnie, but Sunnie will be there to help out. I had such fun last year that I thought I would try it again this year. I was supposed to teach that day, but we moved the class to later in the month.

August will be full, but a lot of it is sewing. The pigs go to the processor at the end of the month. And then it will be fall.