An Auction Again

Some things have a stated purpose, but have an equally important—if not quite as obvious—secondary purpose. The Creston Auction has always been a way for the Creston community to raise additional funds for its all-volunteer fire department, but as the husband commented to me last night, this would be an important event even if all we did was break even. The secondary purpose of the Creston Auction is to strengthen to the web of community that holds us all together. We are people united in the common cause of making our community the best possible place to live, and right now, we’re raising money to build a fire station to replace the one we’ve outgrown. We didn’t have an auction in 2020 or 2021, and even though we had some other fundraising events, they weren’t quite the same as the Creston Auction.

I spent yesterday cataloging the information about the cars and equipment that were being consigned to the Sunday sale. (While I was doing that, the husband was outside on the equipment field getting the consigned items unloaded and placed.) I had two assistants. One was the retired secretary from my kids’ elementary school. I used to sub for her when my kids were in school there. She was my notary, because sometimes consignors bring titles that need to be notarized. My other assistant was a young woman who is part of the large family that helped found our Mennonite church over 100 years ago. She and DD#2 used to take dance classes together when they were little. She’s a sharp cookie and we like to train the younger people to take over some of these jobs.

I was struck, over and over and over again, by how deep and broad our connections are. People came in and out of our office. We visited. We reminisced. We commiserated about how much we hate the influx of “city folk.” Our fire department was paged out early in the day for a medical call and we found out later that someone we all knew had died. Updates on families were traded back and forth. We were getting ready for an auction, yes, but we were also re-establishing and strengthening the web of community in the process.

I went out to take pictures during a lull in the action, but I only got a picture of the general merchandise field because I got called back into the office:

I’ll try to get a picture of the equipment field today. We have a lot of equipment and vehicles to sell tomorrow.

I have to laugh again at the differences between men and women. I told the husband it’s analogous to when someone has a baby. If you ask a woman for details about the new arrival, she will be able to tell you the baby’s exact weight, the length, how long the labor lasted, and the baby’s full name. If you ask a man, he will say, “I think it’s a (girl or boy).” Getting information out of the men was like pulling teeth. I would ask, “What item do you want to sell?” and the man would respond, “A trailer.” I would have to say, “Could you give me more information?” because “trailer” included everything from a small homemade contraption to a 53' car hauler.

Thank goodness for all the knowledge I’ve assimilated via osmosis while the husband was watching car repair and heavy equipment videos. I may not be an expert, but I am at least conversant in the basics.

Today is a bit less busy for us. We have to do a bit of sorting and organizing for tomorrow’s sale. The husband will be out on the field answering questions from potential buyers. For the first time in many years, I’ll get to watch some of the general merchandise auction while it’s happening. And I am sure there will be a lot more visiting and reconnecting with old friends. Come find me if you’re out there.

Creativity Happens at the Worst Times

I have a pile of hexie flowers sitting on my worktable. I’ve been waiting for them to tell me what they want to be. Yesterday, while I was watching a quilting video on a completely unrelated technique, they decided. I love their idea. I have all the supplies.

I cannot start the project right now.

I went as far as pulling some material from the stash before I came to my senses. I cannot start anything new until after this fire department auction is over. The pile of material is sitting on my worktable next to the hexies.

Instead, I worked on finishing up some projects. I finished quilting the wallhanging. I made and attached the binding to it. I made and attached the binding to the second Baby Bear Paw quilt. And I started quilting the Blue Thistle quilt, because I had an idea I wanted to try out. In her promotional video for her Every Daisy quilting rulers, Amanda Murphy did a combo design of loops and flowers using the smallest Daisy ruler. I thought it would look good on this quilt:

I love it. The first few flowers are a bit rough but I can always take them out if they drive me nuts. I got better as I went along. The thread is a variegated King Tut 40wt cotton; I wanted to use the Wonderfil Konfetti 50wt, but I could not find a suitable color in that thread. The King Tut, however, has subtle color changes and looks great.

This will go quickly. I did that amount of quilting in about 45 minutes.

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Seedlings are starting to pop up.

These are hollyhocks, a variety called Jet Black, or Nigra, which apparently date back to 1629 and were also planted in Jefferson’s garden at Monticello. I love hollyhocks. I had them in my herb garden at one time, but they died out. Some of these will go in my garden and some will be sold at the plant sale.

And the swiss chard is up:

I could have direct-seeded these, but I thought I might sell some at the plant sale, too.

The fruit trees I ordered from Stark Bros arrived yesterday afternoon. The husband happened to be home from work early, so we went ahead and planted them. The two peach trees—Hale Haven and Reliance—went out by the garden. According to my mother, Hale Haven was the variety my grandfather had in his orchard. They are supposed to be hardy to zone 5. And I am pretty sure that Reliance is the peach I bought a number of years ago at Costco. That is the only peach that has ever produced for us and it is delicious.

The other two trees are a Snappy Mac (Macintosh variety) and a Whitney crabapple. They went in with the trees in the front yard, where we have the apple orchard.

I have so much to do and it all has to wait until after this auction. The husband set the brooder box up in the garage. Getting chicks is on the schedule for next week. I still have to plant the cukes and melons and a few more things for the plant sale. I have to start working on promotional material for the plant sale. I need to dig up lavender, thyme, and other herbs from the garden and pot them up for the plant sale. I got seed potatoes a few days ago and they need to get planted. I’ve got to make a decision on garden layout so I can move the plastic around and start setting up my new watering system. I’ve got three serger classes scheduled for April. And I am going to make a quilt.

Not at the Same Time

Winter is over and I am having to come to grips with the fact that my production level was less than I wanted it to be. I had a whole list of things I wanted to make for the co-op sale this September. I am not sure I will even have as much inventory as I did for last year’s sale. I really wanted to design and publish a few more quilt patterns. That didn’t happen, either. What have I been doing for the past six months?

The obvious answer to that question is that my goals are insane and I need to scale them back into the realm of possibility. And it’s not like I was sitting around. I worked on developing and teaching serger classes. I made clothing. I taught myself rulerwork. I knocked out ten million hexies. I did finish several quilts and three or four more are almost done.

It’s not as bleak as I am painting it to be inside my head. I need to stop comparing myself to quilt designers on YouTube who have large families and staff that enable them to crank out fabric lines, quilt patterns, and videos on a consistent basis. And if I were like them, I wouldn’t have chickens and pigs and a garden.

It’s like that saying, “You can have it all, just not at the same time.”

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I finished quilting another Baby Bear Paw quilt. I liked the concentric circles I did in the first one, but wanted to try something different in this quilt. I thought I might try 60-degree diamond quilting. My straight line quilting ruler even has 60-degree line markings on it. However, they are in the middle of the ruler, so using them cuts the effective length of the ruler in half. I was having trouble getting the lines established. I finally got one of my 24” cutting rulers, which also has 60-degree lines on it, and drew in the lines with a disappearing marker so I could quilt them.

I don’t know that this is the “right” quilting pattern for these large squares, but I do love the texture it gives. This one is all done and just needs to be bound.

I worked on the O’s wallhanging again yesterday—this is the one that is destined to be hung over the stairwell if I ever get it finished. Making a wallhanging for that spot was the reason I started quilting in the first place (almost 10 years ago). It is close to being done. I just need to finish quilting the borders and bind it.

Next up will be the Blue Thistle quilt. That one is going to get an allover pattern, so the quilting should go relatively quickly.

In the evenings, I’ve been working on the embroidery kit that Tera gifted me:

This is called Hummingbird Garden and it was designed by Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings. There are twelve 5” squares that will be sewn together into a wallhanging. Tera did all the hard work of cutting and appliquéing the designs. I get the joy of doing the blanket stitching and other embellishments.

I find the Primitive Gatherings designs to be more approachable than Sue Spargo’s. I love Sue Spargo’s designs—I still want to do Squash Squad—but they are intricate and detailed and require that one take out a bank loan to be able to afford all the specialty threads. Lisa sticks to about a dozen different stitches and uses mostly cotton and wool threads. I have a ton of embroidery thread from my mother and would like to use that up before buying any more.

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I’ve got about a dozen flats of seeds started out in the greenhouse. Some of the plants will be for my garden and some are destined for the plant sale. The plant sale will be held May 21 at the Mountain Brook Community Center, if my Kalispell peeps want to put it on the calendar. I still have to plant the zucchini, cucumbers, and melons, but I’ve held off so they don’t get too big and rootbound. I also need to dig up some lavender seedlings from the garden and pot those up to sell. If I ever stop growing vegetables, I could start a lavender farm.

This coming weekend is the big fire department fundraising auction. I will be glad when it’s over. Being in charge of the equipment sale is a big responsibility and one I would like to have done and off my plate.

Adding Some Breathing Room to a Quilt

I basted some quilts this week, but I am going to have to take one of them out and re-do it. Several years ago, I bought a bag at a yard sale containing the pieces for a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt. Some 40+ hexie flowers had been completed. A few of them had been sewn together with white background hexies. However, the white background hexies were made up of different fabrics—many of them dirty or stained—so I decided to liberate the hexie flowers from the background hexies and appliqué them to white background squares instead. I ended up with 42 squares in a 6 x 7 straight setting.

I did not put a border on the quilt. I have mixed feelings about borders. Sometimes I think they get used as an excuse to make the quilt bigger rather than as a necessary design element. However, they have a practical use, too.

This is the quilt laid out and pin basted:

I think the quilt looks fine without a border. I like the flowers floating on the white background. However, as the quilt top gets quilted, the fabric will shrink and shift. Those outside edges will become distorted. They can be trimmed and squared up, but only if there is sufficient extra fabric at those edges. On this quilt, there isn’t. I risk trimming off some of the flowers. That potential problem didn’t occur to me until I had finished basting this one.

The border wouldn’t have to be wide. A 2” white border added to each side would provide sufficient breathing room. I could add the borders fairly easily, even without taking the whole thing apart, but I am not sure that would leave enough overhang for the batting and backing. The backing and batting have to be at least a couple of inches larger on each side than the quilt top. If I add borders and discover that the backing and batting are too small, I’ll have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together with a bigger backing and batting.

For now, the quilt is rolled up in the spare bedroom. When I have some time, I will lay it out on the floor and reassess. I wish I had thought this through more carefully while I was basting this one, but I got into production mode and wanted to finish.

The Churn Dash and Blue Thistle quilts are also basted and ready to quilt. Do I have any idea when I will have time to quilt them? I do not. The next couple of weeks—and most of April, really—are chock full of other things needing attention. And I have to make a set of cushion covers.

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The 2022 gardening season is officially underway:

Being out in the greenhouse at this time of year is not a hardship. Planting seeds is not difficult. Most of us end up with way too many seedlings anyway, which was part of the motivation for having a plant sale.

On Wednesday, I planted a few varieties of tomatoes, some peppers, some flowers, and some herbs. Today, I’ll do more tomatoes, the corn, and the squash and cukes. I am trying to plant many different things so we have lots to offer at the plant sale in May. And other people in the community will be contributing plants to the sale that they have started or dug up from their own gardens.

The husband and I had drinks on the veranda yesterday afternoon and discussed our upcoming projects. Everything is prefaced with “After the auction . . .” The fire department fundraising auction is next weekend, and while it’s going to help raise money for the new fire station, it’s the kind of event that requires that we shove everything else aside until it’s over. He and I are in charge of the equipment sale this year. This is a new job for me. I understand—in theory—how it is supposed to go, but it’s still unfamiliar and a fairly steep learning curve.

Once the auction is over, though, we’ll be able to get chicks and concentrate on the infrastructure projects that need to be done around here.

Today is Planting Day

I knocked quite a few items off the to-do list yesterday, starting with 17 pints of beans:

I still need to do a batch of white beans, too, but this will keep us going for a while.

Every fall, I put a string of lights up around the porch to brighten up the place. I took the lights down yesterday and replaced them with the wind chimes. I like the lights, but I also like the sound of the wind chimes.

I sewed the pincushion and stuffed it with crushed walnut shells. A few years ago, I bought a 25-pound bag of walnut shells. I still have 24 pounds left.

The annual spring invasion of the forest animals has begun. Every so often, I have to go out and yell at the female flicker who seems to think that our TV antenna is a tree. (We live in a pine forest. I don’t know how you could get the two confused.) There are male turkeys fighting in the front yard. The stellar jays harass me for scratch grains every time I go out to the chicken coop. The deer and rabbits wander back and forth in front of the driveway alarm and set it off. I would not be surprised to see a bear out there soon.

After lunch, I went out to wander around the garden, where I had a short conversation with a male turkey who couldn’t figure out how to get out. He eventually realized he could fly out the way he came in.

I checked on the rhubarb—always the first thing to come up in the spring—and saw a few tiny red shoots:

It was warm enough for me to be out in shirtsleeves yesterday. I am happy with the way things are looking out there. The berry bushes all have buds on them. The lavenders are starting to green up. I am itching to play in the dirt.

Today is supposed to be even nicer, so the plan is to get as many seed trays started in the greenhouse as I can. I’m feeling a bit more stressed about this than usual because we’re not only starting plants for ourselves, we’re starting plants for the Mountain Brook Plant Sale in May. Oh well, all I can do is plant what I plant and see what we have for sale in a couple of weeks.

From Inside to Outside

We are going from cold and snowy to warm and sunny this week at breakneck speed (for Montana). This is the time of year that everything happens at once. I will get seeds started tomorrow, but other jobs on the list include pruning the fruit trees and grapevines, fixing some trellises out in the garden, making sure the tractor is ready to go, and spreading chicken manure around. Some of the black plastic needs to be moved. I have a rough idea in my head where things are going to get planted, but a formal sketch would be helpful.

We could still have weeks of cool weather, yes, but if I don’t start thinking about some of these things and planning for them to get done, they will take me by surprise when the weather does stabilize. And I am looking forward to getting outside and moving around.

I’m canning a batch of beans today and working on other inside tasks. This house is going to need a good cleaning soon. The indoor lettuce-growing setup seems to have run into a problem. I need to look at it and figure out what is going on. Quilting and sewing are going to have to take a back seat for a bit. I am making a conscious effort not to be distracted by new projects. When I do have time to sew, it’s going to be focused on finishing what’s already in the pipeline.

I’ve had my fill of making hexies, so I got out the embroidery projects to work on in the evening. This is a pincushion kit I picked up at As the Crow Flies near Spokane in January:

This is ready to be assembled and stuffed. I’ve also got a kit that Tera gave me that needs to be finished, my embroidered chicken project, and this one:

I broke down and bought the printed pattern. Squash Squad was a free stitchalong that Sue Spargo hosted in the fall of 2020 on Instagram. I tried to participate in the stitchalong while it was happening, but Instagram is not my favorite social media platform and it was just too frustrating. Sue’s videos were supposed to be on IGTV—Instagram TV—but Instagram shut down access to some features due to “misinformation.” Trying to find specific posts for the stitchalong was a nightmare. I am hoping that I can restart this now that I have the written instructions all in one place.

I just realized that my embroidery projects consist of sewing machines, chickens, and vegetables. LOL. I have a pig one started somewhere, too, but it hasn’t resurfaced recently. The husband helped me measure for shelving in DD#2’s bedroom. I’ll pick up the supplies this week. Once he installs it, I’ll be able to corral some of these works-in-progress.

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The BMW has been running very well since the husband replaced the EGR valve. I haven’t had a single light come on. I am particularly grateful right now for the fact that my car gets 40 miles to the gallon. When the snow tires come off, I can go back to driving in Sport mode, which will make WS happy when he travels with me.

I think we’re going to sell our stock trailer at the upcoming fire department fundraising auction. It is a gooseneck trailer, and the only truck with a gooseneck hitch is the one that was totaled in the accident. (We are still waiting to hear on the settlement.) We talked about pigs again last night. We’re still going to take a year off, and if we don’t have a stock trailer, this will be a good year to do it.

On the Rebound

Except for sounding like I should be singing bass in the choir, I seem to be over whatever it was I had last week. I got back to work on Saturday. I added borders to the mystery project and moved it to the “needs a backing” pile. Once I find a backing for it, it will move to the “needs to be quilted” pile and join the four quilts currently there.

I finished two batches of makeup pads and got them ready to mail out today. One batch is for DD#1 and the other batch is for DD#2’s best friend from high school. Best friend was born two days after DD#2 and the two of them have sequential social security numbers, which is something that could probably only happen in Montana. Last year, they got tattoos to honor that. (Before anyone asks—no, the tattoos are not their full SS numbers.) I think I am done with makeup pads for a while. I am going to set that serger up for experimenting with stitches and projects for upcoming classes.

And I finished quilting the Bear Paw baby quilt.

Bernina is having a 20% off sale this month, so I bought a set of echo clips. These are thick, clear plastic clips that fit around the base of the ruler foot. They come in three sizes and allow you to echo lines that you’ve already quilted or extend the reach of a ruler that isn’t quite large enough:

The ruler clips let me finish out the semicircular lines in the dark gray sections, although the freehanded lines aren’t quite as smooth as the ones done with the rulers. It is not as easy to follow an existing line of quilting as one might imagine.

I did ribbon candy in the sashing between the blocks, then finished off with square spiral lines 1/2” apart in the outer border.

It took me a while to find a good binding fabric. All of these came out of my “gray” Kona drawer:

There are warm grays, cool grays, light grays, dark grays—you get the idea. I picked one that I think will work, but I’ll check it again in natural daylight to make sure it’s the right gray.

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The chicks seemed to be a big hit in church yesterday. The little girl who told me last week that her mother wouldn’t let her have a real chicken came up and thanked me twice, and several of the chicks had names by the time church was over. That was fun.

WS popped by after dinner last night to ask about eggs. I sold him five dozen last week to put in the “market,” which is a small fridge on the corner of their property by the road. He buys eggs at wholesale from me and sells them at retail. We also sell our excess produce at the market. There is a lockbox for money, but everything is on the honor system. The corner market has worked well for a couple of years. Recently, though, people have been taking eggs and not paying for them. I am angry for him, because an eight year-old shouldn’t have to learn the lesson that people are jerks. I sold him another four dozen eggs—our hens have really ramped up production lately—and in true WS fashion, he’s trying to figure out a way to make sure no one gets eggs unless they’ve paid for them, first.

I kept my (less than charitable) ideas about booby-trapping the fridge to myself. I have no doubt he’ll come up with something.

Chicks for Church

Catching a virus means I haven’t had the most productive week, but I got two important tasks crossed off the list: assembling the Sunbonnet Sue quilt and making a batch of stuffed chicks:

I have learned to lower my expectations when I’m sick. Having to throttle down like that annoys the daylights out of me, though. (Just because I’ve learned to do it doesn’t mean I am happy about it.) I was glad I had some small projects that I could work on from the comfort of the couch.

I debated for quite a while on how to stuff these. I have plenty of crushed walnut shells, but those are good for stuffing pincusions and perhaps not so good for stuffing toys for little kids. Fiberfill is an obvious choice, but I wanted these to have some heft. Rice attracts animals. Beans would have been okay, but I didn’t have ones of an appropriate size. I had a small bag of polyester pellets, but not enough to fill all the chicks. (I was in no condition to run to Joann Fabrics.) In the end, I did a combination of polyester stuffing and polyester pellets. I am happy with the way they turned out and I hope they will be useful decoys, LOL.

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Because one of my goals is to stay healthy and out of medical facilities—can you blame me?—I worked really hard this week at making sure this virus didn’t turn into something serious. I do not like to take commercial medications if I can avoid it, and truly, I don’t think that taking a cough suppressant when I had the flu in 2018 was the best course of action. This time, I was more interested in keeping stuff loose and moving. I drank a lot of hot tea. This one, mixed with some local raw honey, has become one of my favorites:

I can’t remember where I got it. A Google search on the name brings up a company in a different area of Montana. This tea is a very simple blend of oregano, peppermint, echinacea, plantain, and mullein. Why that combination? Peppermint contains menthol, which is soothing. Echinacea helps fend off infections. Plantain has a high mucilage content, much like marshmallow and licorice root, and helps to hydrate the respiratory tract. (Licorice root and I don’t get along, though, so I tend to steer clear of teas with that as an ingredient.) Mullein is helpful in loosening mucus and moving it out of the lungs. But why oregano? Oregano is surprisingly high in antiviral and antibacterial properties.

Here’s a piece of anecdata for you: The husband came down with something in July of 2020. In true husband fashion, he refused to stop working. He was sick for almost two whole weeks. I haven’t seen him that ill in a long time. Whatever he had was mostly in his sinuses. He hates doctors almost more than I do (which is saying something) and wouldn’t go to urgent care. In desperation one evening, I handed him an oil of oregano capsule and a cup of tea. “What’s this?” he wanted to know. “Just take it,” I said.

A few hours later, he came upstairs to bed. I asked him how he was doing and he said, “What did you give me? I feel so much better!” He says he is now a believer. We keep a good supply of oil of oregano capsules on hand, and while it doesn’t prevent everything (obviously), we take it when either of us thinks we have been exposed or might be coming down with something. Placebo effect? Could be, but he didn’t know what I gave him at the time, and I certainly wasn’t expecting it to work as well or as quickly as it did.

I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. I’m just trying to stay out of the hospital. I’ve been drinking tea, taking ibuprofen, and checking my oxygen saturation periodically. It has stayed well up into the 90s. For perspective, when I landed in the emergency room four years ago, it was 75, and that was after being on full-flow oxygen all the way to the hospital because the husband stopped at the fire hall and picked up a tank and mask for me. I’ve also had the humidifier on every night. My cough—what is left of it—has stayed nice and loose.

I was also really hungry yesterday, which was kind of funny. I was snacking on anything I could find. Amy’s Fire-Roasted Southwestern Vegetable Soup is really good, by the way. My mother used to say, “Feed a cold, starve a fever,” and I guess that was what I was doing.

I have all the ingredients for this kind of tea growing here on the property. I want to make a bigger effort to harvest and dry my own herbs from now on, and this is a blend I want to keep on hand.

I was hoping to start seeds this weekend, but I think I will push that out a few days. Next week is supposed to be nice—sunny and in the 50s—and I have nothing pressing on the calendar besides a dental checkup. It should be a good week to replenish my vitamin D.

Caught at Last

My beginning serger class at the quilt store north of town on Tuesday went very well. It went so well that at the end of the class, the store owner came back to the classroom, pulled up the schedule on the computer, and said, “What else do you want to teach? Let’s get it on the calendar.” I’ll be doing the baby beanies and blankets class next month, and we scheduled a home dec serger class —placemats, napkins, pillows, etc.—for the end of September. One of the students is also interested in fitting classes.

Teaching the classes isn’t difficult, but coming up with the class outline, handouts, and class/display samples takes some time. I can’t just pull class ideas out of my head and schedule them. I’ve got to be prepared to teach the techniques. The stores also want the display samples to be made from fabric they carry, which is understandable, but all of that takes time to develop.

[The student who wants the fitting classes came with an old Riccar serger circa 1980s (?) or so. It was threaded and she said she had used it, although she acknowledged that it had been a while. She did not have a manual. I always suggest that students learn to thread their machines rather than just tying on new threads, because sooner or later, the thread is going to break and they will have to learn to thread it anyway. Better to learn with some guidance than at midnight when trying to finish a project. I looked up the manual on my phone. The illustrations would have been awful even in an original copy of the manual, but they were pretty much useless on the phone. We were persistent, however, and managed to get it working. It helped that its design was very similar to my Juki. I did suggest, though, that if she plans to do any significant amount of serging, she should consider a newer machine. I am all for vintage, as you know, but those old sergers are tricky and temperamental.]

I was looking forward to my T-shirt class yesterday, but I ended up canceling it. Except for feeling punky for a day or two after I got back from Spokane in January, I have pretty much managed to miss all the bugs going around for over two years. (Yes, I got a flu shot last fall.) I haven’t been sick—cold or flu sick—since the fall of 2019, but I woke up yesterday morning with something. No one wants to take a class from a teacher who is coughing and sneezing, so I canceled it.

I don’t feel awful; the husband asked me if I had spent the day on the couch, which is where I was when he got home last night. I said that no, I’d actually had a fairly productive day, but I took frequent breaks and drank lots of hot tea. I got the Sunbonnet Sue top all put together. I love the way it looks. I had to order a bit more fabric for the borders and that should be here next week.

I also made a stack of chicks:

These just need to be stuffed and sewn closed. I’ll probably do that today as I think it’s going to be another day of taking it easy. I might also play around with some new serger techniques.

A Batch of Stuffed Chicks

This was the display in the front of the church sanctuary this past Sunday:

Our planning materials for Lent suggested the visual of a mother hen gathering her chicks beneath her wings. My friend Ginger, who is very creative and does a fabulous job with the visuals for each church season, made this mama hen. The mama hen has little stuffed chicks underneath her wings and surrounding her on the table. Another young woman in the family, Amanda, made the chicks.

After many years of not having any young families with kids, our congregation has been blessed recently to have half a dozen little kids join us on a regular basis. We love their energy and laughter. When they came in on Sunday and saw this display, the temptation was too great. Soon, mama hen was bereft of her chicks, who were lovingly being carted around the church by all the little girls. One of them came up to me and said, “This is going to be my special chicken, because my mama says I can’t have a real one.”

Her mama instructed her to put the chick back where she found it. Ginger arrived and calmly reassembled the display. I found myself offering to make a batch of chicks for the kids to take home next Sunday if they promised to leave the ones on the table alone. I’ll use a simple chicken pincushion pattern and they won’t take long.

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The Sunbonnet Sue quilt is coming together. I have been taking my time on this project because it is a special one to me—the quilt blocks were sent to me by my college roommate, whose grandmother appliquéd them. Twenty-six of the blocks came finished, with six more Sunbonnet Sues finished but without backgrounds. I have been trying to decide if I wanted to do a layout with 24 or 30 blocks. I’ve got sashing strips sewn to most of the blocks and now I can’t dither any longer. I decided on the bigger quilt. Yesterday, I machine appliquéd the remaining blocks to background fabric. (I had checked with my roommate when she sent me the blocks, and she said that machine appliqué was fine. As I was sewing on the sashing strips, I noticed that parts of some of the blocks also had machine stitching.) I used a very fine 80wt thread, and once the quilt is finished, I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference in the blocks.

I think the last two blocks might become pillows, but I need to finish the quilt, first.

I like the Oliso iron, but it took a bit of getting used to. You don’t set the iron on its heel when you’re not using it. You leave the sole plate on the ironing board, and a set of feet pop out and lift the sole plate off the surface. The iron itself is nice and heavy, though, and I can see why it’s so popular with quilters.

I’m working on another batch of makeup pads. I do a few here and there as a break between other tasks.

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The husband helped me measure for some shelving in DD#2’s bedroom. I need space to store bins of supplies I don’t use very often so that the bins of supplies I do use are easier to get to. I’ll pick up the shelving units in town and he’ll hang them up for me.

The BMW had a spa day on Sunday; the husband changed the oil, replaced the failed EGR valve, and cleared all the error codes. So far, the check engine light and drivetrain warning light have stayed off, although I’ve only driven the car a few miles around the neighborhood. We’re hoping that the new EGR valve fixes those issues, although the EGR cooler still needs to be replaced under the recall.

Pattern Drafting Practice

The last part of the T-shirt class, this Wednesday, is on drafting a T-shirt pattern from personal measurements. All of the T-shirts I made myself last summer were done using the pattern I copied from a commercial T-shirt, which was the method I taught in last month’s T-shirt class. In order for me to teach the students how to draft a pattern from their own measurements, though, I have to be able to do it myself. That was yesterday’s project.

I had the husband help me get an accurate set of measurements of the key parts of my body. I used a couple different tutorials for drafting guidance. One of them suggests using Dollar Store wrapping paper, which has 1” grid markings on the back, for drawing out the pattern. That was a brilliant suggestion. Dollar Store wrapping paper is far cheaper than fancy drafting paper.

I decided that the first iteration was going to be done strictly according to the formulas given. After making a muslin from that pattern, I would go back and make the changes I thought needed to be made.

That was the plan, anyway.

I could see right away that the neck opening, as drafted, was going to be too small. The person who created that particular tutorial is very petite, and I think she likes close-fitting clothing. I widened the opening.

I also noted that the armscye and accompanying sleeve shaping resulted in a high, tight armhole. Armhole/sleeve fit is a matter of personal preference. I decided to leave that as drafted, at least for the first iteration, to see if I liked it that way. Armhole shaping is one of those paradoxical situations where a close-fitting sleeve actually gives better range of motion than a deeper, looser sleeve, because you’re not hauling around a lot of excess fabric every time you move your arm.

After I finished the back bodice drafting, I laid the new bodice pattern out on top of the old one to see how closely they tracked to each other.

The white, bottom layer is my copied T-shirt pattern. The red Christmas paper is the pattern drafted from my measurements. You can see that the bottom half of both patterns are very similar, but the top parts are different, especially in the armhole and neck shaping. This doesn’t mean that one is wrong and one is right; there are many different ways to clothe a body. All this means is that the fit in that area is going to be different depending on which pattern I use.

[Lots of sewists use the “Frankenpattern” method, where they cobble together pieces from several patterns into one new one.]

I went ahead and made a T-shirt, start to finish, from the red pattern. I think the fabric is either a rayon/spandex or a rayon/poly/spandex blend:

It fits me well—yay, it’s long enough!—and I plan to wear it when I teach the class on Wednesday. You can see, though, how high that neckline is, even with the mods I made. I will drop that even further. And while the sleeves fit, they are a bit tight for my taste. I think I am going to deepen that armscye just a bit and flatten out the top of the sleeve cap for a slightly more relaxed fit. Basically, I’ll end up drafting a new T-shirt pattern for myself that is an amalgamation of the two patterns.

[There is a bit of excess fabric at the sides near the bust—basically a dartless bust dart—which is visible because my dress form is not quite as well-endowed as I am.]

We’ll see how class goes this week. I am not sure I will continue to teach this level of pattern drafting because I am not sure most people are interested. But I could be wrong.

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I’ve gotten lots of positive comments on the Blue Thistle quilt. That one will get written up into a pattern for sure. (Incoming, Joanna, in a few weeks?)

I spent a couple of hours cleaning and organizing yesterday after I finished the T-shirt. One of the issues I have is that even though all of this stuff comes under the umbrella of “sewing,” it’s a lot of different kinds of sewing. Bags are different than quilting, which is different than garment-making, which is different than serging, which is different than hexies and embroidery. I enjoy them all, simultaneously. Supplies and projects were scattered all over the place, though, and they needed to be corralled because I can’t work efficiently when the place is a mess.

I’ve got four quilt tops to baste: Churn Dash, Blue Thistle, a mystery project, and the appliquéd antique hexie quilt that has been languishing for over a year. Churn Dash has a backing. I had the perfect backing fabric in the stash for Blue Thistle—I think I have enough—and I have a backing for the antique hexie quilt. The mystery project needs two borders and a backing, but I’ll have to do some shopping.

Just Enough Borders

This quilt lived up to its name right until the very end. I had just enough of both the inner and outer border fabrics to finish the top. I had to photograph it on the floor because it’s too heavy to stay up on the design wall.

Now it just needs a backing. I might have one in the stash, but I’ll have to see if the blues coordinate.

This will probably get an allover quilting design. I did loopy flowers on the original.

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I bought myself a new iron yesterday:

I am very particular about my iron and my ironing board. I learned to iron using my mother’s GE iron on her Mary Proctor ironing board. The Mary Proctor ironing boards were rectangles with sections that folded down. The “single-flip” board folds down on one end to form a point:

The “double-flip” board folds down on the end and also on one side. I spent a long time searching for my own Mary Proctor ironing board and now I have one of each. I use the single-flip every day. The double-flip needs a replacement piece to keep the side extension up and I haven’t fixed it yet, although it works fine without the extension. The double-flip board lives here in my office for when I’m sewing in here and need to press something.

I’ve been buying those old GE irons—the heavy ones with the cloth-covered cords—when I see them at thrift stores, because the newer irons are too light and have idiot features like auto shut-off, which is timed perfectly to shut off a few minutes before you need to press something. The old GE ones are getting harder to find, though, and often have damaged sole plates or frayed cords. The one I’ve been using died the other day, so I decided it was time for me to just spend the money and buy myself a new Oliso iron. These are designed for quilters—no auto shut-off—and also have little legs underneath that lift up to keep the sole plate off the ironing board when the iron is not in use. Clever! The Oliso irons are also nice and heavy.

On my to-do list for today is to organize everything for my serger classes next week and make up the handout for the third and final T-shirt class. I think I will need to break up that T-shirt class at some point. We’re getting into some advanced pattern drafting and not everyone needs or wants that. I’m going to make up class materials for making a raglan T-shirt—because one of the students asked about that specifically last time—and see which topic the students would prefer we tackle.

The Just Enough Quilt

The working name for my current piecing project has been Blue Thistle, but I really ought to call it the Just Enough Quilt. I’ve had just enough of several of the fabrics to be able to finish it. Such are the perils of working from stash. I enjoy the challenge, though.

Blue Thistle is a remake of a quilt I finished last spring. This was the original design:

When I hung it up outside, in natural light, I discovered that the background was made of up two different colors of Kona. The leftovers from another quilt had accidentally made their way into this one. I liked the effect, but it would have looked better if it had been planned instead of random—keeping the beige fabric within the flower squares, for instance.

Last fall, I was all about the blues, so I put this block together:

I liked it, although I ended up swapping in a slightly more saturated turquoise—with sparkles!—for those inner corner blocks. The large hourglass blocks also have a different periwinkle print, although it is the same shade. I pulled all the fabrics and kept them together in one bin. To get that cream/white background effect, I used a cream/white Grunge, a shade lighter and whiter than the one in the test block.

I cut all my units and started piecing. I knew I was going to have just enough of the periwinkle print that there was no margin for error and no more of that fabric to be had anywhere. The project got shelved some time in November with 2/3 of the flower blocks assembled.

I’m trying to move some of these projects through the pipeline, so I pulled the bin containing this project last week. I finished assembling the 12 flower squares and started making the chain squares. Yesterday, I finished the chain squares and put all the blocks up on the design wall so I could begin assembling the top.

But wait!—I only had 12 flower squares. The original quilt had 13. My EQ layout had 13. What happened? Could I make one more flower block? I rummaged around in my scrap bins hoping to find a bit more of the periwinkle fabric. Nope. That was not going to be an option.

And then it hit me. The layout is 25 blocks—13 of one and 12 of the other. If I only had 12 flower blocks, I could have 13 chain blocks and adjust the layout accordingly. I made up one more chain block.

It worked.

The layout is different, yes, but the overall effect is the same. And the best part is that the center is all done.

I still need to add two borders. I thought the small inner border would look nice in that turquoise sparkle print, so I calculated how much fabric I needed for a 2” wide finished border. There is just enough, with one narrow strip of fabric left over.

The outer border is going to be the same print that is in the center of the blocks, but I at least had the foresight to buy more of that last fall. I should have plenty. I’ll get this one finished and added to the (ever growing) to-be-quilted pile.

I’ve cut the strips for the Sunbonnet Sue sashing. Finishing that top is up next on the list. I decided to switch back to a simpler sashing, though. I didn’t like the sashing I used in the Churn Dash quilt as much as I thought I would, and that was the same sashing I had planned to use for the Sunbonnet Sue quilt.

I’ve been using the planner system I set up and I like it a lot. It has allowed me to better track projects moving through the pipeline. I would still like to have some shelving that allows me to store the projects, though. Keeping them in bins is helpful; having the bins in one location (and labelled) would be even more helpful.

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DD#2 bought a patio set for her apartment balcony. When we were there a few weeks ago, she asked if I would make different covers for the cushions. My brain, of course, went straight to retina-burning, saturated bold prints. I sent her some ideas. She texted me back and said she was thinking more along the lines of sedate beige.

That made me laugh. I know her decorating style is way more modern and streamlined than mine. She showed me the prints she liked and sent me the cushion measurements. I’ve ordered the fabric and will start working on those so I can take them with me next month.

Our cold snap seems to be over. The forecast is for another wet week in the mid-40s. I’ve got two serger classes next week—one at each quilt store—and then it’s going to be time to plant seedlings.

Paws and Claws

My college friend, Scott, who lives in Ohio and tinkers around with sewing machines, was intrigued by the Christina Cameli bear claw quilting pattern. We’ve been e-mailing back and forth about it for the past few days. Yesterday morning, I made a quilt sandwich with some Essex Linen and sat down at the Q20 to experiment. My goal was to test out that pattern, test out some thread, and see if there were any hiccups to be dealt with before I started quilting the Bear Paw baby quilts.

I threaded the machine with a spool of Konfetti, which is a 100% cotton 50wt thread from Wonderfil, a Canadian company. The Quilt Gallery in Kalispell started carrying their thread a few months ago. I’ve been very impressed by everything I’ve tried so far. Their wooly nylon is a great serger thread. The Glamore is a nice, flexible metallic. And while I am not likely to give up my collection of Aurifil thread, the Konfetti is beautiful.

My first attempt at making bear claws looked suspiciously like the swirls I did on the red Candy Coated:

I sent a picture over to Scott. We discussed. I tried again, but this time, I made an effort to make the starting circle followed by three or four echo lines around it before moving on to the next one:

Much better. The two patterns are very closely related to each other, obviously.

The texture of the quilting on the Essex Linen is amazing.

I switched over to working on the Bear Paw baby quilt. It was slow going, mostly because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I started by quilting in the ditch around the large dark gray squares and then around all the light gray “claws.” That helped to stabilize the center of the quilt. The Essex Linen has a loose enough weave that it will stretch out of shape if you’re not careful. I want a square baby blanket, not a odd-shaped parallelogram or trapezoid.

I decided on curved lines within the dark gray squares (and the colors in this picture are very close to reality):

I’m not unhappy with this choice, but the rings need more work. I started by making them 1” apart—the width of each arc in my set of curved rulers—but I want to go back and add lines in between. The quilting needs to be a bit denser. I’m also planning 1/2” matchstick quilting in the outer teal border.

I need to get a set of echo clips for my ruler foot. The outermost ring was made with the largest curve in my set of rulers. I have no way of doing any further curves unless I freehand them, and I know better than to try. An echo clip will allow me to follow the outer line and make the next one and the next one, etc.

[I played around with the idea of making some rays extending from that outer curve—you might be able to see the lines I drew with the disappearing marker—but I didn’t like those, either.]

I decided that was enough work on that quilt. I could have done the teal sections but I was too lazy to change the thread.

After lunch, it was back to work on the Blue Thistle quilt. I started putting together the chain blocks and finished enough of them that I could lay out the first two rows of the quilt:

The chain blocks are a cream Grunge and navy blue, although that navy blue looks black in this picture.

This one will probably be assembled within the next few days, but the pile of basted tops waiting to be quilted is getting bigger and bigger. The bottleneck just moves from one spot to another.

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I went out to the chicken coop yesterday afternoon and noticed that the Light Brahma broody hen was off the nest. She hasn’t moved for almost three weeks, so I thought she had abandoned the eggs. I took them out of the box, intending to dispose of them in the woods before they exploded and made a big mess. As I was putting more pine shavings in the box, however, she came bustling over, clearly upset that I was messing around in there. And that made Dave anxious, so he came over to investigate. I hurriedly put all the eggs back in the box. When I left the coop, she was busy tucking them all underneath her again. I’ll give her a few more days and see if anything happens.

Fish Stories

Yesterday was mostly a paperwork day. I did a bit of sewing in the afternoon, but it was on a project that has to stay under wraps for the moment, so no pictures.

For today’s blog post, I thought I would share a bit about a Lenten tradition that makes me laugh. When I was growing up in northeast Ohio, we always had fish sandwiches for lunch on Fridays at school during Lent. Our little town was heavily Catholic. My mother always made fish on Good Friday, but fish every Friday during Lent apparently was a Catholic thing and we were Missouri Synod Lutherans.

My family is also of Slovak ancestry. (Szabo is a Hungarian surname, because my paternal grandfather’s family was Hungarian.) We lived in a very ethnic area west of Cleveland. Some of my favorite memories as a kid are from going to the International Festival in Lorain every summer, where we could wander from booth to booth and buy every kind of ethnic food imaginable, then sit on the lawn and eat it while listening to music and watching the dance groups perform in their countries’ traditional costumes.

Growing up next to Lake Erie also meant that our family ate a lot of fish and did a lot of fishing ourselves. My grandfather had six granddaughters before he got any grandsons, and he thought nothing of throwing all six of us into his car and taking us out to a local pond or to the lake to teach us how to fish for bluegill, sunfish, and the occasional bass. (I’m the one with the dark hair sitting down with my back to the camera and my sister is in the orange shorts.)

My favorite fish for eating, hands down, is yellow perch. (Bluegill is surprisingly good, too, although very tiny and hard to filet.) Whenever I am in Ohio, I try to have at least one perch dinner.

One of my cousins shared this on Facebook last week, which reminded me that it’s Lent and the American Slovak Club in Lorain, Ohio, is having its weekly fish fry every Friday night:

What makes me laugh is that I don’t think of perch as a traditional Slovak meal, although pierogies, cabbage rolls, and haluski (cabbage and noodles) are also on the menu. I’d probably indulge in the one pound of perch dinner, because anything worth doing is worth doing in excess.

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I’m in that transition period where I am going to have to figure out when and how much sewing I’ll be able to continue doing over the next couple of months. I didn’t touch the Q20 from June until October last year. When the weather gets nicer, I am going to want to be outside as much as possible, unless we have another ridiculously hot summer. But we’ll see. Maybe this summer, I’ll want to do more quilting on the Q20 in the afternoons. Or some embroidery or hexies. The days are getting longer, though, and that means that our evenings sitting together watching car repair videos are coming to an end.

Hints of Spring

The farm store got chicks this week. I picked up a chick schedule when I was in there on Friday. We don’t usually get chicks until after the fire department auction—which is the first weekend in April—but I also have to factor in what weeks they are supposed to get what breeds from the hatchery. I am just about at the point, though, where I may start ordering directly from the hatchery myself. I had to incubate eggs in the spring of 2020 because the farm stores kept selling out of chicks as soon as they arrived. Last year, I was able to get chicks, but I had to get half Light Brahmas and half Black Jersey Giants, which I am convinced are actually Black Stars or Black Australorps that were mislabelled, because they are not as big as Jersey Giants should be. I try to get a different color breed of chicken each year so I will know how old they are, but we’ve got a mishmash out there right now. There are Buff Orpingtons left from 2019, the crossbreeds I hatched from 2020, the two breeds from last year, the diva show Leghorns we got last spring, and Dave. That limits the breeds I can get this year. My choices are Barred Rocks, New Hampshire or Rhode Island Reds, and Brown or White Leghorns. I’m also limited by how many chicks come in on which week. I said to the husband that it seems that the farm store is ordering fewer chicks of more breeds this year. I suspect that is to accommodate backyard growers who like to have lots of different breeds. My sense from reading the posts on the local Facebook poultry group is that there are a bunch of people looking for show breeds and also a lot of people who want chickens that lay lots of different-colored eggs.

I’ll keep any further comments about that to myself, other than to note that white eggs taste the same as blue eggs. :-/

The Light Brahma broody hen is still sitting on eggs. She was turning them yesterday when I went out to check and she let me know that my presence was not appreciated. Those hens get an A for effort, even if they never manage to hatch anything.

The rain finally stopped on Friday afternoon, and while it only got into the low 40s yesterday, that was warm enough for me to make a trip out to the garden and greenhouse to check things out:

Planting is a ways off yet. The snow is receding, though. I’m standing at the east end of the garden looking west. The greenhouse is to my right.

Part of the fence between the pig pasture and the garden came down; it looks to me like a deer tried to jump it and missed. It’s not a complicated repair.

I spent some time in the greenhouse organizing the growing supplies. We’ve got enough potting soil to get started, although we’ll need a few more bags. I mix it with compost and the seedlings seem to love it. I sorted out the pots we’ll use for the plant sale, because those tend not to come back. The husband promised to move out all of the stuff he stored in there over the winter. We’re going to need every square inch of horizontal surface. Mike, Ali, Elysian, and I all start our plants in there and we’ll also have the ones we’re starting for the plant sale.

The greenhouse was warm enough that I had to open one of the doors for some air flow. I had a big flock of turkeys for company out in the garden and pig pasture.

While I was out in the greenhouse, the husband was putting the bumper guard on the new truck:

He ordered a new EGR valve for the BMW. Thankfully, the valve was in stock and didn’t have to come over on a boat from Germany. That part should be here in a few days and then he will see if he can get the car to stop throwing those drivetrain warnings. The EGR cooler still has to be replaced under the recall, but he said he doesn’t think that is very high on BMW’s priority list right now. Oh well, if my car catches fire because of it, they’ll have to buy me a new one.

We watch a YouTube channel called Just Rolled In. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The videos are compilations of cars that mechanics get in for service, and some of them are horrifying. Some people don’t do even the most basic maintenance on their vehicles.

Did I sew yesterday? A bit. I’m trying to keep current projects moving along, because my sewing time is going to become limited as they days get longer and I need to be outside.

In Fits and Starts

Yesterday was one of those days when I just wanted to finish something—anything—but I kept getting derailed. I don’t do well in those situations. I get cranky. The interruptions, although minor, were urgent, so I had to keep dropping what I was doing. I finally finished the big items on my to-do list just before dinner.

Our conversation over drinks, where I was lamenting my frustration with the day’s progress:

The husband: Did you make a ridiculously long to-do list for yourself that you couldn’t possibly get done in one day?

Me: Isn’t that what you do?

The husband: Sometimes.

All the world is queer, except for me and thee.

Both Bear Paw baby quilts are basted and ready to quilt. I used one layer from the roll of thin quilt batting in my stash; the Essex Linen is thick enough as it is that putting a thick quilt batt inside would make the whole thing too stiff. I am letting the tops marinate for a day or two while I decide how to quilt them. I’ve been looking at various custom quilt patterns for bear paw blocks, but the larger scale of these blocks means that some custom quilting designs just won’t work.

I did find this pattern, though, that I am itching to try on a quilt. This is by Christina Cameli and she calls it Bear Claws:

It might work on one of these Bear Paw baby quilts, but I plan to practice with it, first.

I got the backing sewn for the Churn Dash quilt. I went with a small red-and-white paisley print. I am pretty sure I’ll be switching between red and white/cream threads on the top and I don’t want to have to worry about what color is showing on the backing. It’s a very busy print that will help to hide the thread.

And I pulled out these blocks in an attempt to get this top moving along again:

This is the second iteration of that purple-and-green quilt from last spring in which I thought I was using Kona White for the background but actually ended up with a combination of Kona White and Kona Bone. For this version, I cut as much as I could ahead of time and kept all the fabrics together in their own bin. I had four of these star blocks left to assemble. Those are done. Now I need to cut the units for the alternating chain blocks, assemble those, and finish the top.

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In other news, the husband has created a list of all the damaged/destroyed tools that were on his truck when he was in the accident. I need to type those into an Excel spreadsheet and send them to the claims adjuster. And weird things still keep falling into place. He needed a bumper guard for the new truck, so he stopped at Currier’s Welding in Kalispell to see if they could order one for him. They had the exact bumper guard he needed because the factory had sent it to them by mistake. (They ordered one for a smaller Dodge but got the one that fits the 4500 and 5500 models.) The bumper guard on the gray truck was largely what protected that truck’s engine in the crash.

He also asked them about getting a new Warn winch for the front of the new truck, because the one on the gray truck was destroyed. They had one in stock, which turned out, apparently, to be the only one left in the whole United States. Sixty-four of them are on backorder.

The insurance company needed to know the replacement value of the gray truck, and used work trucks are so scarce that the current value of that truck, even at 8 years old, is more than we paid for it. The way all of this has worked out has been very weird, but I am not about to look a gift horse—or truck—in the mouth.

I picked up his new computer yesterday morning and got it all set up.

Today is supposed to be the last day of wet weather. I am itching to get out to the greenhouse and garden and start making plans. That’s on the schedule for tomorrow. I will do as much set-up as I can by myself and make a list of the things I’m going to need his help with. I’ve started buying supplies as I see them in town. Yes, it’s too early to plant anything, but if I wait until it’s time to plant, things like tomato cages and landscape fabric will be sold out.

More Classes and Bear Paw Quilts

I’ve got two more serger classes on the schedule for this month. I’ll be teaching a Serger 101 class at Glacier Quilts on March 15 from 10-1, and the Bundling Up Baby class (making baby items on the serger) on March 22 from 10-1. We’ll see if they fill, as two weeks isn’t a lot of lead time, but at least customers will know that the store is offering them. We can always bump them to April or May.

When I was at DD#2’s last week and we were discussing rescheduling my trip to visit her, I mentioned that I had more serger classes coming up. She said, “I thought you retired from teaching.” I traveled quite a bit when the girls were younger—teaching at The Knitting Guild of America conferences, at Stitches, and for various guilds and stores around the country, but my last trip was in 2011 (I think) when I taught at The Yarn Barn in Lawrence, Kansas. I had already started my transcription job by then. I do love teaching, although I never expected I would be teaching serger classes.

We got another round of rain and sleet overnight. The temperature is hovering right around 31 degrees. It’s a mess out there. I’d be happy to stay put and sew, but I have a haircut appointment at noon. I’m hoping the roads are clear by then. The husband’s new computer is also waiting to be picked up and I have some book orders to mail out.

He’s been puttering around out in his shop and showing off his new truck to the neighbors who’ve stopped by. I joked that if we sold tickets, we could probably pay it off in short order. He got a call from Liberty Mutual yesterday—Safeco’s parent company—and they said that they will not contest the claim. They needed his statement, because he was the only one involved who saw the whole thing happen, but they are accepting responsibility. Now we just wait to see what the compensation is going to be.

I made another Bear Paw baby quilt top yesterday. These colors are reasonably accurate:

I also finished binding the red Candy Coated. I am going to start working on the sashing for the Sunbonnet Sue quilt so I can get that one put together.

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I had an e-mail from Joann Fabrics in my inbox this morning, highlighting all the new inventory. I was curious, so I clicked on the link. I did not look at all 84,948 items, but I did see a few that were noteworthy. The most surprising news is that Joanns is now an authorized retailer for Liberty Fabrics (Tana Lawn).

I will be curious to see if the store here gets any stock, although this probably isn’t anything I would add to my stash.

I looked at the new juvenile knits, some of which are cute, some of which look like the designers threw together a bunch of random graphics. (The latter ones will, no doubt, end up in the clearance bin in another six months, just like the current crop of ugly knit prints. I told my T-shirt class students to go stock up on those clearance fabrics for making muslins to test their self-drafted patterns.) Joann’s line of juvenile knits really have me scratching my head. They could do a brisk business in baby and juvenile knits if they offered cute prints that were appropriately scaled for smaller clothing. I sometimes wonder if the designers and the buyers even know how to sew, or if they are just employees sitting at their computers, completely divorced from the desires of their end users. Part of what makes DD#2 so good at her job with Nordstrom is that she loves fashion and has a refined sense of style. She knows what is going to sell. If I were a fabric designer for a major retailer, my goal would be to design fabrics that were so adorable that there would be nothing left to put in the clearance bin at the end of the season.

Common sense, I think, but as one of my friends in the craft co-op says, “If common sense were lard, some folks wouldn’t have enough to grease the pan.”

An Atmospheric River

Before I get to the rest of this blog post, may I suggest that if you are looking for a tangible way to help the Ukrainian people, please consider donating to Mennonite Central Committee. MCC actually has its origins in helping the people of Ukraine in the early 20th century and knows how to get help where it is most needed. You have heard me talk about MCC here on the blog, as our church participates in several of their relief sales held annually here in the US.

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This winter has been a bit of a bust, moisture-wise, especially as we were told it was going to be a La Nina winter that would bring us a lot of snow. Apparently, we are going to get all the precipitation this week. We are under what is known as an atmospheric river—a continuous stream of moisture coming in off the Pacific. It started raining Sunday afternoon, and then temperatures dropped overnight. The roads were a skating rink yesterday morning. The husband spent several hours helping one of our employees who had slid off the road on his way to work. (He took the old truck out and left the new one parked here.) Today looks to be a carbon copy of yesterday. And we marvel at the fact that it worked out for us to go to Tacoma when we did, because Snoqualmie Pass was closed for 15 hours yesterday.

I’m not going anywhere until I have to. Yesterday morning, I attacked this project:

The generator needed a cover. The husband has this same model generator on the white truck, and I made a cover for that one a few years ago. I spread the Cordura fabric out on the cutting table, started measuring, and got to work. Things were not going as smoothly as I remembered, though, and I couldn’t figure out why. Finally, the husband said, “I think you used a different material for the other cover.”

He brought the other cover in for me to look at. Sure enough, I had used a different material for that one. I pulled out my set of fabric swatches to check. The other cover was made of what’s called Traveler nylon, which is a thicker urethane-coated fabric with a looser weave. For the new cover, I had ordered polyurethane-coated 500D Cordura. The Cordura is also waterproof and will do what he needs it to do—protect the generator—although I told him that if it doesn’t hold up, I’ll order the other material and make another cover.

This cover turned out well despite my attempts to screw it up:

If I were going to do this on any kind of consistent basis, I would be shopping for a different industrial sewing machine. The Necchi BV handled the Cordura with some coaxing, but I don’t like to stress my machines.

I crossed that project off the list. After lunch, I started another Bear Paw baby quilt, then sewed binding onto the red Candy Coated quilt so I would have something to work on during a Zoom meeting I attended last evening.

[I got roped into being on the fundraising committee for our local Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. This is an organization that the husband and I support financially, which also sponsored the plant sale and garden tour that I participated in last year. This year, I am in charge of the plant sale (Susan is helping me) and I’m also on the roster for the garden tour again this year, in mid-July. I mentioned to the husband that our committee had a meeting scheduled for last night, and he very helpfully said to me, “What is that word you’re always telling me to learn? You know, the one that starts with ‘N’ and ends with ‘O’?”]

I also played around with some doodle quilting while I was waiting for dinner to cook:

I had a couple of reasons for wanting to try this. It is hard to tell from the photo and because this was a batting scrap cut off from the tumbler quilt, but I switched to Aurifil 50wt thread in the top instead of the Signature 40wt that I’ve been using. I like the heavier thread because it looks more like hand quilting to me, but I had a niggling suspicion that things like swirls and paisleys would be easier using a thinner thread and a shorter stitch length. This quilting definitely has a more delicate appearance, and those flowing lines are smoother and easier to stitch. I don’t think it’s a matter of one style being better than the other; rather, it’s a matter of adding more techniques to the toolbox. Some quilts benefit from some types of quilting more than others, and I can’t keep using the same technique on everything just because I am comfortable with it.

I also wanted to try the doodle quilting to see if I could get my brain to switch quickly from one pattern to another. I think I did okay.

And finally, please check out the Pinovations Quilt Tutorial on the Missouri Star Quilt Company’s YouTube channel! The guest is none other than Charisma Horton, who hosted the embroidery workshop in Ephrata, Washington, that I attended back in the fall of 2019. I had such a good time at that workshop. Charisma is one of the sweetest people I know and also one of the hardest working. She absolutely deserves the success she is experiencing. I enjoyed watching her and Misty Doan making this quilt together.

And Now It's Back to Work

The husband spent all day yesterday outfitting the new truck and getting it ready for work tomorrow. He needs to buy one more specialty toolbox to hold his set of wrenches. The one on the gray truck was destroyed in the accident. The wrenches were okay, but they spilled out all over the highway.

The generator cover is back in my queue, probably as tomorrow’s project. It’s not complicated, just a bit unwieldy to sew. I’ll sew it on the Necchi industrial.

I put together a Bear Paw baby quilt top yesterday morning:

The pieces were already cut and the top didn’t take long to assemble. Sewing with the Essex Linen is a bit different than sewing with quilting cotton. The weave is looser, so it tends to torque a bit if you’re not careful. I put this together using the Accufeed foot on my Janome 6600P and that worked really well.

[The “claws” look pink, but they are actually a light gray. I’ll be glad when I can take pictures outside again in natural light. Our carpet isn’t that yellow, either. I did adjust the color balance in Photoshop, but I can’t get it where I want it.]

This finishes at 39” x 39”, which is a great size and only requires a bit more than a yard of fabric for the backing. I haven’t decided how to quilt it yet. I did a square spiral with straight-line quilting on the one I made for Susan’s grandson, but I might try some custom quilting on this one. I chose this color combo to coordinate with a nursery-themed fabric I picked up on clearance at one of the quilt stores.

I worked on the Candy Coated quilt again yesterday, but I got into the weeds with my quilting. I suspect that happened because 1) it had been almost a week since I worked on it and 2) I am overthinking it. The problem is hard to describe other than that the quilting pattern varies ever-so-slightly from one side of the quilt to the other. I think I know what I need to do to get back on track. The quilt is going to be donated, and no one besides me will ever be able to tell what happened, so I am going to finish it today and be grateful for the learning experience.

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Nicole Sauce had a great Living Free in Tennessee podcast on Friday. In a time when the media wants people to focus on the latest crisis, it’s important to remember what is within our sphere of control. Please note that she does not advocate sticking one’s head in the sand and ignoring world events. I have to say that because someone will deliberately misunderstand the point she is making. Instead, she reminds her listeners to keep those events in the proper perspective and avoid becoming paralyzed by the what ifs. The husband and I listened to Sirius radio on the drive over to Seattle (Outlaw Country), and we heard the DJ say that her mother spends most of her time in a state of anxious terror because all she does is watch mainstream media and The Weather Channel. Having 24/7 access to news is not necessarily a good thing.

If you are feeling anxious, maybe that’s an indication that you need to take some kind of action. That has always been my coping mechanism for difficult situations. When the bottom fell out of the economy in 2009, I doubled down on my penny-tracking efforts. Knowing exactly where we stood financially—bleak as it was at the time—was better than not knowing. Focus on what is within your control and do what you can to move forward, even if it seems like you’re taking baby steps.