Fifteen More Minutes of Fame

I’ve mentioned Nicole Sauce’s Living Free in Tennessee podcast here on the blog—it is, hands down, my favorite podcast and the one I’ve been listening to the longest. I am also an LFTN premium member because I believe in supporting the work Nicole does, and the additional membership benefits I get at that level are worth much more than what I pay for them. Nicole’s perspective on life resonates with me. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be a guest on her show. We had an enjoyable half hour visit where I attempted to condense the last 30 years of my life here into something coherent.

You can download the podcast in most podcatchers and listen to it there, or you can click on this link and listen to the podcast on the LFTN website.

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I am supposed to teach a serger class from 10-1 today at the quilt store north of town, but I am keeping one eye on the weather. This has the potential to be a wild weather day. We are under a winter weather advisory until 9 am this morning (it snowed a few more inches overnight), then a wind advisory until 2 pm, then a high wind warning from 2 pm until 9 am tomorrow morning. The high wind warning includes possible northeast gusts up to 70 mph. Those northeast winds that come back down off the mountains are the ones that took out so many trees on our property two years ago. At the very least, I expect the power to go out overnight.

Spring can show up anytime.

January in April

Gardening in Montana requires fortitude, and this is why no one puts plants out before the end of May:

We went from 60 degrees and sunny on Thursday to this. The snow started coming down as I was cooking up bacon and eggs for breakfast. By lunchtime, we had five inches on the ground. It warmed up into the low 40s by mid-afternoon, which turned everything into a slushy mess. It is 22 outside right now, which means that slushy mess is now frozen.

I said to the husband that this was more snow than we’ve gotten in the past three months. I wish it had come in January or February. Back then, I didn’t have chicks in the brooder or plants in the greenhouse. Spring chores are harder when it’s winter outside. The chickens were very unhappy yesterday. They don’t like to go out to the chicken yard when there is snow on the ground.

It is what it is.

The husband installed the new dishwasher yesterday morning. It cleans really well. My only complaint is that the lower rack has dish guides installed at right angles to each other rather than lined up in one direction. I cannot put the drip pans from my stove in this lower rack, so I am keeping the lower rack from the old dishwasher and swapping it out when I need to wash large or long items.

Neither of us had a terribly productive day yesterday. I cleaned the kitchen once the husband was done in there, but I spent the rest of the day sitting and reading or embroidering. I think we are still recovering from the auction. The husband came down with a cold this week (probably caught at the auction) and is pretty miserable.

Of course, now that I can’t work in the garden, my sew-jo has taken a hike. I should take advantage of this time to finish quilting the Blue Thistle quilt and to put the borders on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt and get that one basted. I will see my college roommate in June, so if I have the quilt done by then, I’d like to be able to show it to her. (I will ship it back to her.) Her brother lives in Moscow, Idaho, which is just south of Coeur d’Alene. Her brother and her husband have a bike trip planned for June. She messaged me the other day to say they were flying in to Spokane a few days early and would drive over to see me, but I did her one better—my mother and I are going to Alaska in June to visit DD#1, and it works out perfectly for me to spend a day or two with my roommate and her husband in Spokane before meeting my mother when she flies into Seattle.

I’ll find my sew-jo somewhere. I am nothing if not disciplined. And it’s a lot like writer’s block. Sometimes you just have to fake it until you make it. I am glad to be working on the embroidery projects again, though. I worked on my embroidered chicken project last night. It’s not to the fancy embellishment stage yet, so I have nothing interesting to show you.

The annual spring invasion of the forest animals has begun in earnest. We have a female flicker who has decided that the metal ridge cap of the house would be a great place to try to find bugs. (The husband reminds me that bird brains are not very large.) She starts up at 7 am every morning. It sounds like someone is jackhammering our roof. We have not figured out how to dissuade her. This has been going on for about two weeks now. There is also a very persistent, very opinionated stellar jay who lets me know that he is unhappy when his daily ration of cracked corn is late. The male turkeys seem to have moved on and left the females here by themselves. (No doubt the females are relieved.) I need to get my hummingbird feeders filled and hung up, although if I were a hummingbird, I would stay south for a few more weeks yet.

No bears yet, although we’ve heard they are out.

Barred Rock Peeps

I made a quick trip to the farm store yesterday morning to see if they had gotten any chicks. The store was very quiet when I walked in, and at first I thought the shipment hadn’t arrived. By the time I got to the live animal section, though, I could hear tiny peeping noises. The chicks must have been a bit subdued from their travels.

I was the only customer and had my pick of the shipment. I got 16 Barred Rock pullets, paid for them ($4.50 apiece, which is way more than we’ve paid the last couple of years), and brought them home. They settled right in:

The brooder box is in the old garage. I popped out there a couple of times yesterday to make sure the chicks were still doing well. This seems to be a lively, healthy bunch.

I can breathe a bit easier now that we have peeps. I am the queen of contingency plans, but I hate to implement the fallback strategy unless I absolutely have to.

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After I got the peeps settled, I ran up to sewing for a bit. Until the plant sale is over and all the plants are in the ground, my sewing socializing time is going to be limited. The weather yesterday was stellar, too, and I wanted to take advantage of it, so I didn’t stay long. I came home and attacked the herb garden. We would still like to extend the chicken run into this area. It is wild and overgrown but also full of lots of seedlings. The first thing I did was to dig up two very old, very large lavender plants. I think they’ve been in there for close to 20 years. One had gotten so big that it was blocking the entrance to the garden, but I couldn’t get to it until I dug out the other one. I did not try to save either plant. At that age, they get woody and misshapen. (It’s not like I don’t have plenty with which to replace them.) To my delight, I found a smaller lavender bush underneath them that still had the nametag next to it. The variety is Lavandula ‘Elizabeth’. I plan to dig it out and move it to a prime spot over in the big garden.

I dug out eight or ten lavender seedlings—a fraction of what is out there, because my lavenders are so promiscuous—some catmint, a true hyssop, a bunch of thyme, and some garden sorrel. I took all of the seedlings back over to the greenhouse and potted them up there for the sale. I still have lemon balm, oregano, and bee balm to dig up, but that will have to wait for the next nice day.

I am going to label all my lavender seedlings as “Janet’s Surprise Lavender.” I had so many different varieties in the herb garden at one time that it is genetic chaos out there. People won’t know what color the flowers are until the plant blooms. They could be white, pink, pale purple, or deep purple.

My goal for this plant sale is to double what it took in last year. I think we can do it. We’re offering some really cool and interesting plants that cannot be had locally except from us.

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I got an e-mail from the owner of the quilt store north of town yesterday. I am scheduled to teach a Serger 101 class there on Monday. She asked if I would contact a potential student to make sure she was prepared for the class as she had inherited her machine. I called and chatted with her for a bit. This student says her machine was working when she got it, so I encouraged her to sign up for the class. With her in the class, I will have five students.

The store owner also said that people are asking for more serger classes. Who knew that this was such an untapped market? She asked me to look over the calendar and pick a few open dates. I probably won’t schedule anything until June. The rest of April is a nightmare and May isn’t much better.

Figuring Out Flatlocking

I no longer wonder why sergers sit, unused, in closets all over the world. We are in the age of limitless information and yet it has taken me more than a month of reading and watching YouTube videos to get a handle on the flatlock stitch. And I don’t think it’s because I am stupid.

I should point out that I am one of those people who is most comfortable learning by following an example. Nothing makes me more anxious than being thrown into something without a detailed road map to follow and being told to figure it out. I’d like to think that is part of what makes me a good teacher, because when I develop class materials, I always make sure that what the student learns is framed within some kind of context and shows concrete examples—in other words, I teach the way I would like to learn. That doesn’t work for every student, but the ones who don’t need that information can ignore it.

The first place I went for information on the flatlock stitch was the manual for my Juki serger. I actually have two manuals: the basic setup manual and an additional manual that has more in-depth information as well as some projects. I think one of the projects might feature the flatlock stitch, but I can’t tell from either the instructions or the photo. That manual does, at least, have suggested stitch settings. It also mentioned something about a converter, and I found one in my box of accessories, but that was the extent of the guidance.

I pulled out a couple of my serger books. Several of them have very good photos, but again, what I was missing most was context. When would I use the flatlock stitch? And when would I use a two-thread flatlock versus a three-three flatlock? What is a reverse flatlock stitch?

I picked up snippets of information here and there. Flatlock mimics the seams on activewear, although most of those are done on industrial flatlock machines or on coverstitch machines. Flatlocking can be done with decorative threads. (Okay, which decorative threads?) Flatlocking can also be done on woven fabrics.

I searched for patterns and projects on the internet. I found a few, including some on the Bernina website. I have to say, Bernina does a good job of educating consumers, but that’s almost a requirement for them to do so because their products are so expensive. It’s hard to convince someone to spend $8000 (not a typo) on a top-of-the line serger/coverstitch machine unless that person knows how they are going to be able to use it. Still, the Bernina projects don’t always provide sufficient background material about stitches, thread, and fabric choices.

Gail Yellen is a Bernina educator and she’s really good. I want to take a class from her someday. She has a placemat project featuring pintucks and flatlocking on the serger. The accompanying YouTube video is an hour and a half long. I have watched it twice and plan to watch it at least one more time. When I finally thought I had a handle on flatlocking and its variations, I went back and watched other videos and read my serger books again. The information is finally starting to fall into place.

I had an hour yesterday afternoon before the husband got home, so I sat down at the serger yesterday to experiment. The first step was to unthread, clean, oil, and put in a new needle. Flatlocking is done with one needle, most commonly the left needle. I rethreaded the serger with three different colors of regular serger thread—so I could see what thread(s), if any, needed to be adjusted— got the serger to make a chain, then rethreaded the upper looper with a 12wt Aurifil cotton thread, as suggested by Gail Yellen.

The flatlock is an unbalanced stitch, meaning that some of the threads are deliberately looser or tighter than they would be if I were sewing a seam or finishing an edge. The red is the 12wt Aurifil. It is thicker than regular serger thread. I have white serger thread in the lower looper and green serger thread in the needle. This is how the edge looks when it comes off the serger:

The magic of a flatlock stitch—and what makes it so useful on thicker fabrics—is that after serging the seam, you gently pull the two fabrics apart so that they are lying next to each other. Whether you sew with the right or wrong side of the fabrics together determines which side of the stitch is on the public side of the piece. I was using Kona scraps, which don’t have a right or wrong side, but I pretended that I was sewing them wrong sides together. Thus, when I pulled them apart, the needle threads formed ladders on the wrong side of the work:

If you wanted the needle threads to be on the public side of the work—so you could weave decorative ribbon through them—this would be called a reverse flatlock stitch.

However, if you go to all the trouble of using that lovely 12wt Aurifil in the upper looper, you probably want that side of the stitch to be visible:

Gail Yellen uses both the flatlock and reverse flatlock stitches in her placemat project.

The Kona is thin enough that when I pulled the two pieces of fabric apart, they didn’t lie next to each other. Rather, one ended up on top of the other, but they are within the seam so it’s hard to see. Some sewists will go back and topstitch over one side of the flatlock stitching for additional strength, although I’m not convinced that’s necessary.

That was Kona, a thin woven fabric. How does flatlock work on a thicker knit, like fleece? I ran a few scraps of fleece through as an experiment and was pleased with how it turned out, but those results—and more about the two-thread flatlock—will have to wait for a future blog post.

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Everything that needs to be started in the greenhouse has been planted. We should have plenty for ourselves and plenty of stock for the plant sale.

The farm store did not have chicks on Monday. They had a sign saying they were expecting a shipment at the end of the week. I will check today and again tomorrow. I am a bit concerned that this is 2020 all over again and people are panicking and buying up the supply. I could hatch out my own eggs again, but that’s going to result in far more roosters than we need. They can go into the soup pot, yes, but I don’t look forward to that period at the end of the summer and before butchering when I have a posse of teenage roosters to manage. Also, Dave would be unhappy.

We’ll see. The husband reminded me that last April, the farm store put chicks on sale because they had so many left after the initial rush.

We might try to get potatoes planted this weekend. I also need to work on DD#2’s porch furniture cushions.

Happy 406 Day*

Last week, when we had no time to deal with it, the dishwasher decided to stop working. I left it until Monday night and then asked the husband what he wanted to do. I expected him to tell me he would take it apart, determine what failed, and buy the replacement part and install it. I have a 26-year-old dryer that is still running because he refuses to allow it to die.

“Assuming you can find one, go buy a new dishwasher,” he said.

“Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” I asked.

Our current dishwasher is a Bosch, probably about 15 years old. It leaks, randomly. It will go for three months without leaking, at which point I will decide to take up the towel that usually sits on the floor in front of it (because it leaks), and then it will start leaking again.

Sigh.

I started at Home Depot yesterday morning. They have nothing. They have no idea when they will have anything.

I went to a Pacific Northwest chain called Fred’s Appliance. The reason Home Depot doesn’t have anything is because all the dishwashers are at Fred’s Appliance. I like Fred’s. We bought our Speed Queen washer there. If they ever get JennAir downdraft gas ranges back in stock, I might let my mother buy me a new one. She’s been trying for many years.

[People do not like my current JennAir downdraft range because it has to be lit manually. We have propane, not natural gas, and the lighter has never worked properly, not for 26 years. It doesn’t bother me. I just pretend I am lighting a Bunsen burner in the lab when I cook dinner.]

Fred’s had plenty of Bosch dishwashers in stock AND apparently now those dishwashers come with anti-door leak technology. How nice to know our leaking dishwasher was not an isolated issue.

The husband will install this tonight.

It was too late when he got home last night. He is still trying to decompress from the auction and needed to sit and relax.

[My house is in desperate need of a thorough deep cleaning. I see no point in starting that, though, until this season of rain and mud is over.]

Once I had the dishwasher problem sorted, I went and taught a serger class at the quilt store south of town. I only had one student. That’s fine—I’ll teach one student. She came from Eureka, about an hour and a half away, and brought two machines. The first one, an older Singer model, had belonged to her mother. We started with that machine, but it was not catching the left needle thread. The last time I had a student with a machine with that problem, the store owner said that it probably needed to be re-timed.

I’ve re-timed sewing machines, but re-timing a serger is above my pay grade.

This student also brought a New Home (Janome) model of slightly newer vintage, probably late 90s or early 2000s, so we switched over to that one. The New Home machine had differential feed, which the Singer did not. She told me she picked it up at a yard sale for $15 and I told her she got a screaming deal. It was a lovely little machine. We went through it from top to bottom. I suggested she get a supply of needles and replace the knife, but the machine worked well for the class. We tested out a four-thread stitch, a three-thread stitch, and the rolled hem. All of them looked great.

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I am staying home today. I need to finish planting seeds out in the greenhouse. Everything I planted a few weeks ago is up, although I need to replant a few things that either didn’t sprout or got dug up by a mouse (who has been eliminated).

I also stole an hour yesterday morning and started a new quilt. I like it. This one is going to be fun.

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*Montana only has one area code for the whole state—406.

Made it to the Other Side

The 2022 Creston Auction is in the books. This is a great event put on by great people for a great cause, but it’s a huge relief to me when it’s over. Now I can turn my attention to chicks and plants and taking a road trip to see DD#2.

It wouldn’t be the Auction without some kind of weather event. This was Saturday morning:

In Montana, however, there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing choices.

[I was in need of some canvas work pants for this event (and others) and found a brand called Noble Outfitters at the farm store. I am going back this week to get a few more in my size. The canvas was a good weight—Carhartt is cutting corners with skimpy canvas—and the pants came all the way up to my waist and fit beautifully. I wore them all weekend with long johns underneath.]

The snow put a damper on the crowds, but the people who came out seemed to be having a good time bidding for treasures.

Yesterday’s weather was a big improvement over Saturday’s. When the husband and I arrived at the sale grounds to get ready for the equipment sale, the sun was shining and the snow had melted:

We took in a lot of inventory for this year’s sale. The auction started at 11 am and I didn’t get off the auction wagon until 6 pm. My job was to sit there with the computer and enter the sale price and bidder number for each sale. That information was then sent to the cashiers so they could take payment from the winning bidder.

We sold our stock trailer at the auction. It had a gooseneck hitch and we no longer have a truck that can tow it. We’ll have to get a different one for the next batch of pigs. We also sold our police cruiser this week—via a private sale—which was the car that DD#2 drove in high school.

The seedlings in the greenhouse are looking good, although it was touch-and-go for a bit when the husband discovered that the fuel company had filled the wrong propane tank when they came out last week. We have a propane tank for the rental house and one for the greenhouse. When I call, the dispatcher always asks, as she did this time, which tank we want filled. I told her we needed the greenhouse tank filled. Unfortunately, the guy driving the delivery truck saw the first tank, for the house, and filled that one instead of driving further back on the property to fill the greenhouse tank. We didn’t discover that until Friday, by which time it was too late to call them. The husband put a portable diesel heater in the greenhouse and I have a call in to the fuel service company. They can send a truck out today to fill the greenhouse tank, although I am going to refuse to pay the $90 same-day delivery fee because this was their mistake, not ours.

I will check the farm store this week to see what they have for chicks. We’re all set up and ready for them. I’ve also got a Serger 101 class scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I have a bit of breathing room later this week, but April is going to be a busy month.

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.