Playing the Peep Lottery

The farm store puts out a chick schedule every February. The schedule lists all of the chicken breeds they expect to get from the hatchery, by week and number of chicks. I always grab a copy of the schedule as soon as it comes out so I will be able to time my chick purchases. Historically, getting chicks has not been an issue. In 2020, however, when everyone and his brother decided to take up farming, chicks were selling out within a few minutes of arriving at the store, so I bought an incubator. I incubated 25 eggs that year. Of the 25 eggs, 17 hatched, and we ended up with eight hens and nine roosters. If it weren’t for the excess roosters, I’d do that every year, but having that many teenage roosters hassling the hens by the time fall rolls around is a major pain.

[Dave came from that 2020 hatch. At some point, I will have to incubate some eggs because I’ll have to replace him and I want to keep his genetics. He is a stellar rooster.]

I used to have a system where I would get a different breed of chicken every year. I would know which hens belonged to which year, and the oldest ones would get butchered in the fall, on a three-year rotation. My 2020 chicks were all mixed breeds. The next year, I had to do half of one breed and half of another because I couldn’t get enough of the same breed. The husband also brought home some cast-off hens from a customer of his who raises show chickens. Thus, my tracking system has been completely shot to hell. I am trying to get it back in place. I think we’re feeding a lot of chickens who are no longer laying. We usually butcher in the fall, but I suggested to the husband that we might do some this spring if we can find a time.

Because of egg prices, and because everyone thinks that it’s possible to go from 0 to 60 in one farming season, the farm stores have been selling out of chicks quickly again. Tera’s husband had to wait in line a few weeks ago, so I knew I had to be at the store early. I arrived yesterday at 7:20. The store didn’t officially open until 7:30, but just as I pulled up, a couple of employees were unlocking the door. All of us in the parking lot jumped out of our cars and went inside. The woman handling the chick sales was handing out cards with numbers. Initially, I got #6, but she came back a few minutes later and said her numbers were messed up. She traded me #4 for #6.

We had to wait another half an hour for them to start selling the chicks, but that gave me time to check out the available breeds and eavesdrop on the conversations around me. (This is serious business. You bet I am going to gather intelligence.) The guy at the head of the line was there to get chicks for his daughter. He had a “Beginning Poultry Kit” in his cart. Given that and the number of questions he was firing at the employee, it was obvious this was his first rodeo.

Also ahead of me was a couple about my age and a father with a young boy. The father and son looked at every single breed of chicken and debated the merits of each. I had my eye on the Pearl White Leghorns, not because I like them—Leghorns are absolute divas in the chicken department—but because I wanted either a white breed or a red breed and there were no red ones. I also checked to make sure the store hadn’t put limits on sales.

At 8:00 am, the young woman in charge invited the first guy in line to choose his chicks. He took five. The next couple got two. (I suspect all of those chickens are going to be pets, not livestock.) The father and son took 10 of the Leghorns. The store only got 25 in the shipment, so that left 15. I took those. I would have liked 20, but I was happy to get the ones I got.

The husband had turned on the heat lamp before he left so the brooder box would be warm when I got home. The chicks moved right in:

I checked on them several times during the day yesterday. The brooder box is in the old garage, and it’s much easier to raise chicks in there than in the coop like we used to do.

I am glad to have that off the list.

After the chicks were settled, I finished quilting bear paw baby quilt #2 of 4. It’s trimmed and awaiting binding. I redid the top zipper on the Ravenwood bag—the one I screwed up last week—and added the D-rings to the side gussets. I also traced the Allie Olson Coram Top:

I’ve had this pattern for over a year. I thought I had already traced it, but apparently not. The Allie Olson patterns come in cup sizes. I want to see how this compares to the Burda raglan top I made a muslin for a few weeks ago. I am no fan of the hi-lo hem, however, and I need the additional length, so I extended the front to be the same length as the back.

I also talked to the class coordinator at the quilt store south of town. We’ve got dates on the calendar through the end of 2023. Now I need to make up all my class samples and put together supply lists for the website.

Beans and Bear Paws

I’ve cleared a pile of stuff off my desk this week and that feels so good. The taxes are all done and filed, both construction company and personal. I am caught up on website work for the homestead foundation. All of my class ideas for the summer have been submitted. I did a big Costco run yesterday. The farm store did not have chicks on Monday but I am going to try again today. If dealing with excess roosters weren’t such a hassle—I suspect Dave would go on a murdering rampage and pick them off one by one—I’d pop two dozen eggs into the incubator and hatch chicks out here.

I canned up 19 pints of white beans yesterday afternoon:

They started out as a five-pound bag of dry beans from Azure Standard. My All-American canner holds 19 pints, so this amount works out perfectly. Beans need 90 minutes of processing at 15 pounds pressure here. I need to can up some batches of red beans and black beans, too. If I do them this week and next, we should have enough beans for a couple of months.

I tore down and washed all the jars from the indoor lettuce-growing operation. I’ll plant one more run of lettuce and that should keep us supplied until it’s warm enough to grow some out in the greenhouse or in the garden.

While the beans were processing, I worked on another Bear Paw Baby quilt.

These are fun to quilt. The light beige section has some free motion swirls. Everything else is done with rulers. I’ve got a little bit more quilting to finish up and then I can attach the binding. I’ve got two more waiting to be quilted.

I want to spend some time over the next couple of days cutting out patterns. I have three or four new ones that need muslins. I struggle with what appears on the surface to be excess clothing production—I don’t need twenty tops and fifteen pairs of pants—but I have to remember that I am teaching myself fitting and sewing techniques and in order to do that, I have to make clothing. I do finish as many of my muslins as I can. If I don’t wear them, I put them in the pile to donate.

In particular, I want to compare my bodice sloper to some of the blouse patterns I’ve earmarked. I think I know what adjustments I need to make and I’d like to have a few more patterns for wovens. Sewing with knits would be the easy way out, because they require a lot less fitting, but nice rayon challis and rayon batik fabrics are seductive.

[I watch a YouTuber who insists on pronouncing “challis” as chalice rather than shallee and it drives me absolutely up a wall.]

As I suspected might happen, more warm-weather fabrics are beginning to show up on the Walmart mystery remnant rack. I picked up three yards of a white rayon woven with a surface texture of white thread yesterday. I don’t normally wear a lot of white—it doesn’t stay white around here for very long—but I bought that one because I liked the fabric so much. It’s going to be one of my muslins, I think.

We’re supposed to have weather in the 40s for the next couple of days. Things are beginning to melt, albeit slowly. I am going to be optimistic and plan to start seeds in the greenhouse next week.

Waiting for Spring, 2023 Edition

The husband cleared a path to the greenhouse for me on Saturday. He also cleared a path from the greenhouse to the frost free faucet about 50 feet away. Until it warms up enough to hook up the water line, I’ll have to haul water from the faucet to the greenhouse to water seedlings.

I am just not ready to start planting yet, not when I look outside and see this:

We had a cold spring last year and it looks like we’ll have a cold spring again this year. But we have a plant sale scheduled for the third weekend in May and I need to get the tomatoes and peppers started soon.

I’ve also got to try to get chicks this week.

I struggle with transitions, and the transition from winter to spring is especially difficult. My brain maintains a schedule of things that have to happen this time of year, but the reality I see outside isn’t lining up. That dissonance is making me cranky right now.

I will get it figured out—I always do—but there is a reason March is my least favorite month in Montana. (August is a close second.) We’re supposed to warm up into the high 30s and low 40s this week, so hopefully some of this will start to melt.

The husband requested a cover for the generator that powers the house when the electricity is out. The current cover is over 10 years old and starting to fall apart from being out in the weather. The reason I make covers for the equipment is because we got tired of spending money on cheap ones from the manufacturers. They disintegrate with even minimal use. We took the measurements of the existing cover over the weekend. I’ll order some heavy Cordura from Seattle Fabrics and run one up. He keeps telling me that I could have more business than I know what to do with if I would make custom generator covers and sell them, but first I have to figure out how to alter the laws of physics to cram 24 more hours in the day.

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I assembled the last baby quilt on Saturday. The goal is to get all three of them quilted by the end of the month. I worked on the Ravenwood Bag but had to take out what I did because I put the zipper lining in wrong. Oh, well. The only way to avoid sewing mistakes is not to sew.

This arrived over the weekend:

One of the authors was Tera’s instructor for the pattern alteration class she took at Expo. I looked at this book while we were there and ordered it from Amazon when we got home. (I used some of my reward points.) I like that it is comprehensive without being overwhelming.

I’ve got some administrative stuff to get done this week, including finishing the tax prep. Most of it is done—the construction company returns are the biggest part of that—but I need to corral a few more pieces of information for the accountant. I also need to can up a couple of batches of beans. We’re running low. And there will be sewing, of course. I’ll check today to see if anyone signed up for tomorrow’s serger class. If not, I’ll work on making more samples for upcoming classes.

Planning My Summer Classes

I’ve been prepping class samples for the past couple of days. It’s time to start scheduling classes for the summer and early fall and I need to make supply lists for the stores. I was planning to teach in Spokane at the end of the month, but the store is having trouble getting copies of the Lark Tee pattern, so we’ve pushed that out a few months. Although most of the supply chain issues have improved, odd shortages are still happening here and there.

I made up a new sample for my flatlock pillow class:

I am supposed to teach project this at the quilt store north of town on Tuesday, but classes aren’t filling there. It is possible that I may have saturated that market. The two stores in town are very different—different machines, different fabric lines, different student interests. Some customers will only patronize one store or the other. Some shop at both. I try not to teach the same topics/projects at both stores. The flatlock pillow pattern is from the BabyLock website, so I am teaching it at the store that sells BabyLock machines.

The design and sales strategies adopted by various companies fascinate me. BabyLock pioneered air threading on sergers, which was a game changer. However, they went on to make their machines so idiot-proof that it’s almost impossible to override any settings. I liken it to driving an automatic versus a manual transmission. Given the choice, I would much rather be able to control the machine than to have the machine make decisions for me, but some people like being able to sew without having to tweak a bunch of settings.

The other pattern I made up this week is from the Bernina dealer website. I can’t show it to you yet, but it’s very cute. I was able to use some of the Bernina sewing-themed ribbon that Cathy gifted me. Bernina has specific requirements of its dealers that include offering a certain number of classes every year. Their dealer website, though, has robust support for making that happen, including classes with lesson plans already prepared. That’s less prep work I have do.

I also worked a bit on the Ravenwood Messenger bag. I really love these projects that are broken down into manageable steps. I feel like I’ve accomplished something if I finish one page of instructions. I made the back panel of the bag yesterday:

Those two zippers underneath the flap slide down to reveal an internal zippered mesh pocket. I didn’t do the mesh pocket on the first version because mesh can be kind of fiddly. This time, though, I included it.

The next step will be to add the zippered gusset (so many zippers), and then this will start to look like an actual bag.

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I created a website for our homestead foundation last year. One of the features I’m trying to add now is accepting credit cards through Stripe. The president (Susan) and treasurer (Sandy) of the organization came to my house for a few hours on Wednesday so we could take care of some of these administrative and financial issues. Stripe required us to upload a copy of the IRS letter identifying us as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Unfortunately, Stripe keeps sending me notices that the document is not an official IRS document. It appears to me that they are using optical character recognition software, and our document is so old that it doesn’t have the keywords the OCR software wanted to see.

I called customer support yesterday morning and had a surprisingly pleasant experience. The rep spoke understandable English, which I appreciated. As soon as I explained what was happening, she said she would kick the case up a level and have the document reviewed manually. We have lots of exciting events coming up this spring and summer and being able to take online registrations and payments is huge for us.

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I ordered some raincoat fabric swatches from Seattle Fabrics. They arrived this week. Unfortunately, the fabric I loved the most is $37 a yard and I need six yards. That puts this project firmly in the “You could buy a ready-made raincoat for that price” category. I am aware that people sew clothing for reasons other than to save money. In fact, that reason is probably close to the bottom of the list given the ready availability of fast fashion. Still, I have to sit with that idea for a bit. This particular fabric comes in a dozen colors, so I could make something really fun.

The Sew Expo Adventure, Part 4

We ended our week at Sew Expo on a high note, with an excellent Saturday morning class on sewing machine needles. The teacher was a Schmetz educator and knew her stuff. (Schmetz needles are the ones I use.) Each student received a goodie bag:

This was better than Christmas. We got thread:

Fabric swatches:

A luggage tag with the fabulous Schmetz color-coding system on it:

And about 10 packs of needles, some of which we used in class. That classroom had Viking sewing machines.

The class was laid out in such a way that we were able to sew with different types of needles on many different kinds of fabrics. By the end of class—which went by too quickly!—we all had a good understanding of what needles were best for what applications. Even more importantly, we understood when it was possible, or even desirable, to bend the rules a bit.

After class, Tera and I loaded our stuff into the car and hit the road back to Spokane. We could have stayed through Saturday and driven back Sunday, but at the end of a busy week like that, I knew it would be better if we broke up the drive. I also had plenty of hotel points to use up. We checked in to the hotel when we got to Spokane, did a bit of shopping, and finished off with a dinner at Luna, one of our favorite Spokane restaurants.

We’ve already decided to go back again next year. We will have a better idea what to expect, having experienced it once. I’ll pay closer attention to teacher names, definitely, and try to choose classes on other brands of machines.

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I had eight women in my Coverstitch Basics class last night. Four were on Bernina L890s, two were on Bernette Funlocks, one was on a Bernina MDC, and one was on a Janome 2000cpx. I took my Janome 1000cpx—my first coverstitch machine—to use for demos. That’s the machine that had so many quality control issues. I had to take it apart and put it back together to get it to work properly. I keep it to use in classes.

I took lots of fabric scraps with me and by the end of class, each student was making beautiful coverstitch hems on a variety of fabrics, from thin rayon knits all the way up to ponte.

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The husband is going to set the brooder box up for me this weekend. I will make at least a couple of attempts to get chicks from the farm store next week, but if I am unsuccessful, then I will probably go ahead and just incubate eggs.

The little deer had a growth spurt while I was gone and is not quite so little anymore. Of course, a steady diet of sweet feed over the winter probably didn’t hurt.

The Sew Expo Adventure, Part 3

I have certain expectations when I take a class. I want the teacher to communicate exactly what we’re going to learn and how we’re going to learn it. Handouts should be presented in an organized format. If there is a project, it needs to do a good job of illustrating the technique(s) and be able to be completed in the allotted time. My Friday classes fell short of those expectations.

The morning class was Serging for the Home. The teacher was Pam Damour. I did not recognize her name when I signed up for the class, but she introduced herself as one of the authors of this book, which I own:

Not only did she introduce herself as the author, but she boasted that it was “probably the best serger book ever written.” I rolled my eyes at that. This book was a disappointment to me. It really should have been marketed as a coverstitch book, not a serger book. If you don’t have a serger with coverstitch capabilities, you can only do about a third of the techniques and projects included in the book.

Personality conflicts happen. I am aware that I am not everyone’s cup of tea. However, the teacher can do much to set the tone of the class, and I could tell we were going to have problems right from the beginning. She came across as disorganized and rude. At one point, she stopped the class and yelled at a student to put her cell phone away. The woman had stepped to the back of the classroom to take an emergency call from her husband (he couldn’t find his keys). I didn’t even know this woman was on her phone until the teacher stopped the class. That could have been handled much differently. She also made several jokes that I thought were unprofessional and inappropriate.

We were given a kit that included enough supplies to make a placemat with decorative flatlock stitches and a couple of rolled edge napkins. Most of the women in this class, however, had never seen or used these top-of-the line Bernina sergers. Flatlock and rolled edge are not basic stitches, but they require some practice. The placemat pattern was far too complicated, even with the handout. We were instructed to cut a piece off the side of the placemat, then sew it back on with a second piece of fabric to form a pocket. That was unnecessarily fussy. Once the pocket was done, we were supposed to draw guide lines for the flatlock stitching at 60-degree angles across the fabric. The handout indicated to space them 2” apart, but then we were told no, space them 3” apart. Straight vertical lines would have been far better for demonstrating the technique, especially because we had to be careful that the 60-degree lines didn’t cut across the pocket.

Because of the complexity of the project and the fact that there were 30 of us, the class never found a rhythm. We did not get to the rolled edge napkins because we ran out of time to change the threading and settings on the machines. I came home and took my placemat apart and repurposed the fabric.

The afternoon class was only marginally better. The teacher was a Bernina Educator and the class was Cozy Socks on the Overlocker. This class had no handout, because—as the teacher explained—we were supposed to “be creative” and “use our imaginations.”

Yeah, no. Here was a room full of women with that deer-in-the-headlights look—because most of them had never seen these machines before—who were being thrown into the deep end and expected to swim. Right off the bat, we had problems. The teacher told everyone to take the scrap piece of fabric next to the machine and test the stitch. I could tell immediately that my machine wasn’t set up correctly, but that’s because I’ve used this model. The machines had been in coverstitch mode for a previous class and one of the knobs needed to be turned back to a default setting. I fixed my machine and the machines of two women sitting nearby.

The teacher had one illustration on the flipboard at the front of the room, but it made no sense because we had no context. Thus, she had to come around and explain, in detail, exactly what she wanted us to do. All of that could have been helped considerably by a handout with a detailed line drawing and/or photos and a list of the measurements we needed to take. Some people had problems with the fabric in their kits not having been cut on grain. Half the students had microfleece from Joanns and half had an athletic knit fabric from an indie fabric supplier.

Eventually, I figured out what she wanted us to do and I went ahead and made my socks.

The idea has potential. I’m going to play around with it a bit more. I’d like to try making a pair in some compression-knit fabric.

It was after these two classes that I decided that perhaps I should apply to teach at Expo next year. I have the background and expertise and I know I could provide a better class experience than the ones I had. In addition to sewing classes, Expo also offers quite a few knitting classes. I could dust off some of my shorter knitting classes and submit proposals for them.

We’ll see. I keep saying I have no desire to get back on the teaching circuit like that—even regionally—but the temptation is great.

The Sew Expo Adventure, Part 2

I know enough about these kinds of events not to schedule myself into four days of back-to-back classes. Thursday was my light day, which turned out to be a good thing given the stomach issue of the day before. (I hadn’t been able to take my thyroid meds Wednesday morning and by Thursday afternoon, when I finally remembered to take them, I was dragging a bit.)

On Thursday morning, Tera and I took “Put Your Best Foot Forward,” taught by Bernina Educator Sylvain Bergeron.

We got to sew on the Kaffe Fassett 770 edition machines:

Let me just say that if I had been in the market for a new sewing machine, I would have plunked down the cash for this one without hesitation. I am turning into quite the Bernina fangirl and this is one sweet machine. I don’t need Yet Another Sewing Machine—and there is nothing wrong with my Janome 6600P—so I enjoyed the experience of sewing on this one and moved on.

This was an excellent class. Sylvain is an engaging and entertaining teacher. We tried out almost a dozen different presser feet. Bernina has a dizzying array of presser feet for all their machines and this class helped to demystify the differences. And we laughed a lot.

Tera had a class at 2 pm and my second one wasn’t until 3:30 pm, so we grabbed a quick lunch and went shopping. I found it interesting that although there were not very many quilting classes on the roster, quilting suppliers made up the bulk of the vendors. Every longarm machine company had a booth and just about every quilt store in the PNW was there.

We were mostly interested in garment fabrics, not quilting fabrics. Tera found an armful of knits at Billie’s Designer Fabrics. I was on the hunt for some raincoat fabric. Billie’s had a gorgeous navy blue cotton poplin with a nylon backing—Ryan Roberts deadstock—that would have been perfect, but there were only three yards left on the bolt and I need six. And it’s deadstock, so she can’t reorder. Splash Fabrics, from Seattle, also had a booth. Splash makes a laminated cotton, but it’s not quite what I am looking for in a raincoat fabric. I’ve made aprons from it.

The other garment fabric vendor was Amanda’s Bundles, from southern California. This is where I did most of my damage. The booth consisted of Rubbermaid totes full of two-yard packages of fabrics, mostly knits. I bought some beautiful seafoam green rayon ponte as well as this chicken-themed ITY knit:

ITY stands for Interlock Twist Yarn. ITY knits are very interesting. This one doesn’t have a lot of stretch, but it’s drapey and polished. I’ve never sewn with an ITY knit before and I’m eager to see how it sews up. I think it will work best as a simple knit tunic.

I also bought this double-brushed poly just because I loved the print. I may end up looking like my grandmother’s dinnerware, but I’ll have fun in the process:

As we were walking through one of the vendor buildings, I spotted Jen Stern sitting in her booth. I follow her YouTube channel—J Stern Designs—so we popped over to say hello. She had a pair of linen pants hanging in her booth that were from her latest set of videos. Jen designed the Sorcha Pants pattern to illustrate the top-down, center-out method of pants fitting. This method was first introduced by a woman named Ruth Collins in Threads magazine last year. Jen produced both the pattern and a waistband kit, which uses hook-and-loop tape for making the muslin of your pants. Tera and I each bought a set. This is probably going to be a project for next fall. The method makes a lot of sense to me. You start with the waistband placed on your body where you want it—no low-rise pants for me!—and fit the crotch and legs from there instead of making the pants and trying to figure out what you have to alter. I can follow along on Jen’s videos and she also offers Zoom fitting consultations.

My Thursday afternoon session was more of a lecture than a class, given by another Bernina educator. She used a Power Point presentation and passed around samples of decorative serger stitches using fancy threads. I came away with tons of ideas to develop into classes to teach here.

For dinner, I suggested we go to Mama Stortini’s, another local favorite from DD#1’s college days. We had her graduation dinner there. Tera ordered pasta and I ordered a cauliflower-crust mushroom and cheese pizza, but it took forever for our food to arrive. Apparently, they had burned my pizza and had to make me another one. The waitress offered us a free dessert, so we split the spiced pear in a snickerdoodle crust with vanilla ice cream. It was yummy. I joked that at the rate we were going, much of the food on our trip was going to be free.

Friday’s classes were my most disappointing ones of the week. More about them tomorrow.

The Sew Expo Adventure, Part 1

What an amazing week we had. The next few blog posts may be longer than normal just because I have so much to cover and I want to do it while everything is fresh in my mind.

The Sewing and Stitchery Expo—shortened to “Sew Expo” by most attendees—is an annual event sponsored by Washington State University. It is held at the state fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington, near Tacoma. Attending Sew Expo has been on my bucket list for a couple of years. DD#1 is a 2014 graduate of Pacific Lutheran University, so I am familiar with that area. The Expo was held virtually in 2021 and 2022 because of the pandemic. When I found out it would be in person again at the fairgrounds this spring, I mentioned it to Tera, and of course she was all in. Everyone needs a friend like Tera.

We were able to get tickets and spots in our first-choice classes, made all the necessary travel arrangements, and waited impatiently for the end of February. We left for Puyallup last Tuesday morning. Getting out of Flathead County was a bit dicey as it was snowing heavily and the plows hadn’t been out yet. It took five hours instead of the usual four to get to Spokane, but around Ritzville, the weather cleared up nicely and we had a smooth drive the rest of the way. We arrived at the Airbnb, checked in, then headed to a local Indian restaurant for dinner. I’d eaten there several times when DD#1 was in college.

I was surprised to see how busy the restaurant was for a Tuesday evening. We had to wait about 20 minutes for a table, and the only dining option was a buffet. Tera did order some naan to go with the meal.

When it came time to pay for our meal, the restaurant only charged us for the naan and told us the buffet was free. Back at the car, Tera did some quick internet research and discovered that this restaurant offers a free buffet on the last Tuesday of every month in honor of health care workers, EMTs, law enforcement, military, and their families. Tera works at the hospital in Kalispell and the husband was an EMT for many years, so we didn’t feel too bad about taking advantage of the free meal. We headed back to the Airbnb and turned in for the night.

Unfortunately, I woke up Wednesday morning with a very upset stomach. I don’t think it was the Indian food—Tera ate exactly the same food I did—but I must have picked up a bug somewhere. (I do remember feeling a bit of indigestion after dinner, but I thought it was because I ate too much.) Wednesday was our big class day and I didn’t want to miss anything, so I sipped water and chewed peppermints and powered through.

Tera’s Wednesday morning class was Pattern Alteration Boot Camp. She said it was very good. My morning class was Serger Stitch Savvy. I went heavy on the serger classes because I wanted to identify (and close) the holes in my knowledge base. I thought I might also pick up some class ideas.

Next year, when I register, I will pay closer attention to the teacher names as well as the class topics. It turned out that our class was taught by Katrina Walker, author of this book:

This one is on my bookshelf and I refer to it often.

All machines are provided in class. Students need only bring basic sewing supplies. Local sewing machine dealers bring in the machines for students to use, then offer them at hefty discounts at the end of the show. (My Janome 6600P was a show machine when I bought it 10 years ago.) All of my serger classes ended up being on the Bernina L890, although I did not plan it that way. I have the Bernina L860. The only difference is that the L890 has coverstitch capabilities.

Katrina is an excellent teacher. Each student received a notebook full of pages—one for each stitch—complete with notes on suggested fabrics and usage. (I give my students a similar handout so that they can compile their own notebooks.)

We systematically went through all the serger stitches on the machine, made up samples, and pasted them into the notebook. Going in, I was still a bit weak on the two-thread serger stitches, so getting to work through those was very helpful. At the end of four hours, I had a notebook full of stitch samples.

I managed to keep down half a sandwich for lunch. Afterward, Tera and I went to our afternoon session on making and fitting a bodice sloper.

We hit the jackpot with our bodice sloper class. The woman who was supposed to teach the class had an emergency. Our substitute teacher turned out to be Joe Vechiarelli. (!!!!!!!) Joe works for ABC and Disney. He has done costuming and fitting for Dancing With the Stars and most recently dressed Rihanna for the Superbowl. He is a BIG NAME in the industry and he taught our class.

[Picture me fanning myself.]

Joe is such a nice guy. Not every teacher could have walked into a class of 30 women and done what he did. We submitted measurements ahead of time, so each of us had a draft sloper—courtesy of Garment Designer by Susan Lazear—waiting for us. He checked a couple of measurements on each of us and compared them to our slopers, then told us to trace a copy of the sloper to work from. (I had to lengthen my sloper by an inch right off the bat.)

Joe said that roughly 65% of the class needed a full bust adjustment, so he walked us through the process. I’ve done them before so this wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory. I did the FBA and had him check it, then made the muslin to test the fit. He checked each of our muslins on us, marked adjustment lines, and had us re-sew them if necessary. We then transferred the changes to our slopers.

Here is Tera working on her sloper:

Late yesterday afternoon, after unpacking all my stuff, I re-traced my bodice sloper once more for a clean copy. And I had an epiphany.

Tera mentioned that one of her teachers had made a distinction between a “full bust” and a “prominent bust,” which has to do with how the breast tissue is distributed on the body. Whenever I have done an FBA on a pattern, I can get it to fit across my body, but I always have excess fabric at the upper sides and underarm and I’ve never known how to get rid of that. I’ve tried shortening the length of the armhole and/or pinching out a dart in the armscye, neither of which is a satisfactory fix.

I think I fall more into the prominent bust category. Most FBAs are intended for women with full busts. Those women need the extra fabric at the sides and underarms to cover their breast tissue. I don’t, so I get those goofy folds of extra fabric.

I looked at my bodice sloper after I re-traced it and it was staring me right in the face:

See the part I’ve circled in red? That angle and the resulting shape of the armhole—which is shorter and shallower—is the fix I think I needed. I will still get the coverage I require across the front, but there should be much less fabric at the sides and underarm. I’ll have to make up another muslin to test out my theory, but this is promising. What I needed was someone to help me fit a bodice properly and I got that with Joe. That class alone was worth the cost of the entire trip.

I still need to lengthen my sloper by another inch. Apparently, I have a very long torso, which is why tops are always too short for me.

We decided to swing through the Panera drive-through for dinner so I could get a bowl of chicken soup to take back to the Airbnb. Our Airbnb was very comfortable. It was about a mile from the fairgrounds in a small subdivision. We had use of the garage so I didn’t have to park on the street.

I’ll post about our Thursday classes tomorrow.

The Sunbonnet Sue Quilt is Done

I finished sewing down the binding last evening:

I am so, so happy with how this turned out. I will pack it carefully this afternoon and get it ready to ship tomorrow. I am hoping to get the binding finished on the first of the baby quilts tonight so I can send that one off tomorrow, too.

The keyhole top is ready to drop off at the quilt store:

This is the New Look 6555 pattern, but made a size smaller than the first version. This one fits me much better. The fabric just came in to the store. Sue, who does the ordering, needed to round out an order with one of the fabric manufacturers, so she added a couple of bolts of woven rayon. I snagged three yards of this one when I was there last week. This class is scheduled for the first Friday in May.

[My sewing studio could benefit from a good-quality clothing steamer. We have Amazon reward points waiting to be used and I just need to decide which steamer to order.]

I used both the sewing machine and the serger to assemble this. The Janome was giving me tension issues, which was unusual. That machine is not temperamental at all. After some consideration, I changed the brand of thread—I was using black for the topstitching around the neck binding—and that solved the problem. Black thread is the most prone to being damaged or uneven because it has to be processed more harshly. Black yarn can have similar problems. I’ve run into tension problems with black thread on both my serger and my sewing machine.

Whew. I have had a productive couple of days. This feels like a good time to step back and reassess.

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When I went out to do chicken chores yesterday afternoon, the sun was shining and the snow was melting. I thought to myself, “Wow, it’s actually hot out here,” and then I looked at the thermometer, which read 35 degrees. Hahahaha. Mid-30s does feel like a heat wave after a few days of -12F.

Reports are that the farm store is selling out of chicks as fast as they arrive. Sigh. I would rather not incubate my own, but that is looking more and more likely.

Having exhausted all the mountaineering disaster videos, I was looking for something interesting to watch while I finished the quilt binding. I found the YouTube channel of a young Swedish woman named Elin Abrahamsson. She makes historical clothing. I don’t think she has uploaded any videos recently—the last one appears to be from seven months ago—but I watched several of them and enjoyed them very much. She covers the historical aspects as well as the technical sewing ones. The video where she dyed fabric using woad she grew in her garden was wonderful. Woad gives a dye similar to indigo and was grown in cooler climates. I can’t grow it here, though, because it’s a noxious weed in Montana.

We Made Pants

The Jalie Renee Pants class yesterday went very well. I had four students—three have been in previous classes of mine and one student was new. Two students used sergers, and two used sewing machines. Not everyone has the budget or desire for a serger, so it’s good to be able to accommodate all kinds of machines. For most projects, as long as the sewing machine can make some kind of stretch stitch, it can sew knits. (Stretch & Sew, anyone?)

The two students using sewing machines had never made clothing before. The other two students had been in my Easton Cowl class and had Bernina sergers. We started with a general discussion about measurements and fitting, then moved on to the specifics in the pattern. The Jalie patterns are well drafted and exceptionally thorough. I went over hip and waist measurements and helped each student choose the correct size. For this pattern, we went by full hip measurement.

The first time I taught this class, one of my students made “bike shorts” for her muslin. I suggested these students do the same thing. Getting the fit at the top of the pants is crucial; figuring out the length can wait until later. Also, that saves on fabric, although I had brought plenty of leftovers and remnants for the students to use for their muslins. It’s easier for me to bring a chunk of polyester interlock from the Walmart mystery rack—at $8 for three yards of 60” wide fabric—than to have the students try to source that material on their own when they might not yet have a good understanding of what they need.

The students traced their patterns, then cut their muslins. All of that had taken most of the morning (two hours). We stopped for a lunch break, and after lunch, they worked on assembling their bike shorts. Making the pants doesn’t take nearly as much time as prepping for them. One by one, as each student finished her shorts, I had her go into the bathroom and change into them. I came in and checked the fit. I had suggested that they NOT sew the waist darts in at the beginning. Some students don’t need them. I’ve made five pairs of these for myself, and I didn’t put the darts in the most recent pair, simply because I was in a hurry and forgot. Because these are knit pants with an elastic waist, I don’t think it changes the fit much unless there is a large discrepancy between the hip and waist measurements.

Every single one of them nailed the fit. One woman said they fit so well she felt like she wasn’t wearing anything. Only one student needed darts, and she didn’t need darts as large as the pattern piece for her size indicated. I pinned them in for her and helped her mark and sew them so she would understand what she needed to do on the final version.

Each student finished a muslin. (The woman who said she felt like she wasn’t wearing anything also said she planned to hem hers and wear them this summer.) We figured out the appropriate inseam lengths, and two students got their pants cut from the Robert Kaufman ponte the store had brought in for the class. And one student—who had never made clothing before—finished her pants except for the hems and the elastic at the waist:

She used a vintage Bernina Record 730 sewing machine to make her pants and had zero issues.

All in all, I was very happy with how the class went. The most gratifying part is seeing how excited these women get when they realize they can make clothing that fits them well. It doesn’t matter if they are short or tall, rail thin or plump. They are no longer confined to buying ill-fitting ready-to-wear, and that’s a heady feeling.

A student I’ve had in some of my other classes was also in the store, quilting a top on one of the store’s longarm machines. She joined us for lunch and told us about her current project of drafting and making bras for herself. That was fascinating.

The store is having another Bernina serger event in April. Unfortunately, I am going to be at the homesteading conference that weekend; otherwise, I would come in to help.

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I think we’re finally out of the deep freeze, although I heard a rumor that it might be windy again today. Ugh. Maybe the wind will be out of the southwest and won’t affect us as much.

I have one side of binding left to sew down on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt. I’d like to get that done this evening. Today’s task will be making the keyhole top (New Look 6555). I spent way too much time looking for the fabric for that top yesterday morning, so I should probably spend some time cleaning and organizing, too.

Calm Again, Finally

The wind finally stopped blowing after more than 48 hours. It’s -8F (air temp) right now, but a heat wave is coming in and it will be in the 30s starting tomorrow. (That wasn’t sarcasm.) One distinct advantage of subzero temps is that town was blessedly deserted yesterday morning. I got all of my errands run in record time, although I decided not to go to sewing. I am teaching all day today and I didn’t want to overdo the people-ing. I am great at faking extraversion, but only to a point. Also, the husband was here being a shiny toy.

I came home and gathered up my class supplies. Today’s class is the Jalie Renee Pants. I have four students, which will be plenty for one session. The tricky part about teaching these clothing classes is that we spend more time making a muslin than we do making the actual garment. A clothing class isn’t like a quilting class where everyone makes the same thing without modification. I’ve got lots of leftover ponte and interlock fabrics, and what I had the students do last time was make a bike shorts version of the pattern so we could get the fit right in the upper part of the pants. Sometimes the darts are necessary and sometimes they are not. (On the last pair I made, I forgot the darts and decided they weren’t really required. Ponte is very forgiving.) The crotch length is plenty long enough for me without modification—which is unusual—but for some people, it might be too long and need to be adjusted. Once the fit is good in the waist and hips, we can address the length.

I spent an hour working on the Ravenwood pattern and completed the front of the bag.

I still have a long, long way to go on this project. The inside of the bag has several pockets.

I also put together one of the Laundry Day Tees. I’m running up a bunch of tops and then will have one long coverstitch hemming session for them.

One of the baby quilts is quilted and waiting to be bound. I would love to show you a photo of it but I want these to be a surprise. I am quite happy with the way the first one turned out. It’s a combination of rulerwork and free motion quilting.

The plan for this weekend is (hopefully) to finish binding the Sunbonnet Sue quilt, hem a few tops, and make that New Look 6555 top so the store can use it as a display sample for the class in May. Anything beyond that will be a bonus.

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We had a good group at choir practice Wednesday night considering the weather. With me singing alto on the acapella pieces, we had almost a double quartet. Steve had to carry the bass line by himself, but he’s more than capable. Finding music for our group is not easy. We are all accomplished musicians and good singers, but we’re small. The anthem arrangements for Easter Sunday are so frustrating as most of them call for trumpets and/or organ, a full chorus, and have complicated orchestral accompaniments.

Yesterday morning, I organized my piano music for Lent and Easter. I like to keep favorite arrangements in alphabetical order in notebooks. I pulled some older ones and replaced them with newer ones. I’ve got a fair bit of practicing to do before Easter, though.

Purple is a Pretty Color

I don’t use a lot of purple. I am not sure why. Purple is a good color on me and it plays nicely with blue and green—colors I do love. And I am enjoying it on this Sunbonnet Sue quilt.

I attached the binding yesterday morning and got one side sewn down last night. Here is a corner of the back:

I love love love that big flower.

I’ll take this to sewing for Show and Tell tomorrow. I won’t be able to work on the binding tonight because we have choir practice scheduled at church, but the plan is to get the quilt done by this weekend and packed up to ship on Monday. I talked to my college roommate, Marcia, about what to put on the label on the back and that is done, too.

The wind is still howling. I still have a sinus headache. This weather is supposed to last through today and warm back up to something seasonable by Saturday. The air temp is currently -1F. I hate wind. (That is putting it mildly.) Wind like this just makes me cranky, even without the headache. We lost power briefly yesterday, but only for about 30 minutes.

After I attached the binding to the quilt, I basted three baby quilt tops. I have one more cut out that needs to be assembled and a fifth waiting to be cut. I started quilting one of the tops yesterday afternoon. I think I’ll do the same quilting pattern on all of them as I have a deadline. Every single one of these babies is due at the end of April/beginning of May and I’d like to have the quilts done for the baby showers.

We’ll see.

The zippers for the Ravenwood Bag arrived yesterday. I’d like to make some progress on that project, too. Funny story: When I was ordering the lengths I needed, I neglected to notice that they come in bundles of five zippers per size, probably because the bulk price from this seller is similar to the price of one zipper at Joann Fabrics. So now I have a good supply of black metal bag zippers in 7”, 14”, and 18” lengths. Hit me up if you need one.

I need to make up a class sample for the quilt store. I’m teaching a class on this New Look pattern at the beginning of May:

I made this top once, but the owner of the store where I am teaching saw it and asked to buy it from me. I am going to make another one for myself. The first one was a bit large on me. I traced one size down for the second iteration. Now I just need to decide which of my pretty rayons to use.

At some point, I also need to clean up my sewing area. Right now, it looks like someone let a couple of toddlers loose in a Joann Fabrics store. I hate to get things out and put them away, especially in the middle of a project(s) so I tend to leave things sitting out where I can get to them. At a certain point, though, too much stuff wreaks havoc on the workflow. I do have projects corralled in bins, which helps.

Wait Until It is Quilted

We’re waiting for the arctic cold front to sweep through. Temps warmed up yesterday and it rained most of the night, which means that when the cold air and high winds come in, things likely will become a big mess. I have had an annoying sinus headache for the last 24 hours, too.

The Sunbonnet Sue top is all quilted, and I am thrilled with how it turned out. Kathryn, one of our quilters at church, gave me a great piece of advice some years ago. She said to reserve judgment on a top until it is all done, because it will look completely different when it is quilted. I constantly second-guess my way through quilting a top—because I am looking at the trees instead of the forest—but when it’s all done and I can see the overall design, I always love how everything works together.

I wish I had a good picture for you. The hero shot might have to wait until my college roommate gets the quilt and puts it on a bed. Right now, the quilt is trimmed and waiting for me to attach the binding. I had the perfect shade of purple Kona for that—a lovely, deep orchid—and will sew it on today. It will take me a couple of evenings to sew down the binding by hand.

I did do ribbon candy in the borders, which was a great choice. The corners have big flowers courtesy of my Amanda Murphy Daisy rulers.

Next up are the baby quilts. I will baste the two completed tops with batting and backings and start working on them. The other two tops are cut and only need to be sewn together.

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I’m still waiting for zippers to arrive, so the Ravenwood Bag is in time out. Anna Graham, at Noodlehead, released a new bag pattern this month, the Haralson Belt Bag pattern:

I have no immediate plans to make this, but I buy everything that Anna designs because her patterns are so good. Also, I like that this one uses small amounts of fabric and waxed canvas. She has a YouTube video accompanying this pattern on her channel.

And I have two Laundry Day Tees cut out, waiting to be assembled. I think my serger misses me.

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Nicole Sauce has a free webinar on her #My3Things system coming up this Sunday, February 26. If you are looking for a way to become more productive and organized, this might work for you. I use a slightly less formal version of it. Nicole is an excellent podcaster and presenter, and even though her podcast has “Tennessee” in the title, she doesn’t limit her topics to that part of the country. I have been a devoted listener for years. Check it out.

Spring is a Ways Off

We woke up to heavy snow yesterday morning, which I didn’t remember seeing in the forecast. I made a quick trip into town after church to get a few things in case we’re stuck here until the middle of the week from the forecasted storm that is supposed to come in this evening. It was not snowing in town. Our fire department got paged out for a car accident up the road near Susan’s house; there is a tight curve there that is the scene of frequent driver miscalculations. I drove through on my way home and saw a car and a truck ass-end up in snowbanks along the side of the road. Oops.

All in all, we got probably 8” of snow over the weekend. Winter isn’t over yet, despite people attempting to drive as though it is.

The long-term forecast for March is for continued below-average temperatures. I usually start seeds in the greenhouse in March, so I am considering backup plans if for some reason I have to push that back a couple of weeks. The greenhouse can be heated with propane, but getting over there is a slog until the snow melts.

I took a break from quilting yesterday. I’ll finish the sashing this morning. I went through the quilting rulers and pulled out some possibilities for the border. I could always do ribbon candy, which I love, but I feel like I should broaden my horizons a bit. On the other hand, I’ve kind of stretched myself with quilting this top and ribbon candy would be a relaxing finish. I am still pondering.

I’ve been working the wheatear stitch (purple) on my leaning pumpkin and I like it a lot:

Slow and steady wins the race.

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I discovered that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has a podcast. I get their e-mails and in a recent one, they highlighted an episode about long-term side effects of treatment. I listened to it a few days ago on my drive into town. The hosts interviewed two women. One had non-Hodgkins lymphoma nine years ago and got the standard R-CHOP regimen. The other woman had acute myeloid leukemia when she was 4 years old, was treated and in remission for 22 years, then relapsed when she was 26. I also had acute myeloid leukemia and received two of the same drugs—idarubicin and Ara-C—over the course of six months.

I listened to about half of the podcast and turned it off. It was so depressing. These poor women have a host of health problems, from bone degeneration to memory issues to dental problems. I consider myself fortunate to have escaped all of that. The only long-term issue I’ve had to manage is some peripheral neuropathy, which manifests as tingling and numbness. I notice it in my fingers when they get cold, but I also have it in my toes no matter the temperature. I am trying to stay on top of it so it doesn’t worsen. I take vitamin B6, which I was given while having chemo, and I also take over-the-counter GABA. And I am trying to be more careful about tripping hazards around here.

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The little deer is still here but she has competition. I put a cup of sweet feed out for her a few days ago, and the next thing I knew, a flock of several dozen turkeys came running over and hoovered it all up. On Saturday, I went to the garage—where we keep the feed—and got a container of scratch grains for the chickens and a cup of sweet feed in a yogurt container for the deer. Sometimes she is waiting for me, but I didn’t see her. I walked back to the house, set the yogurt container on a table on the porch, and went into the coop to feed the chickens. I was in there, at most, for five minutes. When I came out, the deer was on the porch with her nose stuck in the yogurt container, busily munching away. We do not encourage that behavior, trust me.

A Different Approach to Creativity

The sashing on the Sunbonnet Sue top is mostly quilted. I’ll finish the sashing today and quilt the borders tomorrow. We are supposed to get a big storm tomorrow night:

We are “in the mountains,” so it’s quite possible we’ll get dumped on. And this looks like a back door cold front with high winds.

The sashing design required some thought. I had it in my head that the blocks were 12” square. They were, before I put them into the quilt. Finished, they are 11-1/2” because the seams are 1/4” on all sides. I didn’t want to trim them down any further and risk losing space around the appliqués. When it came time to quilt the sashing, though, I realized that none of my quilting ruler motifs would fit evenly into that 11-1/2”. Sometimes it’s possible to fudge things a bit because the human brain will smooth out any tiny discrepancies, but I didn’t see an easy way to do that without ending up with partial motifs in places.

I have always had terrible spatial perception. I have a lot of trouble visualizing things in my brain. In some ways, it feels a bit like being head-blind. We used to take aptitude tests in school where some of the questions involved looking at a two-dimensional drawing, with dotted lines, and we were supposed to “fold” the drawing and predict the shape of the object. Fail.

I’m much better at this than I used to be, which is a testament to the plasticity of the human brain. (And, apparently, to how stubborn I am.) The turning point seemed to be when I had to force myself to learn to read knitting charts. There was a time, back in the early 1990s, when all the magazines wanted to transition to chart-only patterns. I wanted so desperately to knit a vest pattern from Vogue Knitting, but it had a five-stitch, four-row chart. (That sounds so simple now…) The key to reading a knitting chart is to know that the symbols show the stitch as it appears on the public side of the work. Thus, when working back and forth, every other row has to be translated. If the chart shows a knit stitch, it has to be worked as a purl and vice-versa.

Some of you out there are probably saying, “That’s not hard!” but it was for me. I persevered until I had figured it out and knitted the vest. And then, just for fun, I went on and designed complicated cabled sweaters with intricate charts. The husband always says that he thinks it is interesting that I have picked hobbies which challenge my lack of innate ability. Really, though, where is the fun in something easy?

Because of what I saw as a deficiency in processing, I always assumed that I was missing that “thing” that enabled one to be creative. Creative people see things in their heads and bring them into being, like Sunnie, who paints beautiful pictures. The husband can look at a set of plans and know what the finished house will look like. My friend Ginger comes up with an idea and brings it to life in the form of visuals in our sanctuary. I could never “see” the thing that I wanted to make. Drawing? I can’t do much more than stick figures.

[Interestingly, I cannot play music by ear. Transposing is difficult for me, too.]

One of my art teachers, in middle school, said something one time that has stuck with me. She said that art can be considered as a problem to be solved. I can solve problems! I love algebra. Maybe I could approach creativity as a problem to be solved rather than a fully-formed idea that springs from my brain.

This was the problem: I had blocks that were an odd size, such that I either had to quilt the sashings freehand, without rulers, or I had to figure out some way to fit a pattern into that space. I don’t like to quilt freehand. It feels too much like drawing to me. I like quilting with rulers.

One of the tricks quilters use is to work from the center out. I do this when quilting borders. I’ve got a center-zero tape measure that allows me to identify the center point of a long stretch of fabric. I’ll position the motif so that it either straddles that center point or starts next to it—depending on how the math works out—and go from there. Any partial motifs end up at the sides where they won’t be so noticeable.

This is what I came up with. I’m showing you a line drawing I made up in Illustrator because I’m quilting in a thread color that blends into the sashing print and a photo won’t show this as well:

Imagine that those ovals are diamonds and the stars are hearts. I found the one diamond ruler in my collection that fit well into the sashing space. I marked the center point of the sashing along each square, then positioned the diamonds—there are six—so they split evenly on either side of that center point. I quilted a heart in each cornerstone.

[Someone out there just read this blog post and thought that the solution was blindingly obvious. If that is you, congratulations. Your brain works differently than mine. I have to analyze and dissect and think through a problem before I come up with a solution.]

In any case, I am happy with the way the sashing looks. I am still thinking about how to quilt the border. The border is 8” wide, so I could do something dramatic, like feathers—I have feather rulers—but I’m not wedded to that idea. After I finish the sashing, I’ll go through my collection of rulers and see what might work.

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I’ve got two Laundry Day Tees cut out—one of which is the fruit and veggie fabric—two baby quilt tops assembled, and two more baby quilts cut out. Next week is mostly clear until Friday, when I am teaching a Renee Pants class. After I get this Sunbonnet Sue quilt done, I’ll quilt the baby quilts and put those two LDTs together. We’re also starting choir practice this week. If you are local and want to sing for Lent and Easter, feel free to join us at the Mennonite Church on Wednesday night at 6:15.

Wearing Fruits and Vegetables

I went to sewing yesterday and handed the raffle quilt top over to Joyce, who is going to quilt it. Judy will make a label for it. When Joyce is done, she’ll give the quilt to Jessie to bind, and when Jessie is done, the quilt is coming back to me for photos. The quilt will be a fundraiser for the homestead foundation.

[Yes, we have a Jessie, a Joyce, a Janet, and a Judy in our sewing group.]

I stayed and knitted and visited with Sarah. She is very excited about the upcoming growing season. She was never able to grow tomatoes when she lived in Washington state but she can grown them here, and they’ve become one of her passions. It is lovely to have friends who go whole hog on things the same way I do.

We got to see Jessie’s almost-finished quilt during show and tell. (She was sewing down the binding while we sat and visited.) The spools are made up of sewing-themed fabric, and Joyce quilted it with an allover sewing-themed pattern. If you look closely, you can see needles and spools of thread. Jessie plans to hang this in her sewing room.

I stayed and knitted to the end of the skein of yarn I had with me, then left and came home to work on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt. I’ve got 21 of the 30 blocks quilted. I plan to get at least six more done today, finish the rest tomorrow, then start the sashing and borders. I am pretty sure I know how I want to quilt the sashings. I am still thinking about the borders.

The Sunbonnet Sue is on track to be quilted by the middle of next week, and then it’s a matter of attaching and sewing down the binding. I’m like Jessie—I like to sew my bindings down by hand.

I also assembled a second baby quilt and cut out fabrics for a third one. I have enough fabric to do five, even though I only need four, but I’ll go ahead and make an extra one to have on hand.

I found this fabric on the Walmart mystery remnant rack the other day:

Of course I bought it! How could I not? It’s a light rib knit and it’s going to become a Laundry Day Tee. I can wear it at the plant sale. LOL.

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One of our employees has expressed an interest in starting his own business. This young man is pretty sharp. He keeps the other employees in line and the husband trusts him enough to leave him in charge on jobsites. (This is also the kid that calls the husband “sir,” and refers to me as “HR,” which makes me laugh.) The husband will help anyone who is willing to put forth the effort—he had to learn this stuff on his own—so he is teaching this kid how to estimate the costs of an upcoming concrete job. The husband gave him all the information and told him to come up with a price. The husband is also estimating the job. They conferred about it last night in a phone call, and this morning, the two of them are going to go over the two sets of numbers.

Apparently, the husband also advised this kid that he should marry someone capable of running the administrative end of things if he wants to start his own business. We do have complementary superpowers. The husband is great at making money and I am great at managing it.

Turn the Lights On

I am chatty this week . . .

The husband installed my Valentine’s gift in the garage over the weekend:

These are new lights, and more of them. This is where I park my car and work on sewing machines, and now I can see what I am doing. Such a thoughtful gift. Much better than a box of chocolates!

That poor man worked in this garage for 20 years before we built his new shop. I don’t know how he did everything he did in here.

I quilted another column of Sunbonnet Sue blocks yesterday morning. Twelve of 30 blocks are done. I am pleased with the progress.

After lunch, I worked a bit more on the Ravenwood bag and completed the front piece with the cargo pockets:

This project is stalled until the zippers arrive. They are on the way.

[I’ve got this app called Route on my phone, which I love. It shows me when orders have been shipped, where they are in transit, and sends notifications when they have been delivered.]

I cut pieces for a second baby quilt and made 24 half-square triangles while watching documentaries about climbing Mount Everest. It’s that time of year again. I don’t know why these documentaries fascinate me. Perhaps it’s because I almost died twice (without trying), so I am trying to figure out what part of their brains those people are missing.

Robin is substitute teaching all week at a nearby elementary school. She came by after school and dropped off the raffle quilt. I will take it to sewing tomorrow and hand it off to the woman who is going to longarm quilt it. Robin is worn out at the end of the day—a room full of energetic kids will do that to you—but she doesn’t appear to have acquired my cold.

I have to go to town today. I think I’ll break up the next set of Sunbonnet blocks and do three today and three tomorrow.

I’ve lost count of how many people have said to me that they read my blog and it makes them tired. Maybe the husband and I just reinforce each other’s natural tendencies to be productive, although I am sure there is a genetic component to this. My mother doesn’t sit around, either. She still goes to work and bowls in a league and she’s 81. A busy day feels normal to me.

Quilting Sunbonnet Sue

I made quite a bit of headway on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt yesterday. I started with a quilt sandwich of the same battings and fabric—one layer of Warm and White and a second layer of low-loft polyester between quilting cotton—and tested my stitch tension. On most quilts, I use 40wt Signature cotton in the top and 50wt Aurifil in the bobbin. For this quilt, I am using 50wt Aurifil in both top and bobbin. Once I had the tension dialed in, I began working on the quilt.

There are five columns of six 12” blocks divided by sashing. No cornerstones. On this top, “quilting the bones” means outlining each block rather than stitching in the ditch along the sashing. I started with the center block, working out from there, and was able to get the center column of blocks quilted by lunchtime. (I stop every 20 minutes or so and get up and walk around.)

I want those appliqués to take center stage. I stitched in the ditch to outline each block, then stitched 1/4” from the edge of each Sunbonnet Sue. The background is filled in with a basic meander—or, as I like to call it, “amoeba quilting.”

This is where those two layers of batting help. The background recedes due to the quilting and each Sunbonnet Sue puffs out ever so slightly. I will not quilt within the appliqués.

One block takes about 40 minutes to quilt. I think the next column of blocks may go a bit more quickly. The center of the quilt takes longer because there is more fabric to wrestle around. As I move to the outer edges, I can roll up the excess fabric to keep it out of my way.

Once the blocks are quilted, I’ll go back and quilt something inside each sashing strip. Diamonds, maybe? And then I’ll have to decide what to put in the borders. I am still aiming to have this all quilted by the end of February. I know my college roommate would like to have it on a bed where it belongs. Her grandmother made the Sunbonnet Sue blocks and yes, those are true vintage fabrics.

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I got so much quilting done in the morning that after lunch, all I did was press fabric, drink tea, and read a book. I want to speed this cold on its way. I went to bed early, too.

I am going to postpone errands in town until tomorrow. We’re under a winter weather advisory and I am likely still contagious. I’ve been doing a Costco run the first week of the month, and I only have to go to the grocery store twice a month.

We’ll see if I can get another six blocks quilted today.

Those Pesky Viruses

I woke up yesterday morning with a cold. No, it’s not covid or the flu. It’s just a garden-variety cold. I rarely get sick. This is the first cold I’ve had in over a year. I feel bad because I don’t want Robin to get it, although I had absolutely no warning it was coming. I felt fine all day Saturday on our trip to Missoula.

I stayed home from church yesterday. There is no need for me to be spreading this around. I won’t go anywhere today, either.

I drank lots of hot tea and took it easy yesterday. I even napped in the afternoon, which is unusual for me. I was not a complete slug, however. I traced some patterns while watching YouTube videos.

This is Burda 6610:

I bought it to make view C, the tunic. This is similar to the top I found at Kohls. If I make it myself, I can ensure it will be long enough. I probably won’t make the split hem so deep, but I like it otherwise. I am still on the hunt for some tried-and-true patterns for wovens. That old See & Sew raglan pattern is a keeper, but I want a few others. I have some nice rayon wovens in the stash that I’d like to turn into tops.

The other one I traced is New Look 6453:

This is another princess-seam top. I am still playing around with fitting that silhouette. View C looks like it would be plenty long enough, although I am not crazy about hi-lo hems.

I am really looking forward to that bodice sloper class at Sew Expo. Hopefully, what I learn in that class will eliminate or reduce the need to do so much experimenting.

I also ordered Simplicity 8169 off Etsy:

This is similar to the Burda pattern, although I would probably make the keyhole version, view B. I like the fluted sleeves. I tend to avoid fussy details, as a rule, but those sleeves are attractive without being in the way. No big statement sleeves for me.

The raincoat pattern may end up being my summer project. It requires five yards of coating fabric and four yards of lining. The Confident Stitch has some nice raincoat fabric, although nothing in colors as saturated as I would like. A hot pink raincoat might be a bit much, but emerald green would be nice. I am going to order swatches from Mood and from Seattle Fabrics, and maybe I’ll find something while we’re at Sew Expo. We might have time to take a quick side trip to Pacific Fabrics, too.

I ordered zippers for the Ravenwood bag yesterday. I know better than to try to source those locally. That was an exercise in frustration with the first version. Either I could find the color I needed, but not the length, or I could find the length I needed but not in colors I wanted. I usually order zippers from ZipIt, on Etsy. The pattern specifies two 7” zippers, a 14” zipper, and an 18” zipper. I found them, in black, although they don’t come in black nickel finish so I went with antique brass. That will be close enough. I’ll do as much as I can on the bag until the zippers get here.

These are all first-world problems, to be sure.

I plan to start working on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt today. I will make a practice quilt sandwich, first, to dial in the tension and try out some design ideas.

FART Success

Robin and I went on a Fabric Acquisition Road Trip (FART) yesterday. I picked her up at 8:00 am and we headed to Missoula. Our first stop was the store A Clean Stitch, the Missoula Bernina/Janome dealer. They carry the entire line of Amanda Murphy rulers. The last time I was there, I bought the large hexagon set but the smaller hexagon set was out of stock. I picked up the small hexagon set yesterday as well as a Bernina set of border rulers:

I really wanted that loop-to-loop ruler and the cable ruler as I don’t have anything like them.

We stopped at Walmart to peruse the mystery remnant rack. I bought an intriguing chunk of fabric—it’s a white background with black circles that get progressively bigger from top to bottom, making it basically a border print. The fabric is a medium weight and I think it will make a lovely tunic top.

Our next stop was the reason for the trip in the first place. Robin is assembling a quilt that will be donated to the homestead foundation for a fundraising raffle. She could not find a border for it in Kalispell. We went to Vicki’s Quilts Down Under to see if we could find one there. The two of us spent over an hour combing through the fabrics. We had narrowed it down to two possibilities when Robin asked Vicki what she thought. Vicki looked at the top, walked over to the shelf, took down a bolt of a batik, and laid it down next to the top.

The batik was nothing like either of the fabrics we had chosen but it was perfect. Perfect. Vicki is a genius and I know why her store is so popular. Robin bought a few additional fabrics and I got a backing for one of the baby quilts.

We left Vicki’s and stopped at Kohls. I was so disappointed—I found a lovely blouse in a bright print, on sale. I tried it on even though I knew what would happen. It fit beautifully except that it was 3” too short. I considered buying it anyway and deconstructing and reverse engineering it, but I really don’t have time.

By then, it was past noon and we were starving. I drove downtown to one of our favorite restaurants, Notorious P.I.G. Their pulled pork sandwiches are excellent. The restaurant also happens to be two blocks from The Confident Stitch, so we headed there after we ate.

I try to shop for fabric with a list so I don’t get distracted by all the pretties. The Confident Stitch carries some quilting cottons, but their selection of garment fabrics is why I visit. I scoped out possible raincoat fabrics, looked at some Essex Linen, and bought two yards of a screaming bright pink tencel print from Kaleidoscope Studios:

I also bought a Christine Jonson pattern—the store has an entire wall of drawers full of indie patterns—and a remnant of Essex Linen.

Over at Joann Fabrics, Burda patterns were on sale. I bought two and picked up the Simplicity 9713 raincoat pattern that was just released. Our store still didn’t have it last time I checked. I also bought fabric for the lining of my Ravenwood bag.

We needed to head back toward Kalispell as it was already 2:30 pm and I knew a stop at the Amish store was on the itinerary. On the way to Missoula, I had pointed out a new little fabric store in Ronan to Robin and suggested we stop there, too, on our way back. The store has expanded their inventory since I was there last. I found backings for the other three baby quilts.

All in all, it was a productive shopping day. Getting the perfect border fabric for the raffle quilt was great. Robin will put the border on today, and once it has been quilted and bound, I’ll get some good photos for us to use for advertising.