A Baby Shower and Another Sunbonnet Sue

One of the young families in our church is about to welcome their second child. We had a baby shower for them yesterday. Jessica, who organized the event, had the Sunbonnet Sue quilt made by her grandmother on display:

This is a different setting than the one I used; each block is bordered by one of the fabrics that is in the appliqué, and each Sunbonnet Sue is outlined in blanket stitch in black thread. I love the two off-kilter blocks at the bottom.

The shower was lovely. We haven’t had families with kids in our congregation for a long time, and now we have almost a dozen littles running around. I love the chaos. It reminds me of growing up with all of my cousins.

My shower gift was one of the bear paw quilts.

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After several days of sunny weather and temps in the high 40s, we got 4” of heavy, wet snow on Friday and flurries again yesterday. The new snow melted quickly, but I haven’t been back out to the greenhouse. I’m going to try again this afternoon. I’m not panicking yet, but I do need to get the rest of the tomatoes and peppers planted this week. Everything else can wait until after the fire department auction.

The chicks are starting to get their big chicken feathers and are eating like there is no tomorrow. For the first week, they were on a probiotic solution—which helps considerably—but it has a lot of sugar in it. I’ve been cutting back the concentration and they’ll be on plain water starting today.

I worked on class samples all day Friday and ran up three tops yesterday. I made two Laundry Day Tees and another Lark Tee. Before I cut them out, I compared my bodice sloper to each and re-traced the front pieces so I could adjust the position of the boob bump slightly. I’ll post pictures of the tops tomorrow.

Itch to Stitch released a new pattern this week, the Zakopane Top:

This is a knot-front top, one of my favorite styles, but I am undecided about buying the pattern. I’ve got three knot-front top patterns, two of which I reverse engineered from favorite Liz Claiborne tops. I don’t know that this pattern is going to provide anything I don’t already have. I’d also have to lengthen it right off the bat as it is drafted for a shorter person.

Karina, at Lifting Pins and Needles, did a nice video recap of the two tops she made from the Zakopane pattern.

I may have solved the industrial sewing machine dilemma. The sew & vac store in Kalispell—which I do not frequent for a variety of reasons—has a used Consew 118 for sale. (I was in there last week to get binding fabric for one of the bear paw quilts.) The 118 is a walking foot machine and will handle the heavier UV-coated fabric that the husband likes for generator covers. I did some research to determine a reasonable asking price, because I know from previous dealings with this store that I will have to bargain hard. This store tends to overprice used machines and push customers toward buying new, but I am trying to avoid spending lots of money on a machine I likely won’t use that often.

As the husband says, the key to successful negotiation is being willing to walk away.

More Serger Classes, Please

I will be sewing today. I have spent most of this week attending to other projects and I need a day alone, in my sewing room, to process and plan. I stopped in at the quilt store north of town yesterday morning and was asked by a customer when I was going to offer more serger classes there. I had classes on the schedule in January, February, and March, but none of them filled. I told the staff person that I would look at my calendar and schedule additional classes.

I am working hard to keep boundaries in place. My volunteer activities are important, but I have learned over the years that if I am not vigilant, some of these organizations will begin to treat me as unpaid staff, and I don’t want the road to hell to turn into an eight-lane expressway. Teaching sewing is what I am doing these days and that needs to be my focus.

Part of our Starlink order arrived yesterday:

I think the box with the mounting hardware will be delivered today. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to install it this weekend or not. We’ll need to use the forklift and we still have quite a bit of snow in the yard. I am sure the husband has this all planned out, though. Being married to the man who built the house has its advantages.

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I’ve been meaning to mention this book, which I read the week Tera and I were at Sew Expo:

This is the story of Jenny Doan’s life and how Missouri Star Quilt Company came into being. I had trouble putting this down. I knew the basic history, but to hear Jenny talk about growing up in California and everything in her life that led to the founding of one of the most successful quilting businesses in the country was riveting. I was lucky enough to see her in person in 2021 at the Garden of Quilts in Salt Lake City (another trip with Tera). Five stars, highly recommend.

I got fabric yesterday for the binding on the third bear paw quilt. I’d love to start quilting the fourth one—I am still hoping to meet my self-imposed deadline of finishing all of these by the end of March—but I had to order thread and that order hasn’t come yet. If the thread doesn’t arrive by Monday, quilting the last bear paw top will have to wait until after the fire department auction.

Friends Are Special

My college roommate sent me a large envelope full of goodies. I told her I did not want to be paid to finish her grandmother’s quilt, so she gave me a gift card to Spoonflower and sent a few other gifts with a long note. Everything was tucked into this fun pouch:

One can never have enough zipper pouches.

She also does cross-stitch, and included these:

The quilt square one had been stitched by her grandmother, but she added the lettering around the outside. I will hang these near my sewing machine.

And she included a couple of these “bonnets,” which she said her grandmother was fond of making. She thinks they were sold at a local craft sale. I tried the bigger one out on a jar of my tomato sauce.

It fits perfectly!

Friends are special. I love all of mine.

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The greenhouse got a thorough cleaning yesterday. I went through all the pots, now organized by size, and tossed any supplies that were beyond repair. The sun was shining and it was warm enough inside that I had to open the doors.

The husband put the diesel heater out there after dinner last night. We have a propane heater hooked up to the tank outside, but that heater has the unfortunate tendency to turn itself off unexpectedly. We almost lost a whole season’s worth of seedlings a few years ago, so we don’t rely on it until later in the spring. The diesel heater is bigger but it has a thermostat.

I’m trying something slightly different with the tomatoes. I usually direct seed them into 3” pots, but I am planting them into nine-packs in trays and putting them downstairs on the lettuce system until they sprout. Once the seedlings get their true leaves, I’ll transplant them. I also bought clear plastic covers for our trays in hopes that we can avoid having to booby trap the entire greenhouse with mousetraps.

The chicks are doing very well. I had one escapee yesterday, who flew out when I lifted up the lid to put their waterer back in. She landed on the table next to the brooder box and froze, so I scooped her up and put her back. Leghorns are so flighty.

And even though I know I’ll have to do it again once mud season starts in earnest, I cleaned the kitchen on Tuesday. I couldn’t stand it any longer. The floor was a mess. I moved everything, vacuumed, mopped, wiped down baseboards, washed the curtains and the wallhanging over the table, and washed the windows and French doors. The laundry room needs the same treatment soon.

‘Tis that time of year. I’m not getting a lot of sewing done this week, although I did finish bear paw quilt #3 yesterday. I need to check in town for the color Kona I need for the binding because—shockingly—I did not have it in my stash.

I’m trying to reconcile myself to the fact that there may not be any (clothing) sewing in April. How ironic, just when I feel like I’ve cracked the code with my bodice sloper. Next month’s schedule is nuts, to put it mildly, and class samples for my summer classes are at the top of the to-do list when I do get time to sew. Maybe I can get a few things cut out and stacked up next to the serger this weekend.

Time to Plant

We’re going to be off to the races here shortly. The fire department auction is next weekend and will consume four days of our time. The husband and I are in charge of the equipment sale. It is not as involved as running all of Finance—which I did for several years—but it is still a big responsibility as it brings in most of the revenue.

The week after the auction is Holy Week and Easter and that’s always a busy time for church pianists. And Susan and I have to produce the homestead foundation newsletter that week, too.

I had WS here yesterday. After lunch, we went out to assess the situation in the garden. There is still at least a foot of snow on the ground:

I have to use all of my imagination to envision what it’s going to look like in another month or so:

We’ll get there.

WS helped me sort through the pots to see what we need.

Some of the trays are falling apart after 12 years so I put in an order for new ones. The husband brought home six bags of potting soil and I will get tomatoes and peppers planted this week. Not only am I planting what we need, I am also planting inventory for the fundraising plant sale in May.

The greenhouse is a bit of a mess. We store a lot of supplies in there over the winter and also collect boxes and cardboard and other items we’ll need. WS and I put the tomato cages out in the garden. Yesterday was overcast, so it wasn’t exactly toasty inside, but it was warm enough that we could work in shirtsleeves. I plan to spend this afternoon out there doing more cleaning and organizing.

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I finished messing around with the Butterick 6754 shell pattern. I am happy with my third and final muslin. There are no egregious wrinkles, the sleeves hang perfectly (I had to adjust the sleeve cap shaping slightly), the side seams are straight, and the darts are where they are supposed to be. Zede Donahue cautions against “overfitting”—trying to eliminate all wrinkles—so I am stopping with what looks good to me. And my personal yardstick has always been, “Does this look better than what’s coming out of China?”

I knew I had issues with tops and blouses being too short, but seeing the differences between commercial patterns and my bodice sloper has been an eye-opener for me. From now on, the first step in tracing anything will be to see how the pattern compares to my bodice sloper. The information in that Threads article was so helpful, as was the bodice sloper class we took at Sew Expo.

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The husband—the man who never met a tool he didn’t like—told me the other day that I should buy myself a good heavy-duty industrial sewing machine. My Necchi industrial is really a lighter tailoring machine and balks at sewing Sunbrella. He says I could sell plenty of generator covers (all made in my copious spare time, of course). I’ve been looking for a good used vintage industrial machine for several years, but those are hard to come by in our part of the country.

I talked to our friend Tommy, who does auto upholstery. He said I was welcome to use his machines any time. We’ll see. I am still in the research phase. I’ve narrowed my choices down to the Sailrite Fabricator, a Juki 1541, or a Consew 206. They are all about the same price and have similar features. C.H. Holderby is an industrial sewing machine supplier in Seattle, so if I could find a time to get over there and try sewing on a few different models, that would be helpful. They might also have a nice used machine.

Sunbonnet Sue Safe and Sound

My college roommate messaged me on Friday afternoon that the quilt had made it to her house in Maryland:

It fits the bed perfectly. That was a happy accident, LOL.

I had a worship team meeting at church yesterday morning. Afterward, I headed into town to run a few errands. The husband was at a concrete cutting job with his crew and planned to work most of the day.

I remembered why I don’t go to town on Saturdays. Ugh. I stopped at Joann Fabrics to pick up a few items, then headed to Hobby Lobby. I am still working on class samples and I also needed to do some research. I get tons of ideas just walking around the store.

After leaving Hobby Lobby, I went to the quilt store south of town to pick up some thread. I need some 50wt thread in a baby pink color for one of the bear paw quilts. The quilt store north of town did not have the correct shade of Aurifil. I found some Wonderfil at the quilt store south of town. The store was quite busy. While waiting to check out, I visited with one of the students from my January serger class on presser feet. She has a Bernina L460 and brought it in to the store for some warranty work. She also thought some presser feet had been ordered for her after the class, but they hadn’t come in yet and there was some confusion about the correct feet for her model. The owner’s son—who is the sewing machine tech—came out to the floor and the three of us figured out what feet she needed and got them onto the list for the next order.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and was delighted to find that ground beef was on sale for $1.98 a pound. (It’s been running $4.98 a pound.) I offered to make some of the chili for our spring pie social in May, so I bought everything I needed yesterday. I’ll make up a roaster pan of chili today and put it in ice cream buckets in the freezer.

It was 2:00 pm by the time I got home. I checked on chicks, fed the big chickens, fed the deer, sorted through a bag of potatoes that was starting to go south, and finished binding the second bear paw quilt. The third one is on the Q20 right now and I’ve been working on it here and there.

I’m hoping to put some time in on my bodice fitting issues again today. I ran across this fantastic Threads article about comparing a bodice sloper to commercial pattern and it has been very helpful. I’m comparing my bodice sloper to the Butterick 6754 basic shell pattern. I did widen the back bodice piece slightly and now I am tweaking the front bodice piece. After watching this Minvera YouTube video, I dropped the darts another 1/2”. I also dropped the waistline. I wasn’t kidding when I said I had a long torso. When I compared my bodice sloper from the Sew Expo class to the Butterick pattern, I realized I had to drop the waistline by almost 2”. This is why I never buy ready-to-wear clothing with waist ties or belts.

[I hate that it has taken me so long, and so much work, to solve my clothing-fitting issues, but it’s nice to know that I might be able to make some of the things I see in stores that have never fit me properly. I’m also starting to feel more prepared to tackle an Upton Dress.]

Once I get all these tweaks done, I’ll make up one more—hopefully the last?—muslin and see how close I am.

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We are supposed to get close to 50 degrees today. It has been warm and sunny lately and the snow is starting to melt, but at our house, at least, the snow will be here for a while. I’m always happy when the day comes that the driveway is clear and I don’t need my ice cleats to get back and forth to the garage.

I have WS with me tomorrow—his mom is working and he doesn’t have school. I think it will be a good day for the two of us to go out to the greenhouse and assess the situation. It is time to get tomatoes and peppers started.

Goodbye, CenturyLink

I came downstairs this morning to find a very welcome e-mail in my inbox—our Starlink order is ready! I confirmed the invoice and ordered the additional hardware that the husband said we needed for the installation. Hopefully, we should be able to tell CenturyLink to go pound sand soon. After that debacle at Christmas when we were without internet for two weeks, I am ready to be done with them.

I’m also more than a bit annoyed with Intuit, which is forcing me into QuickBooks Online as of May, to the tune of $1000 a year. This whole “software as a service” business model is a greedy scam. I’m already paying $600 a year for Adobe Creative Suite. (Yes, I know there are open source models out there, but either they don’t work as well or they are not backward-compatible.) I’m also not thrilled about having my financial information in the cloud.

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The peeps are doing well. They are busy running around the brooder box and stuffing themselves full of food. The little deer shows up every afternoon for its ration of sweet feed, usually when I am out in the chicken coop. I wait to feed her until I see her so the turkeys don’t swoop in and hoover up the snacks.

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I made up another muslin yesterday. I still can’t figure out exactly what fitting issue I am having. The front of the muslin fits well. The darts are positioned properly, the sleeve seamlines sit where they should, I’ve got plenty of fabric over my chest, and there are no odd wrinkles, but something is off. I’m wondering, now, if the fit of the back is the issue. I looked at that fitting book, which was helpful, but I really need a comprehensive set of accurate measurements so I know exactly where mine deviate from average. The husband, for all that he knows how to lay out foundations and build houses, doesn’t know enough about clothing construction to know what measurements I need him to take or how to take them. Maybe Tera and I can get together some time for a fitting session. Or I’ll take my tape measure and book with me the next time I visit DD#1’s in-laws, because DSIL’s mom has a lot of sewing and fitting experience.

The easy way out would be to stick to sewing with knits. I’ve got half a dozen tried and true patterns that fit me well, but I’m too stubborn to let this go and I’m so close. I might adjust the back pattern piece for the muslin I made yesterday and run up another one this afternoon if I get time.

Raglans seem to be a trend this spring. I’m seeing lots of raglans with gathered necklines, Gathers at the neckline effectively do the same thing as bust darts—they provide extra room on the front of the garment. That old See & Sew raglan pattern fits me well for a similar reason, but instead of gathers, it has a pleat at the center front. Gathers at the shoulders work, too. The trick is finding styles that don’t end up looking like maternity tops. I really wish I had bought that too-short blouse at Kohls in Spokane. It fit me well. I could have reverse-engineered it and made it longer. (I checked the website and it’s no longer available.)

I bought this book at the quilt store yesterday:

I love books like this that have all the math done for lots of different blocks in a range of sizes. I’m not averse to doing math, but if someone has already done it for me, so much the better.

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.