Christmas in July Serger Class

I field tested the Simplicity 9469 blouse on Friday and wore it to teach my Christmas in July serger class. The top performed beautifully. There was no tugging or adjusting and I could move freely in it. I’ve pulled out a few more blouse patterns to trace and frankenpattern, now that I have a solid base for hacking. And although I shouldn’t be, I am continually surprised at how much I have to lengthen the bodices. At least that is a consistent adjustment from pattern to pattern.

The serger class went well, mostly. I had one student with a new machine that was being temperamental. (The machine, not the student.) She was able to complete the first project but decided not to stay to the end of class because we couldn’t get her machine threaded. She’ll have to have the store’s sewing machine tech take a look at it. Her first project turned out beautifully, though:

We made folded Christmas tree napkins edged with 12wt decorative threads. I always love to see students’ fabric choices. Some choose glam, and some choose fun. Sue, who works at the store, made hers with these cute prints:

We also made cutlery holders with flatlock stitches woven through with 1/4” ribbon:

Coming up with suitable projects is the hardest part of class prep, I think. The goal is to have students create something practical while giving them an opportunity to learn the technique. At the same time, though, the project can’t be so complicated that it causes frustration. During class, we talk a lot about each technique and how it could be used in other ways.

My students were having so much fun that they didn’t want to leave. They didn’t want me to leave, either. The last project was a Christmas ornament decorated with trim made on the serger. (Gail Yellen has a video on her YouTube channel on how to make these.) This is an interesting technique because no fabric is involved in making the trim. The serger is threaded with four heavy threads and one serger thread, and then you just run out yards and yards of chain:

The chain will be added to these fabric-covered foam balls:

One of my students came to class a bit afraid of her BabyLock serger. By the end, she was changing needles and thread with confidence. Seeing that is, for me, the best part of teaching.

I am teaching a Bernina serger mastery class this week. Right after my class, the store owner’s son, a young guy who is the store’s machine tech, will be teaching a class on “sewing machine technical solutions.” I signed up for that one, both because I want to support him—this is his first class—and because I am sure I will learn things I don’t know. I also offered to take notes for him during class and write down any questions people have so he can incorporate that information into future classes.

[This quilt store has such good class offerings that a few of my students were joking about their “staycations” at the store last week. Krista Moser taught a quilting class Monday through Thursday, my class was on Friday, and several of them were coming back on Saturday for open sew. I sometimes think that a few people would be happy to live at the store if it offered dormitory and kitchen accommodations.]

My next class is an evening session on choosing the right sewing machine needle for a project. Getting the kits prepped is on the list for this week.

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The husband mucked out the chicken coop yesterday morning. I was at a meeting and came home just as he was finishing up. That is a thankless, dirty job. We use the ”deep litter” method, continually adding straw to the bedding on the floor of the coop, but every couple of months it all has to be cleaned out and put on the compost pile. The chickens got to feast on the mice that were living in the bedding. I didn’t see the snake, though.I did spot a garter snake out in the big garden a few days ago but it slithered away before I could get a picture.

Robin came by after lunch to cut lavender. She makes sachets to sell at the craft co-op sale and I told her she was welcome to whatever she wanted. We’ll have another wave of zucchini this week and the peas are ready. I’m expecting an avalanche of cucumbers in another week or so.

And Rain Came Down

We had the weirdest weather yesterday. It was near 80 when I left for town at noon to run errands. The sun was shining and there was nothing in the forecast about rain. Nothing. It looked and felt like a typical mid-July day in Montana.

By the time I got to town, clouds were gathering. I pulled into the Walmart parking lot around 2 pm just as big, fat raindrops started hitting my car. Dark clouds continued to pile up. While I was getting my hair cut an hour later, the heavens opened up and let loose. I was completely soaked running from the salon to my car, a distance of about 100 feet. The drive out of town was slow going because it was still raining hard and there were several inches of standing water on the roads.

We did not, unfortunately, get that kind of rain here at the house. Most of the precip this summer seems to be going north and south of us. (Alberta is getting hammered.) Usually, the atmosphere is so dry this time of year that any precipitation evaporates before it reaches the ground. To get that amount of rain—that amount of un-forecasted rain—was bizarre.

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More of my hollyhocks have bloomed and I do have a “black” one, which is really a very dark purple:

I need to get in there and cut back the weeds.

I discovered that ground squirrels like cilantro, as if decimating my broccoli starts wasn’t enough of an insult. I planted dill and cilantro a few years ago and now it just self-seeds all over the garden. I found a patch of volunteers a few days ago and lovingly weeded it. (The rest of my family hates cilantro but I am quite partial to it.) When I checked on it yesterday morning, all that was left was the dill.

The husband went out to the garden with the shotgun last evening. He spotted the little criminal, but couldn’t get a shot off before it disappeared down into its hole. I’ve also seen the neighborhood cat, Sylvester, parked by that spot.

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Before I make a pattern, I’ll often check for reviews on the PatternReview.com website. (An account is required to read reviews, but the account is free.) I didn’t do that for the Simplicity 9469 because Tea’s recommendation was enough for me, but I took a peek at some reviews after the fact. Apparently, several other people like that pattern, too, as it had a number of five-star reviews.

Joanns and Hobby Lobby have many of their summer fabrics on clearance. While I was in town yesterday, I picked up several lengths of fabric for making muslins. I have Burda 6610, which I had already traced, and which is similar to Simplicity 9469 except that the Burda pattern has bust darts:

I want to make this one an as intellectual exercise, to see how the fit compares.

I’m teaching a serger class today. We are making Christmas ornaments and napkins. Those projects were chosen so we could try out some new and unusual techniques with decorative threads.

A Bug Blouse

Simplicity 9469 has earned a place on my tried-and-true patterns list. I have been searching for a good pattern for woven fabrics, because rayon is wonderfully cool in hot weather. I have a fair bit of it in the stash. This pattern is a winner. My usual size fit nicely with no adjustments other than redrafting the sleeve to something less fussy.

And I got to use some bug fabric!

I bought this fabric at Hobby Lobby last season. As rayons go, it’s not the highest quality—Hobby Lobby, not Mood Fabrics—but it’ll do. I always prewash and dry my fabric. That made the selvages shrink (and distort the rest of the fabric), so I cut them off before I laid out the pattern pieces.

The pattern calls for narrow self-fabric ties at the V-neck. I tried to make some, but the rayon wanted to fray, so I abandoned that idea in favor of some black 1/4” ribbon. Honestly, I might just leave those off next time. I probably won’t tie them in any case. The sleeves ended up a bit gathered at the shoulder; I know how to set in sleeves and usually can get them to go in smoothly, but I tried twice with the first sleeve and the rayon started to fray. (Have I mentioned that this is not the highest quality rayon?) I invoked the “Does it look better than what is coming out of China?” rule and went with the gathers. After setting in the sleeves, I finished the insides on the serger.

After some consideration, I also abandoned the bust dart idea. The blouse fits fine without them, and adding bust darts comes with downstream issues.

The only change I will make is to re-trace this and add some length. The top looked perfect until I hemmed it, and now I want that additional 5/8” back. LOL.

I think this pattern could lend itself well to some hacking, too. Maybe a ruffled edge at the neckline? Or something at the hem?

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When I taught a serger class at the quilt store in Spokane last August, one of the students begged me to come and do a fitting class. I wonder if she will sign up for the T-shirt class. At the time, I didn’t feel competent to teach what she wanted. I could do it now, I think—and the T-shirt class will include basic fitting concepts—but fitting is a broad subject and I am not Joe Vechiarelli. It’s taken me a couple of years to figure out my own fitting issues. I think I can at least save students from having to reinvent the wheel, though, with the following tips:

• Take the time to make a bodice block (and a pants block, if you want to make pants). Even if you never want to draft your own patterns from it, being able to compare your block to a commercial pattern will save you a ton of time.

• Look at the ready-to-wear pieces in your closet. Do you gravitate toward the same brand(s) over and over (coughLizClaibornecough)? What makes you reach for certain items more than others? Are there features you avoid, like belts or raglans? Why?

• Do some research and find out what size and body shape each pattern company drafts for. Sinclair Patterns offers a Tall option in many of their patterns, which is wonderful for me as most companies design for an average height of 5’5”. We all know what happens when I try to use Love Notions patterns, as beautiful as they are.

• Assume you will have to make some adjustments. Very rarely do patterns fit right out of the envelope. Also assume that you will need to make at least a basic muslin for any new pattern.

• Start a collection of basic patterns that either fit well or that you’ve tweaked to fit well—your own personal tried-and-true patterns.

• Don’t be afraid to mash up patterns and combine parts (but expect to make lots of muslins).

We’ll see what happens at the T-shirt class. My sense from the serger classes I’ve taught is that people want to make their own clothes but aren’t sure where to start.

Cool Weather and Class Handouts

We had 90+ degree temps on Monday. I don’t think we broke 60 degrees yesterday. It was cool and overcast most of the day and felt wonderful. The heat comes back this weekend, though. I spent yesterday morning dealing with paperwork. Class handouts for Friday’s class are done.

One of the patterns recommended recently by Tea—of the Crumpets, Tea, and Sewing channel on YouTube—is the Simplicity 9469 top:

She calls this one of her essential patterns. I just happened to have it in my pattern stash. Sunnie gave me some drapey purple fabric a few weeks ago when I stopped in at Thursday sewing and I’d like to make a top from it. I thought this pattern might work. I cut a “muslin”—the front and back pattern pieces for View A, at the top—from some leftover fabric from another project and seamed them together to evaluate the fit. I didn’t want to go to the trouble of making even a wearable muslin if the whole thing was going to crash and burn from the outset.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the top fits well despite the absence of bust darts. It is long enough and I like the way it looks. I went ahead and cut one from a rayon woven from the stash. (I may not have enough of the purple fabric, so I wanted to make a complete top from something else, first.) I have to figure out an alternate sleeve style, however, because I know that those big, gathered, elasticated sleeves would drive me batty. My preference would be for a simple, hemmed short sleeve or 3/4-length sleeve.

This fabric arrived in the mail yesterday:

It is destined to become a top for Susan’s older grandson. He loves construction equipment.

[I found this fabric on Etsy after sifting through a dozen or so listings for similar fabric on WHITE backgrounds. Why on earth would anyone design fabric, intended to be worn by little kids, with white or light backgrounds? Maybe the kids wearing those fabrics never go outside. I am making workwear for little boys who live in Montana. Dirt comes with the territory.]

One of our friends stopped over yesterday with a backpack that needs some repairs. She is going on a week-long hike soon and asked if I could fix it for her. The repairs are not complicated. The Juki 1541 is all set up and ready to go and I’ll work on that today.

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I listened to Nicole Sauce’s livestream on YouTube yesterday while I was working. She has a roundtable discussion every Tuesday. Yesterday’s guests were Jack Spirko of the Survival Podcast and John Willis, who owns Special Operations Equipment in Camden, Tennessee. John Willis’ company makes tactical gear—it’s a sewing factory—and the property is host to the Self-Reliance Festival, where I will be teaching in October. John also came and spoke at Nicole’s Spring Workshop. One of the topics of yesterday’s discussion was the fact that we’re already in the midst of an economic collapse, despite what the government and the pundits would have you believe. I went grocery shopping Monday and was surprised to see that many of the shelves in our store were bare again, much like they were during the pandemic. The price of rice has shot through the roof. (I knew that was coming.) John Willis has the same problem that many business owners are facing, which is that no one wants to work.

I ran across an interesting article two weeks ago on ZeroHedge. The husband watches the housing market like a hawk and I pay attention to stories about Airbnb trends, and both of us had seen this piece. If you go to the article and scroll down a bit, you’ll see a chart listing Airbnb revenue declines by county from May 2022 to May 2023. Number 3 on that list is Kalispell, which is down by 49%. We’ll see if that decline translates into a longer-term easing of the rental home market here.

These Are Not Pole Beans

I tried something different with beans this year. In the past, if I waited until the soil was warm enough to plant them directly in the ground, either they did not have enough time to ripen or they rotted from too much rain. This year, I waited until after the plant sale, then planted three trays of beans in the greenhouse. The seeds germinated and grew quickly and I was able to transplant the starts into the ground in early June. They are doing splendidly. I will keep to this method in the future.

I grow mostly bean varieties to dry, such as navy beans and black beans. We eat a lot of those. I also started what I thought were pole beans—a variety called Fowler’s Pole Beans—but either the package was mislabeled or I got them mixed up with something else. I arranged those plants around a bamboo teepee, but they never attempted to climb the trellis. This is how they look (need weeding!):

Yeah, those are not pole beans. It remains to be seen whether they are bush green beans or something else.

We’ve been snacking on a few raspberries; “a few” is all we’re going to get this year after I ruthlessly pruned out the patch. Next year, though, we will be swimming in them. Look at how many primocanes there are:

All of those green canes should have berries on them next year, although I may still do some thinning. The thornless variety has mostly pushed out the thorny variety and I am happy about that. The thornless variety has much bigger, tastier berries.

The Sugar Baby watermelon plant is producing:

Everything that the ground squirrels haven’t ravaged looks great. The lavender hedges have bloomed, although the number of bees is way down from previous years.

The employees and the husband were working here yesterday. I had one of the boys help me put a top dressing of compost on the small apple trees followed by a good watering. I am trying to water them at least every couple of days so they establish good root systems. That Lodi apple tree I bought at Costco at the beginning of April has been a puzzle. The husband planted it not long after I bought it, but I truly thought it had died because it didn’t leaf out until about two weeks ago. It still looks a bit anemic. I am hoping it will perk up.

Still no chicks—I can’t tell if those broody hens just want to be perpetually broody or if they are sitting on viable eggs.

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I’ve got a load of paperwork to do this morning. I need to make up the class handouts for my Christmas in July class on Friday. Thankfully, I took extensive notes while I was making samples.

I cannot express adequately how annoyed I am with Quickbooks Online. What irritates me most is that tasks that used to take one or two keystrokes now require five or six (or more). Bookkeeping for the construction company has slowed to a crawl because of it. This is what happens when software engineers and not busy bookkeepers design a program. Every time I am asked for feedback, Intuit gets an earful from me.

I stopped at Joanns yesterday for more clearance fabric. I want to test out my Lark Tee/Olympia mashup pattern and I’d rather do it with fabric that is only a few dollars a yard. I bought some double-brushed poly for $4.97 a yard with an additional 25% off. The store is a mess right now because all of the fall stock is coming in and they are rearranging the shelves and moving fabric around. I think it will be better organized when they are done, but finding anything at the moment requires a bit of scavenging.

A Tale of Two Dresses

The quest for well-fitting garments continues. Yesterday morning, I sewed my hacked-into-a-dress Lark Tee and put it on. It fits perfectly. My definition of a “perfect fit” is clothing that feels like I’m not wearing it. I don’t have to tug, adjust, or reposition anything. I love this dress and expect that I will get a lot of use out of it once it’s hemmed. I’ll wear it when I teach the Lark Tee class in Spokane next month.

The fabric is a rayon blend jersey from the Walmart remnant rack with a nice weight to it. Two yards for $8.

[I wish I could tell you that I am a brilliant seamstress who engineers her makes down to the last detail, but the fact that the stripes match across the sleeves and the body was a complete accident.]

I was able to make the dress the length I wanted, as well. I see a lot of T-shirt dresses that hit at or above the knee. I prefer mine to be mid-calf length.

After lunch, I made up a Love Notions Olympia Dress. I bought that pattern because of the V-neck detail and the way it is constructed. You might remember that I tried making up a similar pattern—the Miramar Dress from Scroop Patterns—and loved the V-neck, but the Miramar Dress’s neck facing is simply folded under. The Olympia Dress’s neck facing is constructed in such a way that it is anchored to the inside of the dress.

I had a sneaking suspicion from the get-go that the Olympia wasn’t going to be the dress for me. I pulled some clearance double-brushed poly out of the stash to make up a muslin. Love Notions has some truly wonderful designs, but they don’t fit my body type. Whitney, at TomKat Stitchery, adores Love Notions. I suspect that’s because she is built very much like the woman who designs the Love Notions patterns. I do like the Laundry Day Tee, but I had to make quite a few adjustments to that pattern to be happy with it. And even though the Love Notions patterns come in cup sizes, they don’t seem to fit me well.

Right off the bat, I lengthened the bodice. I’ve learned that I need to do that on most patterns, no matter who makes them. Being able to compare patterns to the bodice sloper we made at Sew Expo has been so helpful.

The bodice is attached to a circle skirt. Unfortunately, I did not have enough fabric to cut the back of the skirt on the fold, so I cut two separate pieces, intending to seam them together. Also unfortunately, I forgot to flip the second skirt piece to make a mirror image piece. I seamed them together anyway, with one piece wrong-side out, just so I could try on the dress.

I didn’t take a picture of the finished dress. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of trouble with dresses with waist seams. I always have. Anything that cuts me right at the waist looks bizarre on me. (No peplums, ever.) I think that is why I have always preferred sheath dresses or dresses with princess seams.

[I did buy a Liz Claiborne dress this spring that has a waist seam, and believe me, I was shocked when I tried it on and realized that it fit and looked good on me. That rarely happens.]

Out of curiosity, I laid the two front bodice pieces together—Lark and Olympia—on my cutting table.

The Olympia Dress bodice is on the bottom and the Lark Tee bodice is on the top.

I am contemplating a major mashup using the Lark Tee, the Olympia Dress, and the Miramar Dress. The Miramar Dress does not have a waist seam; it is a single piece of fabric from shoulder to hem. I would start by combining the Lark Tee and the Olympia Dress bodices for some V-neck tops, then lengthen the pattern into a dress as I did with the Lark Tee.

I want to emphasize that I don’t think there is anything wrong with the Love Notions patterns. They simply aren’t drafted for my body type. It’s the same reason Liz Claiborne fits me so well and other brands don’t. (Charter Club comes in a close second, but I found out from a Macy’s employee in Seattle that Macy’s won’t be carrying Charter Club any longer.) I just purchased the Icaria Pants pattern from Itch to Stitch and I know—I know—that I will have to adjust the rise on that pattern before I cut it out, because those patterns are drafted for someone two inches shorter than me.

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I’m teaching a serger class this Friday and another one next Wednesday. I need to get those Sew Expo class proposals finished and submitted, too. They aren’t due until September, but I don’t like waiting until the last minute. It’s also time to do some canning. I made a yummy salad last week using Robin’s recipe for chicken, rice, and jardinière vegetables. The original dish is served hot. I combined chilled rice, chicken, and veggies, then thinned out mayonnaise with some of the jardinière juice and mixed it in. I looked up the recipe for jardinière vegetables in my Ball canning book and I think I will do some soon.

Meetup in Spokane

I dashed over to Spokane on Thursday morning for a day of shopping and dinner with friends. Nicole Sauce, who does the Living Free in Tennessee podcast, was in Montana this week. She was a presenter at Paul Wheaton’s Permcaulture Jamboree in Missoula. Flying in and out of Montana is exorbitantly expensive, so she chose to fly into Spokane, instead, and she met with a group of us for dinner Thursday night ahead of her early flight out on Friday morning.

Nicole hosted the LFTN Spring Workshop in April that I attended with my friends Bob and Deana. She also runs the Self-Reliance Festival in Camden, Tennessee. I’ll be at that event in October teaching spinning, knitting, and sewing. Other podcasts have come and gone over the past seven years, but Nicole’s podcast holds the top slot in my podcast queue. She has created an amazing community around the world, and this was an opportunity for some of us who have gotten to know each other online to meet in person. We had a wonderful dinner at the Rusty Moose—I had the most amazing elk salisbury steak—and visited for a couple of hours. Of course, I forgot to get a group photo. I did take a picture of the Campfire S’mores dessert, because it was so darn clever:

That little black cauldron has Sterno in it, over which one roasts the marshmallows.

My shopping excursion in Spokane was a bit disappointing. None of the Joann Fabrics there has yet received (or put out for sale) their fall fabric lines. I was hoping to pick up additional colors of that Eddie Bauer microfleece. I hit up the remnant racks at the various Walmart stores but came home with only one length of a navy blue brushed sweater knit, destined to become either a Harper Cardigan or a Patterns for Pirates Cocoon Cardigan. It’s the perfect color to throw on with jeans.

I touched base with the owner of the small quilt store on South Hill. I’ll be teaching the Lark Tee there at the end of August.

I spent the night in Spokane and headed home early yesterday morning. I know I complain a lot about tourist season, but the traffic coming up here from St. Regis, where I exit I-90, was the worst I’ve ever seen. Montana roads are not meant for this kind of traffic. They were full of lumbering behemoth RVs going about 30 mph slower than the cars want to travel. That leads to impatient drivers taking stupid chances to try to pass them. And the tailgaters!—I don’t understand why, if you’re the 23rd vehicle in a line of 40 behind an RV, that you think riding the bumper of the car in front of you is going to help you get to your destination more quickly. Relax and enjoy the scenery.

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I started a tray of lettuce in the greenhouse. When I left Thursday morning, only one or two little seedings were starting to pop up. When I got back a mere 28 hours later, I found this:

I am hoping this will keep us in lettuce until the fall. And these plants are safe from marauding ground squirrels.

We’ve had “rain showers” the past two days, but it’s so dry out there that most of the moisture is evaporating before it gets to the surface. I’m watering every day now.

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Speaking of the Lark Tee, I decided to hack that pattern into a T-shirt dress. I pulled out a two-yard piece of Walmart remnant rack knit jersey and cut the pieces yesterday afternoon. I’ll put it together this weekend. (Temps are supposed to be near 90 for the next several days, so I won’t be outside if I can help it.) I have a few other clothing patterns I’d like to cut out and get into the queue. too.

My friend Susan and her two grandsons were here for a few hours Wednesday afternoon. The older one just turned four and the younger one will be two next month. They played with the set of wooden trucks while Susan and I sat and visited. I promised to make the older one a couple of tops, one with trains and one with construction equipment. Those are his two current obsessions.

A Bunch of Beanies

The husband sent the employees off to work but stayed here yesterday. After breakfast, he went to his shop to spend the day cleaning and organizing tools and equipment. I headed upstairs to sew. I got everything on my list done and then some, which was great.

One of the projects for an upcoming serger class is beanies. These are quick and easy and make great gifts, and I thought that Eddie Bauer fabric from Joanns would work perfectly. I made three variations to use as class samples. The first is a single layer of fabric with a coverstitch hem:

This version is fairly light—definitely not for keeping one’s head warm in subzero temps, but sometimes a light covering is all that’s needed.

The second is two layers of the same fabric, or two beanies sewn together at the bottom edge with one tucked up inside the other:

This is a much beefier beanie.

The third one also had two layers, but I used a soft jersey knit for the lining:

I am scheduled to teach at Self-Reliance Festival in Camden, Tennessee, in October (spinning, knitting, sewing, quilting, etc—all the “girly” topics again), and I might add beanies to my list of demos. I did mine on the serger but there is no reason these couldn’t be made on a sewing machine.

I also knocked out a couple of zipper bags made entirely on the serger with double-sided quilted fabric.

The zipper is put in using the piping foot. Topstitching on the sewing machine is optional. I did that on the black bag but not the turquoise one.

I put away the canvas grocery bag supplies and looked through my stash of knits. I think it’s time to switch to sewing clothes again. I also located that T-shirt dress I was searching for a few weeks ago. I had put it in a closet where I don’t normally keep clothing. I might copy it into a pattern soon because I could use a few more. So far, summer hasn’t been oppressively hot, but I prefer skirts and dresses at this time of year.

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Dispatch and the rural fire departments were very busy last night. Our department did not get paged for any grass fires, but there were over half a dozen elsewhere in the valley. We were treated to almost-constant booming from fireworks until nearly midnight, when it started to rain (lightly). We just have to hope that nothing is out there still smoldering and waiting to re-ignite in August, because that has happened.

There May be Hope Yet . . .

. . . for Joann Fabrics. Ours, at least, has started to get in some new fabrics, and I am seeing brighter colors and fewer muddy earth tones and sad pastels. They’ve also inked some kind of deal with Eddie Bauer to carry fabrics with that label. Wonder of wonders, I found blue thermal knit Eddie Bauer microfleece in the fleece section. I’m not normally a fan of fleece, but I need some for a serger class this fall and the EB fabric is perfect. I also bought two yards of a brushed sweater knit in a bright sage green—bright enough that I can get away with wearing it, I think. (It isn’t quite as yellow as it appears in the photo, although I do like acid green.)

I’ll be able to make a better assessment once I see what the larger Joann stores in Spokane and Seattle have on their shelves, but this is promising.

I also picked up this pattern for $1.99:

It’s dead simple. I might try mashing it up with the top of the Toaster Sweater. Butterick just released a whole slew of vintage designs, too, under a “Retro” label. I have hope that perhaps some of these companies are listening to customer feedback instead of just shoving products at us.

I think I am done with canvas grocery bags for a while. I did a few with some printed canvas, including this herb-themed one:

Although most of these are destined for the co-op sale, I may put some up for sale in my online store.

The husband asked the employees if they wanted to work today or have the day off, and they elected to work. I’ll be spending a quiet day at home by myself. I plan to make a batch of class samples for an upcoming serger class. He bolted my rivet press to the workbench in the old garage for me, too, so I will practice setting rivets.

I am getting a ton of work done now that I have time to focus on my own stuff. We had scheduled a fundraiser for the homestead foundation for the beginning of August, but the other organizer and I decided to cancel it because the ticket sales were not what we had hoped. The idea is sound, but the execution needs some retooling for next year. We’ve been subjected to a fair bit of Monday morning quarterbacking regarding that decision. My response to some of that criticism has been less than charitable, no doubt, but the work I’ve been doing on behalf of that organization was starting to resemble a part-time unpaid job. Boundaries are important, and I am not willing to continue to shove my own projects aside. The word of the year is “No,” after all.

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We were running low on shotgun shells because of all of these rodents. I bought a case of shells when I was in town yesterday. We may have stemmed the tide for a while, but ground squirrels have a nasty habit of reproducing.

I am getting such a kick out of the crows/ravens. (I know there is a difference, but I am too lazy to look it up.) I think they have learned to listen for gunshots—everyone in the neighborhood is shooting these stupid ground squirrels—and then go in that direction in search of free meals. Two of them were circling overhead yesterday afternoon, cawing to each other, and I said to the husband that it looked like they wanted to know what time the all-you-can-eat dinner buffet opened for business.

Worse than a Plague of Locusts

The ground squirrels just keep coming. I spotted one in the cabbage patch as I walked out to the garden after dinner, so I texted the husband. He came out with the shotgun. Unfortunately, the little pest disappeared into a hole and wouldn’t come back out. He shot two later in the evening—one in the front yard and one in the back yard. Hopefully the one I saw in the garden was one of the two he got.

The ecosystem is badly out of whack. We need more coyotes.

My hollyhocks are blooming:

I thought these were the black variety I started last year for the plant sale, but I might be misremembering. No matter—this color is still very pretty. Of course, an intense dark red could be considered “black,” and it’s possible this is one that reverted to a less intense red.

When the husband replaced the plastic on the greenhouse this year, he also got shade cloth to go over it. He put the shade cloth back on yesterday.

Hopefully, this will keep the greenhouse from getting oven-like in the heat of the summer. I think it lowers the temperature inside by a good 10-15 degrees. It is still plenty warm in there for the tray of lettuce to grow, but not so hot that the seedlings bake to death.

The injured hen has left the chicken hospital and gone to the rehab facility inside the chicken coop. She can see the other chickens but they can’t get to her. The pullets are big enough to hold their own against the other hens and all the chickens are together. I’m still waiting on chicks. One of the Buff Orpingtons moved around enough that I was able to count four eggs under her.

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This week’s to-do list is full of niggling little detail stuff that needs followup and resolution. I have to pester the copier company in Missoula AGAIN about getting a new fuser for my copier. The IRS cannot seem to keep our address or the name of the construction company straight, so I’ve got forms and a letter to send to them to correct that. Quilt stores need photos for classes. We decided to cancel our summer fundraiser for the Homestead Foundation and the six tickets we did sell will have to be refunded.

[Truly, I am not too busted up about canceling that fundraiser; it frees up a lot of time in my schedule that can be devoted to my own projects.]

I got the construction company records moved over to QuickBooks Online—the end of the month was an excellent time to do that—but the whole concept of having that financial information in the cloud makes me very nervous. About the only positive is that our accountant can now access our information directly instead of me bringing the file to him on a thumb drive. He and I have an appointment set up in early August for our annual mid-year checkup.

I have about had my fill of making canvas grocery bags. I think it might be time to move on to another kind of sewing project. I will get that log cabin quilt top put together and start quilting it. And I will order the supplies for the generator covers this week. Seattle Fabrics is still not allowing walk-in traffic, so even though I drove by the store last week, I couldn’t shop in person.

I have an appointment to get the body work done on the BMW. The body shop is so busy that the earliest they could get me in is at the end of October. At least I’m on the schedule.

The Garden in July

I am caught up in the garden after weeding Friday morning. There are a few spots in the garden—the strawberry patch is one—where bindweed is a problem. If I don’t stay on top of it, it will choke out the plants I want growing there. I also weeded the beans, the brassicas, and the potatoes. I mowed the garden perimeter and connected all the hoses. I think our rainy season has ended. It is time to start the supplemental watering.

I am a bit worried about my grapes:

The vines are still alive—there is some growth—but they should have leafed out fully by now. I did prune lightly in early May. I wonder if the roots are being damaged by the ground squirrel highway running underneath. In any case, I doubt we will get grapes this year. I’ll be happy if the vines survive.

The tomatoes look fabulous. Several of them have set fruit already:

We still have two ground squirrels in the front yard. The husband is watching for an opportunity to dispatch them.

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I’ve been meaning to share this photo:

This is the finished Blue Thistle quilt. I made this quilt twice, because I accidentally used two different shades of “white” Kona for the background on the original. I liked the effect, so on this version, I used a cream Grunge for the background. I could get around to offering the pattern for sale if there is interest.

This quilt has been donated to a fundraising auction for a friend of mine, Jenni, who is battling leukemia. She has a slightly different type of leukemia than I had, but hers has turned out to be fairly aggressive. Jenni has also had a run of bad luck not of her making over the past couple of years. The leukemia diagnosis was the icing on the cake. To make matters worse, she started her treatment only to have it postponed because she developed a heart problem. She is having a hard time of it and the community has come together to help her out.

If you would like to take a look at the auction items, or even bid on this quilt, the link is here. In addition, Nicole Sauce of Living Free in Tennessee will be hosting an online live event tonight. The auction features lots of fine items, including some that are handmade, so check it out.

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The husband and I have been working on getting seed oils out of our diet. Clean eating has been a years-long process that started with eliminating high fructose corn syrup (and sugar in general), moved on to wheat, and is focusing now on seed oils. DD#2 texted me the other day that she also is trying to eliminate seed oils from her diet. When I related that conversation to the husband, he said, “Congratulations—our children have turned out just like you.” I took that as the compliment that was intended.

Seed oils are things like canola, soybean, safflower, etc. Interestingly, those all started out as industrial lubricants. That right there should tell you that they don’t belong in our food. I cook with lard, butter, olive oil, and avocado oil, but soybean oil is sneaky. (Soy in general.) It finds its way into everything, including 90% of the food sold at “health food” stores. That “olive oil” mayonnaise at the grocery store is still mostly soybean or canola oil. I can tell when I’ve eaten something with soybean oil in it because my joints will start to hurt, especially my hips.

[Canola is a big crop here; in fact, the canola fields are just starting to bloom with brilliant yellow flowers.]

DD#1 has also done a lot of research into gut microbiomes in conjunction with her work as an pediatric occupational therapist. Some of her clients are children on the autism spectrum. She’s been taking a probiotic called Seed, and she got her sister interested in it. I ordered some, too, and started it this week. I haven’t noticed anything dramatic, but I’ll try it for a month and see what I think.

The Zucchini Tsunami is Upon Us

The warm weather we had in May gave most of the veggies a headstart—those that weren’t being nibbled on by rodents, at least—and I came home to find these:

June is early for zucchini. These became a batch of zucchini fritters yesterday. I ate five in one sitting because they tasted so good.

The garden is still being plagued by ground squirrels, although the husband shot another one while I was gone. If I get any broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower this year, it will be a minor miracle. Enough pea plants escaped damage that I will get some peas. I am going to grow lettuce in the greenhouse. There is no point in putting any out in the garden. I still have a couple of trays of greens growing in the basement, too.

Everything else looks wonderful. We should have raspberries soon. The tomatoes are flourishing. The pole beans seem to have appreciated the application of sulfur and have lovely green leaves now instead of anemic yellow ones.

Every year is different. The husband says that next spring, we will have to rig up some kind of cage system over the brassicas and peas, although a truly determined ground squirrel could tunnel up underneath.

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I have a hen in the chicken hospital at the moment. (The chicken hospital consists of a cage on the floor in the laundry room.) The husband was working behind the chicken yard the other day and spotted her being pecked at mercilessly by the other chickens. She had a gaping wound on her back. Dave, the rooster, has a few favorite hens and he is not always gentle in his wooing of them. I suspect this wound started as a result of his attentions. I cleaned it up as best I could and put her in the cage. She is eating and drinking and generally chipper, but I have to figure out what to do with her. I worry that putting her back out there too soon will be an invitation for the other hens to peck at her again. It’s almost time to let the pullets in with the big chickens, which would free up that separate space for her in the coop for another week or two. We’ll see. She is one of the chickens I hatched in 2020 and is destined for freezer camp this fall anyway.

I’ve had a group of broody hens in the corner of the coop on the floor—two Buff Orpingtons and two Black Australorps—for a couple of weeks now. I know they are sitting on a passel of eggs. If any of the eggs were fertilized, we should be seeing chicks soon.

Our neighbor texted last night that he had fresh bear scat in his yard. I know the bears are roaming around but we haven’t seen any.

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Sewing . . . While we were traveling, I checked at several Joann Fabrics stores for black duck canvas and couldn’t find any. Our store has been out of it for a while. It was like searching for black Kona all over again. I finally found some in the Joanns in Spokane on the way home. I’m working my way through another batch of canvas grocery bags.

One of my favorite YouTube channels at the moment is Crumpets, Tea, and Sewing. Tea made a recent video about her five essential sewing patterns. She mentioned Burda 6221, which I picked up just before we left for Portland:

Tea made both a dress and a blouse version of this pattern. I love that ruffled neckline.

I will be stuck on canvas grocery bags for the foreseeable future, although I’d like to get back to making some clothes. I also have to make a couple of generator covers before fall.

A Migratory Bird

Anyone who knows me knows that I get twitchy if I can’t take a road trip every couple of months. The husband says I am a migratory bird, although I prefer wheels to wings. My friend Elaine and I left last Thursday for Portland. This was the temperature that morning:

The butternut squash plants sustained a bit of frostbite, but everything else survived.

The reason for our trip was a church meeting. Our Mennonite denomination is organized into regional conferences, and the Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference—PNMC for short—holds an annual meeting every June. Elaine grew up in Montana but is retired from pastoring a church in the Central Plains conference. She and I traveled to Boise for the 2018 PNMC meeting. No doubt we would have traveled to every meeting since then had the pandemic not forced their cancellation. Elaine is one of my favorite traveling companions, especially to church events.

I don’t take simple vacations. I hatched a plan for this one, too. Elaine’s sister Alice lives in Seattle, so I suggested that after the PNMC meeting, we drive to Seattle and spend a few days there. Initially, we thought the PNMC meeting would take place over two days, as it always has in the past. I made reservations at an Airbnb outside Portland for myself, Elaine, and Libbie, who also planned to join us. (Libbie drove over on Friday.) As it turned out, the organizers planned an abbreviated meeting for Saturday only, which left Elaine and me a bit at loose ends on Friday. She was more than willing to accompany me on a fabric shopping expedition, though.

Elaine knits (and crochets). Our first stop on Friday was at a Joann Fabrics, where she scored a nice haul of yarn on the clearance rack. I bought three packages of purse hardware.

We left Joanns and headed to The Mill End Store.

I’ve been to this store a couple of times and it never disappoints. I came away with a length of red rayon ponte for a pair of Renee pants and a turquoise blue sweater knit for a Toaster Sweater. (Joann Fabrics, are you paying attention?)

JC Briar had suggested that we try lunch at Bob’s Red Mill, whose headquarters is nearby.

We enjoyed some delicious food outside on the patio—the weather was stellar—and I bought a couple of bags of gluten-free granola.

That was enough shopping for the day. We went back to the Airbnb to wait for Libbie and rest up. Elaine’s nephew and his wife live in Portland and had invited us to dinner. We also had a spinning wheel to deliver. Jeff’s wife, Portia, found one in Laurel, Montana, over by Billings, and through the combined efforts of a large extended family, we were able to get it from Billings to Portland. I raided my spinning fiber stash before we left and took a bunch of sample bags of fiber along for Portia to play with. Dinner was delicious and the company delightful.

Libbie, Elaine, and I headed to Portland Mennonite Church early on Saturday morning. Our transitional pastor, Miriam, had come to Portland with her family and met us there. I have missed these gatherings so much. I served a four-year term on the board of directors and got to know some of these people very well. Seeing them in person again was wonderful. We made new friends, too. The husband-and-wife pastor team at Menno Mennonite, in Ritzville—where the relief sale is held every October—sat in front of us at the meeting and we had a good time visiting with them.

The meeting ended at 5 and Elaine and I hit the road shortly thereafter. It’s about a three-hour drive from Portland to Seattle. We rolled in around 8:30 pm. Elaine’s sister, Alice, met us at my Airbnb and whisked Elaine off to stay with her until Tuesday morning.

DD#2 and I spent Sunday doing some shopping. She needed a few things from Ikea for her new apartment. I love to wander around Ikea. She had to work Monday, so I spent the day visiting Joanns, Hobby Lobby, Half-Price Books, and the Liz Claiborne department at JC Penney. I desperately needed a few summer dresses and nice pants to wear to church and I scored big on this trip.

Elaine and I left Seattle Tuesday morning and headed home. We stopped at a Joann Fabrics in Spokane where we raided the clearance rack again and bought yarn for a few more prayer shawls. All in all, it was a lovely and uneventful trip.

I dashed into town yesterday morning to retrieve my computer. I took it in the day before we left to have the operating system—woefully five years out of date because of some bizarre incompatibility—updated. I knew what needed to be done and probably could have done it myself, but I preferred to pay an expert to do it in case something went wrong. They had to back it up, wipe the drive, install the new system, and restore the backup, but now I have a zippy and functional computer again.

Too Slow

I was so focused on getting paperwork done yesterday morning that when I finally cleared off my desk and looked at my watch, I was surprised to see it was already noon. I got class information prepared and sent off to the quilt store north of town—now I need to make class samples—and I touched base with the owner of the small quilt store in Spokane. I apologized for being so busy with everything this spring that I didn’t have time to follow up on a class at her store. She said that was fine because she hadn’t had time to follow up, either, due to some health issues. We are trying to put something on the calendar for late August.

I need to get a head shot for some of these class submissions. I dread photos. I tried taking some selfies yesterday in front of my sewing machines. In a couple of them, I looked like I had had a stroke. My left eye does something weird when I smile. The husband said I may just have to suck it up and go have a professional portrait session like I did 20 years ago for my knitting head shot.

After lunch, I made a Petunia Pouch:

I think I can confidently say that no sewing factory is going to hire me to sew on an industrial machine. I am too slow. The husband and I had this discussion over dinner. He finds it amusing that I have no patience with myself when I am learning new skills. (One of the things my serger students tell me is that I have endless patience as a teacher. Oh, the irony.) I’ll get it eventually. The fact that this pouch took me three hours to make had nothing to do with the pattern. It is very well done. It had more to do with the fact that a) I am not good at bag bindings despite being a quilter and b) I am still figuring out the finer points of sewing on that 1541. I had to change out the regular foot for the right and left zipper feet, which took some doing. The feet come in two pieces. One part works in concert with the feed dogs and the other part moves with the needle.

After all that tinkering, though, I was able to install the new needle plate and narrow foot.

I’m not sure this narrow foot would work if I were sewing heavy leather or vinyl, but for the fabrics I’m using, I like it better.

Just before dinner, I popped out to the garden to check on my plants and discovered a ground squirrel standing up at the entrance to its tunnel. Of course, my .22 was back at the house because I am not Annie Oakley and I do not carry it on my person. When the husband got home, I asked him to take the shotgun out and dispatch the little pest. As we walked out and approached the garden, we spotted said ground squirrel standing up in the middle of the cabbage patch. The husband sneaked quietly into the garden and waited for a few minutes for a good shot.

I think that was #12. These things are worse than roaches. If they didn’t start to smell and attract carrion, I would hang the bodies up as a warning to others.

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I have a tomato! It’s only June!

This is the Dwarf Mocha tomato plant. I grew this variety last year and gave a plant to Sarah. She saved seed and started plants in February and gave me one. The plant in her garden has even more tomatoes on it than mine.

The zucchini tsunami should arrive in another week or two. And it looks like our weather will be getting back to something more seasonable by the end of the week.

One More Apron

I had some time before leaving for church yesterday, so I block fused* interfacing to some of the leftover apron canvas pieces in preparation for making a couple of bags. The first is the Norwalk Pouch from Sotak Patterns:

This is not something I would carry or use, necessarily, but I’m experimenting with a few items to see how they do at the co-op sale.

*Block fusing is the process of fusing interfacing to a piece of fabric before cutting out the pattern pieces. I’m doing it that way for these bags because I always seem to have a problem with the interfacing shrinking or distorting when I try to fuse individual pieces, especially small ones. Block fusing went quickly on my steam press and now I am ready to cut pattern pieces.

I also have this design, the Petunia Pouch, from Sotak Patterns:

She has lots of really cute designs and they appear to be well written and illustrated.

After lunch, I finished the last canvas apron:

I also sewed the rest of the log cabin quilt blocks into four-patch blocks. I started with sixty-four 12-1/2” individual blocks and now have 16 very large four-patch blocks. Those 16 four-patch blocks need to be sewn into a king-sized quilt top. This is where it gets a bit hairy. I’ll have to set up my small folding table behind my sewing machine to hold all the fabric as I am assembling it. I’m also going to have to take the backing, batting, and quilt top up to the church and baste it together on the (carpeted) floor of the fellowship hall because I don’t have a space big enough to do that here.

The plan is to get that log cabin top quilted and bound before the end of July. At some point, I need to get out all of the inventory I have for the sale and start making a list.

The rain and cool temps have kept me out of the garden for a few days. It appears that we will be in this cooler-than-normal pattern for another week. The peas, cabbages, and broccoli love this weather. The tomatoes and squash are holding their own. They got a nice head start and can tolerate a bit of discomfort. The tomatoes are already two feet tall.

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I’ve casually started looking for a new car. The Diva is nine years old and has almost 140,000 miles on it, although it’s a diesel and I could, conceivably, drive it for another 140,000 miles. I have my own BMW mechanic, after all. I don’t really want to give it up. I enjoy driving it and it gets 40 miles to the gallon. Of course, I cannot replace it with another diesel station wagon and that annoys me to no end. I don’t want an electric vehicle. I don’t even want a hybrid. I don’t want one loaded with a million potentially breakable pieces of technology. I also have to factor in the husband’s preferences as he knows more about what models are reliable and easier to maintain. (He is no fan of Subarus, so those are completely off the list.) I am looking for a unicorn. He checked the Mercedes dealer in Missoula yesterday morning and said he found a vehicle that met all my requirements for only $87,000. That’s insane. I am not spending that kind of money on a car.

We’ll see. I am not in a hurry. I might take some test drives the next time I am in Seattle.

I moved all my Monday errands to tomorrow as I need to stop by the bank and they are closed today. I will keep myself glued to my office chair this morning until I get all the paperwork handled.

A Good Day for Serging

My serger class yesterday went very well. I had four students, all with Bernina L890 sergers. I was supposed to have had five students, but one lady—who takes every class I offer—had company and had to cancel. Two students were new, a mother and daughter.

Like a dingbat, I left my phone at home, plugged in and charging. Sue, one of the students in my class, works at the store and does their Facebook posts. She almost always remembers to take photos in class, so I am going to borrow a picture of her bag:

Sue teaches bag-making classes at the store and has a wonderful sense of design. She left with more fabric and plans to make a second, larger version of this bag that will be big enough to hold a tablet.

The mom and daughter signed up for my July class. I think they were pleased to have learned so much about the capabilities of their machines. We tried out several different feet in the course of making this bag, including the piping foot.

I realized at the end of the day that it was a good thing I had to teach that class, because it provided some much-needed inspiration. It’s time for me to start getting some fall classes on the schedule. I love teaching, but the prep work is a grind. Sarah and I talk about this often. Our favorite classes are when we simply ask the students what they want to learn and teach on the fly. Stores tend to want more structure, though. And this group of serger students keeps pushing the limits. They want to learn everything they can.

The husband worked around the property yesterday. He also shot another ground squirrel last night. Our neighbor got one a few days ago.

This was waiting for me when I got home:

The Juki 1541 came with a plain throat plate. Shortly into the first grocery bag, I decided that not having measurement markings was going to drive me nuts. (Why isn’t that standard?) I have some stickers I bought from the now-defunct Sew-Classic.com (I miss them), so I put one on the throat plate that came with the machine while I waited for this one to arrive. This came from SewingGold.com. It must be their design and manufacture because their name is stamped on it. I also ordered a narrow presser foot from them. Narrow presser feet used to be standard on vintage non-zigzag sewing machines and I find that I like them better than a wider foot.

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I am currently in software hell—Intuit is forcing people away from the desktop version of QuickBooks and into their online “software as a subscription” model. I’ve resisted as long as possible, but I’ve had to capitulate. Unfortunately, the desktop app associated with the online version doesn’t work on my computer, and I think it’s because my operating system is out of date. My operating system is out of date because of some goofy glitch that Apple has yet to fix, and it is beyond me to hunt down and resolve the incompatibility. I am going to have to take the computer in and have an expert fix it and update the operating system. I can use the online version of QB in my browser, but I HATE THE LAYOUT. (Yes, I am yelling.) It doesn’t look anything like the old layout and every 10 seconds, some screen pops up to ask me a question.

Arrggghh. When I was checking out at Costco yesterday, the cashier asked me if I was enrolled in their auto-renew program and I said, “No, I would prefer to be in charge of when I renew my membership.” She muttered something about Costco eventually forcing everyone to sigh up for auto-renew and I thought to myself that when that day comes, they will lose me as a customer.

I am annoyed by this constant intrusion into my life and privacy. I don’t need computers to take care of my every need.

Somewhere, recently, I saw the results of a random survey that indicated that something like 66% of GenXers would prefer to go back to the time before the internet. I guess our demographic has reached the point of longing for the good old days. Truly, though, some of this is getting ridiculous. I managed just fine without my phone for eight hours yesterday.

The myth of progress. Everything new is not, by definition, improved.

Apron Factory

I planted myself in my office chair yesterday morning and stayed there until I got some work done. I didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but I took a chunk off the list. I’ll finish up Monday. Today is a serger class. Tomorrow is church and a dinner our congregation is hosting for a traveling high school group.

A ground squirrel is back in the garden and wreaking havoc again. The plants are big enough now to survive a bit of nibbling, I think, but we’ll dispatch the ground squirrel if we see it.

The pigs are doing nicely. They have a network of trails through the tall grass in the pasture and come running as soon as they hear me call:

We still have four whole hogs/eight halves for sale. I’m going to put an ad in the Mountain Trader this week.

I finished two aprons yesterday afternoon. (I would have done more sewing, but the husband came home early—German Friday—and distracted me.) These were cut out a while ago and stashed with the canvas fabric. I’m glad to have them done and in the rotation. The first is from some fabric I got at Joanns. I made an apron for Elysian from this same fabric. She wears it at the plant sale and always gets comments on it.

This is one fabric I desperately wish I had purchased by the bolt, and of course, Joanns doesn’t have it any longer. In fact, I didn’t even have enough left to make pockets on mine, so I improvised with a different canvas print.

The second is from some fabric I picked up as a remnant from The Confident Stitch in Missoula.

This is a print from Anna Graham’s (Noodlehead) Quarry Trail line by Robert Kaufman.

I’ve got a third that just needs the straps, in a Cotton + Steel print from our quilt store. Of all the apron designs I’ve made, this is the style I like best for myself.

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I put in another order with Wawak at the beginning of the week and it arrived yesterday. The husband saw that I had ordered a bulk pack of 10 seam rippers—why can’t I ever find one when I need it?—and three thread snips. He asked if he could have a seam ripper and one of the snips. We are a couple of tool junkies. I ordered a rivet press yesterday that both of us will be able to use. I’ve been setting all my hardware by hand on the anvil in his shop, but a press is going to make that much easier.

I told him last week that my father would approve of our tool budget if he were still here. My father was a bit of a tool junkie, too, so I come by it honestly.

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I’ve got five students for today’s class. It’s raining again, so it should be a good day to stay in and sew. I expect the store to be busy. The forecast is for periodic showers through the end of June. The plants are loving it, but so are the weeds. I’ve been trying to do half an hour of weeding every day, which mostly keeps the weeds down to a dull roar.

June to October

The high never made it past 45 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday—after a high of 85 on Monday—with a cold, steady rain much of the day. It felt like we went from summer to fall overnight. I am glad for the precipitation, but a few of the plants in the garden, like the beans, are looking a bit shell-shocked. I would not be surprised to see snow on top of the mountains this morning. I know that snow was forecast for the higher elevations of Glacier Park.

I had a meeting in the morning that lasted until just after lunch. The rain gave me the perfect excuse to stay inside and sew, but I’m at an impasse with the Forever Shopper and now the last two aprons. I made more binding while listening to Ryan Hall’s weather livestream on YouTube. He’s so much better than The Weather Channel and there are no commercials.

I’ll get the supplies I need for the Shopper and the aprons when I am in town today. I’m teaching a serger class on Saturday and will also check with the store to see how many students I have. This class is one that Bernina designs for stores, so I didn’t have to do any prep other than to make up the sample. I don’t have a picture of the sample—it’s a small bag—but I used some of this ribbon that Cathy gifted me:

The colors of the bag are black, pink, yellow, and purple, which I picked up from the ribbon colors. I’ll get a photo of the bag because it’s very cute.

I neglected to note that Tuesday was National Sewing Machine Day, probably because I didn’t do a blog post that day. We all know how much I love my sewing machines. 😇

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I am not doing so well with my to-do list. I really need to buckle down and get back on track. The meeting yesterday morning took place here in my office, so I spent a couple of hours tidying up the house beforehand. I tend to slack on the housework. If I wanted to keep my house looking magazine-worthy, I’d have to spend all my waking hours cleaning and that just isn’t going to happen. I am satisfied if we’re not drowning in clutter and the floors are relatively clean. I like to walk around barefoot in the summer, so dirty floors drive me nuts. I vacuum the main level at least once a day.

I’m going to start a big roaster pan of ham stock this afternoon. I’ll let it simmer overnight and can it tomorrow.

The husband also asked me to research dash cams. There are enough stupid people on the roads these days—and we’ve already encountered two of them at close range—that he wants to have video evidence if something happens. We’ll start with his work trucks, but I’ll see what’s available for my car, too.

I was out getting the mail the other day when some kid in a truck came roaring around the corner at the north end of our property. He flew down the down the road, flipping me off as he passed me because I was yelling at him to slow down. This is why we don’t have dogs anymore. The amount of traffic here is insane. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route includes our road—I watch cyclists pass our house from my office window—and I worry that someone is going to get hit or killed by one of these idiots who thinks that Foothill Road is his own personal drag strip.

Baby Birds Fly

The baby robins left the nest this week. When we had dogs, this used to be a horribly nervewracking experience for me. I think that is why I got so good at listening for the specific call that mama robins use to coax babies out of the nest. More than once, I had to make sure a dog was out of the vicinity when the baby birds flew. They are a bit wobbly at first and don’t always end up where they intend to.

This one spent a few hours on our windowsill yesterday:

After dinner, I heard it crying again and found it sitting on top of the lawnmower. Then it flew over to the woodshed.

At one point yesterday, we had the baby robin on the porch, the bunnies out in the yard, and a male turkey attempting to impress a hen near the chicken coop where the garter snake hangs out eating mice. Welcome to my petting zoo.

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The husband and I didn’t see much of each other for a couple of days. He left early Monday morning for a job about 30 miles south of here and didn’t get home until after I had left to go to the homestead foundation board meeting. Our department got called to a structure fire Monday evening, and he was at the fire until about 10:30 pm. I was asleep when he got home. He was up early again yesterday morning to go back to the job, so we didn’t get to check in with each other until dinner.

I mowed the perimeter of the garden yesterday morning and sprinkled sulfur out around the beans. We got a nice soaking rain overnight, which should help to activate it. We are still feasting on strawberries, too. The pigs were very chatty while I was out in the garden yesterday. They like to come and stand by the fence and watch me.

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I worked on the Spencer Ogg Forever Shopper tote bag yesterday, which led to an hour of sorting and organizing zippers when I could not find a 16” metal one. (I have 14” and 18” metal zips, but no 16” ones.) Because I couldn’t go any further with that project, I cut out a few more canvas grocery bags and pulled out some canvas aprons that I cut a few months ago and stashed. These are for me, not for the sale, and they are based on my favorite commercial apron. This is one from the Cotton + Steel Under the Apple Tree line:

I like deep pockets that go across the front of the apron. The leftover piece I used for the pocket wasn’t quite wide enough, so I included that bit of selvage. I make my own double-fold bias binding for the edgings out of Kona; it behaves so much better than the polyester-blend packaged binding that I don’t mind spending the time to make a big batch of it. (I cut the bias strips with my Accuquilt cutter.) The binding will go around the body of the apron, and then I’ll use the 2” wide twill tape, folded over, for the straps. I like this style of apron best because it doesn’t tie horizontally around my waist. The ties come down at an angle and thus the waistband of the apron isn’t constantly riding up because the ties are in the wrong spot for me.

I’ve got four of these aprons to finish. My friend, Anna, the caterer, asked for one like the water resistant one I made from Splash fabric. I have enough left to make one for her, so I may go ahead and add that to the queue.

My tolerance for scraps is very low. It’s not that I don’t like scraps—scrap quilts are favorites of mine—it’s that I get overwhelmed by all the scraps I generate. It feels wasteful if I don’t use up every single scrap of every piece of material. Some of these pieces of canvas are still a good size, so now I am looking at cutting them into pieces to make some small zip pouches.

When to Make and When to Buy?

When to make something and when to buy it are tricky questions that trip up a lot of DIYers. I’ve discussed this before on the blog. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that doing it is the best use of your time. I know how to make butter, for instance, but I buy it at the store. I don’t gain much by making it myself.

I made a set of cushions a few years ago for the glider rocker on our porch. The original ones had disintegrated in the wash:

I took out the padding and put it into new cushions that I made. Those lasted an additional four years, but now the padding really needs to be replaced.

Padding is not cheap. I priced everything out at Joanns, and even on sale, it would cost me more to make a new set of cushions than it would to buy a set at Walmart. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the ethical considerations of buying—most likely—products made in China using cheap labor. Also, how long might those purchased cushions last? A season or two?

The husband has a supply of concrete blankets to use when he pours concrete in cold weather. The blankets help to ensure that the concrete cures evenly. They wear out, though, because concrete is very caustic, so this past weekend, he took apart a couple of blankets to see if we could repurpose the padding. The padding is still in decent shape and he hates to throw it in the landfill.

I can find replacement covering fabric. It’s a polyethylene woven similar to landscape fabric. The question is, do I want to sew 20’ x 30’ concrete blankets on my new machine? Is that a good use of my time? (Our time, actually, because I am going to need his help to manage that big a project.) One good reason to make an effort is for custom-sized blankets. The husband says he would like to have some smaller ones for footing pours.

We’ll see. I am still researching. Anyone who sews these days knows that you don’t do it to save money. The metric I use most often is “Can I make something I can’t buy anywhere?”—like T-shirts that are long enough for my body, or generator covers that don’t disintegrate.

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The canvas grocery bags are done, although I have pieces cut for another half-dozen bags. I’m trying to organize the workflow such that I sew whatever items require the color of thread I happen to have in the machine at any given time. The 1541 is not hard to thread, but I don’t like to change colors if I don’t need to. Mostly it’s a topstitching issue as I use a neutral color for construction seams.

I really need to find time to make a few summer dresses. I bought a T-shirt dress last year that I loved and was going to copy, but I can’t find it now. I am not sure what I did with it. (I probably put it somewhere thinking, “I should make a pattern from that dress.”) Theoretically, I should just be able to lengthen a Lark Tee into a dress. I wasn’t thinking about making summer clothing over the winter, but clearly, I do not have time in the spring to make summer clothing, either.

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One of the things on my list to get this morning is some agricultural sulfur. The beans I planted last week have yellow leaves and I suspect an iron deficiency. Why not just add iron? We had our soil tested a few years ago and the pH is very alkaline, most likely due to the alkalinity of our well water. The soil probably has plenty of iron, but the pH of the soil is preventing the plants from using it. We were told to add sulfur after the soil test to lower the pH, which we did, but it’s probably time to add more. I’ll pick up a bag today and spread some of the granules over that area.