Watermelons and Patty Pan Squash

Some of the cucumber bounty went to church with me yesterday morning. Our former pastor used to put up a table in the fellowship hall dedicated to excess garden produce. We may have to resume that tradition.

I was surprised to see how big the watermelons are getting. There are only two this year, but that’s okay:

Sarah gave me two patty pan squash plants a few weeks ago. Despite their late arrival to the garden, they are producing:

I have a couple of mystery squash that came from the plant sale. I will be curious to see what comes from them.

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I went through the stash yesterday afternoon and pulled out some lengths of rayon/spandex. That is my favorite fabric for the Laundry Day Tee because it is cool to wear. Some of the pieces are only two yards, though—Walmart remnant rack—and I need about 2-1/2 yards for that pattern because it is a swing top. I set those two-yard chunks aside for Lark Tees or Easton Cowls and made an LDT out of a three-yard piece of turquoise rayon/spandex. I felt much better about my sewing abilities after putting it together. I still have to hem it, though.

While I worked, I watched some videos on a new-to-me YouTube channel called the Closet Historian. She specializes in vintage clothing, but she also has a number of videos focusing on fitting. I am finding them very helpful. She did a video about making a bodice sloper by starting with a commercial pattern rather than drafting from measurements. She suggests using a pattern that has a two-dart bodice, like this one:

In the video, she chose the size closest to her measurements and compared it to the bodice sloper she drafted from scratch. In practice, this likely would require making several muslin iterations to refine the fit—doesn’t everything?—but it’s a good place to start for people not familiar with pattern drafting.

I’m tucking this idea away for my T-shirt class in Spokane next month, in case I get asked about making bodice slopers again.

I also pulled out the Miramar top pattern and tried on the muslin I made. That top has a self-faced V-neckline. I thought I might frankenpattern it with the Love Notions Olympia Dress because the Olympia has a similar neckline. After comparing them, though, I think it’s just going to be easier to use the Miramar pattern but incorporate the construction method from the Olympia Dress that anchors down the facing. I like the way the Miramar top fits, but I have to lengthen the pattern.

I’m attempting to get organized and begin using up some of my stash fabrics. It is far too hot to sew with any of the sweater knits, but I have some ideas for those, too.

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I am putting the Log Cabin quilt together tomorrow. I have to be at church for something else and it’s a good time to get the quilt basted there, too. That quilt needs to go on the Q20 soon. I also want to get out my inventory for the co-op sale and start pricing it. Everything has to be tagged and marked with my initials. Things are going to start getting busy again toward the end of August and into September—100 quarts of spaghetti sauce and more apple pie filling are on the calendar this year—so I’d like to have the co-op prep done and off the list.

A Good Year for Cucumbers

I’ve been working on some fitting experiments lately, but it’s been hit or miss. Mostly miss. I have to remind myself that the failures are educational, too. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my fitting books, and went down a rabbit hole on the internet that led me to this:

This book is from the 1970s and is out of print—an original edition is available on eBay for $250—but the rights are held by the Sewing and Design School in Tacoma, Washington, and they have digital download versions for sale on their website. I ordered one. It is full of all sorts of useful information and illustrations. The Sewing and Design School offers classes and Kenneth King teaches there. I am going to figure out how to take a class this fall or winter.

Despite a few wrong turns, I think I’ve finally come up with a customized-for-me pattern and will make a ponte sheath dress soon. I’m using the Pamela’s Patterns Classic T-Shirt Dress with a few tweaks. I did say to the husband, though, that I need to make something quick and easy, like a Laundry Day Tee, to remind myself that I am a competent seamstress. I haven’t felt like much of one lately.

Let’s look at pictures from the garden, shall we?

Sarah gave me several tomatillo plants. They are all doing well, but this one is especially pretty:

I thought that it must have some unique name, but when I looked at the tag, all it said was “Purple Tomatillo” LOL.

DD#2 will be happy to know that we have spaghetti squash. It’s one of her favorites.

She and her sister and the boys (SIL and significant other) are coming to visit over Labor Day weekend. I am sure these will factor into the menu.

The squash section of the garden is a veritable jungle. The husband spread a load of pig manure in that area before I planted, and everything there looks like it’s growing on nuclear waste. I am hoping for a butternut squash harvest this year. I didn’t get any last year because we got a frost before they ripened, but the long-range forecast is for a warm fall.

The pole beans seem to have figured out (finally) that they are, indeed, pole beans:

Someone here cannot do garden math. We don’t need five zucchini plants or seven cucumber vines for two people. This was yesterday morning’s haul from the cucumber patch:

Judging by the number of blossoms still on the plants, we are going to be drowning in cukes. I’ve been making pickles out of the little ones. The husband discovered the pickle crock yesterday. He loves pickles. I took the first batch out of the crock and put them in fresh brine in the fridge so he could snack on them, then filled both one-gallon crocks again with two new batches. I also have a couple of two-gallon crocks, and I may have to fill those with some of the bigger cucumbers.

He sat down for a snack mid-afternoon with a plate of salami and some pickles and I asked him if that was his charcuterie board. He said, “What the heck is a charcuterie board?” I told him it was Lunchables for adults.

We have two more days of 90+ degree weather before a cold front blows through here Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, that cold front may come with gusty winds and dry thunderstorms—lightning, but no rain—so we’re under a Red Flag Watch starting Monday afternoon. We’ll cool off to a high of 80 on Tuesday before warming up again. Ugh.

Looking Ahead to Fall 2023

I bought a new calendar yesterday. School supplies are on display at Walmart and the desk calendar I like is in stock. I prefer a calendar that shows an entire month at a glance. I also like to color code my activities with highlighter pens.

I am caught up through October. The class coordinator at the quilt store south of town and I conferred about a few additional classes, so those are on my schedule now, too.

Tera and I were going to take a trip to Missoula today. I haven’t seen her for more than a few minutes at a time since we went to Puyallup in March and I thought it would be fun to schedule a playdate. She was called in to work today, though, so we’ll try for another time.

I heard a rumor that Missoula is getting a Hobby Lobby. Hmmmm.

I have plenty to do here to keep me busy. I made 12 loaves of zucchini bread yesterday afternoon. I miss the days when I could outsource that job to DD#2. She was much better at not forgetting to add crucial ingredients, like sugar.

I’m going to start running the air scrubber again. My eyes have been itchy for the past week. Either something is blooming or it’s the ash from wildfires. Best to get it out of the air now.

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Still no chicks. I think those hens want to be broody in perpetuity. They’ve been sitting on eggs since before I left for Portland—a month ago—and if anything was going to hatch, it should have hatched by now.

The pigs have a date for freezer camp of August 14. They will be ready. That is earlier than we usually send them, but we got this batch of weaners a month earlier than usual. I still have a few to sell, so if you expressed interest in some pork, remind me again and I’ll make sure you are on the list. It is so hot in the afternoons that after I am done with chicken chores, I go out to the pig pasture and spray them with the hose for a few minutes. They love that.

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My friend Susan’s daughter and SIL are building a house. The husband poured their foundation this week.

Susan’s two little grandsons were on hand to watch the pour. (I would have been there, too, but I was teaching.) I got such a kick out of this photo, where one of them ran a truck across the concrete:

I said it would have been fun to leave the tracks there, but the husband thinks they got smoothed over by the float.

Learn New Things

Nicole Sauce did a podcast earlier this week about how important it is to continue to challenge ourselves to learn new things. She just acquired a spinning wheel (an Ashford Traditional). It came to her unassembled. In the process of putting it together, she learned about Scotch tension, how the flyer rotates around the bobbin, and other bits of knowledge that will help her to be a better spinner.

I taught a Bernina serger mastery class yesterday (10 am to 4 pm), took a break to get some dinner, and then attended a two-hour evening class on fixing sewing problems taught by the store’s sewing machine tech. I learned several things I didn’t know, or only knew superficially. I hope Ryan continues to offer these kinds of classes because he did a great job. And I will continue to take classes because there is still so much to learn.

In her podcast, Nicole also observed that sometimes, it helps to learn from newbies rather than experts. Experts often make assumptions when they teach. (I have to remind myself that not everyone comes to serger class knowing what a looper is.) I think about that from time to time as I work through these fitting issues, especially when I am wondering out loud on the blog. I’ll give you an example.

I ponder bust shaping in garments quite a bit because I have to. Zede Donohue said, in one of the Sewing Out Loud podcasts, that having a larger-than-average bust measurement does not automatically indicate the need for a full bust adjustment. A full bust adjustment is needed when the difference between the high bust measurement and the full bust measurement is 4” or more. A lot of patterns will recommend choosing a size based on the high bust measurement, first, before deciding if an FBA is needed.

A person could have a high bust measurement of 42” and a full bust measurement of 45” and not need an FBA. Much also depends on how the breast tissue is distributed. One of the issues I’ve run into with some patterns (especially knits) is that in order to accommodate a fuller bust, the pattern is drafted to have a wider measurement at the underarm.

Minerva, a UK fabric company, has a YouTube channel. They’ve just started a sewalong series using this pattern:

I bought this pattern last year at Esther’s Fabric Shop on Bainbridge Island in Seattle when we were there for my cousin’s wedding, so I pulled it out to take a look at it while I watched some of the Minerva videos. As I am starting to do routinely now, I compared my bodice sloper to the pattern:

This is a bit of comparing apples to oranges, admittedly, because my bodice sloper incorporates a bust dart, whereas the Knit Essentials pattern does not. If I use the Knit Essentials pattern that corresponds to my full bust measurement, though, I am going to end up with a big chunk of excess fabric right underneath my armpit. (There is negative ease built into most patterns for knit fabric, so I’d actually be using a measurement slightly smaller than my full bust measurement.) That chunk of fabric drives me batty. I need the additional width in the bodice at the level of my full bust, not 3” above it. That is one of my gripes about patterns for knit fabrics, and I think it’s why I prefer to use the boob bump method. I would rather have the underarm fit more closely and only then accommodate my bust with either an actual dart or a boob bump.

[One of the husband’s nicknames for me is Goldilocks. Other people probably don’t care about that excess fabric underneath the armpit, but I want it to fit “just right”.]

But what do I know? I have no formal education in pattern drafting. I only know what I have learned through trial and error. Even a formal education in pattern drafting might not be the answer—ask the husband some time how he feels about architects who sit in offices and design houses on computers. I come up with all these questions but I have no way to find out if I am on the right track or not except more trial and error, or when I have the great good fortune to take a sloper class from Joe Vechiarelli and he points out that I need to lengthen my bodice sloper by a couple of inches and suddenly I understand why everything is too short.

Some pattern companies, like Love Notions, include a full bust pattern piece in their patterns, where the full bust adjustment has already been done. As I mentioned in another blog post, though, FBAs come with downstream issues, one of which is that making an FBA makes the area below the FBA wider, and unless that additional width is removed, you end up with a very tent-like garment. That is exactly how I would describe the fit of the Laundry Day Tee when I use the full bust pattern piece. If I use the regular bust pattern piece and incorporate a boob bump, I like the overall fit much better.

My questions and general observations about patterns should not be construed as criticism. Pattern drafting is a series of decisions and judgment calls, and no one designer is going to make all the right decisions for every sewist. Rather, I am trying to find my way through a maze of information and synthesize it with my real-world attempts to get my me-made clothing to fit properly. And I want to be able to share what I’ve learned with my students in some way that makes sense.

Zucchini, Pickles, Snakes, and Tools

The garden needed some attention yesterday. I cut the grass around the perimeter, picked zucchini—eight of them, with plenty more to come—snacked on raspberries and peas, and collected two dozen little cucumbers to make into the first batch of pickles. I spotted a friend in the cucumber patch:

I think it is the North American Racer snake; I did not see the yellow or orange common to garter snakes. It was shy and ducked back under the plastic when I tried to get closer. I am glad to know it is out there, though, and I hope it has friends.

I shredded the zucchini for zucchini bread, although I had enough that I also did up a batch of fritters for myself for dinner. The cukes went into a crock to ferment into pickles:

When I have lots of cucumbers, I process them into pickles the usual way, but I like fermented ones better. Once these are finished fermenting, we’ll keep them in the fridge to snack on.

I made a raspberry crisp on Monday, in a 9’ x 13’ pan. I used enough raspberries that the crisp was about 2” deep. The husband ate half the pan—with vanilla ice cream—after dinner Monday night. Last night, he finished the other half of the pan. I wish I had his metabolism.

The Big Brown Truck of Happiness brought the quarterly Tool Crate delivery yesterday.

Tool Crate is a tool subscription box. Yesterday’s box was very large, and I could hardly contain myself until the husband got home and opened it. There was a DeWalt tool bag inside, which the husband gifted to me. He doesn’t use tool bags because he carries all his tools on his truck. The tool bag is large enough to hold my Janome Jem sewing machine. The box included four or five other useful tools, which he kept. One of them was a very nice punch set. I may borrow that from time to time for setting hardware on bags.

I spent the afternoon working on patterns again. I am finding it helpful to go back and revisit patterns that crashed and burned the first time I tried them. I still want a ponte sheath dress, and the one I made last summer was hanging in the closet, unfinished because it had problems. My understanding of fitting is better now and I can look at clothing I’ve made and see where the problems are. I put on last summer’s ponte dress and got out the pattern. That dress was made using the Pamela’s Patterns Classic T-Shirt Dress pattern.

That pattern seems odd to me. The bodice is overly long (I think) from shoulder to bust, and that was reflected in the dress when I put it on. The upper bodice fit much better if I pinched out approximately an inch of fabric at the shoulders. Interestingly, the pattern instructs how to shorten that exact area of the bodice, which makes me think that other people have had similar issues there. Very rarely do I ever have to shorten anything.

I also adjusted the position of the dart so that it matched my sloper. I dropped the waistline. (No surprise there.) I reduced the height of the sleeve cap and checked the length of the sleeve cap to make sure it fit into the armscye properly. I re-traced the back dress piece and trued up the seams to make sure everything matched. I think I have a much better pattern for myself now, and I’m going to make what I hope will be a wearable muslin out of some cotton interlock from Joanns. If that fits, I’ll make a dress out of ponte.

Because I was curious, I also took out the Tessa Sheath Dress pattern from Love Notions and laid the Pamela’s Patterns bodice on it to compare the two. Once again, I was reminded of that joke that “every designer is a size Medium.” Those patterns were drafted from drastically different bodice blocks. That’s unavoidable, I think—bodies are different enough that the perfect bodice block doesn’t exist—but it’s a point I plan to emphasize when I teach.

I Taught Them Well

I heard from two of my students in Friday’s class that they have been shopping the remnant rack at Walmart and scored some goodies. I noticed that the rack at our store has been a bit on the thin side. This makes me happy, because it means that a) students learned something in my classes and b) they want to make clothes for themselves. I have had some requests for a T-shirt class, so the class coordinator and I are trying to get that on the schedule for some time in September.

On Sunday afternoon, I traced both views of this Burda pattern, 6146:

The blouse on the left looks very much like the one I tried on at Kohls last spring. I loved the blouse but—cue the chorus—it was too short. My version will be several inches longer. (It will not have those fussy cuffs.) Both views call for lightweight wovens, but I wonder if view B, on the right, couldn’t be made in a stable knit, instead. Not a ponte, necessarily, but something else. . . I’ll know the fabric when I see it.

I am aware that many sewists dislike Burda patterns because the instructions tend to be, um, brief. Or badly translated from German. I’ve liked the few that I’ve made, and Burda 6315 is one of my tried and true winter patterns. I picked up this pattern at Joanns yesterday:

I love the princess seam lines. I have a length of Robert Kaufman Brussels Linen in the stash that I’ve been wanting to turn into a dress and I think this will be a good pattern (view B).

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I mowed the yard Sunday morning before church. Hopefully, that will be the last time for this year. Our lawn—such as it is, because our yard features a lot of non-grass plants—goes dormant in July unless we water. We don’t.

I’ve seen some warnings on the internet to check the acidity of commercial vinegar this summer, because apparently some companies are now selling 4% vinegar instead of the standard 5% vinegar. Why does this matter? The USDA and Ball canning recipes are based on the use of 5% vinegar, so substituting a lesser strength may have negative repercussions on canned goods. Costco and our local grocery store had 5% white vinegar on their shelves, but I’ll be keeping an eye on those labels.

Some days it feels like we are in the midst of a constant war on our food supply. I’ve discovered that many of the products that contain corn—like tortilla chips—now come with a label stating, “Contains a bioengineered food ingredient.” I would assume that is GMO corn. Reading labels is exhausting.

We had a nice cooldown yesterday—temps were in the low 80s—but the wind! The wind was awful. A section of I-90 near Ritzville, WA, had to be shut down in both directions yesterday afternoon because of a couple of fast-moving wildfires.

I told the husband that the next item he’ll have to replace on the BMW is the horn, because I am going to wear it out driving around town. No fewer than three people—two with out-of-state plates—pulled out in front of me yesterday without looking. I do not understand this habit of driving as though you are the only person on the road.

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.