Come to Class

I traveled to Missoula yesterday to teach a serger mastery class. This is a free-to-students class for owners of Bernina sergers. (I get paid to teach it.) I left a bit early because I wasn’t sure what the roads would be like. As it turns out, the areas south of here got more snow than we did. Traffic was minimal, but I wasn’t traveling at my usual speed.

My class was at A Clean Stitch. The store has been in this strip mall for a couple of years, but it quickly outgrew its original location. Last spring, it moved down a few spots to a much larger space. The owners still have another 5000 square feet to organize and renovate into a service area and classroom space, so my class was in the main store area. Fortunately, it was a quiet day in the store.

Five students registered. Four came to class; the fifth decided not to travel because of the roads. One student thought that class ended at noon instead of 2 pm and had to leave for an appointment. Another student thought class ended at 1 pm and also had to leave. I crammed as much information into those two hours as I could for them, but we didn’t cover everything.

I don’t know what to think about these classes. Students sign up and don’t come, or come and leave early. I tell myself that as long as I am getting paid to teach the class, it’s not big deal for me, but the students are losing out. Maybe if they had to pay for a serger mastery class, they would be a bit more careful about getting their money’s worth. Or not. Sometimes that doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I’m scheduled to teach two more classes at this store—one in November and one in December—so we’ll see what happens with those.

I checked out the two Walmart stores on my route and both still had full remnant racks, which was gratifying.

We need a photo for the blog today, so here is one of the banners hanging up at church:

Isn’t that lovely? Ginger, who is in charge of visuals for our sanctuary, is so creative. I love walking into that space every Sunday morning and seeing what’s she done.

**************

I need to spend some time today on housekeeping. I’m going to start a roaster pan of chicken stock to cook down this morning. I’ll can it tomorrow afternoon. The husband is going to look at the washing machine (a Speed Queen) because it’s throwing an error code and stopping mid-cycle. He thinks the filter screen is plugged up. I have a few mountains of laundry to wash when that’s sorted.

The body shop called yesterday. The car would have been done yesterday afternoon, but they tried to put the new bumper on and realized that it was the wrong part. The attachment clips didn’t line up. They ordered the correct bumper, but it’ll be another week and a half before it gets here. In the meantime, they will repaint the old bumper and put it back on. The car should be ready Monday or Tuesday. I am not thrilled about having to take it back in a second time, but it is what it is.

My hot pink wide wale corduroys from Macy’s arrived this week. They fit nicely. I plan to wear them to church on Sunday and blind everyone. The bizarre thing is that the tag on the pants is in US sizing, so why they were posted with the weird 25-36 size range on the website is beyond me.

I have lost some fabric. I have a bin of wovens somewhere, but it is eluding my attempts to find it. I can even picture what fabrics are inside. I am pretty sure that it contains some Hobby Lobby bengaline, and now that I have this Linda pants pattern under control, I’d like to make a pair with that fabric. Part of me says that this is an indication that I have too much fabric, but the other part argues that I just need to label bins more clearly.

Pants and Socks and Other Clothes

I ran up another muslin for the Style Arc Linda Pants—incorporating the changes to the rise—and they fit so much better! The wrinkles are gone. I am going to drop down a size, though. I seem to be erring on the larger side of some of these patterns. I think that once I have this pattern dialed in, these pants will become a wardrobe staple. I do get tired of jeans.

I also finished the second LDT and took in that sleeve/armscye seam on the Sadie top. Those are waiting to be hemmed.

And I went through every single one of my patterns and divided them into three piles: 1) don’t like; 2) definite keepers; 3) still want to try or re-try. Now I just need to prioritize that third category.

I taught my serger sock class last night. A few days ago, when I checked, I had four students registered. One didn’t come because of the weather, another had to cancel for a family emergency, and a third forgot about the class. (We called her, but she lives too far away to have gotten there in time.) The store owner decided to take the class, though, so the three of us spent a very pleasant couple of hours visiting and making socks.

I provided the fabric for this class. I don’t usually do that, but I wanted something specific, and I knew that if I had trouble sourcing it, the students certainly would. I ordered an athletic knit, but what I got wasn’t the same as the sample fabric I had on hand. I defaulted to some swimwear knit. That worked, but I’d still like to find more of this brushed athletic knit.

[Why do I like shopping the Walmart remnant rack? Because I can see and feel the fabric and don’t have to order blindly.]

The second fabric I wanted was some microfleece. Again, I had a sample that had come from Joanns, but every Joanns between here and Spokane was sold out. On my way to Seattle a few weeks ago, I stopped at the Joanns in Moses Lake, Washington, and they had a bolt of that microfleece on the clearance rack so I bought what was left. Joanns still has it listed on their website. I might order more in case I want to teach this class again, although the store owner is trying to find a supplier for it.

[These are first-world problems. I am aware of that.]

The socks turned out very cute. This is the swimwear fabric:

And this is the microfleece. The store owner liked her microfleece socks so much that she wore them home.

I’ve got a serger mastery class in Missoula tomorrow. I pulled out one of my Nancy Raglans (5 Out of 4 Patterns) to wear to class last night. I do like that top. If I have time, I’d like to make up another one today that I can wear tomorrow.

The store owner threw out the idea of having a serger retreat. She has frequent retreats for quilters and embroiderers and they almost always sell out. She holds them at the church camp on Flathead Lake where the husband and I were in the deck collapse in 2017. I haven’t been back there since. You can be sure, though, that I won’t be going out on that deck again.

We’ll see. That would take some planning, but it would be fun—a whole weekend of nothing but serging and someone else cooking all the meals.

Falling Off the Cliff Into Winter

We got about 2" of snow yesterday, followed by a back door cold front. It’s 20 degrees right now with gusty northeast winds. Temps are supposed to warm up into the low 40s next week, but I think we can safely say that the seasons have changed. I am not unhappy about this. I like the slower pace of winter, and dark and gloomy doesn’t bother me like it does some people. I also have more time to sew.

Our resident bunny is getting whiter and whiter:

I had to run into town for an appointment yesterday morning, so I put on my peacoat with my new lambswool scarf. Isn’t it pretty?

The scarf was a gift from my neighbor, Theresa, from her trip to Ireland last spring. It is so soft and warm.

When I got home from town, I put together a long-sleeve Laundry Day Tee and a Seamwork Sadie. I made a Sadie last year. The pattern didn’t immediately make it to the tried-and-true list because I was undecided about the fit. It is billed as a “structured sweatshirt,” although it feels oversized and slouchy to me, especially in the shoulders. The description indicates dropped shoulders. I’ve noticed some discrepancies between sewing and knitting terminology. My definition of dropped shoulders is a rectangular body with no sleeve cap shaping. (Think Alice Starmore.) Sadie has both armscye and sleeve cap shaping. What it feels like is that the upper bodice just isn’t drafted well. I pinned out the excess in the sleeve and armscye after making this version, and the effect of pulling up those shoulders to where the seam should sit was dramatic. I’ll re-sew that sleeve seam today. I also changed the pattern in case I decide to make it again, but honestly, I think I like Burda 6315 better. We’ll see.

I am re-making some of these patterns I’ve made before even though I was ambivalent about them the first time. I know more now than I did a year ago, so I want to revisit some patterns to see if I can adjust them to fit better.

I sewed up a second LDT yesterday that needs either a neckband or a cowl. After that, the next one in the queue will be a Juniper Cardigan in some navy blue hacci sweater knit. A navy blue cardigan never goes amiss. And I still need to do the second muslin of the Linda pants.

The Socks on the Serger class is tonight. I think it will be a fun one.

A Winter Storm Approaches

I think the universe knew I needed a break after my travels. Early yesterday morning, I dropped the car off at the body shop. While I was waiting for the husband to come pick me up, I got a call from the dentist’s office. Could they reschedule my cleaning? The hygienist was out with a sick child. That freed up my scheduled for the afternoon. I went back into town—driving DD#1’s Acura—and stopped at the quilt store north of town to see if I had any students for today’s class. Nope! That freed up today’s schedule.

I did a Costco run, then came home and moved the squash from the greenhouse to the old garage. This is the forecast for this week as of 4 am:

It will be chilly. How much snow we get depends on how far down the snow levels drop. I am glad I got my snow tires put on before my trip. The husband fired up the wood boiler over the weekend, so the house is nice and toasty. We were sitting in the living room last night, watching YouTube, when I heard a trap go off. Sure enough, a mouse had met a sad end in the laundry room. I expect a few more of them to try to get in this week. ‘Tis the season.

I don’t think there will be any problems with my Wednesday evening class. The storm will have moved out of here by then.

I cut out two Laundry Day Tees yesterday afternoon. Fabric does me no earthly good sitting in the stash. I have fabric set aside for three more. At least one or two of them will have the cowl neckline instead of the plain scoop. I got the Juniper Cardigan printed while I was in town yesterday and may cut that one out, too. I am feeling the need for some cozy tops and sweaters and I have a pile of patterns waiting:

• Sew House Seven Toaster Sweater

• Burda 6315 (hacked to make it long enough for me, with a turtleneck mod)

• Juniper Cardigan

• Harper Cardigan

• Nancy Raglan

• New Look 6771

• Seamwork Sadie

• A few others picked up along the way

I’ve also got a nice stash of sweater knits and lengths of French terry that I’ve been collecting over the past year. I reach for my Burda 6315 and Nancy Raglan tops over and over because they fit so well, but I’d like to add a few more to the tried and true pile.

I also adjusted the front and back rises on the StyleArc Linda pants. I’ll run up another bike short muslin to see how close I am. Just to put it in perspective, the crotch seam on the Linda pants pattern measures 28". The crotch seam on my work pants measures 31". (That’s the crotch seam, not the inseam.) When I talk about the rise on most pants being too short for me, I am not kidding. My body measurements are just far enough outside the average that I’ve got to make adjustments.

Pants—The Continuing Saga

I ran up a muslin of the StyleArc Linda pants using the stretch cotton I bought at Hobby Lobby. The bad news is that the pattern needs some adjustments to fit me properly. The good news is that I am getting better at figuring out exactly what I have to fix. I had the husband take a photo of the front and back of the pants while I was wearing them. Based on the wedgie I was getting, I suspected the rise was too short. The photos showed the wrinkles. I checked the photos against the wrinkle chart in one of my fitting books and that confirmed my hunch.

Here are the Linda pants next to my favorite Noble Outfitters work pants. I love the way these fit. The difference is obvious:

I considered adjusting the crotch seam on the Linda pants—the white chalk line—but looking at these pants next to each other, I think I need a more drastic revision. I am going to enlist the husband’s help in getting an accurate set of measurements before I try again.

It’s no wonder I hate low rise pants. I feel like the poster child for why ready-to-wear looks so awful on most women.

I signed up for a two-hour private lesson at the Sewing and Design School in Tacoma a few days before Thanksgiving. That’s where Kenneth D. King teaches, although my class is with one of the other instructors. The private class can be anything I want, so I asked for help with drafting a pants sloper for myself.

Some day, when I make my way out of this pants maze, I’d like to get back to making more sweaters and tops. I have that Stretch & Sew pattern for the saddle-shoulder sweater, but I’m also kicking around making a Juniper Cardigan by Jennifer Lauren Handmade:

This cardigan has a saddle shoulder detail, as well, and comes in two lengths.

*************

We had stellar weather yesterday, so I worked out in the garden. We finally got a frost, I think, but it wasn’t hard enough to kill the tomatoes completely. The Blue Boar Berry cherry tomato plant is still churning out ripe ones. Go figure. I brought in a bucket full of the last of the tomatillos and tomatoes. I cut the cabbages and made “egg roll in a bowl” in the Instant Pot with one of them for dinner.

I’ve been watching Michael Snyder’s Pacific Northwest Weather Watch channel for the past week. It’s been a battle of computer models. The GFS (North American) model has been steadfast in its prediction that we will get cold air from Canada mid-week that will bring snow. The European model had the cold air staying above the border—and no snow—but it capitulated yesterday and is now in agreement with the GFS.

The husband replaced the mixing valve on the hot water heater yesterday and fired up the wood boiler. I will hang up the rest of the insulated curtains today and we will wait to see what the weather throws at us this week.

All Coverstitch, All Day

I finished my class sample for the coverstitch class yesterday morning, and then I recorded next week’s podcast—the topic, of course, being coverstitch machines. I seem to have fallen into a pattern of using whatever I’m working on as the main topic for the podcast. The subject material is fresh in my mind and easy to talk about. I didn’t think I could blather on about coverstitch machines for 30+ minutes, but I did.

(I have a bit more to say about the podcast later on in this post.)

I made a sampler of what I want to teach in the coverstitch class:

From bottom to top:

• A rolled-edge ruffle—the rolled edge was done on the serger—gathered with a chainstitch on the coverstitch machine and then stitched down to the background fabric with a two-needle narrow coverstitch over 3/8'' satin ribbon. I keep looking at that and thinking it would make a nice detail on the lower edge of an apron . . .

• A two-needle wide coverstitch, looper side up, using 12wt Wonderfil Spagetti in the looper.

• A stacked coverstitch—a la Gail Yellen—done by first making a two-needle wide coverstitch with 12wt Spagetti, then going over it with a different color Spagetti using a two-needle narrow coverstitch. A third pass could be added using a chain stitch (one needle).

• Jumbo rickrack attached with a chainstitch using 12wt variegated thread in the looper.

• Zipper insertion featuring, on the bottom, a decorative two-needle narrow coverstitch, looper side up. I had a little hiccup getting around the zipper pull because the coverstitch machine doesn’t have a true zipper foot. The top is a triple coverstitch (three needles), needle side up.

The sampler isn’t perfect, and it isn’t an actual project, but it gets the point across. If I have some time between now and the class next month, I would like to design some kind of zipper pouch to incorporate and show off these techniques. As it was, I was trying some of them for the first time. I have run into situations where class proposals require that the student make a project as part of learning a technique. I have mixed feelings about that. While it’s nice for students to be able to show off an item they have made, working on a “project” in class brings added pressure. Students tend to compare their projects and focus more on perfection than learning. This is an evening class and we may not even be able to get through all the techniques on the sampler, let alone make a zipper pouch. My goal is to introduce the techniques and inspire students to think about creative ways to use them. I know my students. They won’t disappoint me.

Class prep is a lot of work. That’s part of why I am happy to be teaching some of these classes at the stores in Missoula and Spokane, because if I am going to spend a day making class samples, I’d like to use them more than once. But now that I know what I want to teach in the class, I can make up the supply list and the handout.

***************

The podcast is having some (not unexpected) growing pains. Yesterday’s recording will be episode 8. I am happy with the analytics so far but I need to start recording some interviews. A podcast that consists of me blathering on for half an hour may not be sustainable.

I listened to an excellent podcast episode on the way to Seattle. The host was Toolman Tim Cook of Workshop Radio, who was also at the Self-Reliance Festival. Tim and his wife live in Alberta, which makes us almost neighbors. Tim has a great story and gives a talk at events about escaping the “poverty mindset.” He is also an all-around Nice Guy and a terrific podcast host. The topic of that episode was “content creation”—that’s the new buzzword—and his guests were Nicole Sauce (Living Free in Tennessee podcast), Brian Aleskivich from the LOTS Project, and Kyle Perrault of Backwoods Butcher. (Kyle did a pig butchering demo at SRF.)

My big takeaways from that content creator roundtable discussion were 1) consistency is huge and 2) it may take a couple dozen episodes before things really gel for a podcast. Nicole laughs about the fact that her first podcast episode had 87 downloads and the second episode had 14—of which she and her mother were two. That was eight years ago and now she’s hosting big events and being asked to present at conferences around the country. I have no such ambitions but the trajectory her life has taken is fascinating.

I do need to give some attention to my social media links for the podcast and get them organized such that posts automatically go up for each new episode. Even with as much frontloading as I did, I haven’t covered everything yet. I keep telling myself Rome wasn’t built in a day. This is a process. I am having fun with it and that’s the important part.

Overly Ambitious Class Plans

Today will be a day of sewing. I have to get my decorative coverstitch store samples done so they can be put up on display. Some students will sign up just because it’s a serger/coverstitch class—even without knowing what they are going to learn—but others want to be able to see and touch an example of what we’ll be doing in class.

It’s a three-hour evening class, so there won’t be a ton of time. I sketched out a class plan with ambitious goals, but soon realized that if I want to teach everything on my list, we would be having a sleepover at the quilt store. Fun, but probably not what the owner imagined.

I’ll see where I am at the end of today. We might have to have an advanced coverstitch class after the holidays. It’s about time to be planning spring classes anyway. I have two students who want a Harper Cardigan class—they couldn’t take the one I did last month—and I talked to another woman yesterday who also would take it if I offer it again.

Quilting on the cream-and-white Scrapper’s Delight top has reached the halfway point:

I worked on it yesterday afternoon. I need to can up a few more items for the pantry for winter, so I ran 15 pints of red beans through the canner while I quilted. Beans take 90 minutes to process at 15 pounds of pressure:

I still need to do some white beans and pintos. The beans that have been drying in the greenhouse also have to be brought back to the house so I can shell them in the evenings. And we need more chicken stock.

It is slow going on that quilt top. It’s a king-sized top, and the table is 6' wide when the extensions are up, but quilts are surprisingly heavy. Moving the quilt around to quilt the pattern I’ve chosen—circles with a ruler—takes a bit of effort. I have to roll the quilt and make sure the edges aren’t hanging off the sides of the table. I do have the Horn table with the hydraulic lift, which has been a godsend. I brought in one of the tall chairs from our kitchen table and raised the table so the quilt won’t drag on the floor.

Slow and steady wins the race. Two hours here and two hours there and it’ll get done eventually. Loops would have been faster and easier. Ruler work always takes longer than free motion quilting. I’m trying to expand my horizons, though, and I do like the way this pattern looks.

If I get the coverstitch samples done today, I will move on to the Linda pants from Style Arc. (So far, we’ve had the Linda Top by Sinclair Patterns and now the Linda Pants by Style Arc, which is not confusing at all.)

I also picked up this New Look pattern on my travels last week:

I have no idea when I will get to it, but I like both the top and the pants. Both would lend themselves well to some decorative coverstitching on the seamlines.

Next week is ridiculously busy. I really need to have a talk with the person who manages my schedule. The Diva goes in Monday morning for body work on the damage from the accident last spring. (Yes, it took this long to get an appointment.) I will be driving DD#1’s Acura for at least a week. Monday afternoon is a dental appointment for a cleaning. I am scheduled to teach a class at the quilt store north of town on Tuesday, and I have the Socks on the Serger class Wednesday evening at the quilt store south of town. Thursday is open—for the moment, at least—and then it’s a day trip to Missoula on Friday to teach a serger mastery class. November is going to be a marathon, too. I had to let the music teacher know that I wouldn’t be available to play piano for her concert this year, much as I would love to, because I know better than to try and shoehorn anything else into the schedule.

Treasures From the Trip

At the Quilting Bee, the large quilt store in Spokane, I bought myself something nice with some of my profits from the craft co-op sale. I have been wanting one of these custom seam ripper/stilettos:

Each end pulls out and flips around to reveal either the seam ripper or stiletto. The tool has a nice weight to it, as well, and I think it will make ripping seams less tedious. I am learning to appreciate a really sharp seam ripper.

I picked up this serger pattern:

This might make a good class. I’ll make one up and see if the quilt store can order the pattern. Most everyone in my classes at the quilt store south of town has an L890 and thus has coverstitch capabilities. My big quibble with some of these patterns is that they say “serger” on them but you have to read the fine print to realize that they require coverstitch settings for some of the stitches. Not all sergers can coverstitch.

This is the blue damask—Joanns labeleled it “Delft” on the bolt—ponte fabric I picked up at the Alderwood Joanns.

Technically, I think it should be labelled a doubleknit, not a jersey knit. I categorize knits based on their structure, as you might expect a former knitting designer to do. This Threads article on identifying knits is very helpful, although I also think—splitting hairs, here—that doubleknit and interlock knits are really the same thing; doubleknits sometimes have a jacquard appearance to them, with different patterns on the two sides of the fabric. The term “doubleknit” carries that unfortunate taint of 1970’s polyester with it, however.

I will check my Sandra Betzina fabric book and see what she has to say.

Moving on . . . DD#2 suggested that I listen to this episode of the Glossy podcast, which is an interview with the Chief Merchandising Office of Macy’s, Nata Dvir. Macy’s has stopped carrying the Charter Club brand—at least in stores—and replaced it with a new women’s apparel house brand called On 34th.

This interview was fascinating. Dvir explained that Macy’s realized that they were underserving the 30-year-old to 50-year-old market (duh) and embarked on a project to find out what those women wanted when shopping for clothing.

[What a novel concept—asking customers what they want. How odd. /<sarcasm>]

They surveyed women, held focus groups, tested products, and finally came up with this new brand. I went to their website yesterday morning and checked it out. I like what I see. I especially liked these pants and ordered a pair, which made DD#2 remark that they got their target customer right:

I am withholding judgment until I see how they fit. The sizing for these pants was bizarre. The sizes ran from 24 to 36, which I understand can be similar to European sizing, but there was no way to correlate that—even by body measurements—with US sizing. I finally broke down and had an online chat with one of their stylists to figure out that a size 12 in US pants corresponded to a size 32 in the sizes listed.

[I am being rather pedantic today, aren’t I? Did you miss me?]

I do like that top, too, although I didn’t order one because I could tell by the specs given that the tops in the On 34th brand will be too short on me. Oh well. I can make one in a similar color.

Macy’s seems to be pulling out of the nosedive it has been in for a few years. Perhaps they should offer a master class to Joann’s corporate staff and suggest the same strategy of listening to customers.

I can’t believe that even has to be a thing. 🤦‍♀️

I am itching to start a quilt but I need to finish the one on the Q20, first. I worked on it yesterday afternoon. I used Warm and White batting—not Warm and Natural as I usually do—and I am finding it very irritating to my eyes. The bleach? I can only work on that quilt in two-hour stretches. I am almost to the halfway point, though. And I need to get my decorative coverstitch class sample made.

Spinning at SRF

I have had a whirlwind week, but it was great fun. I left last Tuesday morning to drive to Spokane, stopping at the small quilt store there to drop off two pairs of pants—one Jalie Renee and one New Look 6689—and talk to the owner about next month’s pants class. I visited one of the three Joann Fabrics stores. (Eh.) I checked out three Walmart remnant racks. One had been eliminated completely since my visit in August. Another had been scaled back to half the size. The third one was still there but didn’t have much inventory. I picked up a salad for dinner at Fred Meyer and checked into my hotel.

Early Wednesday morning, I headed for Seattle. The town of Moses Lake sits about halfway between Spokane and Seattle and is a good place to stop and stretch my legs. Moses Lake also has a Walmart and Joann Fabrics close to each other. I found two remnants at Walmart—a double-brushed poly and a rayon spandex—and spent an hour wandering Joanns. That location has only been open for about six or seven years. Their remnant rack is always full to bursting. Their clearance rack is well stocked, too. I scored some microfleece—I need some for my serger sock class next week and every store in Missoula, Kalispell, and Spokane is out—and got three cuts of Christmas fabric at 40% off. I also found some of the rayon sweatshirt fabric from two years ago. That was a really nice fabric—muddy earth tones notwithstanding—and I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t continue to carry it.

[Who am I kidding? No one is making rational decisions at that company.]

I continued on to Seattle, arriving in enough time to visit the mall where DD#2 worked when she first moved there. I needed new shoes and was able to find two pair at Nordstrom. I checked in at Half-Price Books and found a blacksmithing book for the husband. (We established early on in our relationship that I am good at hunting down reading material for him, so I make a point of checking bookstores when I travel.) I visited the Joann Fabrics nearby and was shocked to see a large selection of new fall apparel fabrics. Granted, most of it was in muddy earth tones again (sigh), but I did find a beautiful bolt of ponte in a blue Delft pattern. That is destined to become a dress.

I am unreasonably annoyed by the fact that our Joanns has nothing. Either our store is no longer getting shipments of fabric or there are boxes upon boxes of new stock languishing in the back room, sitting unopened due to lack of staff. Either way, it irritates me. Our store might as well just shut down.

I had dinner with DD#2, then spent the night at another hotel—I love reward points—and flew to Nashville Thursday morning. I arrived around 4:30 pm and was met by my ride to the little town of Camden, Tennessee.

This is why I went to Tennessee:

Nicole Sauce, whose Living Free in Tennessee podcast I have listened to for eight years, co-hosts the Self-Reliance Festival twice a year with John and Amanda Willis, who own Special Operations Equipment in Camden. I attended Nicole’s Spring Workshop in April, and we arranged that I would come back to do spinning demonstrations at the fall Self-Reliance Festival.

SRF is held on the grounds of Special Operations Equipment. SOE is a sewing factory. Can you imagine????? I visited with John about the industrial machines—over 50 of them—and looked at a Red Eye (Singer 66) treadle that Amanda recently purchased at auction.

The tag line for SRF is “Find Your Tribe.” Oh, these people are my tribe and then some. My friend from high school—Bob—and his girlfriend, Deana, drove over from their home on the east side of Tennessee to attend SRF, too. Deana had a vendor booth selling her handmade aprons and shawls and bowl cozies:

Nicole brought her Ashford Traditional spinning wheel along for me to demo on. A few people took me up on my offer to try spinning. I find that it works best if I do the treadling for them. A newbie spinner has enough to worry about just getting his or her hands organized.

The highlight of the fall SRF was a keynote presentation and chicken processing workshop by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. The husband and I have been fans of his for many years, so getting to meet him in person was truly amazing.

If his keynote address gets posted on YouTube, I’ll make sure to link to it. The chicken workshop was Monday and I flew home Monday morning, but I am sure that those who attended got a lot of value from it.

I arrived back in Seattle around noon local time on Monday, picked up my luggage and the car, and drove back to Spokane. I spent the night in Yet Another Hotel—a theme for this trip—and drove home yesterday morning. I’ve got a podcast to knock out today and some paperwork to clear off my desk. I’ve also got to get back on a decent eating plan. I did fine at SRF because we had lots of keto/carnivore options, but I wasn’t so disciplined on the trip home and I am feeling it. I’ll show off my fabric purchases in tomorrow’s post.

A Twist Top, Potatoes, and Date Night

The narrow coverstitch hem on the neckline of the Linda Twist Top worked beautifully:

I will use that technique again in the future. It wasn’t as tricky as I thought it might be. The only change I would make is to use knit stay tape at the shoulders instead of organza ribbon. I use 1/4" organza ribbon to stabilize the shoulders of all my knit tops, but the hem was a bit bulky in those places. The shoulders have to be sewn before hemming the neckline. I prefer the ribbon over the stay tape, but I would use stay tape in this situation.

The top itself was fun to make and turned out well (still needs hemming).

Construction requires both a sewing machine and a serger. Both the center front seam and the topstitching around the opening for the knot have to be done on the sewing machine.

This version, unfortunately, is a bit too big. I was between sizes according to my bust measurement and went up when I should have gone down. I try to adhere to Zede Donohue’s admonition that “knits should skim, not cling,” but that can be a moving target depending on the pattern and fabric. This pattern does indicate negative ease at the bust, which is appropriate for knits, but the entire upper bodice is just a bit too loose and tends to slide around. I will go down a size—and possibly move that V-neck up a tad—when I make the next one. I don’t wear a lot of V-necks precisely because most of them are too low and too wide.

I finished the top just as the husband got back from a concrete-cutting job. He tends to fit those in on evenings and weekends because they are small jobs that don’t take very long. Our weather has been gorgeous, so we decided to go out and dig up potatoes after lunch.

The potato crop this year was a bit disappointing. That part of the garden needs some soil amendments. Next spring, I will put down a bunch of rotting straw and cover the whole area with black plastic. The area on the other side of the garden where we did that a few years ago is the spot that always produces a bumper crop of potatoes. We have enough for the two of us, though.

The husband needed new work boots, so he suggested we go to the Army-Navy store and then out to dinner. I dropped him off to do his boot shopping and went across the street to Joann Fabrics. This is the Butterick pattern that I want to use for my pants class—the one I thought was OOP because the Joanns website said it wasn’t in stock in Kalispell and wasn’t available to ship:

I checked the drawer anyway and found four copies—two in the smaller size range and two in the larger size range. (I should know better than to believe Joanns’ inventory system.) Butterick patterns are $1.99 each this weekend so I bought all four. I’m not thrilled with this pattern because it only comes in alphabet sizing instead of actual garment sizes, but at least I have it.

I think that I am going to bring copies of all these patterns to class and will decide in class which pattern will work best for which student. Each student can pay me for the pattern and take it home with her.

For dinner, we went to a different steak house between Kalispell and Whitefish. We’re trying to use up some gift cards. I had a chopped steak with bleu cheese on top and the husband had a Porterhouse. We finished off dinner with an amazing piece of caramel apple cheesecake.

And then it was off to Home Depot. The husband had a whole shopping list of things he needed:

We discussed cars over dinner. I want to drive the BMW for as long as I can, but I need a contingency plan. I told him to choose something for me because that Volvo station wagon is now out of the running. He knows cars better than I do. Also, he has to work on it, so it’s got to be something that isn’t going to cause him to throw wrenches around his shop. He is leaning toward the Acura MDX. These are my requirements for a new car:

• Station wagon or SUV

• All-wheel drive

• It has to be a color other than white. (White cars in a place that has snow six months out of the year is just stupid, IMO. You can’t see them on the road. Also, most of the time it actually would be light gray because of all the dirt.)

• Heated seats

• Sunroof

• A six-cylinder engine. (I have been driving a BMW for the past seven years and I don’t want to go back to something that plods along.)

I probably will do what I did with the BMW and keep checking the dealers in Seattle to find a two year-old lease turn-in. He suggested I test drive a few cars when I am there over Thanksgiving. I am not going to be happy about giving up the 40 mpg I get with the BMW—the MDX only gets 25 mpg—but I need something reliable.

The Pants Saga Continues

Butterick 6966, the Palmer/Pletsch pattern, will not work for the pants class. DSIL’s mom—an accomplished seamstress herself—noted that seamlines are useful places to make fitting adjustments. Having fewer seamlines is not always a good thing. I didn’t even bother to make a muslin of that pattern. I traced View D, the straight leg version, onto some Pellon Easy Pattern and did as suggested in the instructions, fitting one leg to my body using a piece of elastic at the waist. I had it hanging beautifully at the center, with the side dart perfectly positioned at the side of my body. (The pattern also had darts on the back and front.) However, that left a huge chunk of fabric billowing out at the hips and side leg. To make matters worse, the back rise was 2" too short.

A side seam would have been incredibly useful for fitting, but the pant leg was one wraparound piece of fabric. Add in that short back rise and it would have been faster for me to draft a pair of pants from scratch than to figure out how to get that pattern piece to look like the pants on the front of the envelope. Perhaps someone more experienced in tissue fitting could have made it work, but I have such lousy spatial perception skills that the whole idea was beyond me.

Back to the drawing board. I totally understand why people don’t like to make pants.

I pulled out this pattern:

Some of you may remember that I made the knot top from this pattern last year. (I liked it, but it was too short.) At the time, I also traced the pants pattern but never made them. I went stash diving through the bin of ponte for something suitable and came up with a three-yard length of black fabric that I think I found at the Walmart in Missoula in August. Robin was on that trip with me. The fabric looks and feels like a ponte on one side and a microfleece on the other.

Before I traced the pattern, I laid the Renee pant pieces over it to compare them. I should have done that with the Palmer/Pletsch pattern because I would have seen, right off the bat, that the back rise was going to be a problem. The Renee pant pieces looked very similar to the New Look pieces in that area, so I felt confident in going forward.

I cut out the pattern—20 minutes—and put it together on the serger—another 20 minutes. The pants fit me perfectly. They are long enough in the rise to come up to my natural waistline; in fact, I went back and scooped out about 1/2” in the front rise to make it sit slightly lower.

[I had a similar pair of Liz Claiborne pants that I finally donated to Goodwill, because the rise on them was just short enough that they constantly felt as if they were falling off my hips. It is lovely to have pants with a waistband that sits where it should.]

If I were going to make them in a ponte or interlock, which I will at some point, I probably would go down a size. That ponte/microfleece fabric is wonderful. If I could find out who manufactures it, I’d be tempted to buy a bolt.

This pattern will work for the pants class, yes? Maybe not. My one quibble with New Look patterns is their limited size range. The largest finished hip measurement on these pants is 43", so anyone with hips bigger than about 45" around is out of luck.

I’ve found one Butterick pattern that is very similar, and it has a shorts option, which is even better. When I teach the Renee pants class, I have everyone make a muslin in shorts length, because there is no sense wasting fabric on the pant legs until we get the top of the pants to fit properly. Of course, this Butterick pattern appears to be out of print, although I did find a copy on Etsy. (ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH)

I will figure out how to teach this pants class come hell or high water. We can always default to the Renee pants, although I really like that New Look pattern. I just know the New Look pattern is probably going to be too small for one of the women who wants to take this class. These are so quick and easy to make, though, that I suspect we could re-draft the pattern to fit her through a bit of trial and error. And the goal of this class isn’t to make a pair of tailored, well-fitting pants; the goal of this class is to introduce students to the agony joys of measuring crotch curves and rises and getting a forgiving pair of knit pants to fit reasonably well, because there is only so much I can do in a six-hour introductory pants class.

***************

I press on. After I finished the New Look pants, I got out the Linda twist top. I am not going to finish the neckline with the binding/facing as suggested in the pattern. I am going to make a coverstitch hem there, instead. That requires folding down 1/4" of fabric and using the narrow coverstitch hem on my machine. I got as far as pinning it in place yesterday afternoon:

We’ll see how this goes. I am really good at coverstitch hems, but this one is narrower than anything I’ve done before. In theory, it should work. I will test on some scrap fabric, first.

I don’t use those fine glass-head pins very often. They are great for situations like this, but I always manage to stab myself (multiple times) with them.

***************

In podcast news, I recorded episode 6 yesterday. It will be posted next Tuesday. The podcast has been a great deal of fun, even if I am the only person who is entertained by it. I also—finally!—figured out why it wasn’t posting to iTunes. There was a glitch in the RSS feed which was preventing it from being picked up. It is on iTunes now, however, so if you are feeling charitable and would like to leave a review, I would appreciate it.

Pants—What Have We Learned?

I got my summer tires changed over to snow tires yesterday morning. On the way in to town, one of my tire pressure monitors lit up (how timely). I let the guys know when I got there so they could check it out. It turned out to be a small screw stuck in the tire.

This tire place delivers service. I am only there twice a year, but as soon as I walked in the door, the owner pushed a piece of paper over to the guy next to him at the counter and said, “This is for Janet’s car—go get her tires started.” How he knows my name is beyond me, but he does. I usually sit in the waiting room with my iPad and some knitting while they change the tires. Typically, it takes about 45 minutes. One of their employees was an hour and a half late yesterday, so I was there for two and a half hours. They apologized profusely for making me wait, but they also found the screw in the tire and repaired it for free. I wasn’t going to complain. I go into that situation twice a year knowing that I might have to sit and knit for a while, or read a book, so I deal with it.

Attitude is everything.

I stopped at sewing on the way home. Our checks were all ready for us. Between teaching and the sale, last weekend was fairly lucrative.

I came home, had lunch, and got started on the Éléonore pants. About twenty minutes into them, I decided they won’t work for this class. The issue is that they are very fiddly. There are back yoke pieces, front mock pockets, a fake front fly, and everything has to be topstitched with two parallel lines of stitching. And that didn’t include the back pockets, which I left off this muslin. When I prep for a class, one of the yardsticks I use—no pun intended—is how long does it take me to make something? I time myself, then multiply that by at least three. This is an all-day pants class, yes, but the construction is going to take so long that I worry there won’t be time to address fitting issues. Also, this store has a tiny, tiny classroom area, so having everyone on both sergers and sewing machines is tricky.

[Conversation over dinner revolved around why anyone would have fake pockets on their pants. The husband thinks fake anything is a waste of time and wanted to know why there weren’t functional pockets in the pattern. Personally, I am not obsessed with pockets in clothing but I suppose he has a point.]

I finished the pants anyway. I’m not in love with them, but I am glad I made them so I could see how they went together.

It’s back to the drawing board. I am going to try this pattern today:

This one is dead simple: two pattern pieces and a length of elastic. It’s also a Palmer/Pletsch pattern, so it has fitting tips included. I’m going to make a quick muslin for myself, and if I like the way they fit, I’ll make up a pair in a nice ponte for the store to display. The waistband on these is similar to the Jalie Renee pants, with darts and elastic, although the waistband isn’t as deep. These can also be made entirely on the serger. The goal of this pants class is the same goal I have with my introductory T-shirt classes. I make sure that students understand that fitting is a process and that they are unlikely to nail it perfectly on the first try, but we have to start somewhere.

If this pattern fails, I will just go ahead and use the Renee pants pattern. I’ve taught that class here twice and it has gone over well both times.

Not an Alterations Shop

I had an amazingly productive day yesterday. I’d love to have a week of days where I can buckle down and work for six or eight hours straight.

After the husband left for work—he was pouring concrete at 8 am so he was out of here fairly early—I headed to my sewing room to clean and organize. Everything related to the sale had to be put away. I took advantage of some newly-emptied tubs to sort and store my knit fabrics. I earmarked a stack of fabrics to become either long-sleeved LDTs or possible Linda twist tops if I like that pattern. A muslin for the Linda top has been traced and cut out, but I haven’t had time to assemble it yet.

The next order of business was hemming a bridesmaid’s dress for a young woman at church. I have no desire to do alterations, but I will do small jobs here and there. She brought the dress and shoes to church on Sunday, and I pinned and marked a new hem. The dress is made from a gorgeous dark green stretch velvet. The skirt overlaps in front and is open to the hem. I hung it up in my sewing room and looked at it a couple of times to make sure I understood the construction before I started taking it apart. In the end, it was easier than I expected. The dress and the lining were sewn in a continuous circle with a coverstitch hem. I worked around and pinned up the entire circumference, then hung the dress from a hook on the wall over my coverstitch machine. I put the seam guide on the bed of the machine and very carefully stitched a new hem. Once I was sure that the new line of stitching looked good and was correct, I pressed the hem (on a towel), then went back with a pair of duckbill (appliqué) scissors and carefully cut off the excess fabric just above the new stitching line. That is not my preferred way of making coverstitch hems, but it’s a legitimate method. In this case, it was much easier and more accurate than first cutting the excess fabric, then folding up and stitching a hem.

I am happy with how it turned out. I’ll deliver the dress on Sunday.

After lunch and a phone visit with DD#1, I tackled the Jalie Éléonore pants.

I traced the pattern, then located the stretch poplin I bought on clearance at Joann Fabrics and cut them out. I went up a size from the Renee pants because those were ponte and these are poplin. This pair is being made straight from the pattern without alteration. I didn’t have to alter the Renee pants, so I want to check the fit on these before I start messing with them. Also, these are going to be a store display/class sample.

By then, it was time to start working on dinner. I changed the needles in the sewing machine and serger and rethreaded both with black thread so they would be ready to go today.

****************

From the “Where has common sense gone?” department, I logged into QuickBooks Online yesterday morning to write some checks and was met with a message that an update was available. I agreed to download and install the update. (I always wonder if something will break after the update and turn a two-minute task into a three-hour ordeal.) After the update, I was met with a splash screen letting me know that, Hey!—this update is intended to restore the appearance and function of QBO back to the Desktop version familiar to users!

Gee, maybe you should have left it that way from the get-go. 🤦‍♀️

Back in the olden days—get off my lawn—it seemed that companies were actually concerned with meeting customers’ needs. Build a better mousetrap, etc. More and more, it seems that companies are completely tone-deaf to what people want. Instead, companies bring the items to market that THEY want to sell (or are being incentivized to sell) and try to jam them down consumers’ throats. No one really wants to buy a car loaded with useless options that add 10K to the price tag. Joann Fabrics customers would like to buy fabric, not cheap Dollar Store crap from China. Everyone I know hates the software-as-a-service model that Adobe and Intuit have espoused, which is intended to bleed users slowly and continuously. (I did switch to Affinity, but I miss some things about Adobe Creative Suite.) And while I am sure that it kept a whole office building of software engineers busy, the QBO redesign slowed my workflow to a crawl because everything that used to require one mouse click now requires five.

I’m getting tired of being held hostage.

I was considering a Volvo station wagon as a replacement for The Diva when she finally wears out. The husband and I watched a video review of the Volvo the other night. The reviewer is a very sharp guy who owns a repair shop, and he went over that car with a fine-toothed comb. His recommendation? You don’t want this car in your life if you’re ever going to have to work on it. I thought the Germans were bad. The Swedes make the Germans look like kindergarteners when it comes to over-engineering. Halfway through the video, I looked at the husband and said, “I’m not getting this car, am I?” and he shook his head.

Honestly, I am about ready to go back to a Ram pickup, except that I don’t want to have to drive one in Seattle. I’ll keep looking.

Is This Too Loud?

I am still trying to catch up from last week. We had an unexpected emergency here this weekend—nothing major, but it required that I spend all of yesterday attending to it. And even though it disrupted the schedule, it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The situation is sorted now and I am working to get back on track. I haven’t even unloaded my car from this past weekend.

That also means that this week’s podcast might not get posted until later today. We’ll see how things go this morning and if I can get it done before I have to leave to teach my serger mastery class.

Have you seen the Minerva video highlighting the release of their new crush velvet fabric?

I’m trying to be good and not buy anything else until I sew up some of what I’ve got, but I will need a Christmas outfit and I want something luxe. The prints are absolutely gorgeous. This one caught my eye immediately:

I love love love it but I think it might be too loud for church. I may have to go with one of the more demure prints. I’m still thinking about it. This print also comes on some of their other substrates, like the viscose jersey.

I should have started sewing my own clothes a long time ago.

Other than trying to keep my schedule on an even footing, nothing momentous is happening this week. It is the first of the month, so I have a lot of paperwork to handle. (I still hate QuickBooks online, in case you were wondering.) DD#2 asked me yesterday about plans for Thanksgiving, so I need to get those in place. I think I’ll be going to Seattle. I am looking at taking a private class at the Sewing and Design School in Tacoma that week. I’m being very generous to myself with the birthday gifts this year. (My birthday is the day after Thanksgiving.) Taking some sewing classes is exactly what I want.

Be a Good Student

I taught a Laundry Day Tee class at the quilt store yesterday to six students. Seven registered, but one had to make a trip out of town unexpectedly. All in all, it was a very good class. Every student finished a top by the end of the day, although most took theirs home to hem. I had one motivated student who cut and finished two tops, because she’s leaving on a trip today and wanted to take them with her.

I did get a bit preachy at the beginning of class about students coming to class prepared—or rather, not prepared. Once again, I had people show up and tell me they didn’t have a pattern, so we went over the need to check the supply list for links to patterns and details about what to bring. The store owner overheard part of my sermon and said that she would make some changes at the registration end of things. I also made a point of saying that just because a pattern was free on the internet did not mean that we were entitled to do whatever we wanted with it, and that part of using a free pattern involved supporting the designer in other ways. I encouraged my students to go to the Love Notions website and purchase at least one pattern.

I think I got the point across. Truly, though, it is a PITA for the teacher when people don’t come prepared. I had one lady who came with no pattern and no fabric, so she was behind from the start of the class. She was able to finish a top, but she required extra help from me in finding fabric and getting the pattern traced in her size.

I’m not opposed to helping people figure out how to download and print patterns—I know that some of this technology is new—but those arrangements have to be made before class.

I sound like a grump, but I do love teaching. One of my students made her LDT from some crepe fabric, which was a real leap but worked beautifully. I wouldn’t have thought of using crepe. It is stretchy enough that the only change she had to make was to cut the neckband on the bias. And now I want to make an LDT out of some crepe I have in the stash.

Another student made her LDT entirely on her sewing machine (and used some Walmart remnant rack fabric). Yet another student—who wasn’t very comfortable with her machine when she started—was serging like a rock star by the end of class. She made a gorgeous long-sleeve LDT with the cowl neck option and modeled it for us when she was done.

I loved that each student was willing to experiment a bit and choose the pattern options that worked for her.

After class, I headed back to the church to help clean up after the sale. Here are a few more pictures:

This was Sarah’s table full of linen handtowels and beeswax candles. These were very popular at last year’s sale. Sarah has done a lot of craft shows and knows how to create a beautiful display.

Sunnie had a number of paintings for sale, too:

I have a couple of her paintings. One hangs in our bedroom and I get to look at it every morning. The scene is the pasture behind Sunnie’s house and it’s one of my favorite spots in our little community.

Our last customer left at 4 pm and our group got to work. While the cashiers did the final calculations—we surpassed last year’s total—the rest of us collected the items that were left, packed them up, and put the church back the way we found it when we started. It helps that this is my church because I know where everything lives and I’m also the person with the key to the door. We were done in an hour and a half.

I came home, had some dinner, and went to bed. The husband was out in the shop repairing a cylinder on the forklift, so we didn’t get a chance to visit with each other. (The repair was completed successfully.) I have to play at church this morning but I plan to relax this afternoon. This has been a busy couple of days. I am looking forward to having a break. It looks like the rain is ending for a while, too, but still no frost in the forecast.

Another Growing Season in the Books

Our next-door neighbor, Mike, and I left around 8 am Thursday to go get pork. Mike’s property backs up onto our pig pasture and he feeds our pigs scraps over the fence. He also bought half a hog from us this year. He offered to drive his truck up to the processor and help me haul boxes of frozen pork back here. We probably could have gotten it all into his truck, but I drove the station wagon. The processor is halfway to Spokane and I did not want to have to make two trips.

I love this time of year. The drive was lovely. Tourists are mostly gone and the fall colors are coming out. The processor was ready for us and had all the boxes labeled and ready to load. I asked to be put on their schedule for next fall. I don’t know if we’ll do pigs again, but if we do, we will have a processing date in late September or early October. We used to do that with our first processor until they went out of business with no warning.

I am glad to have all of that sorted. And with all of this cool and rainy weather, I am ready to stay inside and sew.

****************

I missed setup for market, but other members did a wonderful job getting all the items placed for sale. The quilts are laid out over the pews in our church sanctuary:

We started doing this at last year’s sale and it works very well. Besides being a dramatic focal point, it frees up space for other items in the fellowship hall:

We had quite a rush as soon as the doors opened; in fact, I had people stopping me in the parking lot as I was walking in at 9:30 because they wanted to know if we were open yet. (We opened at 10 am.) Business was brisk until well after lunchtime, when we got a break. Smaller items seemed to be selling better than quilts. I expected that. Quilts are a ton of work and we price ours accordingly. Also, I think that people have a lot less money to spend right now thanks to rampant inflation. All of my potholders went quickly—they usually do—and the majority of my canvas grocery bags.

Trying to figure out what will sell is tricky and not worth the extra effort because every year is different. I think it makes more sense just to make a variety of items and have fun doing it. I am trying to concentrate on making items that other people don’t—I have a serger and an industrial Juki, so I probably will continue to make items like canvas grocery bags.

I sat in the Christmas decor area—unfortunately, we have to keep an eye out that items don’t walk out the door—and worked on a prayer shawl. This is usually a good time to do some visiting and catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while.

Market is open today, as well, from 10-4. I’m teaching, but will come by after class to help clean up. And then I expect to come home and fall into bed, exhausted, LOL. I think I will be able to get in some serious sewing time this week. though. It’s time to make pants.

A Wrench in the Schedule

We are supposed to set up for the craft co-op sale today. The meat processor called yesterday afternoon and said, “Your pork is ready.” Implicit in that statement is “You need to come get it ASAP” because the processor needs the freezer space for the next round of processing. We never know when they are going to call; we only get a ballpark estimate of a couple of weeks from when the pigs go in. The husband is pouring concrete at 8 am today or he would make the trip.

That means that instead of helping to set up for the sale today, I will be driving two hours one-way to the processor to pick up 700 pounds of pork. Our next-door neighbor is coming along with his truck. He bought pork from us and said he would be happy to help transport. Between his truck and the Diva, we should be able to get it all back here and delivered this afternoon.

I knew this was a possibility when the pigs went to the processor. I just wish the processor had called on Tuesday, because we could have gone yesterday. Oh, well.

One of the (common sense) rules about the co-op sale is that everyone has to help. That means helping with set-up/take-down and being there for part of the sale. I’m not going to be at the sale Saturday because I’m teaching. I can’t be there for set-up because I have to retrieve pork. It is possible to sell at the sale without being there, but the co-op takes a larger cut of the individual’s profits because other people have to do the work on that person’s behalf. I don’t have enough inventory to make it work if the co-op takes a larger cut, so I had decided not to participate in this year’s sale. However, when I went up to the church last night to give my key to the two ladies who were setting up, they convinced me to bring my stuff anyway. As long as I am there on Friday and come to help take down after my class on Saturday, I will fulfill my obligation to the co-op for the sale.

Everything is priced and labeled, so I will drop the boxes off at the church on my way to the processor.

The next couple of days will be a marathon, but next week’s schedule is mostly clear.

*************

I had a discussion with one of the quilt store employees yesterday. She also teaches there, and we discussed the fact that students are not coming prepared to class. (I touched on this in this week’s podcast, too.) The supply lists for each class are on the website, but apparently, students aren’t reading them. She had a student come to class last week without a sewing machine. I find that baffling. Why would you come to a sewing class without a machine?

[My supply lists are incredibly detailed and always begin with “Sewing machine or serger in working condition.”]

When I related this to the husband, he said he doesn’t think this is anything new. I think it is. When Tera and I went to Sew Expo, each of us took a rolling case containing everything we thought we could possibly need for any of the classes we were taking. If we had shown up unprepared, the teacher likely would have shrugged her shoulders. The expectation that someone else—in this case, the teacher—will take care of everything for you is odd, but it’s becoming more prevalent.

We’re going to ask the class coordinator to find some way to highlight the supply lists on the website so that people will know to take a look at them for each class. The husband says he doesn’t think that will help. (Such a cynic.) If someone shows up to one of my classes without a machine or a pattern, though, I’m just going to shrug my shoulders.

*************

The Walmart remnant rack was jam packed with new fabrics yesterday. I looked but didn’t see anything I couldn’t live without. Looking through my stash, I have gotten some absolutely gorgeous fabrics from that remnant rack in the past year.

I whipped up a Pattern for Pirates Cocoon Cardigan yesterday afternoon:

This is such an instant gratification project. It doesn’t take long at all, although I still have to hem the sleeves. The fabric is a waffle knit from Walmart.

Shoemaker's Children

Someone needs some new potholders.

I wonder if I know anyone who sews? LOL. I made these about 10 years ago. I remember sewing them on my Singer Rocketeer. Now I make them in bulk by layering large pieces of fabric for top and bottom with batting and Insul-Brite. I quilt the whole sandwich on the Q20 and then cut the large piece into potholder-sized pieces. Finish with binding and ta-da!—potholders. I’ll have some in the sale.

Everything is tagged and priced. I don’t have a ton of stuff to sell, but I have enough.

All of the squash came in except for these huge babies. I have no idea what variety they are. If ever there was a label, it’s missing.

Some of our squash from the plant sale was mislabeled. I heard that from a customer and I also had incorrect labels on some of the plants I brought home. These acorn squash were labeled Galeux, which is that warty pumpkin.

I started Table King acorn squash in the greenhouse, but these don’t look like Table King. We’ll have to be more careful about our labeling next spring. Squash seedlings look very similar.

The butternut squash are finding homes, happily.

I made “egg roll in a bowl” in the Instant Pot for dinner with one of my cabbages. The cabbages—the ones I was able to keep the ground squirrels from destroying—did really well. Elysian had a variety in the plant sale called Jung’s Triplet Hybrid. I put in a couple of those and they made the cutest little softball-sized white cabbage. Those are going into the rotation again next year. Sometimes I want a small cabbage and they are the perfect size.

All that’s left is to dig potatoes.

**************

The fourth podcast episode is up. The podcast is getting some traction; I host it externally at BuzzSprout, and they send me an analytics report every few days. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of downloads. I will keep trying to make improvements as I go along. There are a thousand details still needing to be addressed, though, mostly having to do with social media (ugh).

I found a very interesting video yesterday; it was linked on the Joann Fabrics subreddit so I went and checked it out. The YouTube channel is called Sewing Report and the host of the channel did a two-hour dig into what is going on at Joann Fabrics. I think she may be a former (or current) journalist. She stated right up front that she only used sources that could be verified, which included everything from Joanns’ own website all the way down to SEC filings. I watched the video while cutting out a Patterns 4 Pirates Cocoon Cardigan.

Yes, Joanns is currently owned by a private equity firm. (Technically, it is a public company, but the private equity firm owns something like 70% of shares.) This private equity company has owned it since 2019, I think, but it may be that they have finally decided it is a lost cause. The company has a staggering amount of debt. Of course, it seems to be trying to dig itself out of a hole by cutting employees to part-time minimum wage status and forcing customers to buy online. The current inflationary environment doesn’t help, either. People are cutting back. I watched another YouTube video a few weeks ago on the Quilt Addicts Anonymous channel where the owner talked about how inflation was crushing their business, directly and indirectly. Her business went from a high of 14 employees a few years ago to now simply trying to keep the doors open.

The whole situation is very sad. I doubt Joanns management understands what customers want, and until they make an effort to figure that out, they are trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teaspoon. Perhaps some of the execs should take a pay cut.

I also found out yesterday that Target is closing two Seattle stores, both of which my kids shopped at. The reason given was increasing theft and security issues. DD#2 told me that the Target nearest her—one that is closing—has everything locked up in cases, so if you want to buy anything, you have to find an employee to unlock the case.

Empires fall.

A Million Butternut Squash

I rely on Michael Snyder’s Pacific Northwest Weather Watch channel on YouTube for an accurate weather forecast, and he’s been talking for a week about the impending storm train coming in off the Pacific. We had a lovely day yesterday with sun and temps in the mid-70s. Today is supposed to be slightly cooler, followed by a week of temps in the 50s and rain. (Still no frost in the forecast, though.) I want everything brought in from the garden—either stored in the house or, temporarily, in the greenhouse. I cleaned off the two Honeycrisp trees yesterday afternoon.

[A neighbor up the road caught a grizzly bear on his game cam the other night. I saw the pictures. So did one of the bear biologists at FWP, apparently, who estimated its size at over 1000 pounds. 😳]

After getting the apples in, I went out to the garden to deal with the butternut squash. I worry that if I leave them out in the garden, they will rot in the rain. I put in two butternut squash plants last summer and none of the squash ripened before frost. This year, I hedged my bets and put in five plants. And this is what happened:

I didn’t count, but I would guesstimate that there are about 60 butternut squash there. And another 20 or so are still out in the garden and have to come in today.

These are all up for grabs, local peeps. There are personal-size squash, family-size squash, and everything in between. I even told the UPS guy to stop and get some the next time he drives past the greenhouse on the way to the neighbor’s. Whatever is left next week probably will be taken to the food bank.

The load of pig manure that was spread out over that section of the garden last spring no doubt contributed to the bounty.

Our tray of lettuce in the greenhouse is pretty well spent. I need to start up the indoor system again soon.

**************

I had a great visit with my naturopath yesterday. He said my bloodwork was perfect and that I am one of the healthiest people he knows. Considering that I was a hot mess, health wise, when I first saw him 15 or 16 years ago, that is a big deal.

And I had a wonderful e-mail waiting for me when I got home—my class proposals for Sew Expo 2024 were accepted! The class coordinator sent me a lovely note and said she was excited to see my proposals. We are working on scheduling. I don’t want to give specifics about the classes other than to say they are three knitting classes geared toward knitters who want to increase their repertoire of skills. The dates for next year’s Expo are February 29 to March 4.

I am trying to find a pants pattern for the class in Spokane in November. This is proving tougher than I expected. I could teach the Jalie Renee pants, but I don’t think that that style—skinny legs—is going to appeal to some of the women I know want to take the class. I had a request for pants without an elasticized waist, or with elastic that doesn’t bunch. The Renee pants are like that. They have elastic, but it’s smooth and hidden inside the waistband. What I need is a pattern like the Renee pants on top, but with wider legs. I could hack the Renee pattern to have wider legs. StyleArc has a number of really nice pants patterns, but they split their sizing such that if someone has to grade between two specific sizes, where the pattern breaks, they’d have to buy two patterns. And should I do knit pants or stretch wovens? Questions.

Arrggghhh. I’m still thinking about this. I need to get cracking, though, in case I need to make a new class sample. Lots to do this week. The fourth podcast episode will be up later this morning.

Ruffly Aprons on the Serger

Apron class was a lot of fun. I only had one student—she took my Serger 101 class at this store last month—but she was engaged and ready to learn and that makes teaching that much more enjoyable. She has a couple of friends who were interested in taking the class but both had conflicts yesterday. I said that if they wanted to choose a date, I’d be happy to arrange something for all three of them. I’ve started offering that option to students. The two women who took my Harper Cardigan class also wanted to take the Laundry Day Tee class that I’m teaching next weekend, but they will be out of town. I told them I would do a class for them if we can find a date that works for all three of us and the store.

My student has a serger she inherited from a cousin when the cousin upgraded. It’s a Brother 925D and it is probably the easiest serger I’ve ever threaded. And despite being an older model, the machine was able to do all the techniques in the pattern. We were using an apron pattern designed by Deb Canham for BabyLock and provided as a free download on the BabyLock website. I like to use manufacturer patterns when I can—this store is a BabyLock dealer—but one of the issues I sometimes encounter is that manufacturer patterns are designed to showcase the latest and greatest features of the new high-end machines. Those features might be lacking on older or lower-end machines. For example, the newer sergers can make stitches up to 9mm wide. My Juki 654-DE only makes stitches up to 7mm wide, and this Brother 925D had a max stitch width of 6mm. The apron featured flatlock stitches with 12wt thread on the pocket. We were able to get the Brother to make the flatlock stitch, but it wasn’t as wide or as dramatic as it was on the class sample, which I made on my Bernina.

Still, the apron turned out beautifully:

The last couple of steps have to be done on the sewing machine, so my student was going to do those at home. She also plans to make a Christmas version of this apron. Both of us were very happy with the class. She added several new techniques to her arsenal, including working with decorative thread and gathering. I still think she’s going to outgrow that machine sooner rather than later, but it has been an excellent machine for her to learn on. If I ever run across that model in a thrift store, I certainly would consider buying it.

The store was very busy yesterday. Apparently, a large group of quilters was having a retreat somewhere here in the Flathead and shopping was on the schedule. They split into two groups; one half came to the store north of town and one half went to the store south of town. After lunch, they flipped.

Speaking of that Harper Cardigan (again), I ran across a YouTube video last night where the sewist made the cropped version and added buttons. I am so tempted. I shied away from cropped tops and cardigans during that interminable period of time when they were paired with low-rise pants but now that the fashion world has come to its senses and high-rise pants are back in style—forever, I hope—I find that I love cropped tops and sweaters paired with my high-rise, wide-leg Liz Claiborne jeans.

**************

The husband stayed home yesterday and worked on replacing all the screws holding the metal roofing in place on the porch roof. Our house is 27 years old and he has a laundry list of things that need to be addressed.

I’d like to stay home and get a few things crossed off my list, too, but we have another lunch and meeting after church today. I hope this is the last one for a while.

I’ve got an appointment with my naturopath first thing tomorrow morning. I want to get my snow tires put on this week, too, because I’ll be driving to Seattle in a few weeks. If I don’t get them put on before that trip, I can guarantee there will be a snowstorm over Snoqualmie Pass the day I drive over. The rest of the week will be devoted to getting ready for the co-op sale and the Laundry Day Tee class.