Making Peace with Nathalie

I lost an entire day on Thursday. I had a scratchy throat on Tuesday afternoon, but it didn’t get any worse on Wednesday, so I thought that perhaps I had dodged a bullet. No such luck. After breakfast Thursday, I managed to get the collar made for a second Nathalie top (no interfacing in this one) before giving up and curling up under a quilt to drink tea and binge watch mountain climbing disaster videos for the rest of the day. ‘Tis the season.

Tera texted me Thursday evening with a picture of the Nathalie she made. I asked her about the fabric and she said it was a French terry she picked up on a Walmart remnant rack on some recent travels. Tera and I are friends for a reason.

I woke up feeling better yesterday morning, although more than a bit annoyed to have lost a day’s worth of work. My voice sounds like rusty chains being dragged across a concrete slab, so I have to delay recording the podcast for a few days, too.

And while I am still not firing on all cylinders, I managed to make a second Nathalie top yesterday and I am quite happy with it. I think I am going to wear it to church tomorrow.

The fabric is a Joanns luxe fleece bought on clearance. I’ll talk more about the fabric in a moment.

Part of the reason Tera texted me Thursday night was to show me a picture of the Nathalie she made. Hers had a lot of excess fabric at the shoulders. It fit well in the rest of the bodice. I have broad shoulders, so I don’t have that excess fabric there, although the shoulder seam does drop off the shoulder about an inch.

This is an athletic wear design, so that doesn’t surprise me. The sleeve cap is correspondingly shallow; that’s a combination often seen in garment knitting patterns. The intent is to create a relaxed silhouette without it being boxy.

Tera worked on adjusting that shoulder area and texted me another photo yesterday afternoon. I think I am going to frankenpattern the closer-fitting shoulders and sleeves from my favorite Burda 6315 with the Nathalie. I do like the rest of the Nathalie top, especially that cowl. Tera and I want to get together in January to monkey around with the bodice slopers from our class at Sew Expo last March.

So . . . that fabric. I bought this on clearance and had 1-5/8 yards, which was just enough for the shorter version with the band and no pocket. (I did add an inch to the length.) I kicked around the idea of hemming it, but I decided to stay as close to the original pattern as I could. This band is fine because it hangs straight instead of pulling in. I might hem the next one.

The fabric is a “luxe fleece” substrate with a gold pattern printed on it. Interestingly, the issues I ran into were not due to the gold print. (I did have to vacuum my sewing room when I was done, which is par for the course with fleece.) This fleece doesn’t have an obvious nap on the front—or it’s obscured by the print—but it most certainly does on the reverse side. It has such an obvious nap on the reverse side that I had to be very careful to feed the fabric through the machines, both serger and sewing machine, with the nap. If the nap fed against the feed dogs, the fabric would hang up. I figured that out by copious testing on scrap fabric, because I knew I had no room for error.

Also, this is the reason I don’t like patterns that specify 1/4" garment seams:

A 1/4" seam is 6mm wide. I have a 6mm stitch width setting on my serger, but for thick fabrics, like fleece, I use the largest stitch width setting, which is 9mm. You wouldn’t think the extra 3mm would make a difference, but it does, especially on multiple layers. Through testing, I also determined I needed to lengthen the stitch to the longest setting and increase the differential feed. A serger seam made on thick fabrics where the stitch length is too short and the stitch width too narrow has a tendency to pucker. The seam in the photo, above, is nigh on perfect, but it’s a bit wider than 1/4". I understand that pattern companies want to include customers who don’t own sergers. However, 1/4" seams are for quilt tops, not garments. Get off my lawn.

On this Nathalie, I sewed in the collar on the sewing machine using a 3/8" seam allowance, then finished the raw edges with the serger. I see lots of justification in patterns for not finishing edges on knits because they won’t ravel, but I want the inside of my makes to be as attractive as the outside. I attached the cuffs and the bottom band directly on the serger.

I think I have made my peace with this pattern. There will be more Nathalie tops in my future—and maybe a dress?—although hacked and refined to my sensibilities.

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Those of you who have been around for a while may remember that we lost internet service (CenturyLink) for two weeks at Christmas last year due to a couple of problems. The first was a severe cold snap that resulted in Bonneville Power throttling down the amount of electricity they were sending to western Montana so they could serve their Washington state customers first. Our electric co-op had to do some fast maneuvering to redistribute power across our valley, and in the process, some of the components in the CenturyLink box up at the corner were fried. The second issue is that every winter, without fail, someone misses that corner when the road is icy (or they are drunk, or both) and takes out the service box. That happened again recently—this time very thoroughly:

RIP, CenturyLink box. Everyone downstream of that box likely is without internet service again. We still have service because no one runs over a Starlink satellite and destroys it.

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The husband texted his business associates Wednesday morning to let them know that the 2008 work truck was for sale. Within 15 minutes, he had people wanting to come look at it. He ended up selling it to a farmer friend of ours who grows hemp commercially. Everyone who knows the husband knows that he takes excellent care of his vehicles, so I was not surprised at the amount of interest. The proceeds from the sale of this truck will get applied to the loan for the new truck to pay that down.

And I went for almost two whole weeks without the check engine light being on in The Diva, but it is lit up again. The husband checked the code; it’s yet another emissions sensor. I think they will just continue to fail serially until he has replaced all of them.

Nathalie And I Are Not Friends (Yet)

Some projects—even ones made from well-drafted patterns—crash and burn. I worked on the Jalie Nathalie cowl-neck pullover yesterday but failed to make anything wearable. That doesn’t happen very often. Some of the problems were due to user error but some were inherent in the pattern. Jalie patterns tend to be some of the better-drafted patterns out there, so I was a bit surprised by all the problems I encountered.

1. In an effort to conserve space—because patterns are expensive to produce—there is only one bottom bodice pattern piece. The front bodice top and back bodice top are separate pattern pieces, so if you’re going to trace the pattern, as I always do, you have to trace the pieces and either tape them together or trace the bottom half, then slide the tracing paper over and trace the top. There is a suggestion in the pattern to tape both front top and back top to the bottom half of the bodice and simply fold down one or the other when cutting each body piece. Eh. I would have paid a bit more money for a second sheet of paper that had each individual pattern piece laid out in its entirety, but that’s me. I have enough spatial problems that I need well-labeled pattern pieces to ensure I am not cutting the wrong thing at the wrong time.

2. Speaking of cutting the wrong thing, I cut the longer tunic length, because a longer top is always better for me. However, I had it in my head that I was making the shorter version with the narrower bottom band (store sample), so when it came time to sew the kangaroo pocket onto the front bodice, I placed it according to those directions instead of the directions for the tunic length. It would have been okay for me because I have long arms, but someone with shorter arms wouldn’t have been able to use the pocket because it’s too far down the body.

3. If this hadn’t been a potential store sample, I would have left off the pocket. If I teach this as a class, we will be leaving off the pocket because of time constraints. I thought it was interesting that the pattern advised interfacing the (two-layer) collar if using a thinner, drapier fabric but said nothing about stabilizing the pocket. I was using a modal sweatshirt fleece, and it was obvious to me that a single-layer pocket was going to be way too thin. I cut two pocket pieces, seamed them together, then turned the pocket inside out and topstitched the openings. That made a beefier pocket.

4. I did interface the collar. However, I only had a small piece of knit interfacing and wasn’t paying attention to the direction of the stretch. It stretches horizontally but not vertically. Also, there is nothing in the pattern that indicates what kind of interfacing to use. I use knit interfacing on just about everything, even wovens, because I prefer it, but what if you don’t know about or can’t get knit interfacing? We’ll come back to that in a moment.

5. The pattern specifies 1/4" seam allowances. I’m sorry, but that narrow a seam allowance is inappropriate for garments, especially when trying to seam together five layers of sweatshirt fabric. At a minimum, I want a 3/8" seam allowance.

6. As it was, I had to assemble parts of this garment on my sewing machine. That was fine, but taking out a triple-stitch stretch stitch or a lightning stitch is even more miserable than taking out a serger seam. It also occurred to me that I should offer a class on sewing knits on a sewing machine for those people who don’t have sergers and don’t want to buy one.

7. Assembly was going swimmingly until I got to the collar. The sizing was great. Jalie patterns always nail the sizing. The longer tunic length looked good on me (pocket placement notwithstanding). The collar assembly directions were well-illustrated—and I understand there is an accompanying video—although the numbering of the steps in the assembly was bizarre. Each step was set off with a bullet point, and the number of that step appeared in parentheses at the end of the paragraph. [Pattern writers, please be kind to the end user and number each step at the beginning so that it is easy to find, especially when it is referred to in other parts of the pattern!!!!!]

8. I assembled and basted the collar as instructed. The collar was smaller than the neck opening. On a knit garment, that is to be expected, because you stretch the collar as you ease it into the opening. However, because of the interfacing, the collar did not stretch. I would have cut and made a new collar, but I was out of fabric. I tried everything I could think of to make the original collar work. I took out the basting stitches and tried to move the overlapped pieces to make the collar bigger. That didn’t help—because of the collar shaping, I suspect—and every time I went to pin the collar into the neck opening, the neck opening stretched out even a bit more. I tried sewing in the collar on my machine with the neck opening as the bottom layer in hopes that the feed dogs would ease in the extra fabric. Nope. After an hour of frustrated sewing, I had a pullover that was complete except for the collar, and the collar was hanging half in and half out of the opening.

9. In hindsight, what I should have done was to sew the collar in as a single layer and save sewing down the overlap on the inside until I had most of the collar attached. If the two sides of the collar ended up being not quite even, it wouldn’t matter as much on the inside. That idea, of course, didn’t occur to me until after I had tried everything else, and I was not going to sit there for two hours painstakingly removing those sewing machine stitches. Alternatively—if I ever have to interface a collar for this pattern again—I will avoid putting interfacing on the bottom 1" of the collar piece. Anyone who used woven interfacing on this collar would have run into the same problem.

I may try again today—I have other suitable fabric in the stash—but we’ll see. I might have to do something else, like clean or bake cookies. You know things are bad when I voluntarily bake cookies. (Our employees kept an eye on things here while we were getting the truck, so I promised them each a batch of cookies.)

I consulted with the other Janet, who has made this top twice. Interestingly, she also had problems, although she had different problems than I did. I’m not eliminating this pattern as a class just yet, but I won’t commit until I am able to make one successfully.

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I was watching a YouTube sewing channel yesterday when the sewist apologized for the fact that she makes so many garments. She pointed out that she has a sewing channel, though, so making garments is part and parcel of what she does for a living. Did someone take her to task? Why do we feel we must apologize for making so many clothes? I may not keep everything I make, but I try to make things in such a way that I can donate them to a local thrift store. Those items might be just what someone else wants. And I am learning a lot as I go. Theory only gets you so far.

Also, if you feel the need to criticize a content creator for making content, perhaps you need a hobby. 😐

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It occurred to me that I should describe the topography of the Pacific Northwest for those of you who have never been to this part of the US. Seattle isn’t out in the middle of a piece of open land, like a city in the Midwest. Seattle is situated on the west side of the Cascade range of mountains, and there are only a few routes in and out. You can go west out of the city to the Olympic Peninsula, either by taking a ferry across Puget Sound or by driving down around Tacoma. You can go north to Stevens Pass and then east on Hwy 2 (or keep going north to Canada if you are so inclined). You can go south to Portland. You can go east over Snoqualmie Pass. There are a few other mountain passes, most of which are seasonal. That’s it. I-90 begins at sea level in downtown Seattle and heads east up over Snoqualmie Pass, which is at an elevation of approximately 4700 feet. That elevation gain happens over a distance of about 50 miles. You can see why it took us so long to leave Seattle last Friday, helped along by people who don’t know how to drive in snow.

Things Are Different

I went to town to run errands yesterday and made a few interesting observations along the way. In my experience, the day after Christmas typically has been a big shopping day—people are out getting Christmas supplies on clearance, returning items that don’t fit, etc. Last year, Susan and I made the rounds of Michaels, Joanns, and Hobby Lobby to buy clear plastic and glass ornaments at deep discount. We squirreled them away for the homestead foundation’s annual Christmas gift-making workshop this year.

I tried to do the same thing this year. No one had those ornaments in stock. (Somehow I missed noting that before Christmas.) In fact, the leftover Christmas stock was almost nonexistent in most stores, and I was out and about early. A lady in front of me at Joann Fabrics complained to the cashier that she couldn’t find Christmas ribbon on sale anywhere.

I also noted that few people were out shopping. The atmosphere seemed very subdued.

As far as Joann Fabrics is concerned, they have hired more staff recently and I noticed that their posted hours have expanded. The store has been open 11-5 every day for the past year. Now the sign says 10-7. The store is full of racks of unopened bolts of fabric and a ton of fabric has been moved to clearance. I bought a couple of quilt batts so I can move some of these tops through the queue.

I did a fair bit of damage at the quilt store where I teach. I went in to get a backing for a quilt top that has been languishing far too long. I came out with the backing. I also came out with some Kaffe Fassett cotton sateen. It was in the wideback section, but after touching it, I decided it would make a beautiful garment. Maybe the Itch to Stitch Celeste Dress?

The store had also gotten in a shipment of QT Fabrics’ lovely double-brushed poly, so I bought some for another pleated Burda top, and I succumbed and bought two yards of a deep, saturated blue and purple rayon batik for a keyhole top.

[While I’ve been concentrating on serger classes for the past couple of years, I am thinking that I shouldn’t limit my clothing classes to only those which can be made with knits on a serger. I suspect the demand would be there for other types of classes, too.]

Lest anyone (deliberately) misunderstand me, I am not lamenting the absence of rampant consumerism with these observations. That’s all they are—observations. In fact, I enjoy getting out and running errands in Kalispell when it’s not being overrun by crowds. What I saw yesterday was such a departure from the way things have been for many years, though, that I thought it was worth noting.

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I bought olive green thread while I was out and about, so I’ll try to get that Nathalie top put together today. At my request, the husband brought me the old generator cover. After I wash it, I’m going to take it apart to use as a pattern for the new one.

He and the employees are going back to work today. I enjoy it when he’s around, but I don’t get anything done because he is a Shiny Toy and I want to talk to him. I need to record next week’s podcast—probably tomorrow—and I have a thousand little details to tie up before the end of the year.

Back in Our Workshops

I know I said I was going to take it easy this week, but I lied. I think I am genetically incapable of being inactive. The husband is even worse. By the end of our recent road trip, it was like being around a caged lion. He spent yesterday working on his trucks. We are selling the 2008 work truck, so he was moving tools to the new truck and cleaning out the old one. I puttered around in my sewing room.

A few weeks ago, the class coordinator at the quilt store—whose name is also Janet, which causes no small amount of confusion on occasion—had on a beautiful cowl-neck pullover she had made. I asked her what pattern she used, and she told me it was the Jalie Nathalie:

That was a few days before Robin and I went to Missoula, so when we stopped in at The Confident Stitch, I checked to see if they had the pattern in stock. They carry quite a nice selection of paper patterns. I bought a copy there.

This week, the other Janet sent me an e-mail and said our store had ordered the Nathalie pattern to have on hand and maybe it would make a good class? I agreed. I traced the pattern Sunday afternoon between church services, then cut it out yesterday. I am using some olive green modal sweatshirt knit from Joanns, bought specifically for testing patterns and making class samples because I would not be caught dead wearing olive green.

I could have put the top together yesterday—I think it will be a fairly quick sew once the kangaroo pocket is assembled—but I don’t have any olive green thread. I will get some in town today or tomorrow. I am making the shorter version to test the pattern. The longer version would be nice to wear with leggings.

After lunch, I quilted some big fabric sandwiches on the Q20 and cut out another stack of potholders.

I may keep doing this until I can’t stand it anymore. I need to keep moving stuff through the quilting queue and I have some quilt projects lined up that have to get done. I am keenly aware that I have about two months of quilt production time, because once March rolls around, I’ll have to start working on gardening projects.

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I’m also spending a bit of time in the mornings working on plans and scheduling for the podcast. You may notice, if you look at the footer of these website pages, that I added a Paypal donation link.

No one is under any obligation to send money.

I don’t have ads on my blog for a reason. Frankly, I won’t read a blog if it is littered with ads because it is too difficult for me to find the content. I stopped reading Sherri McConnell’s and Bonnie Hunter’s blogs for this exact reason. I also think ads on a blog looks amateurish. (Yes, I could use an ad blocker but I shouldn’t have to go to that much trouble.) This blog is free for reader enjoyment and will remain so. However, the podcast is a different beast. I probably won’t monetize podcast content for another six months or so, but I am considering adding an option for premium content. Whether that takes the form of subscriber-only podcasts, patterns, or other perks remains to be seen.

So I am starting with a Paypal link. If you want to help defray the costs I incur with the blog website, feel free. The link goes to my Big Sky Knitting Designs Paypal account, which I have had forever and is the same one I use for selling knitting patterns.

Dashing Through the Snow

The husband and I left early Thursday morning for Seattle. We had an uneventful trip over. The weather was clear, traffic was reasonable, and the dashboard in The Diva was free of check engine lights. The plan was to pick up the new work truck on Friday morning and drive back to Montana. We had done all the paperwork in advance so that all we had to do was walk in, get the keys, and leave with a truck.

We were on our way into Red Robin for dinner when the husband’s cell phone rang. It was the fleet manager from Tacoma Dodge. He has been an absolute hero throughout this entire process, so I am sure that it pained him excessively to have to tell the husband that the employee who was given the job of filling the truck with fuel put gasoline in it instead of diesel. Fortunately, this guy did not start the truck. They towed the truck back to the shop and the plan was to drop the tank Friday morning, drain and flush it, and reinstall it. We were told to be there at noon.

[If the employee had started the truck, that process would have been much more involved, to the point where I would have left the husband in Tacoma and headed home by myself.]

It ended up taking a bit longer than expected, so we didn’t actually leave Tacoma until 2 pm. I had been keeping an eye on the webcams over Snoqualmie Pass. We thought we would get over the pass and drive as far as possible before getting a hotel room for the night.

The husband missed a turn leaving Tacoma and we got separated. I had told him that if that happened, I would pull off into a chain-up area just before the pass and wait for him.

This was not my first time over the pass. (It was probably about my 50th.) This was not my first time over the pass in bad weather. I got over into the right-hand lane and took my time. As we went up in elevation, rain changed to sleet and then snow, and I watched, more than mildly horrified, as cars with Washington plates blew past me in the left-hand lanes like it was a sunny day in July. I’ve concluded that people in Seattle think that because they drive in rain for so much of the year, they also believe that qualifies them to drive in the snow. You know—same precip, just white. 🙄

I pulled over into a chain-up area about five miles from the summit to wait for the husband. After a few minutes, traffic started backing up to my location, so I pulled out my cellphone and looked at the WADOT website. They had closed the pass due to spin-outs and collisions, no doubt caused by the idiots I had seen speeding past me.

I called the husband. He was 10 miles behind me and had gotten stuck in North Bend when the state troopers closed I-90 there.

There was a car parked in front of me in the chain-up area. I watched as a young guy in thin pants, sneakers, and a windbreaker got out and attempted to put chains on one of the tires. I have a padded waterproof kneeling pad in my car in case I need to put chains on, so I got out and went over and offered it to him. He thanked me and said he didn’t need it. “My father-in-law gave us these chains and I don’t think they fit these tires.” They did not. They were too small. He gave up and got back into the car.

[WADOT posted a photo to its Twitter account last week of some guy who tried to rig up a too-small set of chains on his tires by connecting them with a USB cord. He gets points for creativity, but that was a dumb idea.]

We sat and waited. It got dark. I was plenty warm in my wool socks, boots, and warm winter coat. I had food and water and a sleeping bag with me.

I look at this picture and honestly, that’s not a lot of snow, not by Montana standards. We drove through 6" of snow on our road as we got back to the house yesterday because it was Saturday and the county road department doesn’t plow on the weekends.

Around 5:30 pm, they opened the pass and traffic started moving. I was going to wait for the husband, but he said there were a thousand people down there waiting to drive over the pass and he thought I should just go ahead and not wait to get stuck in another traffic jam. I said I would get over the pass and pull off somewhere and wait for him. The guy parked in front of me—who had his wife, mother, MIL, and a toddler with him—told me that they were going to go to the next exit and turn around and go back to Seattle.

I am surprised that pass doesn’t get closed more often than it does. The posted speed limit over the summit was 35 mph, more than appropriate for the road conditions. It was snowing but they had gotten the plows out while the pass was closed. I got back on the road, stayed in the right-hand lane traveling 35 mph, and still there were people passing me in the left-hand lanes. Driving fast on poor road conditions doesn’t make you some kind of badass. What it makes you is lucky.

I went as far as the town of Cle Elum (about 30 miles), where I knew there was a Safeway and a hotel. That was where WADOT had closed the westbound lanes, though, and the hotel was full and traffic was backed up. I found a spot in the Safeway parking lot and called the husband to let him know where I was. He arrived half an hour later.

I went into Safeway and got us some dinner. We made ourselves comfy inside the new truck and considered sleeping there for the night. The snow finally stopped around 10 pm, so I called a hotel in Ellensburg, another 25 miles down the road, to make sure there was a room available. We drove there—traffic was very light at that point—and spent the night. We left Ellensburg at 7 am yesterday morning and were home by 3 pm.

I’m not going to Monday morning quarterback this one. If I can avoid bad weather and poor road conditions, I will, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. I was reluctant to leave the husband to travel alone because I know that route much better than he does. We were under some time constraints and our carefully-planned schedule was upended by a wrench in the works. Waiting until this week wasn’t an option—the weather over the pass is supposed to be just as bad. We were as prepared as we could be, which is more than I can say for some of those travelers. The number of people we saw wearing light jackets and sneakers was appalling.

Today is a busy one for me—I play at church this morning and again for the Christmas Eve service. I plan on taking it easy this week.

The Six-Hour Block

Welcome to the world of the spatially impaired quilter. It took me most of yesterday to make this:

Six hours to produce a quilt block that should have taken a fraction of that time to make. I am not a novice quilter. (Don’t look at that one wonky seam. I was tired when I sewed that.)

I’ve had the Creative Grids Curvy Log Cabin quilt ruler—this is the 8" size—for a while. I also have a couple of overflowing bags of strips. I’m not particularly fascinated by Log Cabin quilts, despite the fact that I seem to make a lot of them. They just happen to be good for using up leftover strips of fabric.

The reason this is “curvy” is because the logs on either side of the center square are different widths. If you could imagine that I had made four of these (correctly) and had sewn them together, you would see that the red logs make a circle on a background of white.

I did make four of these, incorrectly. That is what took most of the first five hours. I didn’t see the problem until I had sewn the four blocks together, and even then, it took me a few minutes of staring at the larger block to figure out what was wrong. I lay my mistake entirely at the feet of the person who wrote the instructions for the Curvy Log Cabin Ruler. The ruler looks like this:

It comes with a front-and-back page of instructions. The instructions are in two-color monochrome (black and red on white). The steps are not numbered. There are “tips” which really ought to be numbered steps. The instructions do not indicate which fabric should be which. Labeling them as Fabric A and Fabric B would have helped, as would calling one of them “background.”

Even after making five of these blocks, I still do not understand what the first “step” in the instructions—called a “tip”—means.

Basically, what happened was that I used red for the starting block instead of white, because I was looking at the monochrome black-and-red instructions and that is what my brain saw. I got a red circle in my completed 16” block, yes, but it was a weird-looking, squared-off circle.

Could I have gone to YouTube and watched a video on how to make this block? Definitely, but I am old-school and of the opinion that if you cannot communicate to the end user how to use your product successfully, something is wrong. We made things before the existence of the internet, you know.

Nicole Sauce talked about this in one of her recent podcasts. She just completed a kitchen renovation and had a difficult time with one of the products because it came with no instructions. She searched high and low and never found any. She commented that the internet used to be a great place to go to get instructions for products, and now manufacturer websites consist mostly of marketing materials. I had the same experience when I bought a Scarlett Solo Box a few months ago for the podcast. I still haven’t used it because it came with no instructions in the box. The manufacturer website is a collection of slick, glossy photos showing people using it, but not explaining HOW they are using it. I set it up once, the way I thought it should go, and the audio was worse than when I just use my Rode microphone plugged into my computer. I don’t know how to adjust the Solo Box because it didn’t come with any instructions.

At this point, I am not sure I want to make any more of these blocks. I may have scratched this particular itch. I do know how to use the ruler now, though. 😐

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I host my podcast audio files at Buzzsprout. I have been quite happy with them so far, probably because they have extensive documentation on how to use their service. Yesterday, they sent me a year-end summary of my podcast downloads. They submit my podcast to the various podcatchers and aggregate the stats for me. I produced 14 episodes in 2023, which I am calling Season 1. The podcast was downloaded in 11 different countries. The US city with the most episode downloads was Seattle. (The husband wondered if DD#2 was making all of her friends listen to her mother’s podcast but I doubt that.) The total number of downloads was 946 and the majority of listeners—over 60%—are using Apple Podcasts.

I’m happy with those numbers, especially considering I just launched this project. I feel like I can go forward in a more deliberate manner now, and I am excited about some of the interviews I have scheduled.

Something Other Than Clothes

We are planning a comforter-tying party at church to make comforters to donate to Mennonite Central Committee. Elaine talked to Pat, who said she would make the tops if I had more 5" charm squares. Pat did that a couple of years ago and used about two-thirds of my bin of squares making half a dozen tops, so yesterday morning, I got out my Studio cutter and the 5" die and attacked the stack of leftovers. I can cut 80 squares in one pass. The bin is much fuller now and I told Pat I would bring it to church on Sunday.

I ran into town to mail some packages and drop my class samples off at the store. I also picked up a new concrete saw blade for the husband. He and the guys have been working here all week while they wait for excavation for the next foundation job to be completed. They are doing maintenance and repair on the concrete forms and equipment.

When I got back, I took out my bin of food-themed fabrics and made some quilt sandwiches. I’m feeling the need to play around on the Q20, but I want to work on some small projects before I tackle another quilt top. A lot of my foodie fabrics are remnants, so I find pieces of quilt batting and backing and Insul-Bright to pair with them. I quilt the sandwiches, then cut them into potholders:

I’ll churn these out and stack them up, and some day when I have nothing else to do, I’ll have a marathon machine-binding session. These will go into next year’s co-op sale. Potholders always sell well there.

Quilting loops and meanders is very relaxing. I forgot how relaxing it was until I did a couple of these quilt sandwiches yesterday afternoon. I do have an entire bolt of Insul-Bright, bought on a Joann Fabrics 50% off sale, so I’ll keep making potholders until I can’t stand it anymore.

It feels good to be using up supplies I’ve accumulated. That’s what they are there for. My friend, Deana, who lives in Tennessee, just got a serger. She has a nice side hustle making and selling items at craft fairs and farmer’s markets, so I am going to pack up a box of my knit fabric leftovers to send to her for making headbands and socks and other items to sell.

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I am over Christmas and it isn’t even here yet. For some reason, this year seems to have amplified everyone’s underlying issues and hauled them to center stage. I suppose that happens every year; perhaps I am just noticing it more this year. The past couple of weeks have been filled with clashing expectations of what people think Christmas should be, with the result that it becomes nothing resembling what it is.

I don’t know. The husband says that cracks are starting to appear. I think the cracks have been there for a while and are getting bigger. I think that people know that something is very wrong with the current state of affairs but it’s too painful to admit or acknowledge. And humans are not known for being rational creatures. I would much rather walk into a lousy situation with my eyes wide open—and so would the husband—but I suspect we are in a definite minority. We’re in the same minority that would rather work hard and make our own choices than be taken care of by a nanny state. It’s far easier for people to put their fingers in their ears and sing La-la-la-la.

My uncle recently had a miserable encounter with the health care system at a large institution that used to have an excellent reputation, now foolishly squandered. I may relate parts of that story in a future blog post just to illustrate how far we’ve sunk. What happened to him was appalling even to me, who has had my own ridiculous run-ins with the medical system in this country. Let’s just say that if a doctor ever says to me that a Google search is no substitute for a medical degree, that doctor is going to get an earful about how useless an institution full of medical degrees actually turned out to be.

At this point, the husband would ask me if it’s time for puppies and kittens. This is supposed to be a season of light and I am supposed to be reflecting that light, but I think it’s also important not to sweep things under the rug and ignore them.

A Blaudruck Apron

This is the apron my neighbor, Theresa, brought me from Germany. Isn’t it beautiful?

The fabric and the apron were made in Hungary, in a town south of Budapest called Tolna. (Szabo is a Hungarian surname, so this is doubly special.) Theresa brought back a brochure with the apron which had a website link to the producers of this particular apron—Blaudruckerei Fam. Horvath—but unfortunately, that website was a bit lacking in history. I did find a link to the web page of an embroidery artist named Kati who owns Kate and Rose Patterns. Kati grew up in Hungary and has an entire page about the history of blue-dye fabric. It includes lots of photos and information. She writes:

We always had tablecloths, aprons, dresses, skirts made of this fabric when I was little. My mother would find these fabrics at markets, but there were a lot more of the old workshops still manufacturing because in the 1970s this was still a popular fabric in villages. Now there are only six blue-dye manufacturers - with 4 active workshops - remaining in Hungary, and only about 20 in all of Europe. It's a labor-intensive technique, to be sure, but the results are truly lovely. Blue-dying was so important in Hungary that the old textile industry traces its roots to it - even the once-famous former Goldberger textile factory (now museum) in Budapest began as a blue-dye cloth manufacturing workshop. A truly tragic part here: Leo Goldberger, who led the way in modernizing Hungarian textile manufacturing, did not survive the Holocaust. Blue-dye cloth has been created in Hungary for hundreds of years, not long after the dye derived from the indigo plant arrived in Europe by way of French, Dutch, and Turkish traders in the 16th century. The first blue-dye manufacturers in Hungary appeared in the 17th century.

The designs on the fabric are unique and are created using dies dipped in beeswax and stamped onto the fabric. The beeswax keeps the indigo dye out of the fabric. Here is a closeup of that detailed border print:

This apron is a treasure, to be sure, and I love it. Thank you, Theresa!

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After running around all weekend, I wanted nothing more than to stay home yesterday. I spent the day making class samples. This is another Harper Cardigan:

I am teaching this class again here in February and I thought I would mix it up a bit with a different display cardigan for the store. This one has contrast bands. The main fabric is a sweater knit from Walmart. The bands are a bushed sweater knit, also from Walmart. I don’t wear brown, so this will be a good store sample.

I am having great fun with these sweater knits. I love the instant gratification of making a sweater in a couple of hours.

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I think I’ve finally corralled and organized all the social media stuff for the podcast. (Let’s hope.) I updated the running list of topics and added a few more names for interviews. If anyone has suggestions, leave me a note.

I’ve come across an interesting Substack account called The Sewing Machine Newsletter. The account offers a free-to-subscribe option, but if you want to read entire articles or access the archives, you have to pay a monthly or annual fee. The writing is excellent and well worth the subscription fee if you have any interest in sewing.

Nicole Sauce did her Word of the Year livestream yesterday. She talks about the reason for having a WOTY and the process of choosing one for 2024. Her WOTY for 2024 is HONE. She wants to “do more of less,” and that involves honing in on specific areas and sharpening them as you would hone a knife. I think that was a great choice.

Mine is going to be CULTIVATE. I had to jettison some of my activities—using the word NO in 2023—so I could have time to nourish the activities I love.

Finished Before the End of 2023

The apron post is coming, I promise. I had a meeting yesterday morning, after which I went into town to get chicken feed, then came home and baked cookies. I told the husband to write down the date because I don’t like to cook and I like baking even less than I like cooking. He requested a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. I also made oatmeal scotchies and chocolate ones with peanut butter chips. I’ve got molasses cookie dough in the fridge.

I finished binding the cream-and-white quilt Friday night. I put it on our bed to take a picture. We have a queen-sized bed and it’s a king-sized quilt, because I like my quilts to hang down on the sides.

It looks very nice—and would look even better with some pretty pillow shams—but I hesitate to keep it on the bed. White anything in Montana is a bad idea. White is for people who live in homes where there is no dirt or wildfire ash or husbands who pour concrete. (Just for the record, I would rather have the husband than a sterile, clean house.) I will put it away until next fall. I could put it in the co-op sale or donate it to the Ritzville sale. It is finished and that was the goal.

I am close to the saturation point with clothing manufacturing. I need to switch gears and do something else or I run the risk of losing my sew-jo. I did make a dress on Friday:

This is a mashup of Simplicity 9018 (turtleneck dress) with Simplicity 8557 (the red stretch velvet one with the faced neckline). I lengthened it by 3" so it doesn’t hit me right above my knees. The slightly longer length is much better. I kept the 3/4 sleeve length from Simplicity 8557 because it’s perfect for when I’m playing piano at church. Basically, this is the Kohls snowflake dress in a longer length. The fabric is Joanns stretch velvet. I wanted to do a version in a less expensive fabric to make sure that a) I could get the dress out of three yards and b) make absolutely sure I was happy with it before I cut into the Minerva crushed velvet.

This is simple but elegant and may end up being my Christmas dress. If I get the Minerva one run up, great, but if I don’t, this one will be fine. The husband questioned my need to make a specific dress for a one-hour church service, but this would get worn at other times, too.

I sometimes think that because I am sewing clothing for myself, I should be making fancier tops and dresses, but a) fancy is not necessarily my style and b) the goal is to make clothing that fits. Making something that fits properly and is flattering is more important than producing a tour de force of sewing techniques.

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I am knee-deep in organizing social media stuff for the podcast for 2024. It would have been better to do all of this at the beginning, yes, but it involves a fair bit of effort and some extra expense. I wanted to wait and see if the podcast was worth continuing. This is almost like a home renovation project where you put an addition onto your house and attempt to incorporate it into the original structure. I changed domain names, which caused a whole bunch of downstream issues with e-mail addresses and MX records. (Thankfully, I ditched Network Solutions and can now change everything through my Squarespace dashboard.) Instagram has been a nightmare—name changes didn’t take, accounts are managed under Facebook/Meta, and in order to have a business account, you have to create a personal account and then convert it to a business account. I prefer to work on my desktop, not my phone, but some changes can only be made through the phone app. (Really, Meta?) I can’t manage all of this from Metricool until everything is set up properly, and getting everything set up properly means chasing down a thousand tiny details.

Social media is a funny thing. I said to the husband that I am about to give up on YouTube until January. The sewing vlogging community—like blogging, but with video—has been participating in this thing called Vlogmas, where each of them is posting every single day until Christmas. Some of them started in November. I’m over it. I don’t need to see yet another vlogger open her sewing Advent calendar and take out some little notion. I want the longer-form videos that include end-of-the-year reviews and sewing plans for next year.

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch . . .

I wonder if any of them look at their analytics to see if something like Vlogmas actually makes their views decrease instead of increase. There is such a thing as oversaturation.

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We got an update on the truck Friday. Installation of the toolboxes and racks should be completed by next Friday, December 22. The fleet manager from Tacoma Dodge—who has been absolutely amazing throughout this whole process—will go to Seattle to inspect the truck personally to make sure everything is as it should be. If it isn’t, he will wait until they make it right. He will drive the truck back to Tacoma for us. We should be able to pick it up the week after Christmas. My only concern is the weather, because the longer-range forecasts are showing some storms that week. Of course, that could change, but I am keeping an eye on the forecasts.

Upgrading My Tech

I had a haircut scheduled for noon yesterday, so I went into town early to run errands. My list was long. It included a stop at Best Buy to purchase a new laptop. I have been using DD#2’s hand-me-down Macbook Pro, purchased in 2013. I’m doing enough Zoom interviews and meetings now that it’s not keeping up. I’d also like to have something I can use when traveling. I bought a Macbook Air, which is plenty for what I need.

After that, I headed to the Verizon store to see about a new iPad. Mine has been randomly locking me out, requiring a restart, and recently, the touch screen has been glitchy. The kid who was helping me pulled up my account and said, “Oh, I see you have a Gen 2 iPad! You know they’ve come out with 14 newer models since you bought that, right?” (I knew it was old, but not quite how old.) We’ve been with Verizon for 12 years, so I got some nice loyalty discounts and walked out of there with a 9th gen iPad.

I spent a chunk of money, yes, but I’m not capriciously replacing devices every year.

The husband fixed my favorite frying pan for me:

I have a Farberware 12" frying pan I received as a wedding present 34 years ago. This little helper handle fell off a few weeks ago. It was in pretty bad shape, which is why it had fallen off. I’ve already replaced the main handle once. An eBay seller had the helper handle for sale, so I ordered it. It came in the mail on Wednesday, and by the time I got home from Missoula, the husband had attached it for me.

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Anna Graham at Noodlehead has come out with a new bag pattern—yay! This one is called the Oxbow Tote:

I buy every pattern she releases and have made most of them. I may use this as a carrot for getting those generator covers made. I’ll reward myself with this project once the covers are done. I’d like to do a bag start to finish on the 1541, and I have plenty of canvas—waxed and otherwise—to play around with.

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My neighbor, Theresa, stopped by last night with a gift for me. She and her husband went to Vienna and Munich to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and visited all the Christmas markets there. She brought me a beautiful apron, which deserves its own blog post. The fabric comes with some history, too, and I want to research that a bit more before writing about it.

A Lovely Day for a Road Trip

Robin and I went to Missoula yesterday. At this time of year, our valleys can get socked in under inversions—cloud layers that sink down and make everything gray and sad for days at a time—but as we drove south, we exited an inversion straight into brilliant sunshine. The entire day stayed sunny and bright.

Robin has been shopping for a new sewing machine. We went to A Clean Stitch, the Janome dealer in Missoula. We will not shop at or take our machines in to be serviced at the dealer here in Kalispell (We both have Janome 6600s.) Robin has been kicking around the idea of trading in her 6600 for a larger machine. I reminded her that I was with her the first time we stopped in at A Clean Stitch to look at the new Janome machines, and that was almost two years ago. These things take time and consideration.

While she was deciding which of the new machines she wanted to order, I dashed over to Walmart to check out the remnant rack. It was full, but I didn’t see anything I needed. I went back to get her and we headed to Vicki’s Quilts Down Under. If we ever need specific fabrics for quilt projects, Vicki’s is the place to go. Robin found a border for one of her quilt projects and I came out with two yards of Robert Kaufman Trainers French terry in black. I have a Nancy Raglan in the Spruce color and it has worn like iron.

By then it was time for lunch, so we went over to the Montana Club. I had a reuben sandwich and Robin had gyro sliders. I cannot stand the smell of corned beef when it is cooking, but I do like reuben sandwiches (go figure) and this one was excellent.

The Joann Fabrics in Missoula looks as awful as ours does. We left without finding anything. Our last stop in town was The Confident Stitch downtown. Robin bought a bit more quilt fabric and I picked up this Jalie pattern:

I have a couple of long tunics in this style from Kohls that are looking very worn and could stand to be replaced.

We stopped at the Amish store on the way home. I bought more Clear-Jel—I used most of mine making apple pie filling in September—and each of us had a cup of ice cream. Their ice cream comes from Wilcoxson’s, which I think is in Billings, and it reminds me of the kind my grandmother used to serve at her ice cream parlor in Ohio when I was growing up. (Lorain Creamery, for my Ohio peeps.) The store is quite generous with the servings, too.

The BMW drove beautifully, although the husband seems convinced that some other part is about to fail and the check engine light will come on again. I think he has been traumatized by that car.

We got home just as dark was falling. Robin’s new machine is supposed to come in no later than the first of the year. We may be making a return trip to get it. A Clean Stitch is the same store where I taught the Bernina serger mastery class in October, and I have another serger mastery class on the schedule there for early February. The owners are finishing off the classroom space—we heard all the construction noises while we were in the store—so we’re holding off scheduling spring classes until that space is ready.

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I think my two upcoming projects will be making a Simplicity 9018 dress out of some black stretch velvet—the same as that purple stretch velvet from a few weeks ago—and changing the neckline on the Simplicity 8557—the red stretch velvet dress—to the mock turtle neckline. I only have three yards of the Minerva stretch velvet and I am not sure I can get the longer Simplicity 9018 dress out of it. I’ll have to see. I’m not intending for the black stretch velvet dress to be my Christmas dress, but it will be nice to have something cozy to wear in January.

And we’re awaiting an update on the status of the husband’s work truck. Hopefully soon.

Sometimes Simpler is Better

I have been so mired in seemingly endless pattern adjustments that I haven’t been feeling very positive about my fitting skills lately. I like that red stretch velvet dress I made, but I am not crazy about the neckline. I find myself wanting to wear that snowflake swing dress from Kohls ALL THE TIME, partly because I like the mock turtleneck. When I keep reaching for a piece over and over, I try to figure out why. Is it the fabric? The fit? Something else?

I pulled this pattern out of my collection to play around with it:

I have no intention of making either a bodycon dress or top. Much as I wish otherwise, I simply cannot wear close-fitting tops. Anything that hugs my body at and below my bust only makes my bust look that much bigger. That neckline is identical to the one on the snowflake dress, though.

[At some point, I hope to be able to make these kinds of simple alterations without relying on patterns, but for now, I am using the training wheels available to me.]

I traced the pattern for my bust size and made the standard changes of lowering the waistline and lengthening the entire top. That was easy with this pattern because the pattern pieces are for the dress, with marked cutting lines for the top. Still, I added a good 4" to the length of the top. I have a pretty good idea now of how long tops have to be in order not to look out of proportion on my body. I also graded out to the next size below the bust, not because I need the additional width for my waist and hips—I don’t—but because I didn’t want it to cling to my midsection and make my bust look bigger.

[I don’t necessarily think of myself as tall, because the husband and both our girls are taller than me, but when I am with a group of women, I feel like I am towering over most of them.]

I used a fine-gauge brushed sweater knit from the Walmart remnant rack in a bright navy. Once cut, it only took about half an hour to construct, although I had to un-sew the shoulders and redo them because I didn’t have right sides together. It was late in the afternoon, getting dark in my sewing room, and even though I thought I checked to make sure which side was which, something got turned around.

I put on the top to evaluate it just as the husband was coming in for dinner. I like it. A lot. The fit at the bust and shoulders is perfect. I still have to attach the mock turtleneck and hem the sleeves and bottom, which is why I have no photo yet. I think this pattern may work perfectly for my Christmas dress. I’ll retrace it at dress length—although not as long as the one the model is wearing—and make it up in the Minvera crushed velvet.

I feel a bit better about my fitting skills now.

I’ve also got several other lengths of similar sweater knits that have been waiting for a suitable pattern to come along. I am hoping this is the one.

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While we are discussing necklines, I’ll mention my pet peeve about V-necks. I see lots of fashion advice indicating that V-necks are flattering for women with larger bustlines. They are. However, most V-neck tops—both ready-to-wear and in patterns—are so low in the V that they expose my bra. Unlike small-busted women, we cannot wear dainty little plunge bras from Victoria’s Secret. Sometimes, depending on the style of the top, I can wear a camisole bra, but not always.

I’m not alone in this. Karina at the Lifting Pins and Needles YouTube channel almost always raises the neckline when she makes a V-neck top. I wish designers would consider undergarments when designing, because we’re not running around naked under our clothing. (At least I’m not.)

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I am not going to record any additional podcasts for 2023. I want to get all the social media stuff straightened out and start the new year with a fresh slate. I’ve started organizing tax stuff and I would like to do a closet purge and take a few other things to the thrift store after the holidays.

Friends Who Sew

Yesterday was a full day. I had an appointment in the morning, I ran errands, had a mid-afternoon meeting at church to plan the Christmas Eve service, then had another meeting after dinner for the homestead foundation.

One of my errands yesterday was to find and purchase the correct metric tap that would allow the husband to finish the repair on the BMW. I took the Acura to church Sunday morning so he could replace the emissions sensor that was causing the check engine light to be illuminated. When I got home, the BMW was still on the lift. Apparently, when he took the module with the old sensor out, a bolt sheared off (?) and he couldn’t put the module with the new sensor back in because he didn’t have a way to get the remnants of the bolt out. After my appointment, I stopped in at Fastenal, but they didn’t have the size he needed. I ended up at Harbor Freight, and after several minutes of searching and several phone conversations with the husband—accompanied by texted photos—I was able to find the tap and die set he needed.

[When I see a man in Joann Fabrics, I always ask if he needs help finding anything, because I know what it’s like to have to wander around in unfamiliar territory looking for some tool.]

The BMW is back together and running. The husband came in last night after finishing the repair and said, “Drive it and see if the check engine light comes back on. Something else is probably about to fail.”

Needless to say, there was no sewing yesterday. I did get some deliveries of fabric, though. This is the Minerva crushed velvet, in the colorway Celestial:

I may still make a Christmas dress from this, but not until I am 100% sure I have the pattern dialed in.

I also ordered some French terry from KnitFabric.com for a another Burda 6315 top:

I have to finish editing this week’s podcast so I can post it this morning. This one features an interview with Kerry Brown, who owns Strong Roots Resources and is also a member of Nicole Sauce’s Living Free in Tennessee community. Over the past several years, he has developed his interest in permaculture and edible landscaping into a thriving consulting business. At Nicole’s Spring Workshop last year, he and I chatted a bit about his grandmother, Nan, who taught him to sew and quilt on her Singer 99 machine. When I started the podcast, we made plans to have him be a guest and share that story.

I also got a text message yesterday from my friend Marcie’s daughter-in-law. Marcie’s DIL was with us in that deck collapse in 2017 and broke her back when she fell. She was able to recover and walk again, but she has a lot of pain as a result of the accident. She texted me yesterday to say she was taking a sewing class at the local city college in southern California. It was so good to hear from her and to know that she enjoyed her sewing class so much.

I’m not sure what’s on my schedule for the rest of this week. I need to do some brainstorming and organizing for 2024. I want to trace some patterns so they are ready to go when inspiration strikes. I’d like to get some quilt tops sandwiched with batting and backing. I think the next quilt top I make is going to be using the Creative Grids 8 inch Curvy Log Cabin ruler. I have no shortage of things to keep me busy.

Why It's Called Pattern Hacking

I made up the frankenpatterned Easton Cowl/Burda 6329 top. Fabric is a Walmart rayon spandex. I like this version, but I was so focused on fitting the bottom half of the bodice (much better) that I wasn’t addressing the problems I have with the cowl.

It’s not readily apparent on the dress form, but it is when I am wearing the top. The neckline is very wide, and on my broad shoulders, it looks even wider. Think cowl neck on a bateau neckline. The cowl portion does not hang nicely as it does here on the form. It pulls itself into a weird shallow V shape. It’s not awful, but I can tell that something isn’t right.

It’s possible I need to widen the pattern at the shoulders. I don’t think so based on where the shoulder seam sits, although I am allowing for that possibility. What I think I need to do is to bring the sides of that cowl shaping in closer to the neck and make the neckline more rounded. On the pattern, it would look like this:

I would cut that shoulder line in further, either by an inch (leftmost line) or 1-1/2" (right line). Ignore that other sketched-in line. I would make the corresponding adjustment on the back bodice piece.

Theoretically, this should make the neckline rounder and allow that cowl to relax a bit. If you have thoughts, comment below. This is a fairly fast make, especially now that I have figured out how do all of it on my serger and coverstitch. I could run up another version to test my idea.

I realize that at some point, this top may no longer resemble the original Easton Cowl. (My apologies to Liesel Gibson.) This is why it’s called pattern hacking—you just keep hacking away at the pattern until you get it to fit your body.

That was yesterday’s sort-of-win. Before I tackled that top, though, I worked on the project the husband brought me a few days ago. He has a new hydraulic concrete saw and it’s too long for the carrying bag. He wanted to know if I could make an opening in the end of the bag for the blade with the guard on it. If he weren’t married to me, he might have simply slashed a hole in the end of the bag and called it a day, but because we have the knowledge and the equipment, we did it properly.

The bag was constructed from a couple of layers of Cordura. I got out one of my Cordura scraps—in a matching color, even—and talked through with him what I planned to do. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some crucial spatial element. Also, because he was going to help me with the sewing, I wanted him to know what the steps were. I hate being asked to help with a project and having no idea what is supposed to happen, so I try not to do that to other people.

This is where my bagmaking experience came in handy. I planned to make a welt opening in the end of the bag by sewing a piece of scrap Cordura over the place he wanted the opening. The welt would be in the shape of a long, narrow rectangle. By cutting open the center of that rectangle, I could pull the scrap piece of Cordura through to the inside and topstitch it down around the opening, effectively binding the edges of the opening to keep them from fraying.

We also had to take the steel frame pieces out of the top of the bag (sewists, think Poppins bag). I opened a few stitches of the binding below the frame and the husband pulled the frame pieces out. That made the bag flexible enough that I could turn it inside out and maneuver it underneath the machine, although the husband still had to help me by supporting the bag over the machine while I sewed.

It’s not my best sewing—I was working blind in a few spots because of the position of the bag, and the husband was trying to support the bag and hold a flashlight over the bed of the machine for me because I had to take the light off to make room for the bag—but it’s functional:

We put the steel frame pieces back into their channels and I sewed those closed. The saw now fits in the bag and everyone is happy:

I still have two generator covers to make, and the husband noted that a cover for the new hydraulic pump that powers this saw would not go amiss, either.

Miles of Binding

We got an e-mail late yesterday afternoon from the fleet manager in Tacoma. The husband’s new work truck finally arrived at the dealer. It is scheduled to go to the body shop on Monday to have the toolboxes and racks installed. Once that work is complete, we will be able to go get it. Yay.

We got almost 6” of snow yesterday. It snowed for about 12 hours. This was the radar over our house, and it looked like this for most of the day. That blob of precipitation didn’t move:

We are in a very strange topographical niche here. We always get more snow than the rest of our neighborhood. That makes it very hard to know what’s going on in the rest of the valley. I often think it doesn’t occur to the road department to send the plows up here when we’re getting hammered because they look out the window and see rain.

I made the binding for the quilt and attached it. I got one side sewn down last night:

Only three more sides to go. I went with a gray binding because I wanted to “frame” the quilt. The binding is not anywhere as dark as it looks in the photo. It’s more of a medium gray, but this is what you get at 4 am in December in my living room. I do like that the binding picks up the darker colors in the top. I’m not a fan of light-colored bindings because I think they get dirty too easily.

I might swap our bed quilt out for this one over the summer—they are the same quilt in different colors—but I will have to keep the husband from sitting on it.

Making and attaching the binding took most of the morning, after which I worked on cleaning and organizing my sewing space. I am still trying to decide what to do about all these leftover pieces of apparel fabric. Many of them are large enough to use for linings or colorblocking, but I can’t keep everything just because I might have a use for it someday. (I could, but I risk being buried under an avalanche of fabric.) I felt much better after I corralled all the leftovers and put them in a large bag. I can’t work if things are too cluttered.

I feel like I am finally getting close to the end of my closet makeover. It’s too bad it took four decades of ill-fitting ready-to-wear to get to this point. I still have a few things I want to make, but the collection is looking a lot more coherent now. I also feel like I have more of these fitting issues under control.

I am ready for a change of pace. This is the time of year when I feel compelled to tidy up all the loose ends in preparation for starting afresh. I’m already looking ahead well into February.

The Annual Sewing Christmas Party

We had our sewing group Christmas party yesterday. I may not get to sewing every Thursday, but I do enjoy our parties. This was a potluck luncheon and we had enough food to feed an army. We do a gift swap—everyone who wants to participate brings a wrapped gift, which gets a number. Each of us draws a number, the gifts get passed out, and we start at #1 and open them. Sometimes the gifts are quilt- or sewing-related. Sometimes they contain food or home dec items. They almost always have chocolate in them. The bag I received held a lovely cheese board, cheese knives, some cheese and crackers, and holiday tea towels. (And a jar of salted chocolate caramels.)

Robin gave me a painted wooden sign that says, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” which I hung on my kitchen door.

I sometimes hang a wreath there but haven’t gotten one this season.

Sarah gifted me a bag of goodies as a thank-you for the load of chicken manure we hauled up to her house in September. I really think I got the better end of the deal. 😇 It included half a dozen bars of soap—the husband took the lavender-scented ones, because he is quite partial to lavender—a candle, more salted caramels (there is a pattern here), and a beautiful handwoven tea towel.

Sarah told me that only people she considers “family” get a handwoven gift. I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends!

I wore a holiday dress to the party—a very simple swing dress from Kohls. The fabric is a beefy rayon spandex.

Everyone assumed I had made it. I might have, if I had had similar fabric. This was an impulse purchase, for sure, although it fits well and is very comfortable.

I ran errands in town before the party and picked up some fabric for the binding for the king-sized quilt. I need a bit more than a yard and none of my Kona remnants was big enough. The quilt is so scrappy that I wanted a solid color binding to frame it. That’s the first order of business today—make and attach the binding it so I can sew it down in the evenings. The second task on the list is organizing the room where I store my fabric, because it looks like a tornado went through there. I want to find all the projects that need to be quilted and stack them up next to the Q20.

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We are still waiting to hear about the new work truck, although now that choir practice on Wednesday evenings has been canceled, that opens up the schedule quite a bit for going to Tacoma to retrieve it. Work has slowed down for the husband a bit, but that is temporary. He and the crew will be starting a big foundation project next week.

I heard an ad yesterday on the radio from a local real estate agent. He was hawking a piece of property in our neighborhood. I looked it up last night so the husband and I could have a good laugh. It’s a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house built in 1978, total of 1296 square feet on 2.38 acres with septic and a shared well. (Ask the husband some time about the quality of houses built here in the 1970s and 80s and you’ll get an earful.) The real estate agent described it as a “fixer-upper” because it’s been mostly gutted. Any guesses on the asking price? I’d offer around $100,000 for it, max.

The listing price is $399,000. THAT IS INSANE. I don’t even think the land is worth that, let alone the house. A shared well is a problem. Another hundred thousand or so will be required to make it liveable. That listing is the poster child for how ridiculous the housing market here has become.

Can You Fix This?—Industrial Tools Edition

The husband brought me another sewing project this week.

That is the end of a very large bag—it’s about 4 feet long by 18” wide and it’s intended to carry one of his concrete saws. (A not-insignificant part of his business is cutting holes in concrete walls, usually for egress windows.) The saw is too long for the bag. He wondered if I could make an opening for the blade of the saw, with its guard on, to stick out of the end of the bag.

Theoretically, yes. And it wouldn’t even be that complicated, except for the fact that I cannot sew an opening into the end of this bag while simultaneously balancing the other 4 feet of it over my head. I told him I could probably do it if he would stand next to me and support the bag. I got out some Cordura scraps—red, even—and I think we will tackle it this weekend. I will sew a piece of Cordura where I want the opening, cut it, turn the facing in, and sew it down, much like making a welt opening for a zipper. The 1541 should handle the sewing easily. Theoretically.

I got the eight yards of UV-coated fabric I ordered from Seattle Fabrics, and now I have no excuse not to work on generator covers.

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I did another interview for the podcast yesterday. I continue to be tickled by the fact that there are quite a few people who want to listen to me blather on about sewing for 30 minutes. The analytics are exceeding my expectations. I am hoping to have more interviews—and a bit less of me blathering—after the first of the year. This is just such a busy time.

We had our church choir practice last night, but it looks like we won’t be having a church choir. (See comment about this time of year, above.) We have enough for a double quartet, but not enough for the songs I had chosen. They require an actual choir with more than one or two people on a part. We are especially lean on the lower parts. The eight of us who came to practice decided that we would work up an acapella piece. That way, I can sing, too, either alto or tenor. And we’re all accomplished-enough musicians that we’ll only need one or two practices.

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I’m making progress on the clothing front, even though some days I feel like the young woman in Rumpelstiltstkin required to spin a room full of straw into gold. I have a lot of straw. Yesterday, I put together two pairs of Linda pants—they need hemming—and a top from the McCall’s 8022 pattern that I made with some stable athletic knit from the Walmart remnant rack. (It also needs hemming.) That athletic knit is very interesting. On the front, it looks like normal jersey fabric:

But on the back, it almost looks like a twill weave, except that it is knitted.

Machine knitting and hand knitting are not always a 1:1 swap—there are stitches that machines do that are hard to replicate with hand knitting and vice versa.

I shortened this latest iteration to a top; I do like the dress length but didn’t have enough of this fabric.

And I am frankenpatterning stuff left and right. In my quest for some nice church-wear basics, I pulled out a few pieces of rayon spandex for a couple of Easton cowls. I love the cowl neck part of that top but I have never been happy with the fit of the lower bodice. Even lengthening it didn’t help. I am going to try a version where I combine the top of the Easton cowl with the bottom of the Burda 6329, which is the raglan top with the neck pleats. I really like the way the bottom half of that one fits.

We’ll see. It’ll either be great or an unqualified disaster.

I am having to write very detailed notes on my pattern pieces to keep track of all these changes and iterations. I only throw out original tracings if it’s obvious they aren’t going to work at all, because sometimes I want to go back and use them for something else.

At some point, I suspect, I may give up on commercial patterns altogether and just start drafting tops from my own bodice blocks.

Ottoman Rib and a Costco Find

Knitting friends, I have a question. I am almost afraid to ask it because I feel like I should know the answer, but I am not coming up with exactly what I want. I am tempted to shoot off a note to Lily Chin, because I am pretty sure she’ll know what I’m talking about, but maybe someone else knows.

Around the same time that I was publishing Twists and Turns, there was another print magazine called KnittingNOW. One of their issues included a pattern for an ottoman rib cardigan. I thought I had every issue, but that particular issue seems to have gone on walkabout. (It is possible I am imagining the existence of this pattern, but I don’t think so.)

Here’s the thing. I cannot pin down hand knitting instructions for anything called ottoman rib. I suspect it is several rows of stockinette separated by a row of purl stitches—making it a horizontal ribbing pattern rather than a vertical one—but it would be nice to have the “official” pattern if one exists. Googling “ottoman rib knit stitch” brings up a lot of vertical ribbing patterns as well as references to machine knitting. The Bosforus Textiles website has this to say about ottoman rib:

Ottoman Rib Knit Fabric is mostly an interlock fabric that consists of two full interlock courses followed by six half-gauge jersey courses knitted on the effect side of the fabric. Ottoman Rib Knit Fabric is characterised by horizontal relief ridges on the effect side. Ottoman Rib Knit Fabrics can also be made on a rib basis instead of an interlock basis, and on a knit-tuck basis instead of a knit-miss basis.

That is clearly machine-knitting-speak. I understand what they are describing, but none of those stitches is identical to what I am remembering as the handknitted version.

The reason this has come up—other than me occasionally wondering what black hole devoured that issue of KnittingNOW with the cardigan pattern—is because I was watching a Minerva video the other day that featured the Meet MILK ottoman rib fabric Minerva carries. It looks luscious and comes in lots of wonderful colors. Go look:

And it got me to thinking about that pattern again. JC, is there anything in the Stitch Maps database? Or maybe someone has that elusive issue of KnittingNOW? Not that I would actually knit myself a cardigan when I could buy some of that fabric and sew myself one . . .

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You know you are an adult when you find something new and exciting at Costco and it makes your entire day:

I love Better than Bouillon. I haven’t seen this one before and I think it will make a nice addition to the pasta e fagioli soup I make.

I finished quilting the cream-and-white top yesterday morning. I’ll trim it today and figure out what I want to use for binding. The top has bits of gray fabric in it so I suspect the binding will be gray as well. I am happy to have that done and looking forward to getting some smaller projects quilted now that the bottleneck has cleared.

Our local community organization is hosting a kids’ Christmas Gift Workshop this weekend and Susan asked me for some of my knit fabric scraps. I was only too happy to pass along a large bag of them.

A Quilt, a Tunic, and a Blackberry Heart

I spent a couple of hours working on the quilt yesterday afternoon. It is very close to being done. I need to put another hour’s worth of quilting time into it and then it will be ready for binding. The Q20 is supposed to be on the schedule for service soon. The tech has to come out here to service it because that machine is too big and unwieldy for me to take it out of the table for transport. I hope to be heading into 2024 with the machine serviced and ready to take on the stack of projects backed up behind this cream-and-white quilt.

I like the quilting pattern I chose for this top, but it was a lot of work even though it was a simple design. Free motion loops would have been faster and easier. I’m not likely to do another king-sized top for a while.

The husband has been chasing down a problem with the ground heater, a piece of equipment he needs in the winter to be able to pour concrete. We bought it used—they are expensive and hard to find—and he has had to tinker with it on and off for over a year. It runs, but shuts itself off for no apparent reason. He spent most of the weekend holed up in his shop trying to fix it. We did get more snow yesterday afternoon and I am glad I didn’t try to drive to Coeur d’Alene. Warm weather (and more precipitation) is headed in from the Pacific, though. The high tomorrow is supposed to be close to 50F.

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I’ve got that McCall’s 8022 top dialed in. I made a second muslin out of some rayon French terry (Walmart), although the fabric was a bit drapier than I anticipated. I also determined that the best tunic length on me is 31" down from my shoulder, so I will adjust the pattern accordingly.

The McCall’s pattern was designed by the late Nancy Zieman, and there is a video for it on the Stitch It! Sisters YouTube channel:

I watched the video AFTER I made the top, and I had to laugh at myself because I didn’t follow any of the instructions. I left off the pocket—reviewers commented that it was too small to be useful and I am not one for pockets in my clothes anyway—and I assembled the top entirely on my serger. They use a sewing machine in the video. I also lowered the cap of the sleeve a bit as it was too high for the armscye. I’m finding that happens a lot when designers who are used to working with wovens design something for a knit. The instructions indicate it should be ease stitched but I prefer to adjust the cap to better fit the armscye.

If you haven’t read Nancy Zieman’s autobiography, Seams Unlikely, I highly recommend it:

She started her business in a spare bedroom, moving it to her in-laws’ basement as it got bigger and then eventually to warehouse space. One of the stories that has stuck with me was about when she went to the bank to ask for a loan. As was often the case back in the 70s and 80s, the loan officer patted her on the head and said that the bank couldn’t loan her money for her “little hobby.” Her MIL marched into the bank and suggested the loan officer look at how much money Nancy’s business had on deposit in his bank and reconsider his decision. (He did.)

I am having great fun with my anatomical embroidery project:

I have been working on the blood vessels (in satin stitch) for the past couple of evenings. The leaves are getting their ribs outlined in stem stitch, and I have a few more berries and flower centers to do in French knots. I haven’t decided which pattern to tackle next—maybe the cranium?

[I imagine these creations of mine being passed down to grandchildren and great-grandchildren and I wonder if they are going to ask themselves why Grandma found it necessary to embroider macabre medical illustrations . . . LOL]

I am not sure yet what sewing projects will be on the docket for this week. I did cut out a pair of StyleArc Linda pants in some dark red bengaline from Joanns. Those won’t take long to assemble. I have been taking notes while getting dressed for church, because that is still where the holes seem to be in my wardrobe. I have tops with no coordinating bottoms and vice versa, so I am trying to address that.

I Will Try to Write a Different Sermon

“Try” being the operative word.

I pulled up the Fat Quarter Shop livestream on YouTube yesterday morning and sat myself down at the Q20 to work on quilting the king-sized top. I finished the third quadrant and thought briefly about starting the fourth one, but it takes a fair bit of effort to maneuver that thing across the table. My shoulders were feeling it. I can see the finish line though—and binding it won’t be a hardship—so I decided to leave it until next week. I’ll be happy to get it done by the end of the year.

I found someone to take my spot in the Amanda Murphy class. One of the women who works at the quilt store in town has a cousin who lives in Coeur d’Alene. Both of them were in the first serger class I ever taught here in Kalispell. I got the cousin’s phone number and called to ask if she wanted to take my spot. She was delighted. She shops at that store and indeed, when I called the store back to tell them about the arrangement, the staffperson knew exactly who she was. If I can’t take the class, I am glad she will be able to.

My phone beeped with a text from the Washington State DOT yesterday morning while I was quilting. Snoqualmie Pass was getting hammered with snow, and they had to close I-90 because of an accident involving 30 spun-out semis who hadn’t chained up. 😮

Posted here because we have to remind people not to be stupid (the guy in shorts and flip-flops is particularly entertaining):

The Flathead Valley is under a Winter Weather Advisory today. Thankfully, I do not have to go anywhere. I think the husband is planning to replace the emissions sensor in The Diva, which should make the check engine light go out—for a few days, at least, until some other part decides to give up the ghost.

We got an e-mail from the dealer in Tacoma that the husband’s new work truck is already under a recall and it hasn’t even arrived yet. We will still be able to pick it up before Christmas, but he’ll have to take it in to the dealer here some time in January when the part is available. I am starting to sound like a broken record, but this kind of stuff is reaching unimaginable levels of ridiculousness. It would be nice if we could make things that don’t break before they even get used.

We did get a welcome piece of mail this week, though:

With four businesses in Montana, it will be nice not to have to shell out the filing fees for 2024.

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I retraced the McCall’s pattern yesterday afternoon but have not had a chance to cut it out yet. I had to stop and think about what seamlines I wanted to grade out, because there are a total of six—two princess seams in front, two in back, and two side seams. Grading all of them to the next size would have added way too much ease, so I only graded out the side seams.

I think I might have a big cutting session today and line up half a dozen projects. Once this quilt top is done, I’d like to attack a few more things in the quilting queue. My embroidery projects are coming along nicely, though. They are fun to work on in the evenings.