This Quilt Needs Some Binding

I finished quilting the jelly roll top. The border was done in ribbon candy and I used Amanda Murphy’s Every Daisy ruler set to quilt flowers in each corner:

I stopped in at the quilt store yesterday morning to get thread to finish the hexie wallhanging—I found the color I needed—and binding fabric for this quilt. I also came out with fabric to make the sample for the Bernina event scheduled at the end of March. Bernina dealers have at least one or two “events” every year, which are day-long classes designed to allow people to come in and use the machines to make something. It’s a great way to try out a machine you might be thinking of purchasing.

Stores have the option of bringing in a Bernina educator for these events or having someone from the store teach them. I taught the serger event a couple of years ago, and last September, I was a class angel for the Bernina educator who came in to teach it. I’m teaching the event at the end of March. The pattern is for a table runner. I don’t think it will take me long to put it together.

In between the quilt store and a Costco run, I stopped at the farm store to get some bales of pine shavings. We use those in the nesting boxes. I also picked up a copy of this year’s chick schedule. Apparently, designer chickens are all the rage. The chick schedule has several pages full of fancy chicken breeds. I had to look to find the dates for the New Hampshire Reds and Brown Leghorns. I guess the more common breeds are no longer popular. 🙄 We’re aiming to get chicks around the third week of March.

I’m not ready to think about planting, but people are asking me if I’ve started seeds yet. Even if we could get to the greenhouse easily—which we can’t—the amount of daylight isn’t yet sufficient.

And I still have so much sewing to do between now and spring planting. I’m putting my nose to the grindstone this week and trying to knock out all of my to-do list. At some point, I’m also going to have to think about what clothes I need to make for spring. I have a distinct lack of dresses in my closet, which I notice every Sunday when I get dressed for church. I know what I’d like to make, but some of those items require pattern drafting. I need a solid chunk of uninterrupted time to tackle that, and I also have to be in the right mood.

I suspect I will come back from my Sew Expo trip with some fabric. I plan to stop at Pacific Fabrics in Seattle and I know there will be a some apparel fabric vendors at the show. And from the “Too Little, Too Late” department, I see that Joann Fabrics is carrying a new line called Draper James. This line actually has quite a few really nice apparel fabrics in it. Why did they wait so long??????

Sewing and Growing

I taught a sewing class at the community center yesterday morning. I do these periodically and donate the class fee to the homestead foundation. They are always a lot of fun. I set up a couple of sewing machines and my ironing board and bring all the fabric and supplies. Yesterday’s class had three students: a woman about my age and two 20-something girls. Each of them made two pillowcases during the three-hour class.

We make the pillowcases using the burrito method, which is always rather magical. Along the way, I try to teach good sewing and pressing habits.

Halfway through the class, the older lady mentioned that she had a sewing machine and had brought it with her, so I asked her if I could look it over. It turned out to be a serger! All she could tell me was that she had bought it at an estate sale. I threaded it up and got it to make a serger chain, but I’d need to tinker with it a bit more to get it to stitch properly.

The pillowcases turned out well. We do simple ones without the flange between the header and body because I’ve found that beginning sewists have enough trouble keeping three layers of fabric together (even with pins), let alone five.

After class, I packed up my supplies and came home. The husband is doing some concrete work at the hospital and went to work yesterday with a couple of our employees. He said it was much easier to work on the weekend when fewer people were there.

I was going to finish quilting the hexie wallhanging, but I don’t have the correct thread color for the border. I’ll get some this week. I started working on the jelly roll quilt, instead:

This one is getting a loopy meander in the center. I know that’s my default free motion quilting pattern, but it’s fast and relaxing. I don’t want to take the time to do rulerwork or custom quilting on this top.

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The husband has been queuing up seed starting and garden planning videos for our evening viewing, but I’m not ready to think about planting yet. He found an interesting channel called Montana Mid-Valley Farm, which is produced by a young couple living somewhere near Helena. We watched their videos about building a root cellar. The husband says that building one here is on his to-do list for this summer. We’re using a spot in our basement as a root cellar, but it would be nice to have a larger one for more storage. He also said it would make a good fire shelter in the event of a wildfire, although I don’t like to think about that.

In any case, it’s going to be about six weeks before I can get into the greenhouse to do anything. The lettuce in the basement is about ready to cut, and I need to start the next round in the rooting plugs.

Hexie Quilting and a Puzzle

I spent yesterday making quilt backings. I couldn’t find any 108" wide fabrics that I liked at the quilt store, so I bought 44" wide yardage and pieced the backings. Then I basted them to the tops and batting. After lunch, I worked on quilting the EPP hexie wallhanging:

I’m stitching in the ditch around all the units. I’ll do something fun in the border. I’m just happy to be moving some of these projects through the pipeline.

Anna at Noodlehead released a new pattern, the Trail Tote:

I bought the pattern (of course), although I probably won’t make it immediately. I do love the piping detail. I carry a ton of stuff around with me—if we’re ever shopping together and you need a tape measure, I have one—so I would make the larger version. I think it would be great in a waxed canvas. I might order some of the waxed canvas that Sailrite sells just to see how it compares to the AL Frances canvas and the Klum House canvas.

So many things to make.

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I don’t talk about medical stuff very often here on the blog, because I am not a doctor and I don’t give medical advice, but I am living a medical puzzle and one of the pieces dropped into place this week. I am sharing in case it helps anyone else.

I am homozygous for the C677T mutation in the MTHFR gene. That means I got one copy from each of my parents. Maybe you’ve heard of MTHFR, maybe not. It has become more notorious thanks to DNA testing. (There is also a mutation known as A1298C, which I do not have.) The MTHFR gene codes for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, an enzyme involved in one of the metabolic pathways in our bodies. Because I am homozygous for that mutation, I have about 75% less methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. The lack of that enzyme can lead to a laundry list of problems, and the fact that I got one copy of that gene from each of my parents means that it is running rampant on both sides of my family. We’ve done enough DNA testing that I know who has it and it what form.

Our first baby was born without a brain, a birth defect which falls under the category of neural tube defects and is directly attributable to that MTHFR mutation. It’s why pregnant women are now told to take folic acid. In my case, I don’t metabolize folate properly. You might think I could fix that by taking a folic acid supplement, but it’s more complicated than that. The folic acid that is available now is synthetic, and it actually causes more problems for people with MTHFR than it solves. A lot of doctors recommend methylfolate as an alternative, but I can’t take that, either, because it causes violent mood swings. I can tolerate folinic acid, which is a precursor to methylfolate, so I take that.

My mother has a B12 deficiency, also known as pernicious anemia. For most of her life, doctors told her to take more iron. 🙄 Pernicious anemia cannot be fixed by taking more iron. She requires B12 supplementation. That’s another manifestation of the MTHFR mutation.

That mutation can also cause elevated homocysteine which, in turn, leads to inflammation in the blood vessels. Blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks feature prominently in our medical history on both sides.

I want my girls to be armed with as much knowledge about this and how it affects them as possible, so I’ve done a ton of research. Thankfully, I have a naturopath as my primary care doctor who is also fairly knowledgeable about MTHFR. Most conventional doctors don’t have a clue.

I happened to be surfing Pinterest the other night when I ran across an article entitled, “Your ‘MTHFR’ is Just a Riboflavin Deficiency.” That led me to Chris Masterjohn, who has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and a Substack account where he writes about this stuff. (The Substack account has a free version and a subscription version.) He argues that because the MTHFR mutations are so common—something like 75% of the population has a version of them—they’ve only become a problem for some people because the quality of our diets have deteriorated so much. I do know that I’d be happy to live on a diet of beans, rice, and leafy greens, all of which happen to be foods high in folate. My body knows what it needs.

Every so often, I get cracking and redness around my mouth. It’s more than just chapped lips. The dentist also told me in December that my tongue looked swollen and red. I had read somewhere a few years ago that that could be due to a B vitamin deficiency. I take the Seeking Health B-Minus complex every day, which is a formulation from Dr. Ben Lynch that doesn’t have any methylfolate or folic acid in it. (I take the folinic acid separately.) That B-complex has 20 mg of riboflavin in it. The dietary recommendation is something like 1.5 mg per day, so I thought I was getting plenty of riboflavin, but I still had this cracking and redness issue. According to Chris Masterjohn, some people with the MTHFR mutation may need up to 400 mg of riboflavin a day. I started taking 100 mg capsules in addition to my B-complex and guess what?—the redness around my mouth is resolving. I am working my way up to 400 mg a day. Riboflavin is a water-soluble vitamin and any excess is eliminated from the body, so I don’t need to worry about toxicity.

I haven’t solved the entire puzzle yet, but I have way more information than I had 35 years ago. Comprehensive metabolic testing is available, although it’s expensive. I’m going to ask my naturopath about it on my next visit.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t give medical advice. Please don’t ask me. I present this for informational purposes only. If you have questions, ask your doctor.

Toward the Finish Line

I’m still in the midst of cleaning up and organizing my sewing area. I have a stack of quilts I’ve made that I want to keep, but finding a place to store them has been an issue. I got the brilliant idea to stack them, opened, on the spare bed, in the manner of a bed turning. Once the top quilt is on, the quilts underneath are (mostly) hidden. It works, and it keeps the quilts from getting damaged by fold lines.

Because I need to get backing fabric for the Correspondence quilt, I decided to figure out what other projects need backings. I might as well buy everything at once. That English paper piecing hexie wallhanging needs one. I also unearthed a jelly roll quilt with a chunk of yardage intended for borders, so I went ahead and put the borders on it yesterday:

I think this is a fabric line from Laundry Basket Quilts. I remember buying the jelly roll to take with me to Alaska a couple of years ago. When I visit DD#1, I usually take a project to work on while I am there. I left a Janome Hello Kitty sewing machine at her house on my first visit.

I’ll see what backings I can find at the quilt store today. I also need to get lining fabric for the blue quilted Hobby Lobby fabric. I love that fabric and want to get it made into a jacket, but I am beginning to wish I hadn’t bought it. For some reason, I didn’t notice that the reverse side of the fabric is a scrim-type batting, so the jacket will need to be lined no matter which pattern I use. Or—I’ve been kicking this around as an idea—I could cut lining pieces to match each pattern piece, then baste the lining fabric to the fashion fabric and treat them as a single piece. If I did that, I’d probably want to bind the inside seams, even if I finish the edges on the serger.

It will be a minor miracle if I ever get this Hobby Lobby fabric made into a jacket.

Class handouts are almost complete. One class still needs a handout, and for that one, I need to knit some samples so I can take photos.

I’m teaching a beginning sewing class (pillowcases) for the homestead foundation this weekend. That’s always a lot of fun. We’re supposed to get more snow, too, followed by another deep freeze. It’s February in Montana.

Snow and Scraps

I think the National Weather Service has revised its guidelines for issuing warnings, but I am not sure those changes were for the better. We’ve lived here for almost 32 years. It seems to me that we only used to get winter storm warnings when something serious was going to happen. Now we get winter storm warnings for typical, average snowfall events. That’s like warning people that it’s going to be hot in July. 😑

I worked on class handouts yesterday morning. The first one I tackled was for a four-hour class on sweater drafting. I opened up my class template file and began writing down everything I could think of that I want to cover. That class is scheduled for the first day of Sew Expo, from 8 am to noon. I’ll have to be careful not to come in like a shining supernova and overwhelm people who haven’t finished drinking their coffee.

After lunch, I cut scraps. I keep my 5" scrap squares in a clear tote, and when it gets full, I take it to church and give it to my friend, Pat. She sews the squares into comforter tops that get tied and finished to donate to Mennonite Central Committee. It’s a very efficient system. She gave me the empty tote on Sunday and said she could use more scraps. I’ve been going through my bins and pulling out smaller remnants and cutting them into 5" squares. I have all this fabric and it’s not doing anyone any good sitting in bins.

That dark blue print, interestingly, is some old Joann Fabrics yardage. (It must have come in a shipment from my mother.) The fabric says “Richloom” on the selvedge, which is not something Joanns has carried for a long time. The quality is also nicer than what is being sold currently.

My Accuquilt Studio cutter can cut eighty 5" squares in one pass, so it didn’t take long to amass a pile of squares:

I also cut a bunch of tumbler units.

I have a bin of tumblers, too, and I’ve been using the brown ones as leaders and enders as I sew the Tim Holtz quilt top together. Some people begin sewing on a piece of scrap fabric, then follow it with the quilt block or unit without cutting the thread. It’s a way to save thread. If you make your leader (and ender) out of another quilt unit instead of a piece of scrap fabric, it’s possible to sew units for a second quilt simultaneously. When I can’t chain piece, for whatever reason, I try to use leaders and enders, and now I’ve got a nice stack of rows sewn together for a brown tumbler quilt.

The Tim Holtz Correspondence top is finished.

I need to get a backing for it. Our quilt store carries Tim Holtz yardage and I know they have something that will coordinate with this line.

More class handout work and some sewing is on the schedule for today. I’m in no hurry for spring to get here.

Two More Months of Winter (At Least)

Last week was insanely busy, with lots of meetings. I have to chair a fundraising committee tonight, but other than that, this week’s schedule is clear. (I’m whispering again so the universe doesn’t hear me.) This week will be devoted to class prep for Sew Expo. I’m teaching seven classes. A few of the classes are new and need handouts. The rest are classes I taught last year, but I need to pare down the handouts a bit to reflect the shortened class time. Classes are 2-1/2 hours, which is so awkward. I wish the organizers would make them three-hour classes.

Don’t laugh, but I think I’ve found the jacket pattern I want to use for the blue quilted Hobby Lobby fabric:

I will never have to buy another jacket pattern ever again—I now own them all. 🤪 I like the pink zipper version on the left. I will make it with the lower welt pockets but I’ll leave off the upper patch pockets. I’ll probably lengthen it a bit, too, but I’ll determine that when I make a muslin of the pattern. Alissah, the designer, has a YouTube video on constructing the jacket. That will come in handy when I do the welt pockets, because—of course—I couldn’t visualize how to put them together from reading the instructions.

I am sure we’ll all be happy when I stop dithering and finally make a quilted jacket with that Hobby Lobby fabric.

One of my followers suggested the Megan Nielsen Hovea Jacket pattern—that one is full of value for the money because it has five different variations. Maybe for a future jacket.

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The husband asked me yesterday if I’ve ordered seeds yet. I haven’t, but I need to get on that soon. When we first moved here, I was very optimistic and thought that spring began in March. 🤣🤣🤣 It took a couple of years, but I finally had that beaten out of me. Even with a greenhouse, I don’t usually start seeds until the middle of March at the earliest, and only for some crops. Beans and squash don’t take long to germinate, so they get started later in the spring.

I’ll make a list, though, and get the order in this week. I’m growing for us and for the plant sale, so it’s usually a substantial list.

The lettuce is coming along nicely:

My container of Texas Tomato Food was out in the greenhouse, so I stopped by on the way home from town one day and retrieved it. I use the TTF to feed the lettuce. It will grow without it, but the TTF provides some extra nutrients.

We were under a winter storm watch until Wednesday morning, but that’s been changed to a winter weather advisory. Cold air is coming down from the Arctic and moisture is coming up from the south, but it looks like those two things will collide over Missoula. We’ll get the cold air but likely not much snow.

Hello, February

I finished making the blocks for the Tim Holtz Correspondence quilt:

It looks very denim-y to me. This isn’t my favorite Tim Holtz line but I like how this quilt turned out and I am happy to have used up some stash. Now I just have to sew the blocks together. The pattern called for 32 blocks and a border; I had enough fabric to make 45 blocks (5 rows by 9 columns) and I am going to leave off the border. This is a generously-sized lap quilt.

I’m sure I’ll use that Fat Eights Flapjacks pattern again. It was easy to piece.

We’ll see if this has scratched my quilting itch for a while. I am ready to work on some clothing projects again. I did all that work last fall to get a pants sloper that fits me and I really need to put it to use.

The husband and I were eating dinner last night when I heard the UPS truck pull in. We have a great UPS guy—he’s here so often that I make him a batch of chocolate chip cookies every so often as a thank you. He brought a package addressed to me, which was odd because I hadn’t ordered anything recently. Inside was a very special gift!

My friends Robert and Deana came to visit in September. At the time, Deana was shopping for an embroidery machine. She makes and sells items at local craft fairs. I put her in touch with one of the ladies from our Thursday sewing group who does a lot of embroidery. Later in the fall, she bought a new machine and has been embroidering up a storm. She made me this custom-embroidered hoodie and all the letters are made up of sewing motifs! She said she used her brightest thread colors because she knows I don’t like muddy earth tones, LOL.

I will get a lot of use out of this. Thank you, Deana! 😘

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We have a gathering here this morning for our semi-annual church conference meeting. I’ve hosted this gathering every year for the past several years. A group of us used to attend the meeting in person, but traveling to Portland was always dicey in February. During the pandemic, the conference organizers moved the meeting to Zoom and have continued that tradition. I’m a bit bummed not to have a reason to go to Portland in February, but a Zoom meeting is better than nothing. This year, the focus of the meeting is on the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.

I hook the computer up to the television so everyone can see the meeting and it works nicely. We’ll have soup for lunch and lots of other treats to snack on.

Good Stuff But Not Much Sewing

The grant meeting I went to Tuesday morning was very interesting. The Whitefish Community Foundation exists to give money to local Flathead Valley nonprofit organizations. Our local volunteer fire department’s support organization participates in the Great Fish Challenge every summer, which is a five-week event during which each group has to raise at least $25,000. Those funds are then matched in part by the Community Foundation. Our homestead foundation is not big enough to participate in the Great Fish Challenge, but they have some smaller grant programs for which we qualify.

Being a small community organization is both a blessing and a curse. We have a lot of community support, but we don’t have the infrastructure that larger organizations do. Many of the organizations attending the meeting on Tuesday have paid staff. The Whitefish Community Foundation wants all of their participating nonprofits to use QuickBooks, which our organization does not—yet, but we’ll be moving to that shortly. I’ve been on several nonprofit boards and they tend to be filled with people who want to do good work in their communities but who don’t always have a solid understanding of basic business principles. When I joined the board of the homestead foundation and built the new website, I included features that allow for passive income streams. We have business sponsors, we can take payment for memberships and events online, and I am in the process of setting up a merchandise store where we can sell things like T-shirts, aprons, and tote bags with our logo and other artwork on them.

After the grant meeting, I went to one of the assisted living facilities in town. Several members of our congregation live there and they invited us to a hymn sing at 11 am. We ended up with a group of 12 people from our church. Half of us stayed for lunch. The food in their dining room is very good and we all had a lovely visit.

[I am not kidding about the Mennonite singing thing. All you have to do is mention singing and a bunch of Mennonites will show up.]

Ruler class yesterday was a lot of fun. It is so gratifying to witness those “A-ha!” moments in a class when students understand a concept or master a skill. I also had a good chat with the store owner’s daughter, who runs their website and social media. She has some intriguing ideas about the podcast and ways we might work together.

As predicted, the only sewing that is happening this week has been on the Tim Holtz Correspondence quilt.

I finished sewing thirty-two of these units together. They need to have another rectangle sewn to the ends and then I can assemble the top. This has gone together quickly.

This is What I Do All Day

Let’s revisit that question of what I do all day, because this week is a good example of everything I do rolled into one.

My number one priority is the Schuster-Szabo empire. I run the business end of the construction company. We have 4-5 employees, depending on the time of year. I do all the paperwork and bookkeeping—basically, anything that doesn’t involve the actual pouring of concrete. The husband often says that if it weren’t for me, he’d be part of the underground economy. He has no interest in any of that stuff. And I am OCD about tracking every last penny. I reconcile the bank statement every month and our accountant has everything he needs to prepare our tax returns by the end of January. Have I mentioned how much I hate QuickBooks?

I am on the board of the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. That is our local community organization. The Foundation owns the property on which stands the original 1927 schoolhouse as well as our community center where the sewing group meets on Thursdays.

I built and manage the Foundation website, produce the quarterly newsletter, and I am the chairman of the Fundraising Committee which meets once a month. I am also the chairman of the annual plant sale. Last year, the Fundraising Committee set a goal of raising $25,000. We beat that by over a thousand dollars. That sounds like a lot of money, but half of that is earmarked just for keeping the lights on and the doors open. Our insurance premiums alone are $6000 a year. This morning, I’m going to a presentation by the Whitefish Community Foundation to see about possible grant opportunities for our organization because we would like to renovate and improve the 1927 schoolhouse building.

I produce a weekly podcast. (Yes, I am going back to a weekly schedule.) That isn’t generating much income at the moment, but I enjoy it and will keep doing it. I have met a lot of very fascinating people.

I teach sewing (and knitting). I have a class on ruler quilting scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the quilt store south of town. I’ll be teaching at Sew Expo in Puyallup, WA, at the end of February. I enjoy teaching and probably would travel more except that I promised the husband that I would confine my roaming around to the Pacific Northwest. Traveling does take a lot of time and it’s very disruptive.

I am the pianist at the Mennonite Church. Every Sunday. As part of that position, I’m on the worship planning team. I am also currently the chairman of the pastor search team. Our previous pastor retired in the fall of 2022 and we are searching for another pastor. There are five very devoted people on the committee with me. I enjoy working with them, although that position comes with a lot of expectations and pressure.

The daily chicken chores are partly my responsibility and I do 90% of the work in the garden. The husband helps with the heavy lifting, but starting and growing all of our crops—as well as half the plants for the Homestead Foundation plant sale in May—falls under my purview. All of the food canning and preservation is my responsibility.

In short, I am not sitting around doing nothing. I know that people look at me and think, “Well, she doesn’t have a real job so she must have all the time in the world.” Ha. (The husband reminds me frequently that I do have a real job as the CFO of the construction company.) Most of the time, I enjoy the way my schedule is set up. It’s only when people assume that I am their paid staff and treat me as such that I get annoyed.

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Recording today’s podcast interview was a lot of fun. I got an e-mail from a woman in the Netherlands a few weeks ago. She asked if I would be interested in visiting with her about how she created her own custom dress form. She had a local company do a 3D scan of her body, then sent the files to another company to have them make a foam copy of her body. She set up a website to help other sewists do the same thing for themselves. I finished that interview thinking what a shame is is that we’re on opposite side of the planet, because she would make a great sewing buddy. And I am kicking around the idea of making myself a custom dress form.

That Was a Learning Experience

The quilted jacket is done.

Eh. It’s not really something I would wear. Those sleeves are enormous and annoying. I’m glad I made the pattern—even with all the issues—but I am going to move on. This one goes into class sample storage.

I started tracing the Tamarack jacket pattern yesterday afternoon. I have another chunk of prequilted fabric with which to make a test version. Kate, at The Confident Stitch in Missoula, had a wonderful Tamarack on display in the store. She’s also done a video showing how she made it. She and I are about the same size—although she’s a bit taller than me—so her comments about sizing were helpful as I have been dithering about which size to make. That pattern doesn’t call for seam finishes on the inside. Kate serged the edges of her pattern pieces and I thought they looked fine.

So much goes into good design. I follow a menswear writer on Twitter (@dieworkwear) who posts some great examples of good and bad design in men’s clothing.

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Sailrite has a great YouTube channel. I love watching build videos while I sew and they’ve done some fascinating ones, like the ottoman with a quilted top. The problem is that the husband and I are such tool junkies that now I am wondering how I could justify getting a tempered glass cutting mat and a cordless hot knife. 😇 I told the husband the other day that women just cut webbing and seal the ends with a lighter; men created a specialized tool to do the same thing.

Sewing has to take a backseat this week. I have half a dozen appointments and meetings on the schedule and I am teaching my quilting class on Wednesday. That one will happen because I have students signed up. I’ll keep the Tim Holtz quilt pieces next to the sewing machine so I can work on that project here and there as I have time. That may be all that happens in the sewing room this week.

Quilted Jacket Hell

All of this started because I thought the blue quilted fabric from Hobby Lobby would make a nice jacket . . .

The store in Missoula would like a quilted jacket class. They carry Riley Blake fabrics, so the owner asked me if I would consider teaching this pattern:

Sure, why not. I might decide that I like it enough to make it up with the Hobby Lobby fabric. And if I am going to teach this pattern, I need to make it up so that I can locate any possible landmines for the students ahead of time.

On the surface, it looks like an easy pattern—two fronts, two sleeves, a back, and a collar. Edges finished with binding. The pattern calls for three yards of quilted 44" wide fabric. I don’t have time to quilt three yards of fabric for a jacket right now, so I bought some solid pink pre-quilted fabric from Joanns. It’s not of the best quality, but it worked for testing.

[When I finally use that Hobby Lobby fabric, it will be in a pattern that has been thoroughly tested.]

The pattern pieces are printed in four different colors on one large piece of paper. The pattern pieces overlap, so they have to be traced. There are no grainlines or notches. I traced the pattern and cut the pieces Friday afternoon and started working on this yesterday morning. I thought it might take me 3-4 hours.

Riley Blake has a video about making this jacket on their YouTube channel. I watched a bit of it before I got started. The process looked reasonable, although I wondered why they hadn’t shown the actual sewing of the shoulder seams. Then I tried to sew my shoulder seams.

The fronts were 2" longer than the back at the shoulder seams. Had I cut the pieces incorrectly? I got out the pattern and measured the pattern pieces. The fronts are 2" longer than the back at the shoulder seams.

I adjusted the fronts by cutting back the angle of the V-neck opening so that the shoulder seams matched, then sewed them. One nice feature about this pattern is that all of the inside seams are bound. The jacket is reversible. I was a bit puzzled by the fact that the pattern calls for two different widths of binding. The 1-1/2" binding is to cover the (bulky) inside seams, while the 2" binding is for finishing the outside edges, which are not bulky. I forged on and followed the directions as written. (The directions, by the way, are skimpy and poorly illustrated.)

The 1-1/2" binding is folded in half lengthwise and pressed, making it 3/4" wide—or 6/8" for the math, as you’ll see in a moment. The seam allowances are 1/2" trimmed down to 3/8". After sewing the seam, the pattern instructions have you trim down the seam, then sew the binding along the seam. The pattern doesn’t specify that the raw edges of the seam and the binding should be aligned, although that was mentioned at one point in the video. After sewing the binding along the seam, the folded edge gets turned over the (very bulky) seam and topstitched down. It should look like this when it is done (oh how I love that #10 edgestitch foot):

Let’s do the math. The folded binding is 6/8" wide. It is sewn to a 3/8" seam with the raw edges aligned, meaning that 3/8" of the binding width becomes part of the seam, leaving only 3/8" to be folded over a very bulky seam—because the seam is two layers of quilted fabric!—and topstitched down.

I couldn’t make it happen. And I kept watching the video and thinking to myself that the binding they were sewing over the shoulder seam on their sample was wider than 3/8". From that point, in order to get that binding folded over and sewn down, I had to sew the binding on so that its raw edge was positioned below the raw edge of the seam by at least 1/8" and then trim the seam down even further.

This begs the question of why the narrower binding is specified in the pattern. It doesn’t work. The designer of the pattern is in the Riley Blake video and she says she prefers very tight binding, but this was ridiculous. I wonder if it’s a mistake in the pattern and the 1-1/2" binding was meant for the outer edge and the wider binding meant for the seams. The pattern clearly states to use the 1-1/2" binding for the seams, though.

It took me two hours to get those shoulder seams sorted out. I was able to get the sleeves attached and bound by lunchtime, although the instructions given in the pattern differ from the instructions that were given in the video. In the pattern, the binding is attached on the sleeve side of the seam and folded over to the body and stitched down. In the video, the instructions are to sew the binding to the body and fold it over to the sleeve side and stitch it down, which works much better.

And if I thought that trying to get that narrow binding folded over the shoulder seams was bad, trying to fold it over at the underarm on the side seam—where there are FOUR thicknesses of quilted fabric and two layers of sleeve seam binding—was next to impossible. I got a pair of very sharp, small scissors and trimmed that seam down to within an inch of its life.

Before I topstitched the side seam binding, I decided to attach the collar. The collar piece has to be bound on three sides with the wider binding. I did that, then began pinning the collar onto the jacket from the center back neck out.

The collar was an inch too long on either end, even after having cut back the angle of the V neck to get the shoulder seams to match. I went back to the pattern and measured. Yep, the collar pattern piece is longer than the measurement of the front Vs combined with the back neck.

Sigh. I did a bit more trimming to get the collar to attach to the body properly.

I was finishing up the topstitching on the side/body seam—which requires wrestling the jacket through the machine from one direction as far as possible, then turning it around and wrestling it through the machine from the other direction—when the husband came upstairs and asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner. I love that man.

All that is left now is to sew down the binding around the perimeter of the jacket and attach binding to the cuffs. I was hoping to have a photo of the completed jacket this morning, but it’s going to take another hour or two of work.

This pattern is currently unavailable on the Riley Blake website, although it says “coming soon.” I wonder if they had so many issues with sewists not being able to make the jacket as written that they are revising the pattern. The husband and I discussed this project on our way to dinner. He asked me why I hadn’t just ditched the pattern and made the jacket the way I thought it should go together. I said that if I am going to teach a pattern, I need to make it the way the designer specifies the first time, because the designer may have very good reasons for choosing certain techniques.

Believe me, I understand the work that goes into producing a quality pattern. Mistakes can creep in. On something this simple, though, many of these issues should have been caught in the testing stage. And I am a garment sewist. I suspect that a lot of the people who buy this pattern are quilters who don’t have a lot of garment-making experience. (That may be true of the designer, too.) This pattern is not a good introduction to garment sewing.

I still don’t know which pattern I’m going to use for that Hobby Lobby fabric. I have the Tamarack Jacket and the new McCall’s 8560 to test out. Neither of those patterns appears to have bound seams on the inside, at least from my initial reading. I don’t think it would be difficult to bind seams on either one, though, especially if I use binding of sufficient width. The bounds seams are a nice finishing detail.

We did go out to dinner, stopping by one of the jobsites on the way so the husband could check on a few things. This house is being built on the west shore of Flathead Lake. The views are stunning:

We couldn’t get a reservation at Mercantile Steak—our favorite date night restaurant—so we settled for Famous Dave’s, followed by a stop at Home Depot. The husband is going to put better lighting over my Juki 1541 in the garage so I can see what I am sewing.

A Tale of Two Tops

Stores where I teach like to have display samples. They prefer to have display samples in fabrics they carry so they can sell more fabric. I get that. As much as I can, I try to accommodate the stores. When it comes to clothing classes, I make the display samples in my size so I get some use of out them. (I am providing the fabric.) Also, I think it helps students to see clothing made for real people, not 98-pound models.

The quilt store here in Kalispell carries a fair bit of apparel fabric, including ponte, rayon batiks, and linen/rayon blends. The store in Missoula doesn’t carry any apparel fabric. Making their samples is a bit more challenging. They don’t require students to buy fabric for classes from them, but they want to encourage people to shop at stores other than Hobby Lobby, Walmart, and Joanns. If a student can’t find fabric at the quilt store, the quilt store will send them over to The Confident Stitch. I may specify in the supply list to bring muslin fabric. Sometimes we need to use less expensive fabrics to make the first iteration and refine the fit, because it is demoralizing for students to use expensive fabric on something they can’t wear.

For the Missoula store’s display sample, I chose the Fableism fabric. You’ll see from the photo that perhaps it isn’t technically an apparel fabric, but The Confident Stitch carries it and it did make a comfortable Cadence Top. Quilting cottons, lovely though they may be, don’t usually lend themselves well to garments, although some of the lawns and sateens work.

I wish I had a good way to get photos of me wearing these tops, because I think it would be more informative. The dress form will have to do.

I tested out a mashup of the upper bodice of the Cadence with the lower half of New Look 6543 and I think I have created the perfect woven tee pattern for me:

This is one of the rayon batiks that our store carries. You can see how much flowier it is than the Fableism fabric. I love the way this one fits and definitely prefer the French darts to horizontal bust darts. I also set in the sleeves in via the conventional method and they went in perfectly without the need for any ease stitches.

[I look at this top and I totally understand why I can’t wear store-bought tops—they are a good 6" or 8" too short, and this is far from tunic length on me. It hits about mid-hip.]

I see a batch of these tops in my future, although I am not yet ready for spring sewing. Social media is full of sewists starting to work on spring projects, and I’m going to be wearing sweater knits for at least another two months. I do have half a dozen chunks of rayon batiks in my stash, though, that will get made into more T’s and possibly a dress or two as warm weather approaches.

After I finished this top, I spent some time cleaning and organizing my sewing area. I need to stop procrastinating the pocket construction steps of that Place for Everything tote, so those have been stacked up next to the machine. And because seeing and comparing patterns is so helpful for cementing some of these fitting concepts into my brain, I traced the Amarena Dress (Liesl + Co). I have no intention of making it up right now, but I was able to compare the way it was drafted to the Cadence Top and the Scout Tee.

Honestly, I am a bit tired of making clothes. If I hadn’t had to get the shop sample done, I would have been working on quilts and bags.

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The article about Joanns on the Craft Industry Alliance website disappeared for a bit yesterday. When it was reposted, the photo at the top of the article had been changed. The original photo was obviously an AI-generated image—an amateurish one, at that—and it was called out by several commenters. The photo was removed and replaced with a photo of the front of a Joanns store, along with a note that the Craft Industry Alliance was drafting a policy for use of artificial intelligence-generated images.

I get that AI is almost inevitable at this point, Luddite though I may be sometimes, I realize I can’t stem this tide. However, I wish we would not rush headlong into incorporating it thoughtlessly into every part of our lives. New! Shiny!—Oh, wait, you mean there are some drawbacks?

I’ve dabbled with ChatGPT a bit, but I always feel like I need a shower afterwards. I have zero faith in humanity, and I know AI will be used for nefarious purposes. I just wish we were smarter than that.

So Much Sewing Going On

Sorry, this post got rather long. It’s also a bit heavy on nerdy sewing concepts.

I spent Tuesday afternoon working on the Tim Holtz Correspondence quilt. This project jumped the line, in a sense, but I’m not going to chastise myself over it. I am working on what seems right to me in the moment. As much as I enjoy the challenge of a project like the Place for Everything Tote, sometimes I just want mindless sewing. Balance is key.

I chain pieced units on my beloved Necchi BF:

I haven’t sewn on this machine for a while and I didn’t want it to get lonely.

These are some of the partial blocks:

I still have to sew rectangle units onto the ends of these partial blocks. I like how this is coming together, though. The gray works better as a background than white or cream.

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Hobby Lobby has not yet stocked the Spring pattern releases from McCall’s. I happened to stop in at Joanns while the manager was stocking patterns there, so I asked her if she had any new ones. The store had received a stock of KnowMe and Simplicity patterns but only a few McCall’s patterns. She said that she doesn’t think they will be getting any more pattern shipments until this bankruptcy issue is resolved.

This analysis of the entire Joanns debacle popped up on the Craft Industry Alliance website yesterday. I think it is spot on, particularly this assessment of the overall poor customer experience:

Imagine how different the experience at Joann would be as a customer if from the top-down the company was oriented to make the shopping experience pleasant instead of the “bad garage sale-like environment” of a Joann store.

That sums it up perfectly.

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The quilt store in Missoula wants a woven top class. (Quilt stores are making an effort to fill the gap in apparel classes, at least locally.) I chose the Cadence Top from Love Notions for them. Love Notions has a teaching license system, which simplifies things for everyone. I spent yesterday sewing a Cadence for myself to make sure it will work for the class.

Personally, I’ve stayed away from Love Notions patterns only because they don’t seem to fit me well. I got out the Scout Tee pattern from a few weeks ago—the one I lengthened to fit me properly—and compared it to the Cadence pattern. I was surprised to see that my altered Scout Tee pattern pieces were very similar to the Cadence top pattern pieces. I took a leap of faith and traced the Cadence Top in my size, using the full bust option, with no alterations. I used some of the Fableism fabric I got at Pacific Fabrics last spring to make my version.

I am not unhappy with the way it turned out. I love the way the shoulders and upper bodice fit. I have broad shoulders, so that’s often a sticking point for me. The Scout Tee fits more tightly in the shoulder and underarm area. I also watched the TomKat Stitchery video about making the Cadence Top, and Whitney mentioned that she put the sleeves in flat on her version. How interesting. I always put my sleeves in flat in knit garments, but never in wovens. I decided to try that on this top. They went in without a hitch. That reinforces my belief that most sleeve caps are drafted with way too much ease. I’m not alone: Sleeve Cap Ease is Bogus.

The Cadence Top has a horizontal bust dart. It fits me well in that area, but I went down a rabbit hole and pulled out a top I made last year from New Look 6543. That top—also for wovens—has what is basically a French dart, which is a dart coming up from the side near the waist rather than a dart at the side of the bodice. I think I prefer the fit of the French dart. The waist area seems to be where I have problems with Love Notions patterns. Their block is drafted for someone who is 5'5", so even though the top might be long enough, the waist is in the wrong place for me.

I got the brilliant idea to frankenpattern the upper bodice of the Cadence Top with the French dart and lower half of New Look 6543. (It may not be so brilliant, but we won’t know until I try.) I think what I may end up with is basically the French Dart Shift in top form, but at least I know it will fit me well in all the important places. I’m going to test the pattern today, and you’ll get photos of both tops in a future blog post.

My Precious Tim Holtz Fabric

While I was stash diving for the lining fabric for my red Wool and Wax Tote last week, I was seduced by my Tim Holtz fabric into making a quilt. (Blame it all on the fabric.) I have four fat eighth bundles of the Correspondence line, which is exactly the amount I need to make a Fat Eighth Flapjack quilt.

Fat Eighth Flapjack is a free pattern from Fat Quarter Shop. The thing about Tim Holtz fabric is that many of the prints feature large-scale motifs, so cutting the fabric into tiny pieces defeats the purpose. When I use my Tim Holtz fabric, I try to find patterns that are mostly based on large-ish rectangles.

I paired these fabrics with some gray Kona from the stash for the 3" background squares. I cut the gray Kona on the Accuquilt cutter. The rest of the units have to be cut by hand, but it doesn’t take long.

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I am not sure what it is about zippers. I don’t think that zippers are particularly difficult—or at least I didn’t used to think so—but they seem to thwart me at every turn.

I bought some packages of byAnnie zipper tape-by-the yard for the Place for Everything Tote. I had some time yesterday morning before a Zoom meeting, so I thought I would attach the zipper pulls to the tape per the instructions. The zipper tape is a continuous length of several yards. The instructions have you mark the tape for to the appropriate lengths, after which you are supposed to attach the needed pulls, slide them to each marked section, sew stops between the sections, and cut the tape. The zipper for the outside of the case requires two pulls going in opposite directions. The remaining zippers require one pull.

I’ve put zipper pulls on zipper tape before. There is nothing mysterious or magical about it. I attempted to attach the pulls. They would not move down the tape. I tried the fork method. I watched the byAnnie videos to see if I was missing some crucial piece of information. No luck. Nothing. I struggled with those zipper pulls for almost an hour until I had to go to my meeting.

After the meeting, I tried again. I tried from each end of the tape. I could get the pull onto the tape, but it wouldn’t slide. Finally, I tried this method from Sallie Tomato, which involves cutting one side of the zipper tape shorter than the other to attach the pulls. That worked, although it still took some effort.

I spent way too much time on that part of the project yesterday. 😡

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I changed my podcasting schedule. I don’t like it. Producing it on this new schedule doesn’t flow well or fit into my life the way it used to. I may go back to the old schedule soon.

Barring any more zipper dysfunction, I’m hoping to knock out a few projects this week.

A Blip in Time

Saturday was a weird day. I knocked a bunch of stuff off my to-do list, but the day felt like it lasted forever. I remember looking at the clock at one point, thinking it must be past dinner time. It was 3 pm. 🧐

My ruler class samples are done. I may need to come up with some kind of deposit policy for the display items I give to stores to promote classes, because I have had a few instances of stores losing samples. I don’t think it’s anything nefarious; I think it’s a matter of being disorganized. However, I don’t want to have to make new promotional items for every class. The store here in town does an excellent job of collecting my samples and getting them back to me.

I sewed a line of stitches around the outside of all the Place For Everything pieces, which “seals” and flattens the edges to make them easier to sew. I am at an impasse, though, because I am overwhelmed by the pocket options for the inside pages. Vinyl or mesh? One large pocket or several smaller pockets? Or half large pockets and a few smaller pockets? I don’t know what I will want or need, so I don’t know what to make. I am leaning toward larger vinyl pockets. I cut two pieces of vinyl. Baby steps.

Angela Walters has a new video series on quilting swirls, so after I finished with the class samples and PFE pieces, I felt compelled to mess around with free-motion swirl quilting on the Q20.

So relaxing. I did a bit more of this yesterday afternoon. Free motion quilting is a bit like learning to play the piano. Theory is all well and good, but you can’t learn it without doing it, because so much of it depends on forming the muscle memory.

Amanda Murphy has come out with some new quilting rulers. I ordered the Every Angle Plus, which has “hooks” on each end to make ditch quilting easier.

I really wish Bernina would come out with some kind of stitch-in-the-ditch foot for the Q-series machines.

I also ordered the Every Semicircle set:

I have a semicircle set from HandiQuilter, but those rulers are hard to keep lined up on the quilting. That’s why I really like Amanda Murphy’s rulers. The hooks help keep the quilting foot where it belongs at all times.

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I have a week of empty spaces on my calendar. (I am whispering so the universe doesn’t hear me.) That seems like such a luxury to me. I intend to take advantage of it.

I Love January

Many people complain that January feels like it lasts forever, but it is one of my favorite months. The holidays have come and gone, the new year begins with a clean slate, and I have an abundance of sewing time. Also, the husband is here being a Shiny Toy and that’s always fun. (I am not being facetious.)

DD#1 called us to chat last night. Our SIL is the dentist at the Coast Guard station in Ketchikan, Alaska. He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in a ceremony at the base yesterday. We are so proud of our kids. 😊

I had enough quilted material left from cutting the pieces for the A Place for Everything Tote that I was able to cut the pieces for another byAnnie pattern, Running With Scissors:

Function stacking for the win.

I worked on more class samples yesterday. This is another cheater print:

It looks complicated, but it’s actually very simple to quilt. I started with the small pink square in the center, and then it was just a matter of quilting ever-larger squares around it.

Just when I had decided that I would make the Tamarack jacket with that blue quilted fabric, McCall’s released its spring line of patterns and I spotted this one:

What to do? I think I like this one better. I’ll pop into Hobby Lobby next week to see if they have the pattern in stock. Joanns has been taking forever to stock new patterns, so it may be October by the time they get this one, if they are even in business by then.

Riley Blake is carrying this pattern by Paula McKinlay, but it’s “one size fits all,” which I interpret as “one size fits no one.”

I just don’t see how one size could fit both a petite 5'2" woman and a larger 5'9" woman. I do like the style, though, with the cuffs and collar.

January Road Trip

I have had way too many people-to-people interactions in the past week. I also have been feeling the need for a road trip. I can go about 6-8 weeks before I start to get twitchy, and it’s been almost two months since my Thanksgiving trip to Seattle. Unfortunately, I can’t go as far in the winter, so I contented myself with a trip to Missoula and enjoyed some quiet time alone in my head.

It was foggy when I left; some people, especially transplants to Montana, do not understand the dangers of freezing fog, but if I had waited until the fog burned off, I wouldn’t have gotten to Missoula until lunchtime. The drive was uneventful, and by the time I arrived, it was another brilliantly sunny day.

Missoula doesn’t have much snow.

My first stop was the quilt store where I’ve taught in the past. I met with the owners and we got a slate of classes on the calendar for this spring. We’re trying not to overlap classes with the store here in Kalispell even though the stores are two hours apart. I think we came up with some good ones. Hopefully the customers will think so, too, and sign up for them.

I also purchased the rest of the supplies I need for the byAnnie Place for Everything Tote bag. I’ll be able to continue working on that project now.

Missoula’s Walmart did not have much on its remnant rack, so I continued on to Joann Fabrics. When Robin and I were there last spring, I saw that they had some very cute printed terrycloth fabric for sale. I was going to make myself a robe, but I would have needed something like seven yards of 44” wide fabric and it was $20 a yard. I will spend money on many things, but not $150 on fabric to make myself a robe. For silk, maybe, but not terrycloth.

Two bolts of that fabric were on the “last chance” shelf at 70% off, so I bought what they had. Now I can make myself a robe.

I said to the husband that I realize that I am not helping Joann Fabrics to stay in business, but their problems are much larger than $20 a yard terrycloth.

After Joanns, I headed to The Confident Stitch. I could have bought fabric—I can always find fabric there—but I confined my purchases to a few patterns, which happened to be 50% off. I bought the Amarena Dress from Liesl + Co:

And the Tamarack Jacket from Grainline Studio:

Do you remember the blue quilted fabric I bought at Hobby Lobby last fall? That fabric still hasn’t been turned into a jacket and it’s driving me nuts. Some projects make themselves. That project is not one of them. I think I am going to use it to make a Tamarack jacket that I can wear this spring.

Of course, I stopped at the Amish store on my way home. I skipped the ice cream, but bought socks for the husband and me. He needs more boot socks for work. I like to wear knee socks in the winter and have become quite fond of the ones that most Amish stores sell.

My last stop was at a small quilt store in Ronan, about halfway between here and Missoula. Robin and I discovered this store a few years ago. It is currently in a tiny, tiny space that it outgrew almost as soon as it opened. When I walked in, I heard the employee at the cutting table telling a customer that the store is moving across the road to a much larger space. Yay!

I had a quiet evening at home by myself because the husband was doing his annual CPR training for the fire department.

Paperwork, sewing, and cooking are on the schedule for the next two days. I made and sent a batch of cookies to the husband’s father two weeks ago, but apparently my BIL ate all the chocolate chip cookies before my FIL could have any. Bad BIL. I need to make and send another batch.

The Future of Fabric at Joanns

Joann Fabrics needs a miracle. I don’t think the company is going to survive. I was looking at the Customer FAQ on the restructuring page of Joann’s website, and this bullet point leaped out:

Gordon Brothers has indicated that it intends to pursue a liquidation of the Company and conduct going-out-of-business sales at all store locations.

Gordon Brothers is currently the only interested buyer, in what is referred to as the “stalking horse” position. Other, better offers are being pursued, but it appears that Gordon Brothers is the buyer of last (only?) resort. Note that the sale to Gordon Brothers has not been completed.

We shall see what happens. I will be a bit sad not to have Joann Fabrics as a resource, although one could argue that they haven’t been a good resource for several years because they just don’t carry anything worth buying anymore.

In an unrelated-but-also-interesting twist, I tried to order two lengths of Minerva Exclusive Crushed Velvet a week ago. This is the fabric from which I made my Christmas dress, and I thought to use it again for my 2025 dress. I believe that Minerva prints a lot of their fabrics on demand, which is what allows them to offer such a huge selection. I received an e-mail from them yesterday letting me know that the mill does not know when they will be able to fulfill this order and how did I want to proceed? I opted to cancel the order. Is the mill overwhelmed with orders? Is something else going on? Inquiring minds and all that.

I started a project yesterday that has been languishing in the queue for almost a year. I want to make a byAnnie A Place for Everything Tote:

I want something to hold all of my supplies when I travel. Yesterday afternoon, I sandwiched and quilted the fabric for the body of the case. The correct color thread was already in the Q20 and it seemed like a good time to get this done.

Unfortunately, I need a few more supplies to proceed. This project requires an insane number of zippers, and rather than cut down pre-made zippers, I want to use zipper tape. I don’t think anyone in Kalispell carries the byAnnie zipper tape, at least not in all the colors.

After that quilting was done, I used the same color thread to make another class sample for the ruler class. Sometimes quilters learn better with training wheels. Rather than trying to quilt a design from scratch, it helps to practice quilting around a printed design. Quilters call these “cheater prints.”

This fabric is from one of the Laundry Basket Quilts lines.

Yesterday was a brilliantly sunny day. I took this photo when I went out to get the mail. The mountains have on their winter finery. This view is looking south down our road.

As I was standing at the mailbox, a truck came around the corner at the north edge of our property. After that corner, you can see that there is quite a long straight stretch. A red Mustang came screaming out from behind the truck, which apparently wasn’t going fast enough for the driver of the Mustang. I jumped back into the snowbank to get off the road. The Mustang sped past me and I watched it fishtail down the icy road. I doubt the car had snow tires or any extra weight in the back end.

The neighboring fire district line is about two miles down the road. When the husband sees this kind of stuff, he always says that he hopes the driver waits to wreck the car until they are in Bigfork’s district.

Quilting and Teenage Roosters

I finished the black corduroy skirt and wore it to church on Sunday. I like the slightly shorter length. I may move the zipper to the back seam rather than the side seam on the next iteration. I don’t think side zippers work well with my high hip curves.

I have had a slew of meetings over the past couple of days. I have also been reminded lately how easy it is for people who aren’t doing anything to criticize the efforts of those who are. Do you ever wonder why people are reluctant to take leadership roles in your church or community? It’s because they often feel like they are under constant attack for the decisions they make in situations that no one else is brave (or stupid) enough to shoulder. I really appreciate the people at church who come up to me and say, “Hey, I know this is a hard job—I am praying for you.” It seems like such a little thing but it means a lot.

One of my meetings went really well and I am looking forward to the work that comes out of it. That meeting also gave me the chance to reconnect with someone I haven’t seen in about 10 years.

My thread class that was scheduled for yesterday afternoon was canceled due to lack of students. I wasn’t too busted up about that. Not having to teach freed up some valuable time for other tasks, but it is frustrating for both the store and the teacher when classes don’t fill. If the store stopped offering classes, though, customers would complain.

Complaining, criticizing, and fault-finding seem to be the default setting of most human beings.

Joann Fabrics has filed bankruptcy again (Chapter 11). I know of at least three stores in the US that are closing. Every time I drive by ours, I expect to see a big “Store Closing” banner hung across the front.

I’ve hired someone to help me with social media for the podcast. So far, so good. I knew what needed to be done, but I got mired in the muck on my way there. Have I mentioned how much I hate Instagram? I am sure things will evolve as we go along, but at least it’s a step in a forward direction.

I spent yesterday afternoon working on a class sample for my ruler quilting class in two weeks. (That one has students enrolled, because I talked to one of them the other day.)

This is a series of four classes on quilting with rulers. We’re starting with the straight ruler, so I made up a sample showing what kinds of quilting designs can be made with simple straight lines.

I adore 60-degree diamonds:

Clean and unfussy.

The sampler shows examples for overall quilting, small blocks, and borders:

Little Roo found his voice and spends an inordinate amount of time every day practicing crowing. He sounds like a rusty gate. Also, having hit puberty, he has started chasing hens around the chicken coop, which annoys both the hens and Dave. I’ve seen Dave go after Little Roo a couple of times. Dave is about twice his size, so I am hoping this doesn’t end in bloodshed. 🫰🏻

How to Grow Lettuce in the Basement

One of my aunts (hi Auntie Omi) asked about the lettuce-growing setup. I’ll run through it in case anyone else wants to know how we do it.

We bought this a few years ago:

It’s a frame with three shelves and three lights. The lights are adjustable using chains. If you don’t need the shelving but want lights, the Barrina lights are what most people use. (Ignore those totes—that was a different project.)

I start the lettuce seeds in these Rapid Rooter plugs, which I get from Amazon.

These are not the same as little peat pots. I tried starting seedlings in these and putting them directly into the ground in the garden and that did not work very well. These are meant for hydroponic systems.

I’ve found it works best to pack the rooting plugs into a casserole dish, allow them to soak up water from the bottom, then plant the seeds in the holes. Once the seeds have sprouted, I move the plugs to half-pint mason jars. The jars have rings on them but no lids. A plastic “net pot” sits in the jar and is supported by the rings:

Net pots come in different sizes (also from Amazon). The ones I use are 2".

This is what the seedlings look like when they are growing in the mason jars:

And eventually, we get this:

At that point, the lettuce plants will produce for 6-8 weeks. I keep them watered and just cut off the new growth for our salads.