Progress

Only twenty more accent in the corner Nine-Patches and I'll finally be done with Step 2 of Carolina Crossroads! And those twenty are in progress.

I spent Tuesday and Thursday in the sewing lab and was able to finish my pants with the contour waistband. This is the second pair of pants I've sewn; the first had a straight waistband with elastic in the back.

This time I documented every step of their construction in my notebook. (I don't have any pattern instructions.) Unfortunately, they don't fit as well as they ought. I'll be taking my muslins, the different versions of my pattern, and both pairs of pants to the lab next week to see if we can figure out why. In the meantime, I have to go to the regular class meeting tomorrow and work on my corset. (I'm finally getting kind of interested in it. I love learning new techniques.)

But when am I going to find time to finish my dress before the end of class?

A Week of Sewing

It's been a busy week at the sewing machine. On Tuesday morning I had my weekly quilting session with my new friend. Afterwards, I threw my sewing bag into the car and buzzed down to the college for the remaining open hours at the sewing lab. Another girl and I are working our way through an extra credit pair of pants with a contour waistband. The lab assistant said she'd do demos of various construction techniques for us, so I needed to get my fabric cut out ASAP which is easier to do on those long classroom tables than at home.

On Thursday I spent almost 7 hours at the lab working on those pants. The lab assistant had predicted that we'd be able to finish our pants in that amount of time, but I knew better. I am not only a slow, meticulous worker, but I was trying to write down the instructions for these pants as we went along. (The lab assistant had previously helped me alter a commercial pants pattern so that it would actually fit me. It's now so different from the original that printed instructions no longer apply.)

This morning I'm off for the regular class session where I will continue making a corset. I'm not very enthusiastic about this project because it's an item I will never, ever wear. In fact, it's not even designed to fit me -- just the dress form. But I'm making it for the sake of learning some new techniques. Maybe I can sell it on eBay!

Needles and Tongues

What is it about sewing together that makes women so chatty?

There's something about plying a needle, even when it's attached to a sewing machine, that seems to loosen tongues and inhibitions. Certainly my quilting friend and I wander through a wide range of topics during our weekly sewing days. And that's a good thing since it keeps me on task during some of the more tedious steps of my Carolina Crossroads quilt. (I love quilting, but you have to admit that pinning 100 Nine-Patches together can get just a teensy bit dull.)

I also take a garment sewing class at the local community college where I've noticed the same tendency to confidential chat. When the teacher is neither lecturing nor demonstrating, the tongues begin to wag. There's one lone male in our class, a tall African man -- judging from his accent, he's not African-American -- who sits by himself at the perimeter of the classroom. I wonder what he makes of it all.

One group of women is busily discussing underwear. One girl wonders why no one makes lingerie out of velvet. Being the practical, older woman of the class, I point out that velvet would be rather warm to wear. A younger student points out that successful lingerie is not actually worn for very long. Another group of students is rooting through a donated box of lace and trims. Periodically one of them will squeal in delight at the discovery of some particular piece of lace, "I'll make this into underwear!"

Of course no group of women can sew for long without the conversation becoming gynecological. Across the room another group is discussing a recent news report of a pregnant "man." From there the discussion wanders into hermaphroditism. And I suppose the only reason it didn't morph into the inevitable swapping of labor and childbirth stories is that most of the class are still young and childless.

Then the topic veers off towards car dealers, and the trials and travails of dealing with them. One woman likes haggling; the rest hate it. Another woman's husband used to work for Volvo and she describes their shady dealings which caused her husband, who is also a minister, to leave that job. Now the older class members are discussing their teen-aged offspring. A couple of ladies who attend the same church are discussing relatives who "came forward" at the last altar call.

Ah, a piece of silk noile is found in one of the donation boxes. The teacher says you can identify it by its distinctive odor. Several students who dislike the scent compare it to various disagreeable substances. (I nab the fabric to make a blouse. With my sinuses I can't detect any scent at all. Besides, I'll be washing it before I cut and sew.)

Many other topics pass our lips, and our busy machines hum a pleasant background music as we guide our fabrics under the needle.

All too soon the class session is over.

Update

Well, my quilting friend and I spent 5 hours on Wednesday working on our quilt projects! Yay!

The next day I spent at my class's sewing lab working on one of my assigned projects -- cutting out a dress pattern and learning how to match checked fabric. I'm not sure how good a job I did. We'll see how well things go together on Saturday.

Quilting Day

Bonnie has announced the newest Mystery Quilt, but I can't take part. I still haven't finished Carolina Crossroads! But I have a new strategy. I recently made a new friend who also finds it difficult to find time to quilt. So we are meeting once a week to work on our quilting projects. The first week we sewed for about five hours, including a lunch break. We skipped Holy Week, but we are meeting tomorrow. Must finish! Must finish!

Eeeeek!

Patti at Quilting is My Passion has done something rash, something many of us would find unthinkable.

. . . what is this terrible thing I've done? I've thrown out my crumbs. Totally thrown them out. They are in the garbage can by the curb waiting for tomorrow's pick-up.

Read about it here.

For those of you who aren't scrap fanatics, "crumbs" are little tiny bits of fabric which any sane quilter would consider too small to use. But some of us aren't quite sane. While going through some of my UFOs (or Works in Progress, as I prefer to call them), I came across these foundation pieced log cabin blocks which are only 2 inches square. They are foundation pieced on muslin using a rubber stamp which I bought from Sharon Doyle's company, Thoroughly Modern Minis, back in the early '90s. (I "met" her through an online quilter's guild hosted on Genie way back in the Pleistocene.) For blocks like these almost no fabric scrap is too small.

Interestingly, the remarks in Patti's comment box unanimously support trashing crumbs. Perhaps we crumb hoarders are too embarrassed to speak up. Or perhaps we've all been sequestered in padded sewing rooms without Internet access. (Perhaps I should go piece some of these mini-blocks before someone comes to lock me up.)

What Was I Thinking?

About 20 years ago I began making a redwork baby quilt. The embroidery pattern was from Better Homes & Gardens. My project has twelve cats embroidered on a large piece of unbleached muslin. The pattern originally called for a faux sashing to be made by sewing pieces of green bias tape as a lattice between the cats. I embroidered the cats using a chain stitch in red perle cotton. I did an outline (or stem) stitch in black floss for their eyes and whiskers. The faces were kind of tedious, so the project has been in my drawer for a very long time. But recently I pulled it out and finished those ancient cats. I was thinking it might be a nice gift for one of my granddaughters -- and appropriate since I originally started the project for her father!

I've decided to abandon the green bias tape in favor of cutting the cats into separate blocks and sashing them with red '30s repro prints.

But look at what I inadvertently did: When I embroidered the whiskers I absentmindedly put them behind the cats' smiles rather than in from of them! Perhaps they are relatives of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.