Pattern Testing Is Not For the Weak

I started sewing when I was in high school, mostly figuring it out as I went along.  By the time I was a senior, I was confident/foolish enough to decide to make my prom dress.  I LOVED that thing.  The color was outstanding.  I had no idea what I was doing but I did all the hard things: invisible zipper, boning, a crazy version of that off the shoulder thing because I couldn’t quite figure it out.

I think there was a bow across the back of my hips too.  It’s was 1992.  Bows were a thing.

Back in the 1900s, the only pattern options we had were the big 4: McCalls, Simplicity, etc.  We’d go to the fabric store, look through giant catalogs of what was available, and then go to the biggest filing cabinets you’d ever see and try to find the pattern.  A lot of things still surprise me about this process.

1.  We could help ourselves to the cabinets and it seemed like people mostly respected the organization and didn’t move patterns all over the place.

2.  The pattern envelopes had colored line drawings of people in the clothes that sometimes looked like photographs but not really.  

3.  Occasionally, you could find a pattern with a real photograph on the cover.

4.  If you needed help or ideas, you had to ask your grandmother, neighbor, sewing teacher from middle school home ec.  There was no contacting the designer directly.

You’d walk into the fabric store with an idea and then you had to look through the catalogs to see if someone else had designed your idea.  Then, you had to find the pattern.  Then you had to figure out fabric and notions.

I had no more patience in the 1900s than I do in the 2000s, so I wasn’t willing to buy a pattern one day, think about it and analyze it and then go back other days for fabrics and notions.  For me, it was one stop madness.  

Fast forward to the 2010s or so and I got back into my clothing sewing groove when my sister told me about these people who design patterns on their own, sell them as PDFs that you print on your own and do all kinds of things to support sewists.  

Welcome to sewing in the social media era.  

This is not your mother’s home ec class with all of the rules about pre sewing rituals and pressing this and steaming that.  This is a band of wild hooligans who throw sewing rules to the wind and do it their way.  

Maybe that’s a little dramatic. 

We aren’t  all reckless banditos tearing up the sewing world, thumbing our noses at the centuries of sewing experts who told us we have to do it this way, and this way only.  But many of us frequently confess that we “just” did it this way or “didn’t bother to” do this and you know what?  The clothes fit, they don’t fall off, and the world continues spinning with a lot of happy sewists doing their thing.

The best part of this modern sewing community is access to the designers and the design process.  When someone is ready to release a pattern, they ask for testers of all sizes, shapes and abilities to go through the tutorial and the pattern itself with a magnifying glass.  Find all of the errors.  Tell me all of the misinterpretations you had of my instructions.  Make 5 muslins if necessary so I can see how it looks on your body and make the necessary changes.  Stick with me as I feverishly redraw this whole section because eveyrone is showing me that it’s too long here, too short there, just not right there.  I should be done by 3am.  Please reprint no later than 3:10am and make another one.  (Just kidding, it’s not that harsh).

Pattern testing can be brutal for both parties.  

1. You’re mostly working with a bunch of strangers you’ll never see in real life.  On one hand, this means you don’t have to care what you look like, how dirty your mirror is, what the room behind you looks in your pictures.  On the other, you don’t get to know much about the other people and for someone like me with a wild imagination, it’s hard not to imagine life stories for each person based only on a few pictures and their comments.

2.  As a tester, you’re exposing a lot of your flaws.  None of the tester pictures are used except the official finals, so we see everything from terrible lighting to half dressed people to combinations of fabrics that shouldn’t see the light of day.  

3.  Both the testers and the designer see and talk about crotches, butts and boobs more than any other community, I would imagine.  Because no matter the pattern, unless it’s a bag, one of those 3 spots is the undoing of many a  sewist.  Trying to get any of those curves to work for every size is the hardest part of the whole process.  What works for one shape won’t work for another and that’s where the designer and the testers work together to share ideas, visuals and suggestions.  One “expert” says one thing, another “expert” chimes in with the exact opposite suggestion and sometimes we get caught in the middle, not sure if we should burn down the sewing room and call it a day.

4.  I can’t imagine being a designer, developing my idea and making it work for me, and then putting it out to the masses to test.  Especially when a big revision has to happen.  I’ve tested some patterns that seemed to need no tweaking and I’ve tested patterns that no matter the tweaking never looked good on any body except that of the designer.  I’m also one of those people who takes a pattern and then changes things to suit myself.  Designers must die a little when they see what some people do to their patterns.  I don’t think I could deal with that as a designer.

Most of my pattern testing experiences have been positive and I’ve learned a lot.  Most of all, I’ve learned that designing is not for me.  Taking a pattern and doing little things here and there that I think might work?  Definitely me.  But putting pen to paper and drawing out a design and all of the intricacies that go with it and then sharing it for others to make and change and possibly complain about?  No thanks.

These Boots Are Made For Walking

 I might have reached the pinnacle of my sewing career because.....  I altered boots!

If you were not provided with the gift of patience or you don't have enough time to read through this missive about boots, click here and watch my video.  You can even speed that up so you can cut to the chase. 

If you enjoy my lengthy stories, carry on reading and then go back and watch the video.

I was not given the gift of height and though my legs are longish for my height, most winter boots look silly on me.  If they don't come to the middle of my kneecap, the best they can usually do is hit just below it and it feels like I'm clomping around in someone else's boots.

I'd say I feel like I'm clomping around in my mother's boots, but a) she's shorter than me and b) in my lifetime, I have never seen her even entertain putting on a pair of boots like these.

It's like I'm parading around boots that belong to someone far taller than myself.

If I ran the boot world, I would offer several shaft heights for all boots, just as they can offer widths in many shoes.  I bet many shorter people would love to be able to ask for boots that are several inches shorter so they look stylish, feel comfortable and actually want to wear them.  Even the wildly expensive boot manufacturers don't offer more than one shaft height, as far as I can tell.  

If shoes can come in wide widths, why can't boots comes in 2 heights?

It would also be GREAT if companies selling boots could get on the same page about where exactly the shaft height is measured.  They do not always pick the same starting point so even though a lot of them now offer that information, 15 inches from one company doesn't fit like 15 inches from another so it's still very frustrating.

Sidebar:  while I am an English rider, I do not wear tall boots and never plan to. I don't show, so I don't have an reason to actually buy them, but one of the many reasons I don't wear them is due to the shaft height.  I realize riding boots come in different heights but I don't trust that they will fit well and comfortably.  

I'm also not great at maintaining my leather when it comes to riding.

And also, I can't imagine being trapped in tall boots at the height of summer heat and humidity.

Paddock boots and half chaps have always sufficed for me.

Anyway, back to fashion boots.

I've had this pair of boots and I like the fit in the foot but every winter, I look at them thinking I'm sure I can take them down an inch or two and they'd fit so much better.  I will only buy boots that are actually leather, and I avoid elastic in them as much as possible.  This means they are usually more expensive than what I want to pay (faux leather and super stretchy boots tend to be a lot cheaper) but I prefer real over fake so i occasionally haul out the cash.  

Every time I started to toy with the idea of cutting them out and resewing them, I'd think about how much they cost and how sad I would be if I ruined them.  Was the taller height that I don't want a better choice than possibly ruining them and having nothing?

This week, the answer to that question was yes.  If I'm going to continue wearing these boots then they have to come down a notch or two and if they get ruined, I wasn't going to wear them much as they were, so I was ready to cut my losses.

The process was nowhere near as hard as it seemed like it would be.  There's a slight elastic gusset that gave me pause but I plowed ahead and made it work.  The hardest part was taking everything apart because they were sewn and glued.  The glue released pretty easily and the sewing was very easy to replicate.  

The zipper wasn't that hard to deal with because they didn't have zipper stops at the top, they just curled the tape into the facing, which is what I do with zippers as well. I have no idea how to put in zipper stops and I wasn't going to reinvent the wheel here if the factory hadn't even done it.

Several people asked if my sewing machine was going to be strong enough to handle it.  This particular leather isn't very thick and the facing and lining are quite thin too.  The hardest part was deal with the zipper teeth so I just hand cranked over that part.  My Bernina 1001 sailed right through as I expected it would.  It's not a digital machine and it has the heavy duty feeling I don't get from more modern machines.  I didn't try my Bernina 350 but I think that would have been fine too.  Trying to work with this as an actual boot was tough because it limited some of the movements I wanted to do, but that wasn't anything related to my sewing machine.

The result, as you will see in the video is definitely similar to the original.  Looking at the inside of the original, it wasn't quite as neat as I would have expected, so when mine was less than perfect, I felt like it was comparable to the original.  I don't think these boots are the highest quality out there, so I'm sure less than perfect seams wouldn't have put these in the reject pile.  I did get them from DSW, so maybe they were rejected.  Who would know?

I don't know if I'll do this again.  I'm certainly not on a quest to shorten all the boots out there and I would never do it for someone else.  I have a pair of black tall boots that are on the verge of being too tall but I don't know if I will tackle shortening them this winter or if I really care.    This little experiment has made this pair much more wearable and that was my goal.

If you're too tired from all of these words to scroll back up, here's the link to the video.

What's Old Is New

A few months ago, I was given a tote full of these squares that k-ster's great grandmother had crocheted and given to his mother. I didn't look carefully at them the day she gave it to me, but I knew there were a lot of squares in there that needed to be put together.  She said she included the string they were made from and that she wasn't sure how many were there, but it was a lot.  She said she didn't care what I did with them but she didn't want the bedspread that her grandmother had probably intended them to be.

An idea started brewing that maybe I could make a couple of throws out of the squares and give them to his mother and aunts and uncles for Christmas.  

In case you're new here, one of the many things I learned how to do on Aunt Mildred's porch (this is where the blog name originated, by the way) was crochet and I was pretty sure that as long as all of the squares were done, I could put them together to make something.  If I had had to actually make more squares, that would have been a bigger challenge since there was no pattern included and I haven't done this specific kind of pattern before.

I also like to take on challenges because I'm a sucker for complicated things.  This didn't appear to be complicated, but they never do.

I planned to work on it in the summer, when I could work outside and let everything air out because everything was pretty musty smelling.  Imagine my surprise when it was November and I realized I had never taken them out of the box, let alone aired them out or put them together.  

Or even looked at what was really in the box.

I decided I really couldn't do anything until I at least washed all of the squares once.  This would start to get rid of the musty smell and mold spores and also tell me if they were going to survive or if they were too delicate.  I had a feeling they'd be just fine. 

I put them through one wash and dry cycle so the initial mold spores would wash and dry out but the smell lingered.  It wasn't awful, and I knew I could work with the squares and still breathe, but I had to also figure out a way to get more of the smell out.

I was shocked to find she had already sewn most of the squares into 5 square strips.  This made things much more clear and I knew it would make the whole thing easy to put together.  The first thing I had to do was decide how big I would make these throws so I could figure out how many it would make.

               

Three strips made a pretty narrow throw.  Something you'd literally put on the back of the couch, but I couldn't imagine anyone putting it over their lap.  Four strips was better but now it reduced how many I could make.  And left me with strips I didn't know what to do with.

I finally settled on 3 blankets:  two would be 5x5 and one would be 4x5.  This left me with one strip that had 2 stains that I couldn't get out.  I decided to keep that strip and put it across the top of my piano.  Maybe over time, the stains will come out.

After everything was washed and dried and I knew how many strips to put together, I had to figure out what size crochet hook she had used to put the strips together.  You can see the stitches are very tiny.  I have a lot of hooks but even my tiniest one wouldn't do anything that small.  I'm a pretty tight crocheter but my smallest hook and tight hands made stitches that were too big. 

I went to the store and found a 5 pack of extremely small crochet hooks.  I figured one of them had to be the right size.  Just for comparison, I put it next to my "typical" crochet hook that I use.  The tiny one is like the size of a sewing needle at the tip, but it's exactly what I needed.

When you put crocheted blocks together, some patterns say to get a tapestry needle and sew them together and others say to crochet them together.  Since she had already crocheted together all of the squares for the strips, I wanted to do the same.  I also thought it might be stronger and last longer than if I just sewed them.

Some of the blocks were a little stretched out, so I got a little inventive as I crocheted them together so everything would fit.

After I finished each blanket, I draped it over my drying rack on the patio and let it sit in the sun and air all day.  Then I put them all through the laundry one more time.  This helped a lot with the smell.  There's still something there but it's not offensive.  Over time, they will each take on the smell of the house where they now live and as they get washed and dried and used, the original smell will be gone.

When all was said and done, I gave one to his mother, one to his aunt and I kept one.  I originally thought I might dye ours a light blue to go with the living room colors and to make it a little more colorful than just the off white.  Now that it's been in the living room (and well used during last week's super cold weather), I'm not sure I'll bother.

I imagine her original plan was to put these together in a bedspread.  But, with this many strips, it would have been much bigger than a king size bed and it would have been very heavy.  Even these throws are surprisingly heavy when it's just "a bunch of string".  This is another reason I think crocheting them together was a better idea than sewing them.  When you move the blanket around, it's a lot of pulling on the seams.

One of k-ster's uncles said I "sewed" together 3 generations by putting these together, which is true.  And if they make it to any of the grandchildren, that will be a 4th!  

From Nightgown to Night on the Town

I used to be a huge fan of these floor length flannel night gowns.  I had two of them and I remember wearing them in the winter, under the duvet, and not being hot.  Somewhere along the way, I must have changed the duvet and it's much warmer because I can't even imagine wearing a flannel nightgown to sit on the bed, let alone to sleep under the covers with it on!

Those two sad nightgowns sat in my drawer for years and eventually made it into my sewing room where I was going to dismantle them and make something else out of them.  I like the flannel a lot, and it's hard to find a good flannel at fabric stores right now, so I didn't want to give these away.

I took apart one of them but this red one remained a favorite cat bed for a long time in my sewing room.  I'd look at it and think I should do something with it but then I'd see the cat hair and think I should wash it before I do anything and the cycle went on and on.  

After making a couple of Rhapsody blouses and dresses by Love Notions this summer, I got it in my head that I needed to make these nightgowns into dresses and the Rhapsody would be my pathway.  There are so many options with the Rhapsody.  I have a couple of tops that I made iwth sleeves of my own doing, a couple have ties and a couple don't.  

I also took the top of the Rhapsody and wanted a tiered dress so I found a pattern that had the measurements for tiers and I went crazy.  There's a pink and white striped seersucker dress around here somewhere that makes me feel like I look like a cupcake but I love it.

 I like the length of the Rhapsody dress but I don't like elastic at my waist.  I'm so short in my torso that anything at my actual waist makes me look even shorter, so I hunted for a pattern that I already have that had the right shape and length, without an elastic.

When I was a pattern tester for 5 out of 4 patterns, I tested the Savannah in the dress length which had the exact waist shape I wanted.  The two patterns are similar but the Savannah has a very difficult binding on the V and a dart, so the Rhapsody is easier, by far.  They both have a yoke that is part of the armscye so I wondered if it was possible to start the Savannah shaping below the Rhapsody yoke.  

The picture shows the back view of the Savannah.  On the back of both patterns, the yoke stops in the same place, so I just took the Savannah back, placed it alongside the Rhapsody back and made sure the part that goes into the armscye was the Rhapsody one and drew from there.  It ended up narrower than the back for the Rhapsody which is what I wanted because I feel like my last top was very billowy in the back.  I still gathered a very tiny bit but not as much as I normally would with the size I have been using.

On the front, I started right at the end of the armscye for the front on the Rhapsody and drew the Savannah on down.    My last Rhapsody blouse made me wonder if I should go down a size, especially for the back.  It's a very comfortable top, but it's not as shapely as it could be. I was a little worried that because the shaping at the waist is deeper on the Savannah, it might throw off the fit of the Rhapsody.  And since I was adding the button placket and my math is sketchy, it is entirely possible that the whole thing would end up too tight.

When I made the flannel blouse, I had already taken apart the sleeves from the other nightgown, so I laid the sleeves out flat and cut the upper edge to match the upper edge of the sleeve for the Rhapsody.  With this one, I didn't open up the seams on the sleeves because I didn't want to also interrupt the cuffs.  I debated trying to finagle the upper edge of the sleeve so I could cut it to match the pattern and then I decided that since it's such a generous sleeve, surely I could make it fit.  

I made sure to match up the side seams with the sleeve seams and keep the front going toward the front and the back toward the back.  I think they went in pretty well.

I am not much of a fan of big, luscious sleeves, and because this had been a nightgown, they sleeves had plenty of room.  They are much more full than I would choose for a dress but I think they work just fine.  And I was short on time the day I made this, so it saved a lot of steps not having to redo the sleeve seams and the cuffs.

I really like how this dress came out.  I barely had enough to squeak out the dress length because the front of the nightgown had those pintucks and the button placket, so I didn't have as much fabric to work with as it seemed.  The bottom of the side seams is less wide than my pattern pieces were but I actually like this width better so I didn't lose anything.

I ended up having enough fabric  to make binding for the neckline and the hem.  Because the hem is curved and I was short on time, I knew a deep hem was going to be a nightmare.  People say making binding is a pain and I agree, but I think it was less aggravating to make the binding and sew it on than it would have been to fiddle with the curve of the hem.  

I feel like the neck is a little naked in this.  I could wear it with pearls as people suggested but I think pearls are a little much for a flannel dress.  I debated doing something else around the neckline but nothing made sense to be.  I still have the collar from the nightgown but it looks like a nightgown collar so I know that would just be weird.

My initial intention was to make this early enough in December to wear it once or twice before Christmas.  I don't get dressed up for Christmas day but I do usually dress nicely for work.  I managed to start taking the nightgown apart in plenty of time to get this made but then other things came up in between and knowing I had to actually draw out the pattern, I couldn't get to it early enough.  If it were any other color but red, I'd wear it all winter, but I think it might questionable after Christmas.

Maybe I can get away with it once in January.

That One Time She Turned the Christmas Tree Around

I haven't told a story on this blog in so many years, anyone reading this probably doesn't even know that's what I used to do, almost daily.  

As Christmas comes closer, there's a memory that comes rushing to the forefront of my brain because it was so startling but also hilarious in the end.  This involves a little setup before I can tell the actual story, so sit down for a minute and enjoy.

I live next door to my parents, about 100 yards or so from their door.  I grew up in this house and when I was in high school, my parents built a new house right next door and we lived there and rented out the house I'm currently in.  After college, I moved in here which is  helpful for my parents in the summer when the campground is open.

My parents are still pretty spry and both still have all of their faculties (do any of us really have ALL of our faculties at any age?) so they don't need anyone "looking after them" or checking in on them.  Days, weeks can go by and I don't go over or see them, and it's not weird.  They never come to my house because THAT would be weird.  

This is not Everybody Loves Raymond with the irritating in-laws next door who are always in everyone's business.  

I'm over their house a lot more than they're at mine, and that's really important for this story.  Like, they never come to my house unless it's to look at something that needs fixing, or to feed the cats if we are away.

Another important piece of information is that this house is really old and I sometimes I think I hear things but it turns out to be nothing or just the cats.   My sewing room is upstairs, kind of tucked in a back corner.  I like to listen to music and the radio is in one room while I sew in another so it needs to be kind of loud.

I'm sure nothing I have here in quotes was actually what was said but it's so much more fun to read something in quotes and imagine it was really what was said verbatim, right?  It's all true, it just might not have had so much color.  Or maybe it had more.  It was a wild 45 minutes.

One Saturday in December, I was upstairs sewing my brains out.  When I have music on and get caught up in what I'm sewing, I'm pretty oblivious.  I have no idea where k-ster was, and I knew I was alone.

Sometime mid afternoon, I heard a noise. I thought it was a cat meowing so I didn't pay attention.   I heard it again and realized it was my mother.  

My mother!  

IN MY HOUSE!  

Yelling my name.  

In distress.  Not feeble old shaky lady voice, but not her usual voice either, like maybe she had been crying.

Who fell? What's on fire? Who died? What is so urgent that she had to come over here and not just call or text???? 

I jumped up and got to the top of the stairs to find her standing at the bottom of the stairs in what we call in my family "a lather".  Worked up, distraught, in a dither.  Almost wringing her hands.  Not crying, but she was amped.  You get the picture.

"What???" was all I could say.

"I knocked the Christmas tree over and...."

"Where's dad?" I said.  

"Out and I can't get it back up.  Do you think you can help me?"

I grabbed my shoes and a coat and we walked back across the driveway, my mother still in her lather, me thinking I would just pop the tree back up and get back to whatever I was fervently sewing.  

She was being a awfully dramatic about knocking the tree over.

We walked in the door and well, there was the tree, laying down.  Partially naked, partially decorated, what ornaments were on there all askew.  Ornament hooks everywhere.

She had the tree about half decorated and when I say decorated, I mean with an assortment of ornaments, many very old and delicate. I'd noticed for the past decade or so that some of those heirloom ornaments had seen better days.  Paint was missing, faces no longer had a mouth or eye paint.  

But they were sentimental, so I hadn't said anything.

One set of ornaments is all different parts of the nativity, each its own ornament that someone had made for her.  They're pretty heavy and always want to slide off the branches.   

There have always been lots of "typical" round ornaments, the kind that are now often made of plastic but in previous decades were made with some kind of thin material, like glass, that explodes on impact.  And by impact, I mean the hardwood floor that has a tree skirt but those things never fall on the soft, cushioned tree skirt do they?

And many of those orbs are red.

She had already wrapped the lights around it.  I can't remember if they were turned on, but for effect, let's say they were.

Boxes and boxes of ornaments were set up in front of where the tree fell and some ornaments were already broken on the floor.  Several had "exploded" on impact, a few were missing parts and a lot were unscathed.  The old ornaments seemed to have suffered the most.

She was still grumbling about the mess and how we were going to pick up the tree and how mad she was.  I was busy doing the math to figure out how two 5 feet tall women were going to pick up this 6-7 foot tall tree and set it upright.  I wasn't worried about the weight, it was a cut tree, but if you are short, you know that physics plays a mean trick when you try to stand something upright that's taller than you.

Did I mention there was a plastic base affixed to the tree?  The kind with the 3 screws that sit against the trunk?  That you put water in so the tree doesn't dry out?

This base is round, not the square kind I've seen in recent years.

There were also towels on the floor.  To sop up the water that had spilled from the plastic base as the tree fell.

To recap:  on the floor were wet towels and still some open water, ornaments in varying conditions from totally fine to smashed to smithereens, ornament hooks all over the place, balsam needs from the tree, boxes of ornaments bearing witness to this mayhem, some assortment of extension cords and the tree itself.

This scene was not OSHA approved.

Regardless of how tall you are, have you ever tried to stand up something heavy that's plastic, on a hardwood floor?  And that plastic happens to be a round disc?  

I'd stand behind the tree, grab it around the middle and somehow swoop it upright and get it set on its base, all in one smooth movement.  I couldn't see any way for her to actually assist without one of us falling down, so I told her to move out of the way.  I figured if I did it fast enough, inertia and gravity would help me.  More ornaments would probably fly off, but there were already some broken, so what's a few more?

I stood behind the tree.  I leaned over and grabbed it around the middle.  I picked it up with a mighty heave and it started to come up.  

And then the plastic base, which is round at the bottom, caught the floor and instead of standing straight up, did a pirouette around itself and me and fell back to the floor, now exposing its other side, flinging ornaments right and left.

Lights subtly blinking as the dust settled.

Physics is such a bitch.

There was shattering. 

There was screaming.  

We were both screaming.    At each other, at the tree, at the destruction.  Screaming in fury, in astonishment and probably on the verge of hysterics.

I looked up to see my mother standing, inexplicably, with the vacuum wand in her hand.  I realized the vacuum was running.  How had I not noticed that in the 60 seconds I was dancing with the tree, she had started to clean up the mess?

My mother cannot stand a mess.  

Now she was screaming over the vacuum, with the wand still in her hand "Oh my GOD what are we going to do now???"

I usually start with "what if you..." "can you..."  "I think you should..." "Maybe you could..." but in chaos of the vacuum running, the tree on the ground for the second time, water now creeping through my socks, bits of ornaments all around, I said "You're going to put that down and sit in that chair while I turn off the vacuum and try to pick this up again."  

I resumed my position behind the tree, grabbed it in the middle, pulled and used the strands of lights to assist, and finally it was up.

But the carnage it revealed on the floor was astounding.  The shattered glass, balsam needles, ornament hooks, chipped ornaments detritus that was slowing getting wet from the water that the towels didn't pick up.  

And a dustpan.

Two or three more ornaments met their demise as I surveyed the scene before me, quietly exploding like the last couple of fireworks on the 4th of July.

My mother was sitting in the chair I assigned her but somehow had a broom in her hand, pointed at the mess.  How did she find a broom that fast?  

We had to clean up but do we sweep or vacuum or just scoop up everything into the wet towels and throw it all out?  No solution was going to be ideal but we needed to clean up before more slipping and falling and breaking happened.  

I vacuumed, she swept and somehow another ornament crashed to the floor and exploded into the mess. 

At least one of us screamed.

The bubbling hysteria in my body was about to boil over at this point.  I wasn't sure if I was going to laugh, cry, scream or throw up.  What should have been a quick 5 minute trip had turned into a wild afternoon.

In the middle of cleaning it up, deciding which chipped ornaments should stay or go and my mother being disappointed that so many of the old relics had bit the dust, I stepped on another ornament that we either hadn't seen or had just rolled from somewhere. 

I don't think either of us had the energy to scream.

I leaned down to pick it up a piece and there was a RED STREAK on the floor.  We both thought one of us was bleeding and leaving streaks of blood on the floor.  

Another round of freaking out and yelling ensued. 

Out of concern for the person bleeding or the now permanent streak of red on the floor, I can't be sure.

No one was bleeding.  

An old ornament had smashed on the floor and we inadvertently ground it down to powder during the cleanup.  The red coloring made a nice red powder, that when combined with the dampness that was still on the floor led to a nice streak of red "paint" that no amount of rubbing or sweeping would remove.

With the floor clean, except for the red streak, and things quieting down, my mother dismissed me so she could finish decorating in peace. 

On Christmas day, I sat on the floor near that red streak and told the story of how it got there.  Over time, it faded away, though in the crack between the floorboards you can sort of detect a smidge of red.  It makes me smirk every time I see it.

Not Modern Enough to Use Modern Conveniences

This is for all of you out there using something other than your hands to raise and lower the presser foot on your sewing machines. 

I have two Bernina sewing machines and both have the option to insert a rod like this into that little hole on the front.  This view is on my 1001 model but my newer 350 model has it as well.  Both came with the knee lift rods.  The bend in the rod allows it to go under your table so you can "simply" press your knee against it and it will raise and lower your presser foot, hands free.  I say "simply" in quotes because I have no idea how simple it is to use. 

Confession:  I've had my Bernina 1001 for almost 30 years and a newer 350 but I've always been afraid to use the knee lift.  Why?  Two very silly reasons.  For one, I don't know how to use it and never bothered to look at a video.  But mostly because I've always been afraid that I'd get so used to it, I wouldn't ever be able to use a sewing machine that didn't have this option, no matter how good the rest of the options might be.  

Anyone else out there have this problem?  You have access to a modern convenience that will make your life so much better but you won't use it in case you love it and can't live without it?  I'm looking at you, backup cam in my car.  I refused to use it in case I become so reliant on it, I can't back up the old fashioned way.  This happens more than I'd like which is a great example of irony because the very crux of my job is technology and how it can be leveraged to improve things.

This must be a GenX problem, right?

Back to why I've called you all here.

The more I see people in their videos appearing to magically raise and lower presser feet without no hands, the more I wonder why on earth I have two machines that will do this and refuse to bother.  Isn't this the kind of thing I would LOVE?  I'm all about efficiency and surely the micro milliseconds I will save not moving my hand to raise and lower the presser foot will make my life so much better, right?  So I keep thinking, I should really figure this out.

And I sat down to think about thinking about it and came up with a new dilemma.  How does the knee lift work if you have a standing desk?  When I upgraded my sewing space a few years ago, I left behind the old sit at a table thing and put in a counter where all of my machines live.  The 350 is missing from this picture but it sits to the left of the 1001 most of the time.  I stand or use the stool.  When I'm quilting or trying to sew something unwieldy like these grain bags, I bring it to a table so I can spread everything out.  At that table I do sit, but when I'm doing anything else, I'm at this counter.  I don't think I can stand and press the knee lift and the way I have everything arranged, I'm not sure I can sit on the stool and use it either.  I know I could just try it and see what happens but I also know that if I use it once and LOVE it and then find out I can't use it in my current set up, I'm going to be so mad and rethink everything about the set up I like so much.  

It's very complicated here in my brain when I'm having such first world dilemmas.

I'd love to hear from you if you use a knee lift system and especially if you use it with a standing desk or something similar to mine.  

Not Your Average Grain Bag

A few years back, I learned how to make a bag from some kind of tutorial that had very specific dimensions in mind in the tutorial.  

One thing led to another, and I realized you can make any size you want, make it as deep and wide as you want, add handles, etc.  You can even add pockets inside or outside!  That one takes some pre-thinking and I won't tell you how many times I didn't pre-think correctly and have had weird pockets in weird places.

I did correctly pre-think on this one and successfully incorporated the whale into my design.  The inside pocket locations were questionable though.

I don't remember if the original had you make a lining, but it's as simple as making another bag with the same dimensions and then sewing the two together.  This hides all of the seams and you get that fun experience of "birthing the bag" where you pull it all through so everything is right side out. 

I made this tutorial to give everyone just a nugget of an idea.  Once you get the concept, you'll be off and running!

My  latest endeavor has been trying to find ways to upcycle grain bags from the barn.  We have all of these grain bags from the enormous amounts of grain they eat, and most just get thrown away.  I've seen a lot of people just wash them, cut them down a little bit, make handles from the parts they cut away and sell them as is.  

I tried that but I didn't like the result.  Too noisy and the handles were terrible.  I didn't really trust their durability.  I learned after making this bag with the fancy handles that webbing is really the best way to make durable straps for a bag.  They last forever and I've been known to upcycle from one bag to another.

 
Fast forward to my overactive brain thinking I should quilt some batting scraps to the back of the grain bags and then line them.  That quieted things down nicely and then I got creative with pockets and linings.

My favorite addition is this green fabric on the webbed straps.  Webbing comes in a variety of colors, but darker is really better if it's going to be a bag that might get dirty or used a lot.  The green in the brand name got me thinking and I found some fabric in my stash to match so I sewed it on top.

The fun didn't stop there.  From the scraps of leftover scraps, I made a little clip holder for my sewing room.

All of the bags (not my little clip holder) are available in my etsy shop.