A COMMENT

A comment arrived in my email--sometimes the comment section just won't work; email me instead and I will publish it.  My cousin Joan wrote: I was beginning to think that Marcy was working on an elephant costume for a play or next Halloween.  Also, I was glad that it's your project and not mine!

Well strictly speaking it's Marcy's project, but that makes it mine, too.  I still really like that pattern.  I'm eager to see how it turns out when it's all sewed together!

FUNNY

I tried to reply to Kathy's comment, but it doesn't publish, so I'll do it this way:
Well, we can look into that!
A note to others: She's my daughter, so it's possible I'd make her a jacket like this.

YES, A JACKET

Yes, this is a jacket from a VERY interesting pattern:

We're making the light beige version on the right.  Marcy picked a very appropriate fabric, a charcoal knit with a fair bit of "body."  She has the nifty button and frog for it.  We still need to sew in the sleeves and turn the huge collar inside to make it a facing.  I think it will be very stylish and very comfortable.  In fact I like the pattern so well I bought a copy for myself.  

We are both puzzled that it's labelled "EASY stitch 'n save" as this pattern is NOT easy at all.  I have about 65 years of experience in sewing clothing, but I have to read the pattern carefully to figure out what goes where.  Marcy is gone on a Caribbean cruise right now, so there's no progress being made at the moment.

I had a dear friend since High School/College days visiting the last 10 days, and thus didn't have time to sew anyway.  This Thursday Dear Son #1 will arrive for a visit.  December looks to be as busy as Decembers usually are!

REGARDING WHAT IS IT?

Clue: It's a garment of some sort that Marcy is making for herself.

WHAT IS IT?

Marcy and I are deep into a sewing project.  Who can figure out what this is?

I LIKE THIS

Just now I hung the new Thanksgiving Banner on the patio wall.

This was a panel to which I added a colourful border.  Appropriate for November here in AZ!

Bye Bye Hide-a-bed

 Last Saturday was quite busy.  In the morning Marcy and I were sewing together.  Rather, we were trying to sew together.  We had just endless troubles with our machines.  One of the problems was the material, a fairly dense stretchy knit.  There were SO MANY skipped stitches.  We tried all sorts of fixes.  We also discovered that the tension on the bobbin was so tight that the thread could not be threaded through the proper slots.  We fixed that and we tried other needles.  Yesterday I bought some ball point needles.  I looked for stretch needles but didn't find any.

Then shortly after she left Dear Son #2 called and we had a nice phone visit.  He gave me some good news: dear granddaughter #2 had been the highest scoring grade 4 piano student in their area.  She was invited to play in a concert and receive a trophy, and she will do that.  We're so proud of her!  Then he mentioned that the four of them would like to come for a visit the week after Christmas.  WONDERFUL!

While I was still on the phone with him these fellows who work in the village showed up to pick up the old hide-a-bed.   When we bought the new one we moved the old one to the patio, but it isn't really patio furniture.  Goodwill won't pick up anything that involves beds or bedding, so what to do?  We were told that the workers here, pretty much all of whom are immigrants from Mexico or countries in South America are very willing to remove any furniture that we want to give away.

About five or six fellows from Guatemala showed up and loaded the hide-a-bed on their truck.  We were happy to give it away and they were happy to receive it.

I hope it stayed on the truck all the way home!

Last night I finished a pair of socks for the Dear One's birthday.  That's in December, but I didn't see a reason to wait until them to give them to him.  As he said, It's not a secret.  They are the beige pair.  

The blue ones are for my sister's husband.  They are flying in from Michigan today and will have dinner with us this evening and I'll put the socks beside his plate for a surprise.  He loves these hand-knit socks and uses them to keep his feet warm in bed.

So when the Dear One's socks were finished (before bedtime) I cast on another pair.  The blue and grey striped sock will be for a grandson's birthday in December.

I went to Michael's yesterday to buy some yarn for his socks and found that Patons Kroy Sock yarn is on sale this week.  Just $4.99 a ball--a pair of socks takes two of these 50g balls.  So I bought enough for three pairs of socks.  At the checkout another 10% was taken off.  WOW!  I should go back to load up on sock yarn.  Except that I now have 12 balls of sock yarn in the closet.  That's not counting the two for Zack's socks, the newest pair on the needles.  Maybe that's enough?

BEFORE AND AFTER

Last week all our time in the Sewing Room was spent sorting fabrics.  We received two enormous donations, having already received another rather large donation earlier.  Because this is a 55+ community we do experience the loss of members frequently.  Some die, some move to care centers.  Often their heirs are confronted with a house full of accumulated  possessions, and this sometimes includes a sewing room and we are often the recipients of that accumulation.

One of the donations was HUGE!!!  It was only when we were almost finished sorting that we thought of taking this picture:

This doesn't begin to show you the PILE of boxes and bags.  There were at least a dozen of the big black garbage bags filled with material and accessories for quilting.  Joan and I both took home a new, clamp-on magnifying light for our sewing tables.  I also "inherited" a 6" x 24" quilting ruler and a cutting mat.  In addition to the bags there were maybe six or seven big cardboard boxes also full of fabric.  It was overwhelming!

We made piles of this and that kind of material: pieces large enough for quilt backings, medium sized cuts, maybe a yard or half a yard, fat quarters (18" x 22"--a standard quilting cut), cut squares of several sizes, 2 1/2" strips, and even several half finished projects.  The quilt in my last post was one of them.

And this was only one of three donations in the past three weeks!

Quilters prefer to use only 100% cotton fabrics and many of these fabrics were cotton/polyester, slinky knits, dressy materials or even drapery fabrics.  There were bags of lace.  All of these other fabrics went back into boxes and bags.  Joan and her husband stuffed their car full and took them to Goodwill to donate them there.

Finally the sewing room was almost back to normal.  

 

Now we have to go through all the materials that we saved and ask each other: Will we ever use this piece?  We need to do a further cull.  Otherwise there is enough fabric here for each of us quilters to sew with until we're 100 years old!  And there would probably be some left then.