Six Days and Counting

Last week, ladies on one of the online quilting groups were discussing favorite sewing and quilting tools.  They named rotary cutters (my favorite is the Martelli, with its ergonomic handle), rulers (I like the slotted ruler by June Tailor)... and then someone mentioned pins. 

Good pins make all the difference in the world.  I use super fine .50 mm glass-headed, steel-shanked, 1 ⅜” silk pins.  They slide into fabric – any fabric – like a hot knife through soft butter.  At 2 ½¢ per pin, they’re a little more expensive than regular pins, but worth every penny.  I’ve used Clotilde, IBC from Annie’s Choice, and Dritz. 

A friend asked about a good use for her old pins, when she buys new.

Believe me, once you’ve used really, really good pins, you’ll be so irate when you stumble upon a bad pin that you won’t have any debate at all what to do with it.  You’ll pitch it into the trash so vigorously, it’ll go CLONK instead of plink.

My glass-headed silk pins have not gotten dull in the ten years I’ve been using them.  I’ve thrown out some that I’ve damaged by bending them or hitting them with a sewing machine needle (no, I don’t intentionally sew over pins), and I’ve bought new boxes of them to fill another pin cushion – but they haven’t gotten dull with regular use.

There, now, don’t you think Dritz, Annie’s Choice, and Clotilde should pay me for endorsing their product?

I found three really nifty quilted bag patterns at Craftsy that might offer some helpful hints in the construction of Joanna’s Blossoms bag.  And I saw a couple of excellent photos on Google Images of the insides of bags.  No patterns, but I saved the pictures; those will help.  The inside of Victoria’s new wallet helped, too.  She showed it to me... I peered at it... turned it this way and that... and said, “Wait a minute, just let me get my seam ripper, so I can find out --------” and she snatched it back and ran.  haha

I’ve been thinking so hard about how I’m going to put that bag together, I actually dreamed about it one night.

I’ve quit adding digital patterns to my stash; I have enough.  Well, except for those bag patterns.  And the day before, I came upon an adorable child’s appliqué quilt.  I had to save that one.  Oh, and last week I saw a couple of quilt patterns that were different from anything I’d seen, and nothing in EQ7 was similar... so of course I saved them.

But I’ve quit adding patterns to my stash! 

One of my favorite places to look for free patterns, either when I want something specific, or just to browse, is http://quilterscache.com/.  But I’ve quit adding patterns to my stash.  ;-)

Monday evening, Victoria brought home a silk bouquet – a replica of her ‘real’ one – to use in her prebridal pictures the next day.  Jolene, a second cousin of Larry’s, is putting together all the flowers for the wedding.  Jolene plans to disassemble the silk bouquet after Victoria is done with it and use the flowers in the decorations around the gift table at the reception.

I pointed at a unique dusky lavender flower in the bouquet – probably some sort of a succulent, shaped kind of like a miniature pineapple – and asked, “What’s that?” 

Victoria looked at it consideringly.  Then, “It’s a haycorn!” she pronounced triumphantly.  (à la Tigger, helping himself to some of Piglet’s acorns)

Tuesday afternoon, it was 66°, sunny, a beautiful day.  Victoria went off to have her hair fixed and then to have her prebridal pictures taken.

Someone remarked that it was a shame that after having her hair fixed so pretty, she had to go and cover it with that veil.  But in real life, you can see through the veil quite easily.  Victoria had a sepia-blush filter on her pictures, and the lighting in the salon contributed to the opaqueness, I think.  But her veil is made of very fine netting, and quite sheer.

Three people to whom I mentioned ‘prebridal photos’ said they’d never heard of such a thing, which surprised me.  When the first person wondered about it, I didn’t think too much about it.  But when my friend from New York City said she hadn’t heard of it, why, then, I decided there really must be sections of humanity who haven’t heard of it! 

Even I, frugal as I was, had prebridals before we got married, way back in 1979.  It wasn’t too dreadfully important to me, and I was satisfied with just our engagement pictures and might’ve skipped it, but Larry said that he’d really like pictures of me, just me, in my wedding gown.  Sooo...  I had prebridals taken.  Some of my friends acted quite horrified when I’d suggested I might not bother.  I didn’t really care; other things were far more important to me – like whether I had the right groom for the occasion, for instance.  ha

I went to Hobby Lobby for organza, lining, and knit to use in the revamping of the last two petticoats, which were quite a lot too short and too small.  I had a $20 gift certificate and a 40%-off coupon... and I still wound up with $3.85 left on the gift card after getting about 4 yards of fabric.

I made Emma’s cancan smaller at the waist... lengthened Robin’s at the top – and then chopped the top off the other two bridesmaids’ petticoats.  There would be no returning them after that.

Now for some Helpful Hints and Tips:

Here’s a fact:  It’s hard to sew petticoat ruffles together—when you’re sitting on the other end of the ruffle.

You’re welcome.

I finished the third petticoat Tuesday night.  I had to take it apart, remake several inches of tiered ruffles on one side, add a larger top piece, and put in new elastic.  I may have to extend the bottom ruffle, but I’ll have the girls try them on first before I go to the trouble.  Each petticoat has two layers of three tiers of organza ruffles over a lining.

I had the last petticoat cut apart and the top piece sewn together and ready to attach... and decided, as the clock had long passed the midnight hour, the second slip could wait until the next day.  The reason for all this altering is that I couldn’t find the right sizes when I was ordering (without shelling out humongous amounts of $$$$$$, that is).  I got them anyway, figuring I could alter them easier than I could make them from scratch.  That isn’t always the case, but it was this time (altering vs. making from scratch, that is).

Wednesday afternoon, Norma called to tell me that her brother, Larry’s Uncle Clyde, had been in a bad accident with his truck.  A tractor pulling a grain trailer full of corn had pulled out in front of him.  His own trailer had been loaded with cement powder, so it was very heavy.  He tried to miss the trailer, but hit the corner of it with the passenger side of his cab, and his truck wound up on its side in the median, the cab totally mangled and twisted.  They had to cut him from the cab.  He’d been airlifted to Bryan Hospital in Lincoln.  The story and some pictures are here:  Semi/Tractor Crash 

He has numerous injuries – two long gashes on top of his head, bleeding on the brain, broken clavicle, neck broken in three places, broken ribs, injured back in numerous places, injured leg, bruised heart...

He seemed to be improving Friday night, and people were optimistic.  On Saturday they moved him from the ICU to an Acute Care room, but Sunday morning they moved him back to ICU because he was having troubles breathing.  He is confused and agitated, not understanding where he is or what happened. 

He’s 80 years old; such severe injuries often shorten a person’s life.

The truck looks like a giant grabbed it up and wrung it.  The cab nearly came completely off the frame, and the motor is almost torn loose. 

There were witnesses to the accident, thankfully.  What we first heard was correct – the farmer did indeed pull right out onto the four-lane highway in front of Clyde’s truck and a car that was immediately in front of Clyde.  There’s a wide shoulder, in addition to the two west-bound lanes – but the farmer pulled way out into the left passing lane.  The car swerved around the tractor and grain trailer, but Clyde didn’t have nearly enough space or time, though he hit the brakes and swerved hard.

We here in Nebraska know it’s harvest time, and we’re on the watch-out for tractors and farm machinery – but sometimes there are farmers who act like they own the road.  Just Tuesday, Larry came up over a hill on Rte. 81 (a four-lane with a wide median) to our north, driving his big boom truck, and he saw a tractor and trailer coming on a country road from the west, and he didn’t appear to be slowing down, though the highway was full of traffic.  Larry started applying the brakes, just in case – and sure enough, that farmer drove that tractor and trailer straight across all lanes of traffic, east to the gravel road on the opposite side of the highway.  Cars and trucks had to slow or nearly stop for him.

I think people like that would be just as obnoxious in person as they are on the roadways, what with their exalted opinions of themselves!

Clyde has been a good and careful driver for many, many years.  Sure makes us feel awful, that he was hurt so badly.

I finished the last petticoat right before church, snatched it out from under the presser foot, snipped the last thread, and crammed both petticoats into a bag to take to the bridesmaids, thinking, Whew!  I made it, I’m done!  And then, Oh.  Forgot to iron it.  But there wasn’t enough time to iron it.  We rushed out to our vehicle, and headed to church.

After the service, I handed the petticoats to daughter-in-law Maria and niece Amanda, pointing out the one that wasn’t ironed (Amanda’s), offering my excuses, and then saying in a snippy tone, “So iron it yourself!”  She went off laughing, and I called after her, “With lots of steam!”  :-D 

My niece Katie, who is making Amanda’s and Maria’s dresses, has Amanda’s dress all together, and said it fits her nicely. 

“If those petticoats are too full,” I wrote to her, “perhaps we could cut the underneath layer of organza out, leaving only one layer?  We could use that cut-out layer to make a little girl a cancan.”  And then I added, “If I ask you if Sophia (her little girl) needs a cancan, will you cut the organza out whether it needs to be cut out at all?  ((giggle))  Kidding, kidding.  But does she?”

Katie laughed and said she could do that, and yes, Sophia actually does need one. 

“Well, then,” I said, “if you need to remove the underneath layer of organza, keep it for Sophia.  The other one can be for Ava or Maddie (Sophia’s cousins).”

So that’s taken care of.

Thursday, while I waited hopefully for the lady from The Fabric Shop to call and tell me the lining fabric was in, I did a bit of housework.  When there are VISPs (Very Important Sewing Projects), the housework slides.  But I swept the floor and scrubbed a toilet and vacuumed some spider webs in a basement corner, so I was good, right?  (Don’t drag a white-gloved finger over the top of the headboard hutch, though.  :-O  )

I found a pork roast in the freezer that my brother gave me a while back, put it in the cute little stoneware baking dish Caleb and Maria gave me for Christmas last year, covered the roast with all sorts of spices, and put it into the oven early to bake at a low temperature so it would be tender and tasty right at suppertime, or so I hoped.

(In vain, as it turned out.  The stuff was tough as old shoe leather.)

A little before 4:00 p.m., I got a call from The Fabric Shop ---- the lining was in.  So off I went to town.  It wasn’t quite the same color as the other lining.  Slightly more purple than plum.  I’d seen the lady’s ordering book when she placed the order Monday.  It has page after page of fabric descriptions and color names – with nary a color thumbnail anywhere to be seen.  At least it won’t show; there is that.

I hurried home with the fabric (which didn’t look too bad with the other fabric, really), cut it, serged it together, and started hemming it with my handy-dandy new rolled-hem foot.  Before I got that foot, I had to migrate back to my older machine, if I wanted a tiny rolled hem; I have two sizes of hem feet for the 830.

And then...  Why was I sewing the final hem into the waist, instead of into the bottom of that skirt lining??!

Answer:  I have no idea.  (Except that I regularly do something odd and rippable [should be a word, and would be a word, had Noah Webster ever watched me sew] on the very last seam, right when I’m prepared to leap about jubilantly after the last stitch.)

So there I was, seam ripper in hand (kind of like John Henry, pen in hand; or Casey Jones, throttle in hand), grumbling while I picked out stitches. 

Fortunately, I’d noticed the error mere inches into the job, so it didn’t take long before my machine was humming again, and the edge getting neatly turned up twice was the hem edge, this go-around.

I’ve always liked Bernina’s slogan:  “Nothing runs like a Bernina!  Nothing.”  ’Course, I’m a bona fide Bernina snob.  And ah ain’t a-gonna apologize for it none, either, ah ain’t!  (Yes, yes, I know there are many good machines out there... and I’ve even used some I like.  But I sho’ ’nuff love my Berninas.)

{I wonder, did John Deere steal the motto from Bernina, or did Bernina steal it from John Deere?}

Now that the store in Lincoln where I got my machines has dropped their Bernina franchise, I need to call the store in Omaha to inquire into an update for my Artista 180.  I have no idea what that will cost.  Certain updates are free – but some updates are quite pricey.  The last time I called, they’d already closed for the day, and I got only an answering machine.  I usually hang up fast when I reach an answering machine.  They make me stutter!

I once called the garbage company to cancel, because we were going to go with another company who was not only cheaper, but had a better reputation for arriving on time, and not leaving things behind.  Someone once wanted them to take an old, beat-up garbage can.  They leaned it against the new can, bent-up old lid stuck down inside it.

When the garbage men came, they collected everything but the old can – and they even wedged the bent-up lid back onto the beat-up garbage can.

The next week, the people crammed the old can inside the bigger, nicer, new can, and filled it with bags of trash.

The garbage men took the bags of trash, and set up the old can again beside the new one.

The following week, the people printed a big sign:  “TAKE THIS!” – with an arrow under the words.  They propped the sign atop the can, so that the arrow pointed directly at the can.

The garbage men took the sign – but left the can.

They gave up and hauled the can to the dump themselves.

Anyway, back to my phone call to our garbage haulers.  I called.  Got switched to an answering machine.  This gives me Phony Baloney, a dire malady indeed.

I stuttered around, said something stupid about having our trash ‘something-something-something-mutter-mutter’ with another company... and quickly hung up, forgetting to give them my phone number in the process.

Teddy, about 9 or 10, had stood looking at me during this dialogue, large unfathomable gray-green eyes unblinking.  The instant I hung up, he burst out laughing.  “We’re going to be buying our garbage from some other company, from now on!” he informed his siblings.

“Well, I didn’t say that!” I grumbled.

But it was... close.

By 8:30 p.m., the skirt lining was done, and I was ironing it. 

The pork roast was done, too.  I cooked some vegetables to go with it, thawed a frozen golden fruit mixture, and just about the time I decided to go ahead and eat, Larry got home.  It’s always more pleasant to have someone to chat with over supper.

Friday, Robin, Victoria’s maid of honor, came and tried on her dress with the extended petticoat.  It looks soooo cute on her.  I’m glad I extended it; it definitely improved the look of the dress.  I’m happy, Robin is happy.

My plans to work on the Blossoms bag most of the day were foiled about the time I turned on sewing machine and iron, when Victoria came downstairs with her favorite denim skirt in hand and a beseeching puppydog expression on face.

The zipper was broken.

And an exact replacement of the skirt would cost $50.  !

I reached for my box of zippers, and found a navy metal one almost exactly like the one in the skirt --- still embedded in the flaps of jeans, minus the jeans.

That meant I had to extract two zippers from heavy denim before I could insert the good one into the skirt.  I picked up my seam ripper and got busy.

It didn’t take too awfully long; but, having completed one piece of repair work, I thought I’d just do one more:  shorten a skirt for Victoria.  This one, a brand-new wool blend in a small tan plaid, she bought about three years ago – but as I was sewing things first for Caleb and Maria’s wedding and then for Christmas, I didn’t get it done right away.  I suggested Victoria do it herself – and she quickly found a gazillion other things to do.  Spring came... with summer hot on its heels.  By fall, Victoria had grown out of the skirt, and I was sorry I hadn’t just done it, months earlier.

Well, by last year, Victoria had grown an inch taller, and an inch slimmer, too.  The skirt fits again.  So, having finished putting in the zipper faster than expected, I suddenly remembered that skirt.  I drug it out and set about hemming it.

That was no easy job, as it was lined, had seam binding, lining, a vent and pleat in the back, and was slightly stretchy.  But it was finally done, and it looked good, too.

Supper that evening was tomato basil soup from Schwan’s with grilled cheese sandwiches on 18-grain bread.  I loved grilled cheese sandwiches.  Larry came home a little earlier than usual, bringing the bread and cheese, and helped me make the sandwiches.  He’s a good cook, and it’s fun to cook together, though we sometimes disagree on the finer points, such as how many slices of cheese to put on each sandwich, when to turn them, and which spatula to use.

A lady who shops at Super Saver and likes Victoria, the one who gave her the Christmas glasses, also gave her a big oak coffee table with slabs of marble in the top.  Isn’t it beautiful?

After supper, I returned to the Blossoms bag.  I got all six pockets lined, using a different-but-coordinating fabric for each one, and figured out how to put four in as central dividers, with the other two as side pockets.  I ironed everything that could be ironed, and headed for the feathers.

Victoria, meanwhile, had been putting beads on her ringbearer pillow.  She’s put many hours into that pillow, and wanted me to finish it for her when she got the beading done. 

“If she doesn’t get the beading done soon enough for me to have time to finish it,” I asked some friends, “do you think it would be bad form if I tucked pillow, beaded cover, piping, and ribbon into a Wal-Mart bag and handed that to the ringbearer to carry up the aisle?”

Saturday afternoon, Victoria’s prebridals were done, and a preview posted online.

After reading a few people’s horror stories about photographers who nearly didn’t show, because they didn’t think they’d been given a deposit, though it turned out their accountant had credited the wrong customer... a church that hadn’t been cleaned, because nobody had told the cleaning lady there was going to be a wedding... a florist who didn’t mention he needed a deposit until the mother of the bride called two weeks before the wedding --- and then he said he didn’t know if he could get the flowers ordered in time (and he was even a friend of the bride, for pity’s sake)...  well, after reading that, I think I should be more thankful for all our friends and family who have a finger in this enormous pie (now, there’s a funny correlation). 

Our photographer has been taking photographs at our church for many years, and is friends with a lot of our parishioners, often taking pictures of their families and children.  He’d do everything in his power to avoid disappointing us.  Many of our friends and family members are doing things for us, free of charge.  We appreciate it so very, very much.

There’s a lady in charge of cleaning the church – but dozens of people help her.  The school children all do their part each day with various chores.  The young people do a thorough cleaning every week.

When there’s going to be a wedding, a lot of people come to help set up tables and put all the decorations in place.  An individual family sure couldn’t do it all on their own, as the entire congregation is almost always invited to our weddings, along with relatives from afar, coworkers, and so on.  We expect about 450 people next Sunday.

I’d better make sure I have fresh batteries for the flash on my camera!

As I sewed the Blossoms bag pockets to the lining Saturday afternoon, I listened to the football game.  The Huskers were playing Purdue.  We scored a touchdown just 16 seconds into the game – but Purdue took a three-point lead in the second quarter.  By the third quarter, we were back in business, with a score of 17-14.  At one point, we got a 51-yard field goal.  The final score:  27-14.  So we’ve won all of our first seven games, and are now at No. 7 in the polls.

Dorcas sent some pictures of Baby Trevor.  He is 7 months old – and he has a tooth!  And he looks proud as can be of it.  

Supper that night was leftovers, combined into a new and different dish:  the pork from Thursday, cut into itty bitty pieces cross-grain (still tough, but small enough to just swallow, if chewing proved impossible – and it did have a good flavor, after all), rice, the rest of the tomato basil soup, and the rest of the mixed vegetables.  I added a little water... a little salt... stirred... heated... and voilá!  A yummy supper.

I had a hard time eating, though, and not because of tough pork, but because I still had a sore throat.  It’s been three weeks!  Or four.  Three and a half?  I got mostly over this cold for a few days, only to have it come back with a vengeance.  It kept me home from church yesterday.  I have stuff to DO! – and all I want to do is wrap my head with vinegar and brown paper.

I won’t miss the wedding, even if I have to down Extra-Strength Tylenol, cold medicine, and Cepacol!  I’ll just prance around, camera in hand, taking pictures right and left, and spreading germs with aplomb. 

Saturday night, I heard a great horned owl hooting somewhere outside, quite close, and loud.  I opened a window, the better to hear him – and heard a fox screeching.  One of the neighbor dogs up the hill barked in response.  There was a bit of quiet... then the owl hooted, the fox yelped, the dog barked.  Earlier, a tree frog was cricketing about, right by the window in my sewing room.

I like living in the country! 

Here’s what a fox sounds like (scroll down below the dingbat music video):  Fox cries

Here are some pictures showing the progress on the Blossoms bag.  More photos here.

Two pockets are sewn onto the front and back of the bag; the other four are in the middle, creating open pockets between each zippered pocket.

All those pockets came about because I needed to practice putting in invisible zippers for wedding dresses. 

When Victoria got home from Kurt’s house yesterday afternoon, she was heavily laden with a tall pile of boxes, and bags dangled from her arms.  They were gifts she’d gotten from her sisters and bridesmaids the day before when they had a little shower for her.  She headed up the stairs... reached the top — and there was a loud crash. 

Dagwood Bumstead impersonation fail.

In a few minutes she came back down with the remains of what was once a beautiful mirrored glass frame, now broken to bits.  Why couldn’t she have dropped the box with the pjs and robe in it??

Amanda had given it to her especially to display one of her prebridal photos on a table in the vestibule at church.  There will also be photos of Kurt and Victoria together, along with his parents’ wedding photo and Larry’s and my wedding photo.

I promised Victoria we’d get another frame.  Poor girl, she felt quite bad about it.  I didn’t want Amanda to feel bad, too!

This morning a friend of ours called.  Helen Tucker is almost like a big sister, because she’s the same age as my sister, 20 years older than me, and she lived at our house when I was little and taught me to read before I was 4, and taught me piano when I was 6.  She’s Jeremy’s and Maria’s grandmother.  She was calling to tell me that a woman who works at the Salvation Army wanted to give Kurt and Victoria a gift.  The woman doesn’t have many pennies to spare, but what she does have, she likes to share.  With her employee discount, she could afford to give a nice gift, and several nice items had recently been donated to the store. 

So Victoria went to the store, and chose an entertainment center.

Helen asked if I had any last-minute details, and I commented on the pillow Victoria was beading for the ringbearer.  Five minutes later, Helen was talking to Victoria on the phone and offering to finish the beading.  Victoria gladly took her up on the offer – partly because she’s feeling pressed for time, and partly because she has always loved Helen, and therefore to have some of Helen’s handwork on the pillow would make it special.

So Victoria took pillow top and beadwork to Helen, then returned to the church, where she met with friends who helped her make and decorate the little favors boxes, then fill them with mints and candied nuts.

She ran out of white candy...  bought out Hobby Lobby of the closest thing she could find... and ran out again.  Hy-Vee didn’t have any.  “It won’t matter if they don’t all match,” I told her.  “It’s nothing globally shattering.”

“If I have to do Hershey’s kisses, that’s what it’ll be,” she responded.

“Those who get Hershey’s will feel privileged,” I said, “and those who don’t will be jealous.  But it’s good to add drama to wedding receptions!”

She finally found enough of something suitable at Wal-Mart.

Since I will be sitting at the MIT (Most Important Table), I will not get the substituted Hershey’s kisses.  And I’m going to be jealous.

Ah, well; we will get some cream cheese mints, made by Lawrence’s granddaughter Danielle!  Mmmm, I love those things.  She made them beautifully in Victoria’s colors – ivory, lavender, purple, and coral.

It was a beautiful sunny day today, getting up to 62°.  Some time after 4:00 p.m., Helen called to tell me she was done with the beading on the ringbearer pillow.  She certainly made quick work of that!  I went to pick it up... and she gave me a piece of homemade pumpkin bars and a jar of pear butter she’d just canned, too.  I was glad I’d brought my coffee along, so I could eat the pumpkin bar and have something to drink afterwards.  Mmmmm, mmm.

Helen was pleased when I couldn’t tell which of two similar leaves she had done.  Victoria had done the other one.  Tomorrow I will sew it all together and put the pillow form in it.

I went to Hobby Lobby for the frame, then decided to stop at the Goodwill on my way past to see if I could find a purse that would give me some clues as to how to finish putting together the Blossoms bag.

I found nothing helpful in that regard, but lookie what I did find! – a little clutch purse that is exactly the color – a warm bronze – of my suit and shoes for Victoria’s wedding!  It looks like new; I don’t think it was used much at all – and it cost only $2.50.

Then, as I was rummaging through the bin, I spotted a tag – on a brand-spankin’-new Bag Lady cable knit purse from Mudpie.  I looked it up, and see that it’s a $35 clutch.  It even still has the silica gel packet inside.  I paid $2.50 for it.

I got a cute hat for one of the grandsons for 50¢.  It doesn’t look like it was ever used.  I also found one of those soft, soft scarves – for only $1.35.

This evening, Kurt and Jared came about the time Victoria got home, and carted out some of her furniture to take to their house via Kurt’s pickup.

Do you know, it’s only a few more days, and that girl is going to have to scrub out her OWN pans when she burns eggs in them??

Here’s Teensy; he came out on the back deck with me when I took pictures.

Bedtime!

,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn     ,,,>^..^<,,,