Sewing Math is Fun
My mother has been utilizing her quarantine time to deep clean her house, and she sent me a box of stuff that included these two gems:
The prices are interesting. The pattern on the left cost $0.45. The one on the right cost $4.75. Patterns are typically priced in the $15-$25 range nowadays, although everyone usually just waits until they go on sale for $1.99 each (or $5.99 each for Vogue patterns) at Joanns. I’ve almost completely stopped buying Big 4 patterns and am sewing as much as I can from indie pattern designers. I got tired of the lousy instructions and illustrations in the Big 4 patterns. Indie patterns also usually include a file that can be printed on large-format paper at the blueprint store. I use that as a master and trace my working pattern from it.
I love the 5 out of 4 Nancy Raglan pattern, and yesterday morning, I cut out pieces for the Knot Your Average Shirt pattern. Knot-style tops are very flattering on me, which of course means that they have gone completely out of fashion. They are almost as hard to find as 100% cotton high-rise jeans. I am testing the Knot Your Average Shirt pattern out of a remnant from the stash. Not only do the pattern pieces require some mental gymnastics for the construction, they also need to be coverstitched before assembly. I am letting the instructions marinate a bit inside my head before I try sewing it together.
The huge infusion of scraps from mask-making has given me the opportunity to finish Yet Another Candy Coated quilt top. (I think this must be #5 or #6.) Unlike the low-volume one I just finished binding, this one features bright colors. I had about half of it done when I ran out of scraps a few months ago. I’ve been working on it in the evenings when I don’t have the mental energy for anything else.
There are a variety of scrap management systems out there. Mine looks like this:
Maximize the initial cutting to get as much out of the fabric as possible.
Cut leftovers into 5” squares (I love my Studio cutter with the 5” square die!)
Cut anything narrower than 5” into 2-1/2” strips. Those can also be subcut into 2-1/2” squares.
Add remaining strips to scrap bag for Candy Coated quilts.
That’s the system that seems to work for me based on how I’m using up scraps. Your mileage may vary.
I did make one change to the Candy Coated quilt pattern. The finished quilt in the pattern measures 88” long. It is constructed using rows of varying heights from 3-1/2” to 10-1/2”. I took out one of the 8” rows to make the final top measure 80” instead of 88”. I did that because a quilt top that measures 60” x 80” (or 64” x 80”) only requires four yards for a backing. Four yards cut in half across the width and sewn together along the long edges yields a backing that measures about 72” x 88”. The backing needs to be slightly bigger than the top, so a 72” x 88” backing works great for a 60” by 80” quilt. It’s too short for a quilt that is 88” long. For that, I would have to use five yards of fabric. You wouldn’t think that extra yard would make that much of a difference, but because I try to buy clearance fabric for the backings of the quilts I donate, it really does. By the time a bolt of fabric—which starts out with 10 yards—gets to the clearance rack, finding one that still has five yards on it is next to impossible.
I’ve got four tops now that need to be quilted. I might be doing some this weekend. We’re supposed to get another storm, although the wind is forecast to be strongest beginning Saturday morning. That means we’ll get to watch trees falling over during daylight hours. I am going to move the seed trays out of the greenhouse today. The seedlings are going wait out the storm in the back of my station wagon inside the old garage. With the way 2020 has been going, I don’t want to take a chance that a tree falls on the greenhouse and destroys my seedlings or that the heater goes out and the seedlings freeze to death (or both).
I’ve decided to re-create the herb garden in the back of the big garden by the strawberry bed. Our garden is basically one very large rectangle with another, smaller rectangle tacked on at the west end. We put the strawberries in that small rectangle, but they didn’t fill in the area like I had hoped they would. (Plants do what they want.) Most of the plants are concentrated at the far west end of the bed. I am leaving those there, digging up the stragglers and giving them to friends, and putting the herbs in the rest of that area. I dragged over a piece of plastic yesterday to cover that spot and kill the quackgrass and one very stubborn Oregon Grape bush. If I don’t do it now, I’ll be fighting those weeds forever.