A New Workweek

I got quite a few questions about the bridge abutment pour—here, on MeWe, and on Facebook. I am wholly unqualified to answer them. Several people wanted to know why there was lumber inside the concrete forms, and the husband says that that was done to form a recess for the steel bridge framework when the trestle is laid on the concrete supports. He does have a better picture of that on his phone showing the finished abutments, but he has an Android phone and I have a Mac, and getting pictures from his phone to my computer is a cumbersome and annoying process. (Thank you, Google.) I’ll try to include those in a future blog post, or at least try to be better about which pictures I choose so that they make a bit more sense. (I am as lost as some of you are, trust me.)

I thought the husband was going to be home for a while, but he tells me that one of the general contractors is digging a foundation for a house—it’s still relatively warm here—and they may be setting that up this week.

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Changes are afoot in the sewing world. Barbara Emodi, a sewing educator who writes for Threads magazine, posted on her blog last week that she thinks something is going on with the Big Four pattern companies: Vogue, McCall’s, Butterick, and Simplicity. Her suspicions were driven by the lack of new designs for Fall/Winter. Some of her readers pointed out that the large printing house in Kansas which prints the tissue patterns for all four companies—as well as for many indie designers—lost their entire computer system in October due to malware. As Barbara noted, though, that wouldn’t have affected the Fall/Winter designs, which would have been printed much earlier in the year so they would be ready ahead of the season.

And then I happened to listen to Friday’s Sewing Out Loud podcast. The topic was grading between pattern sizes. A member of their Facebook group noted that KwikSew patterns are now coming with instructions NOT to grade between sizes, which makes no sense, and asked Zede and Mallory for their opinions. That led to a discussion about what is going on with the Big Four pattern companies, and a reference to a recent Craft Industry Alliance article. CSS Industries, which owned the Big Four, was sold to Design Group, a British company specializing in gift wrap and party supplies. CSS Industries is a public company and its stock seems to have been involved in some kind of hostile takeover attempt. (Oh, the intrigue!)

As Zede noted on the podcast, companies buy other companies for lots of reasons. Sometimes it’s to acquire valuable assets. Sometimes it’s to put competitors out of business by liquidating them. It sounds as if there was no huge rush to fix the malware problem at the printing facility, which begs the question of whether pattern printing is a priority for Design Group, the new owner of the Big Four. I also wonder if there is a misguided assumption by people sitting on corporate boards that no one sews anymore.

I will say that I think the Big Four pattern companies have been way out of touch with modern sewists for a number of years. They still seem to be drafting for body shapes of fifty years ago. The quality of the printing and instructions is very poor. Their inability to keep pace with the market opened up space for indie designers to step in and deliver what customers wanted. At this point, I’m only picking up reprints of vintage apron patterns.

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I monkeyed around with blocks for another design while watching the Browns play the Steelers yesterday. The Browns pulled it out and made it into the playoffs.

[This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t ended the season saying, with forced cheerfulness, “There’s always next year!” I might be saying it next week when we play the Steelers again, but for now, I am going to celebrate a season where this team did better than anyone expected it to.]

My original idea—two alternating blocks—needs some tweaking. One of the blocks was an absolute monster to make, although less so after I started ironing the seams open. I don’t usually iron seams open because I was trained by Margaret to iron them to the side, but this is one of those instances when breaking the “rule” is necessary; the seams are too bulky otherwise. I am going to remove that block from the design, however.

I’ve got my second ruler work practice block put together, ready for whenever I have time to get back to that project:

This week, though, is devoted to finishing the quilting on Noon and Night.