Another Tourist Season is Over

Our visitors flew home to Cleveland yesterday, but they left a few gifts. One came from my cousin Aimee, who sent a T-shirt:

So very true!

And Hannah and Matt gave us a gift card to one of our favorite date night restaurants. It came in this beautiful card that revealed a pop-up greenhouse when I opened it.

Hannah used to work at American Greetings, so she knows her cards. I’ve got this one sitting here by my desk. Isn’t that beautiful?

After Matt and Hannah left for the airport, I tidied up the house until my friend Susan arrived. She and I spent the afternoon together yesterday making postcards to mail for the upcoming Fall Pie Social, one of the fundraisers for the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. (That’s the website I’ve been working on this summer.) I have a big office photocopier. Susan brought the cardstock and we printed and cut and stacked until we had 1400 postcards ready to mail to local addresses. We also put the event listing up on the local Facebook pages. If you’re local, please join us that day for pulled pork, nachos, ice cream, and—of course—homemade pies. The Pie Social will be held at the Mountain Brook Community Center, 2353 Foothill Road, on Saturday, September 10, from 4-7 pm.

The husband had to babysit a slab yesterday—they poured in the morning but he needs to make sure it sets up properly, and depending on the size of the slab and the weather conditions, that can take all day—so after Susan left, I worked on some sewing projects until he got home around 8 pm. I traced this Burda top (6278):

This one has deep buttoned cuffs, which I will change to either a plain band or a hem. There is also a shoulder yoke detail, which I like, but when I read through the directions, I could not for the life of me figure out why the pattern has you cut and interface TWO yoke pieces. Burda pattern instructions are minimal, to say the least. I think they are also translated from German because some of the verbiage is worded interestingly. I read the instructions over and over and studied the illustrations (also minimal) and eventually figured out how the top goes together. I feel better about starting this one. I also checked the bust darts against the Classic T-Shirt Dress pattern and they shouldn’t need to be adjusted. I think I might make a cardboard version of the bodice of that Classic T-Shirt Dress to have for comparing to new patterns I want to sew—sort of a quick-and-dirty sloper.

I will say that sewing wovens requires a slightly different mindset than sewing knits. I can whip out a Laundry Day Tee on the serger in about an hour. Tops made from wovens require the use of both the sewing machine and the serger, and I have to stop and think about the order of operations. Do I finish the edges before or after I sew the seams? Are there seams I can do on the serger only? Does this need a four-thread seam or just a three-thread finish? I do a lot more stopping and thinking with these kinds of projects.

I got an e-mail yesterday from the woman who organizes the quilt sale for the Mennonite Country Auction in Ritzville, WA. She was checking in to see if our church had quilts to donate this year. I have a few; I am going to pull them out today and get some photos for her. I know that all the sale organizers are struggling to get enough quilts. I have several more basted and ready to quilt, but I won’t have time in the next month to get them done. They’ll have to go in next year’s sale.

And I pulled out the bag of cream-and-white scraps and started sewing strips together.

This will eventually become another Candy Coated quilt, although I might do the Sunday Morning Quilt from that same book just for a change of pace. We’ll see. I am going to work out in the garden this morning and then I need to put serger handouts together.