Some Days, There is a Lot of Friction

Do I know any quilters in the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene area? I am registered for the Amanda Murphy ruler class being hosted by Becky’s Sewing Center in CdA on Monday, December 4. The forecast for travel over the passes this weekend is not good, so I am looking for someone to take my spot. (Surprisingly, the store does not seem to keep a waiting list for classes like this.) I am a capable winter driver, but willingly venturing out into those kinds of conditions is just dumb. If you’re interested, contact me at Janet K Szabo at gmail dot com. (Take out the spaces.) I am completely bummed about this because a class with Amanda is a rare opportunity, for sure.

I went ahead and ordered the crushed velvet fabric from Minerva. It remains to be seen whether it will become this year’s Christmas outfit or not, but it should get here in time. I received a shipping notice yesterday. I also ordered some softshell fabric (hot pink) for the Itch to Stitch Andes Jacket and eight yards of UV-coated heavy Cordura for generator covers from Seattle Fabrics. They were having a Black Friday sale this week and it seemed like a good time. I told the husband I would try to make generator covers over Christmas break.

Yesterday morning, I ran up a muslin of this pattern:

I do like princess seams and the way they fit. I am glad I made a muslin, first, using some scraps of cotton interlock. I was worried about the fit through the bust, but the size L fit well there. I will have to grade out a bit at the waist, though, because apparently Ryliss was correct about me being a rectangle.

I’ve got some chunks of French terry in the stash for this one as well as an athletic knit that I found on a WalMart remnant rack. I’m also kicking around the idea of lengthening it 4-5” and turning it into a dress.

Slowly but surely, I am getting a good stack of basic patterns to hack into the pieces I need.

I left for town around noon. The husband and I had an appointment at the bank at 3 pm to sign the loan paperwork for his new work truck and I had a few errands to run. My first stop was the quilt store south of town. The store has Open Sew on Thursdays and I hoped I might see Tera there. Not only was she there, but so were about 30 other women and their machines. I thought I had interrupted a class.

[The husband gets a lot of mileage out of this, because men do not have “open” anything. He cannot imagine a situation where men would get together to work on their projects and visit. He wonders how much work women actually get done and I have to remind him that sometimes, that is not the point.]

I caught up with Tera, then went into the store and bought some embroidery thread I need for my anatomical botanical pattern.

The rest of my errand-running was frustrating. It started to snow—which was not in the forecast—and it just seemed like everywhere I went, everything took five times as long as it needed to, for exceptionally stupid reasons. I hate inefficiency. The husband, fount of Stoic wisdom, reminded me that “Some days, there is a lot of friction.”

We met at the bank and signed the loan paperwork. Our construction company accounts are at a local community bank. The guy who was our loan officer there for two decades is now the bank president. We have a different loan officer now, but the former loan officer-now-president always comes over to visit with us when we’re in there. We’re all set to go pick up the new work truck as soon as we get a call from the dealer in Tacoma that it is ready.

I managed to get home without some out-of-state transplant unfamiliar with winter driving conditions hitting my car. That’s always a plus.

I think today will be devoted to working on the cream-and-white quilt top. I’d really like to get it done and off the Q20. I’ll see if I can get a whole quadrant quilted this morning. It’s also time to start working on Christmas choir music. Practice begins next week.