Fun With Knit Fabrics

I had such a great class yesterday. Five students and I spent the afternoon playing with all sorts of knit fabrics—learning about structure, fiber content, stretch, and how their machines handled each one. Three students had sergers and two had sewing machines. I was very proud of all of them, especially the lady who was unfamiliar with her serger (a Brother 1034) and hit some speed bumps on the way. She fell behind a bit and could have given up, but she didn’t, and by the time class was over, she was very familiar with her serger.

And how far we’ve come from Stretch & Sew! The two ladies with sewing machines brought late-model Berninas and were fearless about experimenting with the different kinds of stretch stitches and overcast stitches.

You know it’s a good class when the teacher is having fun, too—so much fun that I forgot to take pictures.

The quilt store just got this book in stock:

I didn’t buy it yesterday, but I’ll probably get it the next time I’m in there. I took a class from Angela a few years ago in Spokane and really enjoyed it. I like her approach to free motion quilting. It makes sense to my brain.

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I had a massage yesterday morning. I have something going on with my back; it is definitely muscular, not structural, and every so often it flares up. DD#1 was delivered via C-section and the surgeon did a low transverse incision that cut my abdominal muscles and destroyed my core strength, and now it is manifesting as back problems.

[That’s also known as a bikini incision, and if anyone had thought to ask me at the time, I would have said just do a vertical incision because I’ve never in my adult life worn bikinis, but oh, well.]

I have fewer issues over the summer when I am out working in the garden and moving around. The massage therapist said she could tell that whole area was inflamed. The massage helped, and I am taking ibuprofen, which is also helping, but I am going to have to be better about developing what core strength I have left. I’m going back another week so she can work on that spot again.

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We’re supposed to get a few days of really nice weather before dropping back to the mid-40s with rain. The house needs some serious attention, which it will get today. I’ve also got to decide what to talk about on next week’s podcast. I might discuss thread, because I am teaching a thread class on Tuesday, but I might go in a different direction.

I was going to start a curvy log cabin quilt with some scrappy red and white strips—I have two overflowing bags of them—but I discovered that I bought a plain 6" log cabin ruler in February instead of the curvy 6" log cabin ruler. Rookie mistake in not reading the label properly. I do have the 4" and 8" curvy log cabin rulers, but I am feeling like Goldilocks at the moment and neither of those is quite right.

Once the fire department auction is over next weekend, the schedule for the remainder of April eases up considerably, and if the weather improves, I’ll be doing a lot of work outside.