1st Week of Winter

When Christmas is over, the general mindset seems to be that Winter should be nearly over too. But here we are, in the first week of Winter and the last week of the calendar year 2023.

Today I sold the Singer 329 Fashion Mate to a sweet young lady who was very excited to have her.

That just leaves the Atlas listed on Craigslist. I'm going to keep working through my vintage machines in 2024, but giving myself only one month each in 2023 turned out to be unreasonably limiting. Next up will be my Featherweight and its hinky plug. I hope that's all that's wrong with it! If I remember correctly, the bakelite had crumbled enough that the internal wires in the plug head had touched and caused quite a commotion when I plugged it in. Once I pull her out, I'll see how good my memory of that event really is!

Mom's January banner continues apace. I bought some beads for it yesterday, but this morning I realized that as I was in the lobby of that hobby chain store, a magical force field must've made me forget that I was after more of the size I'd been given by a friend, not a package of the next size down (which is what I came home with). So, back to that store for a quick exchange, and then the making of the final blocks.

They will feature beads (duh), rather large ones (8mm), and I'd been fretting about how to get everything sewn together once the beads were attached. Sure, I could hand sew the blocks together, but I'd rather not. During the drive to my Mom's facility the answer came to me: assemble everything first, up to a point, and then attach the beads! Idée fixe conquered once more: the individual blocks don't have to be completely complete before they're sewn to each other.

While pointedly not shopping for beads at the beginning of this week, I started putting together fabrics and ideas for the backing of one of the N1C string tops

that's been bunched on the quilting table, providing a nice napping spot for Wraith.

The stripe piece is 40" wide and 104" long, which was to be cut into segments 28" x 17.5", then supplemented with strips of the green.

But when I did the cutting of the stripe fabric, it turned out there was potential for only 9 of the needed 12 rectangles drawn in my plan. So, I pulled in the white-on-offwhite fabric (an old dust ruffle I made decades ago), still thinking I'd cobble together the stripe scraps with the w-o-ow scraps to make more 28" x 17.5" rectangles, separated by those 3.5" green strips.

Then, while on the road with Mom today, the idea bubbled up to go really organic and just cut the green into lengths of 17.5", width be damned, and let there be a happy randomness of those three fabrics. As long as each of the 4 major rows ends up 17.5" x 90", it'll be enough!

Those four major rows will be separated by 90" lengths (labelled "stripe" in the plan) of my 2.5" scrap border roll (against which the plan is resting, above). That'll provide the tie-in of the scrappy strings making up the top, as well as the 6" needed to get the back wide enough (73").

Looks like I've got tomorrow's day "off" filled with plans and ideas!