Glitterati

"Glitter is the herpes of the craft world." John Heffron

There's another expression along the lines of 'If you want to find a Sweet Adeline, just follow the trail of glitter and sequins.'

These days, that trail will lead you straight to my dining room.

My new singing home, the Chisholm Trail Chorus, was gifted scores of yards of this knit fabric and asked if I would make prototypes (largest and smallest sizes) of a couple of swing jacket patterns they were considering. I hurled my favorite 4-letter word at them--"Sure!"--and thus was my house invaded infested decorated with blue and green sparkles on every surface.

I've managed to keep it out of my eyes, by what stroke of luck I cannot imagine as, like I said, it's everywhere!

Four jackets were produced over the past 2 weeks (I'm embarrassed by how long I dithered, intimidated by the fact that I hadn't used my serger in 4 years), modeled and decided upon last night. The winning pattern is this one . . .

. . . which I modified to make the collar lined instead of contrasting. You really don't want to have glitter rubbing against your neck while performing! Four more prototypes will be made so there'll be samples of all sizes (XS to XXL), and from there it'll be a matter of fitting members to a general size then tweaking the details (e.g. 'size M, shorten by 2 inches').

A nice and welcomed break from the glamorous world of glitter was provided by sewing on regular old fabric when I had a few odd minutes. I hit a bump with the log cabin blocks when I discovered one of the N1C light fabrics shrunk alarmingly when ironed. There was no way to rationalize the extreme puckering of the blocks with "it'll quilt out", so I ended up frogging (rip-it, rip-it) a quarter of them.

That got done in short order, the fabric replaced with decent cloth, and the next dark round was finished today. Except, this is what I found when I ironed them this morning:

Two out of 63? It could've been worse!

You'd think, after doing this over 400 times in this project alone, I'd have it figured out by now, wouldn't you? As I frogged these as well, I worked out what happened. I had sewn the first strip on the wrong edge (the strip on the right should've been sewn on the bottom), which threw things off when I went into auto-pilot while sewing on the second strips. I had caught my placement mistake by the 3rd block, but with the fits-and-starts nature of this project, had forgotten to pay attention to these first two when it came time to add their second piece.

Does that green print remind anyone else of Home Ec in the 60s? Those of us who took it in 8th grade, starting with the sewing semester and ending the year learning to cook, made an apron as our first sewing project. This was typical of the fabric available back then.

Celia's top has corners now, leaving me without any handwork to do temporarily.

Quite an optical illusion, but it's not an empty black frame.

The lower portion of this folded flimsy is tucked behind the ironing board. Top and bottom borders--and those corners--to be added soon!

Until I get a backing made for Joie de Vivre and get it sandwiched, I'm going to start stitching again on the vintage top I repaired and started quilting back in 2020. I'd completed one side, and managed in my complete ignorance to get the project underway in exactly the way Baptist Fans were traditionally quilted--from the outside in toward the center!

I'm on the fence about quilting Joie de Vivre, whether by hand or by machine. Sewing the blocks by hand made sense, as they're easier to assemble that way, but I wonder what Celia's intention had been once the top was complete. I suppose by the time I finish this vintage top I'll have a very good idea as to whether I'll ever want to hand quilt another one!