Make cases for Dave's new
pillows.
I pressed them Wednesday morning, got around to pinning and stitching the hems this morning.
After working for a while I realized that tearing off a yard and a half had been a mistake; I should have torn off three yards and made five cases, so there would be something for the pillows to wear on washday.
But it was a lucky mistake. When I put the new cases on the pillows, the excessive length of the unshrunk cases reminded me of putting a case on the body pillow that we threw out a few weeks ago.
And I have two cases for that pillow! They can easily be cut down to make cases for the king-size pillows, or just used as is. I should have been using them all along, instead of the longest of my standard-size cases.
I picked the neck hem out of bra #1 in the hotel last night, after basting my taxicab niquab together.
Before nap time, I opened the White, which already was threaded with white 100/6, and sewed the three-inch topstitch needed on the mask I'm making out of one turned in for spare parts.
With the aid of the handle of a coffee spoon, I managed to thread 1/2" twill tape through the channels with a a fat tapestry needle. I tied it on — not as tightly as if I meant to wear it; the spool of tape attached made tying a bow knot a bit awkward, then stuck a pin 27" from the middle of the tape, as determined by folding it in half and measuring, after I managed to get it off without dislodging the pin. I shall cut four inches beyond that to allow for shrinkage. That will make half the tape 29". The tapes on the first mask were cut 34" inches and shrank to 32"; the missing five inches is just enough to tie a bow knot. But I think I'll cut six inches beyond the pin; I do plan to hem the ends, and a bit long is easier to live with than a bit short.
⁂
In the afternoon, I hemmed the ends of the tie. The mask seems to work, and I think that it will be more convenient for carrying in my pocket. Or I can wear it around my neck — with my two-tie mask, I always untie the wrong knot when I try to do that.
The tie is too long, but probably won't be after the mask is washed.
I have also picked the neck hem out of bra #3. It was frayed in only one spot, but that spot constituted a tear-starting notch. So now I have two bras to press, trim, and re-hem. And none on the bra-hanger; #3 was Friday's, so I am wearing Sunday's. But I can wear #5 if I don't finish by Sunday.
Oops. I never put elastic in #5 — when I finally found it, I just hung it up without considering the possibility that it wasn't finished.
Luckily, the three red bras that I relegated to sleepwear instead of changing out the swimwear elastic are mostly in good condition, so I'm wearing one of those.
Added a note to the project blog for my coin purse.
I'm wearing my basted-together niqab to church. I need to shorten the nose-support tab about half an inch, and the next niqab should be half an inch narrower.
I wore the niqab to hang out the clothes yesterday, and the middle tab is just fine. I also discovered that the wider veil allows me to put my glasses on after putting on the niqab, which holds the middle tab against my face and makes the veil cover the actinic keratosis scar as well as the skin graft.
I'd better sew it up soon, because it needs to be washed.
I don't feel like working, so I'm finally finishing up 2019SEW2.HTM. I find that the first entry thinks through the vent I plan to put into my black raw-silk shirt if I ever run out of desperately-needed jobs to do. I hope I remember where to find it. Ah, continued in the 8 June 2019 entry.
When I finish that, I can start closing out 2020SEW1.HTM. (Beginning by moving the July entries into the July-December log.)
⁂
Oh, grump! I've got 2019 ready to validate — and I won't be able to do that until after we dump Comcast and regain access to our Web site.
I might have a chance to upload the corrected copy.
Comcast managed to de-fang the trojan they call a security upgrade, but it's too little too late: the guy from Century Link will be here tomorrow to look at our land-line wires, and Dave has installed an antenna for over-the-air television.
My orange veil has been sweated on a few times and laundry day is tomorrow, so before going to church today, I machine-stitched the band and picked out the basting. There were a few spots where I used the same thread for the basting that I use for the final stitches, and I had cause to regret that.
This was not the best job of top-stitching I ever did. Wobbles a good bit in the row that runs along the edge. But nobody is supposed to get any closer to it than six feet. I mostly wear it to keep the sun off my incisions when I'm quite alone.
I learned that I can throw the veil up over my hat when I'm indoors. I waited to go to church until everyone else had gone home.
I think I'd like to make another that's cut into two curves under the eyes, with a shorter nose tab, to cover more of my nose.
I changed the e-mail address on the poster offering banner-making classes, printed out a fresh copy, and shoved it under the office door. I'll wait to obtain materials etc. until I hear from potential students. I hope they have the iron-on stickum stuff at Lowery's.
Yesterday, Saturday, I found the mending on the left thumb of my riding gloves torn, so I threw them onto the ironing board and hunted out my newer pair, and found that those had also been darned in that spot. What do I do with my left hand that I don't do with the right?
When hanging up my linen jersey after today's ride, I noticed that the collar has frayed. That jersey has hardly been worn! I don't think it has been through the washing machine more than once; when I come in sweaty, I soak it in a bucket — today with a dash of ammonia — then put it through a drain-and-spin cycle.
I'll soak it a second time, because of the ammonia.
I finally validated 2019SEW2.HTM this evening. Only three errors. I corrected one, got four errors, deleted some no-longer-needed comments, which removed two errors, then finally found the two close-paragraphs that were not open. They had been staring me right in the nose. I removed them by overtyping with blanks, and was surprised when I found that the corrected copy and the old copy had the same byte count.
Now it's time to move the July entries into a new 2020SEW2.HTM and validate 2020SEW1.HTM.
I've found that I can photograph my face by myself; I must put on a plain black shirt and hold a fashion show for ROUGH59.HTM.
Then I can pick the stitching out of the handkerchief niqabs and put them back into the handkerchief drawer.
broken strap on default sandals
Nothing to it when I finally got around to it. Smear glue on both sides of end of strap, shove back into slot, cover with a square of waxed paper, clamp in vice. It will be a few days before I take it out of the vice.
I was forethoughty enough to figure out how to clamp it in the vice before opening the tube of Shoe Goo. It entailed taking the laces almost all the way out.
Yesterday I trimmed the ragged edges of the bras I'm re-hemming, an eighth of an inch off one, the other I had to cut along the exposed edge, about a quarter of an inch. I guided between the two rows of stitching holes for a substantial part of the way.
Bra #6 needs to be done as soon as I get these two back into service.
I meant to wait to sew Bra#1 until I'd pinned #3, but this morning I found that the bra I wore on washday was in the laundry, I didn't want to wear #6 because the frayed spot might start a tear, and #5 still hasn't any elastic, so I unfolded the White (while wearing a sleeping bra) and stitched very, very carefully. I didn't want to repeat the sloppy job I did on the veil.
It wasn't until those seemed like too few numbers in the above paragraph that I remembered that I'd hand-washed a sweat-soaked bra and left it in the laundry room on Saturday.
Check: I'm wearing #1. #2 is in the hamper. #3 needs to be pinned and stitched. #4 is now in the closet. #5 needs elastic. #6 needs to be re-hemmed.
That's all of them.
Later I cut the bottom off the clean madras body-pillow case, sewed it up, and put it on one of Dave's new king-size pillows.
On Sunday, the repaired sandal fell apart before I got to church. In case it simply hadn't cured long enough, I repeated the repair, and today I remembered to go out to the shop and take it out of the vise. It will surely be cured by next Sunday.
But maybe I'll take an old pair of sandals in a shoulder bag, just in case.
Pity I can't go shoe-shopping. It takes many, many trips to find a pair that fits.
I wonder whether my sneakers are stiff enough for cycling?
Bra #3 pinned and stitched and in the closet. Time to pick out #6 — which has, upon inspection, been re-hemmed before, but a short bit of the hem is gone entirely. Perhaps I can re-hem just that section; I'll check all around with magnifying glasses on before I decide.
All the bras except #5, which was never finished, have been re-hemmed. Time to cut out the yellow linen bra I've been planning. And it's not too early to make more underpants; the four PDF briefs aren't going to last much longer, there are only seven of the hemp-cotton jersey, and the HCG was very thin to start with. I do have one yellow, one black, and two linen briefs.
⁂
I picked the hem out only in front, which avoided narrowing the shoulder straps again, but it was a royal pain to persuade those worn-in creases to veer where the trimmed hem tapered into the original hem.
So #6 is sewn and hanging in the closet with a crescent drawn on it to show that I intend to wear it on Monday.
And: scale "ready to cut off worn
fabric" and "finished repair"
I think that that means that I'm ready to cut this file into January-June and July-December.
Yesterday I wanted to post a picture of my linen jersey on a mailing list and couldn't find one, so I snapped a couple of pictures:
And this morning I cropped and scaled them. Tried to see how they looked, and Firefox wouldn't show anything after July the third. So I validated it, found a mistake at the top that propagated all they way to the bottom, corrected some other mistakes, and now it validates, but I can't open this file in Firefox past July third. The Web copy works just fine, and did before I corrected all those mistakes. ??
Mystery solved: I've been opening the back-up file on JOYXP. I must get around to freshening that soon.
While hanging clothes yesterday, I noticed that the madras body-pillow case was torn, but in the part that I'd already decided to tear off to make a king-size pillow case. After bringing the laundry in, I measured it against the piece I'd torn off the other one, and this morning I unburied the White and opened it, but it's nap time and I haven't sewn it yet. I did fold and put away the laundry that had been cluttering the White.
Today's schedule calls for spell-checking January–June and bringing its spine index up to date. I noticed "cobbled a ripped pillow tick" on the spine index. We threw that pillow away quite a while ago, and I've made its cases into cases for the new queen-size pillows.
On Monday, I mended some broken stitches in the waist casing of the yellow underpants — don't know when I replaced the stretched-out elastic. There are more broken stitches, but the gaps aren't big enough to bother with yet.
Then I started trying to draw threads to cut a worn-out linen pillowcase into sweat rags. Tried again yesterday, found that I can do it with more magnification but I can't do it holding a magnifier, remembered my neck-hung magnifier. I plan to wash the dust off and try it today.
Pity I can't go into Harbor Freight to see whether they have stronger glasses. I could order one of the absurdly-expensive reading glasses on the Web, I suppose — sight unseen.
I'm developing a lot of empathy for Al when he trudges back into the house, drooping and resigned, after a five-second escape into the flea-infested world. (He's allergic to fleas.)
The neck-hung magnifier worked. Three sweat rags really aren't worth this much effort, but I got determined.
I think that economists call this the "sunk-cost fallacy".
I've been thinking off and on about my scheme to shorten the nose tab on my next niqab half and inch, and scoop out under the eyes half an inch, in order to pull the veil up high enough to cover the recovering kerosis scar on my nose. Just how do I shape the join with the tab?
Eventually I realized that the result of all this complication would be to make the bottom of the tab wider — all I need to do is to make the tab a trapezoid instead of a narrow strip.
I photographed the orange niqab, and cropped and scaled it yesterday. Now to revise ROUGH059.HTM to include it.
And I have three more pictures to take.
When I looked at NQB\ED.DIR, I discovered that I already had pictures of the strawberry and green niqabs, so all I have to shoot is the white gauze one.
I've been dithering over the thread for overcasting my linen sweat rags; on the one hand, my two-ply thread is much thinner and softer than 100/6, on the other hand it's been hanging in the window for years.
Question settled when I learned that the thread is too rotten to run through the machine.
No ecru bobbin in my 100/6 bobbin box, so I wound one. Then I could not find either spool of ecru 100/6; I vaguely recall using one up and snitching a spool from the other machine, but the remaining one should be in the cotton drawer of the White or on the shelf beside the window in the sewing room.
I didn't feel like winding a five-hundred-yard spool, so I wound another bobbin and used that.
I absent-mindedly began sewing on the scrap side of a drawn line, but that's all to the good. I meant to overcast the scraps before cutting off the sweat rags anyhow, and that allowed me to warm up. I completed one of the three sweat rags. I have not, of course, cut it out. The second round was easier than expected because I realized that it's better if the stitches don't interlock.
I finished stitching the sweat rags this morning, then sunscreened up, took my small cutting mat out to the picnic table in the shade, and cut off three rags, leaving the scraps all in one piece.
I had to re-wind the spool bobbin, but there was plenty of thread left on the bobbin bobbin. My tension must not be as balanced as I thought it was.
So after putting the new sweat rags on the pile, I dug out the electric screwdriver, found an empty 500 yd. spool, and wound the rest of the ball onto it.
Then when I put it away, I found that I already had two full spools of ecru 100/6.
Today I picked the stitching out of the green niqab and threw the bandanna into the wash.
I also re-stitched the yellow furoshiki niqab that I washed last week, then decided to wear the orange headband niqab to church instead.
Noticed, while hanging clothes, that the elastic cord in the waist of one of my pairs of PDF-jersey briefs had come untied. When I brought it in off the line, one end of the elastic was sticking out of a large hole worn into the casing, and a loop sticking out of another proved to be the other end, so re-inserting and retying it was quick and easy.
The PDF has worn so thin that it no longer feels remarkably different from the sleazy hemp-cotton jersey, but it's now easy to sort it by sight.
Oops! I lined the collar of my yellow jersey with black linen so that it wouldn't show skin oil. It shows up sunscreen very well, and soaking the jersey in ammonia and rinsing it after a ride does not take out sunscreen.
The rinsing water is still yellow. One wouldn't think that something so pale could bleed for so long.
I have chosen fabric for my nose-guard niqab.
I started work on my muslin niqab this morning, and in the afternoon, I noticed DH sitting on the front porch, grabbed a needle, broke off a long piece of the two-ply thread that hangs in the window, and sat beside him to darn the sweat rag that I tore the washday before last while stretching the stitches around the edges.
What a struggle! I ran out of bobbin thread — exactly at the end of a seam, then decided that it was a good time to oil the White, which has been on my to-do list for ages. Involved both the PDF manual and a print-out of the lower oiling points with all the "oil"s marked in red. Almost all. Study of the PDF turned up a couple more. Which I marked for next time.
Then when I lifted the belt over the handwheel, it broke. That barbed joiner is very clever, but it's almost impossible to put back with bare hands, and if you use any sort of tool, the barb will cut through the plastic.
Apparently, wear will also make it cut through the plastic, ready break under unusual tension. At least a seam ripper got the ring of plastic off the barb. Stretching the end of the tube with my fid — a varnished dowel I stuck into a pencil sharpener — before starting helped a little.
And I didn't do all that without making the belt fall off the drive wheel. It's easy to put it back, but I had forgotten how.
I think I'll take a nap before I sew the other side.
While looking up something else, I learned that a collar and yoke suitable for wearing over an excessively-low neckline is a "partlet", so called after the ornamental neck feathers on a hen (Dame Partlet).
Oops! My plan was to press the nose tab and the seams of the veil first thing this morning; surely I could finish the job in one day and stop having to wear that bright-orange niqab every time I leave the house.
But with the revised schedule, it's Roomba day in the sewing room, and of course the first step in clearing the floor is to fold up the ironing board.
At least it will be neater in here. It's been months since I let Roomba in. My go bags are in a particular mess, and that's a good way to bring on a need for a go bag!
⁂
Among the things the indoor leaf blower blew out from behind the foot locker was a swatch of black muslin. It had gotten very dirty, so I embroidered a double-head arrow over one of the chalk double-headed arrows on it, and threw it into the hamper.
The disruption led to wondering what is in the Priority Mail box I use to raise XP's keyboard to typing height; it's packed with books to keep it from sagging. Most likely, the books were grabbed at random, discriminated solely by length, width, and thickness, but _Knitting Without Tears_ may have been chosen because I have two copies.
Another is a book I'd forgotten owning: _Ethnic Socks and Stockings: A compendium of Eastern Design and Technique_. This was a terrible disappointment; I'd ordered it expecting an examination and analysis of museum artifacts, with a discussion of how the design fits into the culture that produced it. Instead I got a book of original designs loosely inspired by a trip to a museum. Only the stranded patterns were copied; I never saw any indication that the author was aware that eastern stockings are designed on an entirely different principle from western stockings, even though it's obvious from the picture of a museum specimen on the cover.
Perhaps I should give the book another chance. The disappointment at getting a pattern book may have concealed what observation was there.
I've been reading my Wallet Diary in the hope of remembering what I intended to do when I took it apart.
Changed into clean grubby pants this morning and felt a hole in one pocket. They are hanging pockets that were overlocked around the edges, and some of the overlocking had come undone. I stitched it with the thread already on the zig-zag machine, which happened to be ecru 100/6. I was puzzled (and worried about provenance) that the top thread was on a bobbin, then I remembered the incident in which I mistook ecru spools for white spools, thought I didn't have any spooled ecru, wanted to sew now, so I wound a bobbin instead of a spool. Then later I ran down an electric screwdriver winding a spool with ecru 100/6, and when I put the spool away, it matched the two spools already there, and on inspection, the labels read "ecru".
I had to plug the machine in; it hadn't been used since I dragged it into the bedroom to let Roomba clean.
I wore my new niqab to church yesterday. Unbleached muslin is too stiff to make a good niqab.
At least this muslin is. I wish I could buy some of the six-yards-for-a-dollar muslin that the first dollar store sold until the introduction of the sales tax gave the premature enterprise its coup de grace. It was unbleached batiste, and very useful. But nobody spins that cheap thread that gets soft when washed any more, so I doubt that soft muslin could be bought at any price.
While reading some old Usenet posts yesterday or the day before, I found the following URLs:
Quote:
http://wlweather.net/PAGESEW/BLOG2XVI/BAC93_6h.JPG
same shot at absurd resolution:
http://wlweather.net/PAGESEW/BLOG2XVI/BACK_93.JPG
End Quote.
I wonder why I couldn't find those pictures when I wanted to post a picture of my windbreaker?
So I searched 2016 for "BAC_6h.JPG and found out: Knowing that the wool jersey hadn't been begun until the ripstop jersey had been proven in use, I had stopped looking when I got to entries about the wool jersey.
A bit of assorted mending today: PFD #3 commenced falling down, so I took them off and re-tied the elastic cord.
PFD #3 is in good-enough condition that it would probably be worth my while to cut off the worn waist casing and re-sew it, but I'll wait until the gaps of exposed elastic starts to annoy. I might just throw it out at that point.
Goal for today: have my refurbished wallet to carry on tomorrow's ride.
New chore: inspect worn flag, consider repair.
Flag inspected. I think I can repair it — but not until I've completed the wallet.
I pinned the ragged edges, then the flag hung around, first in the walk-in closet door (which is close to the treadle sewing machine, then on my to-do hook. A few days ago I got around to threading the treadle with nylon thread from my box of bobbins — I picked them up at a garage sale or some-such, and it turned out that they fit the White quite well. I could probably put one in the Necchi's bobbin case when it's used down to the correct diameter, but they are thinner than the Necchi bobbins and might rattle around. I doubt that I'll ever have reason to try.
I must make sure that one of those bobbins is in the emergency kit on my bike.
⁂
Yes, in a "pill pouch" plastic bag to keep it from unwinding. A strong thread like that can be doubled and redoubled to use for string or twine. I fetched a sandwich bag for the black hose I carry in case I need to wear newspaper sleeves over my socks on a cold day.
I should add "saddle bag for bike" to my to-do list; I doubt that I will ever be able to buy one that is neither huge nor tiny. But alas, my last one ended so tragically that I haven't the spirit to design another. (I trusted a bungee cord to secure it to the bike, and lost all manner of irreplaceables.)
Roomba day. Busy stuffing poblanos to bake for supper, I removed only my chair, the mouse-pad stool, one box, my go bags, and Dave's grandmother's sewing stand. And I didn't shift anything during the sweeping.
Now I have to make the bed and clear the bedroom. I hope to cut out my mask in the afternoon or evening, or at least select the fabric.
Ha! Well, I *have* selected the fabric. Or at least the pile I intend to select fabric from. I went through all my linen boxes and didn't find a stout solid color that I could substitute for the springlike print I had in mind when designing the pattern, except for a few snippets of "oakwood" linen-cotton twill, and I distinctly remember having to piece the last patch I cut from those, so I didn't deem it worth my while to sort those out in hope of finding a nine-by-twelve piece.
Getting ready to cut out this morning, I thought the remains of the worn-out linen pillow case that I made into sweat rags the most suitable fabric for the nose shield, which must be made double and therefore should be of thinner fabric than the rest. I drew threads and zig-zagged to separate the shred I wanted from the rest, so that the rest could be made into smaller sweat rags, and ended up making a sweat rag, which is now on the pile.
(The thread-drawing happened in several sessions over the last few days.)
Now that I'm out of worn-out pillowcases, I'm zig-zagging around sweat rags so that they won't unweave in the wash. Not to mention that linen unweaves much more easily than the cotton I made sweat rags of until I ran out of worn-out pillow cases.
The other linen pillowcase is even more worn than this one; when I need to use it, I'll draw wash-out marker lines instead of drawing threads.
Drawing threads in tow posing as linen is very hard. Drawing threads in worn-out tow is close to impossible.
Now off to the cutting mat, which I left on the front porch. It's supposed to get up to eighty today.
Cutting an eight by twelve rectangle for my new mask has turned out to be complicated. The scraps I want to use consist of several teeny bits, a piece large enough that clever cutting might get a blouse out of it, and two pieces amply large enough to make sleeves.
And the dress that the scraps are from is in desperate need of two fold-bottom patch pockets. I left the pockets off when I made it because I couldn't figure out how to match the print. After several years of carrying a purse with it, I've decided that matched print is not important — interruptions to a splashy sprigged design don't show much.
The dress has been hanging on the to-do hook all summer because I can't go anywhere that dresses are appropriate, but I should cut the pockets out now and pin them to the dress. It will probably be low-necked, flutter-sleeved linen season again before the post-pandemic mixed pandemic is over.
(When we get a vaccine, all the diseases that have been suppressed by all this hand washing and mask wearing are going to have a field day.)
Picking the mask apart proved surprisingly quick and easy, but when I was almost done, I had to stop because the damaged muscle in my right upper arm was screaming. Seems all right with using the computer, but I rest my elbow on my thigh when typing, and can support my arm while using the mouse. Stuffing a rice bag up my sleeve helped some.
This was wash day. Even though there was only one load, I got little else done, save for stuffing a pepper with ground beef, canned corned-beef hash, a freshly-dug onion, and a few mustard leaves. Baked the pepper in a bed of diced tomatoes, with four slices of carrot and some bouillon powder. I had more-elaborate plans, but didn't wake up from my nap until time to start the oven.
Trimming off the bits of my mask proved unexpectedly complicated. First, I'd forgotten how to set up the little plastic table. Then I got it set up in front of the love seat and found that on a cloudy day there was no way to get any light on it there. If I put it close to the window, there was no chair. (Well, I could have dragged one in from the kitchen.)
So I fetched the plywood that goes under the cutting mat and carried the operation out onto the porch. This had the advantage that I could simply blow the snippets and lint off the mat and take no further notice of them, the disadvantage, as I discovered when I stood up, that the chair I chose to sit on had been rained on.
Also had to fetch a ruler and the wash-out marker to freshen one of the lines.
Then when I laid my grubbies out to dry and got my sweat pants off the pile of pajamas, I found that I'd sat in something that left white marks on the seat, threw them into the wash, and went in search of the sweat pants that I'd started to make into slopping-around/sleeping pants last winter, then put the project on hold so that I could wear them when I wanted to undress into the washing machine when I got home. (I don't want to wear out my only pair of everyday pants with constant washing.)
I found tights that I'd already made into grubbies before I got to the sweat pants in the closet. After remembering that the worn pants were the only sweat pants that had been shortened, I searched them out (organizing the pants section of my closet rod a bit in the process) and added them to my to-do pile. I'll need a third pair of long grubbies soon; I've already put two of my calf-length grubbies away for the winter, and plan to put the pair I'm wearing with them the next time they are washed.
The other five pairs of sweat pants have not been shortened, because when I wear them on the bike, I pin them at the ankle, then smooth them up to puff at the knee, and tie garters to keep them there.
Now where was I? Oh, pinning hems into my revised mask.
Finished the mask today and started a diary for a lined version.
Dave's new pants arrived today, and I picked out the hems so I can shorten them tomorrow. I leaned my elbows on my knees and didn't hear anything from my upper arm, but it feels a bit sore now. It doesn't help that I yielded to the temptation to play a computer game earlier in the day.
I have decided that when the tights I'm wearing get dirty, I will put them into the landfill instead of the laundry hamper, so I'd better get on with darting the worn sweat pants to fit under jeans. I think the notes I took on it before upgrading it to doctor visits are in 2020SEW1.HTM.
Shortened a pair of pants that DH bought yesterday, and took a sheet of spreadsheet paper out of the packet and put it on the little folding table, intending to draft a pattern for a two-layer mask.
I'll need a pattern for this one because of the curved casing at the bottom. I plan to use the long-forgotten skill of bisecting an angle to draw a circle tangent to three lines drawn on the paper.
Washday. I examined the four PFD briefs and decided that #3 was worth repairing. Decision confirmed when it turned out that I could unpick the old casing just by running the point of the seam ripper under the zig-zag stitches on the wrong side, with blithe disregard for the possibility of damaging fabric that I intended to cut off and throw away. Then I wet the casing area with what I hope is diluted bottle starch and left it on the lid of the washing machine to dry.
I shall have to iron the two masks I washed today; the wind was too cold to allow me to smooth out the ties and stretch them into shape.
I finally got around to trimming the ragged edges of the underpants and sewing the casing. I didn't allow an opening to put the elastic in because one seam had come undone, but between the trimming and the width of the zig-zag, that was mended. I got the elastic in with the aid of a tapestry needle serving as a bodkin, but I finally gave up and cut a thread to let the knot in.
I learned that if you mis-remember the instructions for tying a sheet bend, you get a perfect square knot. Or, if the end had been on the other side, a thief knot. Since the knot had to go through a tight space, I persisted until I remembered how to tie it.
I was able to properly hang the veil I washed yesterday, but I'll iron the headband anyway, if I heat up the iron before the next time I need to wear it.
I was pleased that the tomato stain came out. Tomato stains usually don't, but I got at it quickly, and left detergent on it overnight.
search site for "comcast"
crop and scale needlebook picture in
/TOOLS
Above was written in the middle of the night, when my sciatica got me out of bed. I also deleted some .txt files that are no longer needed.
I think it was yesterday that I looked at the holes in my Capitaland Nautilus shirt, changed shirts, and started picking the pockets off. My sore arm stopped me picking off the third pocket, so I finished it this evening.
I haven't picked the threads out of the picked-off pocket yet; it's dark and cold out, and I didn't want to shed threads in the house. I slid a seam ripper under the zig-zag stitches on the shirt side, since the shirt is now in the trash bin.
Had a short bicycle ride in the middle of the day, and spent the whole morning getting ready to leave.
Can't sleep again. Tried to find folder GRAPHICS, discovered that HOUSEWF.HTM needs to be updated.
⁂
Discovered that GRAPHICS is a desktop folder. Windows really shouldn't use the same word for directories and folders. Poncho-shirt diary needs to be moved to directory RUFFTEXT. Also needs editing to incorporate the files I'm about to move from GRAPHICS to PONCHO_files, and it has no DIV command to make it readable on wide monitors.
May have solved the clutch-slipping problem on the Necchi, but it still needs to be taken in for cleaning and adjustment, and a screw is missing from the handwheel.
⁂
I incidentally opened 2017SEW1.HTM and on 23 February 2017 I read "The Fibernet shirt I have on will last a while." Ayup: that shirt is still in the closet — one of only two grubby shirts now that the Capitaland Nautilus shirt is gone — and it still looks as though it will last a while.
It's warm enough in the sun to pick snippets of thread out of pockets. (I did go back in for a coat halfway through; fuzzy slippers and a velvet hat were not enough.) The disadvantage of the "slip the seam ripper under the zig-zags" method of ripping a seam is that it leave lots of thread snippets.
I moved PONCHO to ROUGH060, but have yet to change the links.
add comment on replacing zig-zag to
"sans-serif chevron stitch" in
ROUGH022.TXT
Couldn't sleep again.
This morning, while putting away yesterday's wash, I paused to add green bar tacks to a pair of socks. The matching pair has white bar tacks.
It Roomba day in the sewing room.
Laundry day. I brought the spine-index remarks in the Table of Contents up to date.
It's ten thirty-two, and there's a chance I can have my new mask to wear when Linda brings my groceries at eleven. But not if I fiddle around writing.
I began my sewing by ironing the starched waistline of a pair of briefs I'm repairing. Then I put a cutting mat inside them and trimmed the ragged edge a few inches at a time, putting my ruler under the notches and weak spots with little attention to being consistent all the way around.
Found an appointment card with a yellow line where a purple air-erasable mark had been, left from the previous time I wanted to turn something half an inch — the tie casing on my mask, I think. Shows that an air-erasable pen should be used only on things that will be washed early and often; when given time to set, those yellow lines are absolutely permanent.
Then I turned half an inch to the inside and pinned it, all the time reflecting on how much easier cloth is to handle when it's been starched to who-tied-it, then I wandered off trying to find out the source of "who tied it" in the sense of "absurdly thoroughly" and never got back to my sewing. And it would take only a few minutes to finish that cotton-plissé mask. ("picking" bowdlerized to plissé)
Briefs in laundry hamper. The starch made zig-zag stitching very easy, but it was a bit harder to put the elastic cord in when the fabric refused to pleat up on the needle, and the elastic found it easier to slip through a casing that wasn't crumpled, so I had to take more care to keep the end from slipping inside the casing.
When putting the laundry away, I noticed that an inch of the waist casing on HCJ briefs red/2 had come undone, and the Necchi was already set up for sewing waist casings, so I mended it standing up (I have to move the mousepad stand to to roll the secretary chair to the sewing machine) and went on with my folding.
Threw briefs PDF #3 onto the ironing board instead of putting them into the drawer; the gaps in the waist casing have gotten annoying. They are not at all worth mending, but cutting a casing off and turning down a new one doesn't take long if I don't wander off.
My mask is finished.
Make pocket for generator cover.
The first thing to strike my eye this morning was the box of synthetics that I'd been hunting for yesterday. The silver ironing-board cover scraps were not in it — I'm sure I saw them at the bottom of some box within the last few years — but while I was consulting with Dave over where to put the pocket on his generator cover, he realized that he could simply tuck the gizmo inside. The gizmo was lying on the generator, so I lifted the flap that covers the handle, tucked the gizmo in, closed the velcro, and the job was done.
I found lots of interesting stuff in the yarn-dyed & solids cotton box yesterday, including the scraps from the old nightgown I made my latest mask from, and a scrap of that marvelous chambray I made into a perfect A-line kimono-sleeve sundress when I was a newlywed. I've never again seen chambray with heavy threads defining the white stripes; it made it wrinkle-shed and very comfortable.
Today, in the pure-synthetics box, I found scraps of the fluff crepe that I made a full-length dress from, and carried the pieces back and forth to work in a tiny bag I'd bought mushrooms in. It's a grand pity that fluff crepe has gone out of style. (It appeared to be a subtle huge-scale plissé.)
At the sewing-machine store we were encouraged to work on personal projects on the expensive machines people could see through the window.
Which didn't work nearly as well as the 500 series in the back of the store. The needle upyanker was particularly memorable. 600 machines not only refused to stop with the needle in the fabric, if you cranked the needle down after stopping, it would find power somewhere and yank it right back up again; I could sew an inch past the place where I wanted to stop before it gave up.
Pity I didn't think of turning the handwheel backward. Or of stopping an inch ahead of time and turning the handwheel the rest of the way.
Or maybe I did; that was fifty years ago.
There is also a swatch of satin from when I was choosing fabric for my wedding dress. I settled on embroidered organdy. And it's still in the back of my closet, somewhat the worse for poor storage. If there were someone around who made bereavement gowns for stillborns, I'd give it away.
There's enough polyester doubleknit to make a pair of slippers, but I don't want polkadot shoes.
⁂
I found PFD briefs #1 on the ironing board with all but two or three inches of the casing picked off, so I finished the job, then put on fuzzy slippers and a coat and sat on the porch to pick out the snippets of thread. It made quite a mess on the concrete, so I'm glad I didn't have to do the job indoors.
DH just walked past my window with a leaf blower. I suspect that he has blown away the threads I left on the porch.
Then I saturated the raw edge with diluted bottle starch, pinned it to a hanger, and hung it in front of the air cleaner. It's already dry in spots.
I wish the keyboard had a symbol that suggests lazy daisies. PFD briefs are marked with little flowers — or, in the case of #1, one petal.
Unicode probably has the perfect symbol, but I'm slightly offended by the extreme number of pointless symbols — they seem to think that having a vast number of code points means that one has to fill them up as rapidly as possible; I'd be saving them back for future developments. I'm sure that there are still whole languages that don't have their characters in Unicode yet.
Not to mention that there is no guarantee that the character would be included in any of the fonts that any given reader has access to.
Yesterday, I finally got around to finishing the repair of PDF#1. I think it was Thursday that I ironed the starched area and trimmed the edge. The heavily-starched edge proved very convenient when pinning the hem in. Instead of pinning measured points and then points between them, all the while struggling to keep the curl flat, I just went around with my marked appointment card and pinched in a crease, then put pins about eight inches apart.
I put them on this morning without washing the starch out, and don't feel it. I did notice which pair I had when taking them out of the drawer in the dark.
Most of the candidates for "next project" seem to be hand work. Might be a good time to drop the machines off at Lowery's. White first or Necchi first? The White isn't usable at all, and the Necchi works fine if I push-start it.
How do I get the White into the car?
I haven't been wearing my flannel gown lately, having washed the pink terrycloth, so beginning to shorten it seemed like a good chore to do while waiting for the washer.
The thread holding the hem was smooth, strong 100/6 and not much worn, and the stitches, though not as long as the ones I intend to use for re-sewing the hem, were not tiny, so I took them out by *separate the edges to loosen the stitches, peel back the thread until friction stops it, cut the thread an inch or more beyond the place where it stopped, pull out the thread, turn to the other side, repeat from *.
This made the snippets of thread so long that I didn't need to go outside or set my chair on a crumb cloth to control them, which was very good because it's bloomin' cold out (I came back in after hanging out the sheet and put the pillowcases on a rack, because my hands were getting numb), and I haven't the faintest idea what a crumb cloth looks like.
I read about crumb cloths in an old needlework book. When people ate an everyday meal in a formal dining room, they put a cloth over the carpet, then took it up and shook it outside after the meal. Nowadays, we feed the children in the kitchen and they never do develop table manners.
Then I opened the hem and found a spectacular amount of lint in the crease. I reflected that DH was going to Roomba the parlor as soon as Roomba was charged, fetched a whisk broom, stretched the hem over my knee and had at it. It was easiest to brush away from me, and that kept most of the lint on the nightgown until I took it out and shook it. I think brushing the lint took longer than picking out the hem.
I knew that taking everything off the top shelf would turn up my villa-olive scraps. Now to remember what I meant to do with them. A neck band for my long-sleeved dress is most urgent, but it might be wise to replace the worn neckband on the old T-shirt first for practice.
It looks as though there is enough fabric to make another long dress. A couple of T-shirts might be in order.
There are pre-cut bands in the black interlock pile. I must remember that if I ever make anything from the underwear-y cotton waffle knit.
⁂
sew up pointless pocket in Amazon
pants I hung the pants on the
to-do hook on washday, and this afternoon I
devoted a few minutes to getting them off it.
loose snap on black raw-silk
shirt I don't know just when I
got at that, but by then the loose snap had become
an off snap. But it was securely snapped to
the other half, and it had dented the fabric, so
there was no difficulty about sewing it in the
correct place.
Finds:
Before my nap, I put the bag of used curtain fabric on the north end of the shelf, and the pile of underwearly unbleached cotton waffle knit on the south end of the shelf.
On top of the waffle knit, a small-flowered jersey that turned out too sleazy for the dress I bought it to make, but I got a couple of nice summer tops out of it, and I think I can make at least two more.
Next layer: the twinkle-twinkle fabric and the two tulip prints that I make pockets for T-shirts from. I think there's enough of the twinkle-twinkle for a long dress.
I had to bring in the "work platform" step ladder to get that up, and then it was time to start frying sausages and slicing peppers and onions.
⁂
Should have looked up the recipe first — you are suppose to steam them for ten minutes. I have another pepper and another sausage, and will try again on Saturday.
Time to start another pile. First up rather a lot of yellow cotton jersey. I expected to make several summer jerseys, but the fabric is so thin that I didn't like the first one at all, and I'm swearing off jersey jerseys because they don't support the heavy stuff in my back pockets. I could add a drawstring around the waist, I suppose.
The fabric makes excellent underpants, but I have a pair of bright-yellow underpants.
Next up, the scraps from my slightly-greenish yellow interlock jerseys. All but one of those have been trashed, and that one is mended. I unfolded this pile.
I might be able to get a back pocket (to be divided into three large pockets) out of the largest piece, and there are a couple of pre-cut sleeve bands. Something to bear in mind if I buy white interlock from Dharma.
The pile of blue scraps and maroon scraps from my beta interlock bras is small enough to sit on the part of the waffleknit that sticks out from under the jersey and interlock.
My shades-of-brown striped jersey went on top of the greenish-yellow interlock, touching the maroon scraps at the bottom of the adjacent pile. This pile looks like enough to make a shirt, but they might all be small pieces, and piecing jersey doesn't work well.
There's just room over the southmost pile for a roll of black fleece that I bought to make slippers to change into after walking to church in boots. I went shopping for polyester, since that is what the original pattern called for, but all I could find in polyester was fleece. The finished slippers were unmistakably strictly for the bedroom, and I carried them to church only once or twice. But I wear them every night to keep my feet warm while I'm work at the computer.
I'll leave the woven fabrics for tomorrow.
First onto the lower closet shelf was a piece of black silk crepe. I bought a piece of red crepe to make a blouse, and a piece of black crepe to make a long blouse-slip. When cutting, I wanted the blouse a tad longer than the pattern and just put all the fabric into it. It turned out to be ankle-length, and I never got around to cutting the black piece. Since it's longer than the piece that I made a long dress from, there is probably enough to do quite a lot.
Next layer, navy wool crepe, about 57" wide, and 5yd 6" long. I don't recall acquiring this; since there is so much of it, it must have been one of the bargains that Phoenix Textiles used to have. That would be almost 4.8 of the thirty-nine-inch yards they used to use, probably five before it was washed. It was a bit dusty, so I tumbled it in the dryer for a while. (And decided to measure it while it was unfolded.)
Next in line: a thin plaid wool about a yard and a half wide. I love the fabric, but the plaid isn't as subtle as I would like in clothing. I'm a solid-color sort of girl. I count twenty-four layers about fifteen inches wide, about ten yards.
I want to wash this and put it into the blanket box, and I already have a blanket soaking in the washer. Time for a nap.
I shall resume cleaning the shelf later. Today I sorted out scraps to make neckbands and pockets for my villa-olive dresses. There were surprisingly-few small pieces, and one scrap the full width (65"). It is 2 yd 5" long on one edge and 4 yd 6" on the other.
I'm warming up by replacing the worn-through neckband on an old, stained T-shirt. The old band is 3/4" wide, which suggests that I want a strip 2" wide.
I examined the 4 1/4" strip, thought it a shame to waste it making a narrow strip, took another look at a scrap I'd dismissed for being narrow in the middle. Lo, it was almost as wide as an appointment card there, and quite straight on the other edge.
My washout marker gave up the ghost while I was marking along an appointment card. I tossed it into a distant basket (lest I think it had fallen in by mistake), and selected a light-blue pencil I had probably bought for writing notes on reproduction copies. I intended to cut along that line, so it didn't matter that it won't wash out.
Then I folded the strip in half lengthwise, stretched it around my head, and cut it to 20" long. I left a little more seam allowance than I plan to use, to be sure it will slide over my ears.
⁂
I picked the old neckband off in the afternoon. I should have made a wider band, because the edge of the neck is too worn to sew a band to.
Lo and behold, there is enough white 1/8" elastic to tighten the neckband of the dress. I almost missed it because it was in a snack bag with a cardboard hem gauge and some miscellaneous old black elastic.
I think it was yesterday that I sewed the band to the T-shirt, then, because the next step required heating the iron, I picked out the neck hem on the dress. I found that the dress is very dingy around the neck; the sparkling-new neckband is going to make that very conspicuous. But it might brighten if I put a whole load's worth of detergent on it and let it soak a while before the next time I wash it.
This morning I pressed the neckband away from the T-shirt, and ironed out the crease where the neck-hem of the dress was.
I need to re-use the elastic that was in it, and it was sewn together, so I can't open it without shortening it. I think I can tuck it in after the neckband is pinned, as there isn't a lot of gathering. The loop is a gnat's whisker more than half a yard around.
The gathering on the dress band is going to be conspicuous. I'm hoping that it will be conspicuous enough to pass off as intentional design.
Oops! I sat down to pin the T-shirt neckband before lying down for my nap, and discovered that I had pressed the seam allowances to the wrong side — they are supposed to end up inside the band. And to think that I started to do it the right way, then corrected myself!
With a spray bottle, that will be easily corrected — but not just before nap time.
sew up pointless pocket in Amazon
pants After my nap, I hunted all around
for a spool of gray thread that matched the pants,
fetched my hand-sewing kit out of the arm of the
futon, sat down in the rocker, and discovered that
the lining of the pocket was black.
I used the gray thread anyway. I watched Alton Brown cooking pork ribs while sewing. This was after I washed the roaster for the pork ribs I plan to bake tomorrow — according to the package directions, not braised in foil. [But I decided to use Alton's temperature and timing, and put the lid on the roaster.]
Re-pressed and pinned the T-shirt neck. First I folded the raw edge down to meet the stitching, using right-angle pins because I intend stitch on the right side and would need to swap them. Re-pinned from the right side, fetched the loop of elastic — since I can't go into Lowery's, re-using the old elastic is my only option, and cutting it to insert it in the usual way would make it shorter. (Checks above: it's half a yard around, which will be useful to know when I put elastic in the dress neckband.)
Tucking the elastic in moved all the pins back to the wrong side, so I could have saved a step. It proved to be not too difficult. When moving the pins back to the right side, I put in lots of extra pins to keep the elastic near the fold and out of the way of the stitching, also easier than I expected. The difference between the elastic and the band is small enough that the band is eased, rather than gathered.
Then an inspection of the inside and a few corrections, and I'm ready to stitch.
After all that fussing and feathering to get the elastic in without shortening it, it turns out that it isn't short enough. Since it's old, and has a piece of tape extending it, I don't think that it would go over my head if I cut a piece out, so I'll replace it with black elastic one of these days.
Meanwhile, I'll wear it with the neck pooching out and put another shirt on over it.
I didn't have the nerve to lay it out to wear under my black raw-silk shirt tomorrow even though the neck sticks out less than it did when newly sewn. I think it might be all right after it's washed.
We slept so late today that there wasn't any morning, and I spent the afternoon sorting out handwork to do in the parking lot, and laying out clothes that I can put on half asleep tomorrow.
I'm taking discarded tights that I want to salvage patch pockets from, two handkerchief niqabs that I want to turn back into handkerchiefs, and gloves and socks that need to be darned.
I found a mysterious hole in one of the brown and gold on black paisley furoshikis that darning had been pinned up in. It looked cut, but jagged. I moved the socks to the matching furoshiki. I have scraps of that fabric, and I particularly like that pair of furoshikis, so I think I'll patch it — if it ever gets to the top of my priority list.
Which reminded me that a small hole in my silk tights is at the top of my priority list, so I tied them and a snack bag of darning silk into a yellow bandana and added them to the tote bag.
My wool tights are at least as urgent, but they require more thinkum than I think I'll have while sitting in a parking lot waiting for a call. I'll probably sleep and read, and leave the things in the tote bag untouched. Except for the food bars.
Didn't touch the food bars. Did read.
I picked the pockets off the discarded tights today, and left the pockets in the laundry room; they are quite dirty. The tights are in the kitchen wastebasket, if DH didn't empty it.
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