Thursday, March 13, 2014

It’s been lovely but I must scream now*

This has been a weird week.

I’ve had nothing but frustration on the coat front. I decided to add buttons but didn’t have anything suitable on hand so I ordered some. When the order arrived, two of the three packs were missing.

So many buttonholes! White thread was on Kent's machine, 
and the black thread was on mine.
In the meantime, I practiced and practiced and practiced buttonholes on the same combination of fabric layers and interfacing as my coat. Our two machines each have an automatic buttonhole option which means you only need to get the first one right in terms of length and style and then the machine will make all the rest the exact same way. Only . . . well not really, not when you’ve got to make the buttonholes up close to a seam, which is where these need to be (I checked on a couple of RTW coats). So the automatic buttonhole feature was out, and so was the keyhole buttonhole which is what you see on RTW coats. In fact, the best buttonhole of all the practices ones I did was the one I did with the manual buttonhole foot. Well OK then, I decided, no big deal. I can make five buttonholes easy-peasy. But not until my buttons get here.

As usual, the switch to DST has messed up my sleep cycle which in turn affects my running. Monday morning when taking the trash barrels to the curb, I realized it would have been a beautiful day for a run if only I hadn’t overslept by an hour. There’ve been so few good running days that I hate to lose one to something as stupid and arbitrary as the switch to DST. I slept late today too but ran anyway. I don’t like to run when traffic gets heavy. Unlike Boston, where the pedestrian/runner rules and car drivers pay attention, Kansas City only pays homage to cars. I have to be incredibly careful when traffic is heavy because the car drivers here really don’t look for pedestrians.

A quick note about the new badge at the top of the right column. I have a bad habit of getting fabric I love and then being afraid to do anything with it (see also my coat fabric, which I had for two years and also the Diary of a Sewing Fanatic give away fabric, which I also had for nearly two years). A few weeks ago, Kent and I were able to get some fabric from Kaplan’s before the store closed for good. This fabric is silk, I forget which designer (because that’s all Kaplan’s carried) and the thought of cutting into it makes me very nervous. But that’s just silly and so by March 22, I will have either a top or dress cut out and ready to go. I only have a yard and a half of it, although it’s 60” wide, so finding a pattern that works will also be a challenge.

*Today's blog title was on a bumper sticker I had for a while. I thought it was funny and it perfectly describes this week. 

1 comment:

Jeanne said...

I do like that title. Pretty apt for the first week of DST.