Zippers

So it's cold outside! This is what the temperature reading was on my car when I arrived at the gym this morning. Oops - now you can see how crazy I am and what time I arrived. Actually, I was late arriving as it took a bit of time to chisel the ice off my windshield.

It's cold outside!

Well, it's been colder and it's colder in other parts of the country. If you dress for it - it's never cold. Technically, I'm not even wearing a winter coat. It's called a down sweater by Patagonia. It's one of the BEST investments in clothing I've ever made. I've had it for years and well - it's absolutely filthy - I must try and wash it again. If you ever travel anywhere, I highly recommend buying one of these sweaters. It compresses into nothing in your suitcase. I LOVE it. They are NOT cheap, but they are the BEST.

I think when walking the girls this morning that we'll move to a different jacket and wear fleece-lined jeans.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!  I see the girls went shopping without me and bought me a nice card. Oh, those girls are so sweet!

Happy Valentine's Day

It's Hazel McCallion's birthday today. She was the mayor of our city for many years and turns 99 today. She's on top of things. I love the little clip they played on the radio about her age. Take a minute and listen to this news story about her. The clip from the radio was taken from the interview. Gosh - she sounds just like my Dad!! But I believe her words to the fullest and EACH day is a new experience. You can be OLD at any age. Choose to be YOUNG.

So I couldn't help myself. We walked to the bank yesterday and on the way home, we took a detour to the mall. I know - I bet I'm going to get myself on the news one day. Homeless woman (because of my dirty orange jacket), walks the street in search of something with two big dogs. I thought about that last night. We are NOT walking in the residential part of our neighborhood and we do it every day. Ooops. Oh well - do I care what other people think? NO!!!!

Retaining wall is under deconstruction

There was a retaining wall which separated the upper and lower levels of the parking lot. That's now being demolished.

By the way, I did some research yesterday. That piece of equipment is called an excavator. Yep - you can check it out on that link. It appears to be a very versatile piece of heavy equipment because you can buy attachments for it which turn it into a whole pile of other tools. I've seen them pounding posts in for a new overpass on the highway. Yesterday, it had a huge jackhammer attached to it as it pounded away at that wall.

See what I mean? Who knew that I would one day learn the proper name of this piece of equipment? It's simply being curious and I learned something new. You may not care, but it's the nature of being curious (and wanting to learn) that is going to make me live to be 100.

And now I can get on with the quilting stuff. So I had an interesting quilt to quilt. It just wanted to make sure that I knew it was there as it caused a few issues along the way. This was one of them.

The first issue was that one of the blocks had dimensional seams on it. GRRR.................   It's a very pretty block, but not so fun to quilt on a long arm.

Dimensional seams

 I grabbed a piece of tissue paper (good quality stuff) and placed it over the block. Then as the robot came along, I held the edges of the tissue paper in place.

The first pass with the long arm

Yep - this block fell between two rows so I had to babysit it for two rows.

Stitching over the tissue paper

Once the stitching was done, I removed the tissue paper which was easy. Because of the quality of the paper, it ripped off clean and no small bits to pick out. And there's the block - all quilted.

The dimensional block is now quilted

There were other issues - I won't go into them. Let's just say that the quilt is done. It also needs to be trimmed. I have a huge pile of stuff to trim so I'd better get to that later today. But please, please, please - measure borders and sashings when you sew them on. Check the size of the backing to make sure it's large enough. I know it's a challenge when the quilt is HUGE, but you MUST do those things. Square up your blocks, check your seam allowances - well, I could go on and on, but there are all very important things to do on ANY quilt.

Customer quilt - DONE

I mentioned that we got back some of our homework in the dressmaking class. I got my seam finishings samples back. Do you remember me saying that I thought one might not pass inspection?

Well, look at what happened. I got full marks for pressing. Phew - not that I was worried. I'm pretty meticulous about pressing. But she docked me a point for that darn zigzag being right on the edge.

I lost a point for my crappy zigzag sample

I like the fact that she wrote right on my sample. Now we have the option to redo the sample. I know it's totally petty for one point. But I might just remake it for the sake of doing it right in case I ever decide that I want to use this as a seam finish. Which I doubt since I have a serger. But just because.

My crappy zigzag sample

I took my old top of the line sewing machine to the class as I figured finding the appropriate zipper feet for those class machines would be a challenge. We had to sew some 5/8" seams. Wow - where the heck are the markings????  We used to think this stitch plate was amazing.

Old stitch plate

However when you compare it to the one on the new top of the line sewing machine, it sort of pales in comparison.

Stitch plate on the Designer EPIC 2

 Gosh - the new one even knows whether you have the straight stitch plate on or the general-purpose stitch plate.

In the class, we were making our zipper samples. I happened to have all the required supplies with me. Hallelujah!!!! 

I was going to hand these in, but then I knew that she was going to dock me points because the stitching lines were NOT perfectly straight. This is the lapped zipper and while it's almost perfect, I messed up when I turned the corner at the very bottom. Darn - One more stitch before pivoting and it would have been perfect.

Lapped zipper

This is the center zipper and well - that's certainly not good - the stitching lines are not centered. Oh boy - I'll be redoing that one as well.

The centered zipper is not good either

Then I tried the invisible zipper. I like this one. Fast and easy, however, I got puckering on one side of the zipper. Why? I've no idea so I brought that sample home as well to try on a different machine.

The invisible zipper sample

I cannot help myself. If I'm going to do something, I want to do it right. If I were making a garment and not in a class, all of those samples would have been fine, except maybe the puckering one. One would be using matched thread and no one can tell. Except that if you have too many of those details that are off, there goes the quality of the garment and those types of things make the garments look hand made. OK -- remaking those zipper samples is a job for next week.

I've got more stuff to get done today. The list of tasks for the week is getting shorter, but not fast enough. That large quilt yesterday (which wasn't even on the task list) was a killer. I spent a LOT of time working with that quilt.

On that note, we're about to brave the cold. I wonder how long the girls will want to be out before their paws get cold? Well, if we move fast, that won't happen. I know the people that pass me are going to think I'm crazy, but do I care? Not in the least. Besides, getting steps for my virtual challenge is way more important than what people say about me.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!