Tuesday Project Pondering: One More?

KarenLeave a comment

My freelance projects are wrapping up and I’m going to need something to do all day. A 12-week sewalong for a quilted coat kicked off this week. Perfect timing?

One of my Instagram friends is doing it so it was on my radar, but I decided I didn’t need yet another quilted coat after I made three in three years. I also thought I didn’t need yet another coat, period, since I have a lot for someone who leaves the house three times a week.

BUT THEN I remembered that you can make quilted LETTERS like Carolyn here (posted back in August, too):

 

And suddenly a jacket that was only pieced in a few places, with contrast binding on the outside seam lines and letters that spell out “AI COULD NEVER” down the back, leapt into my head.

Kind of like this…
A collage of quilted jacket inspo

…with one of these alphabets (clockwise from left, Spaghetti Western Sewing, Patch and Dot, and Sew Hooked).
A collage of three diferent foundation paper piecing aplhapets. One is cowboy font, one is gothic, and one looks hand-drawn.

 

I dug around in the stash to see if I could make this project without spending money and the only things I’d have to buy are a yard of fabric for binding (the burgundy in the photo is actually sweatshirt ribbing, just to help me visualize) and a pattern for the letters, if I don’t use the free one.
Fabric scraps laid out on a white rug. The main fabric is olive green and there are piles of burgundy, pink, and orange fabrics on top

 

I’d like to get a pattern for the jacket, too, because the Daughter Judy Thompson Quilt Coat would be perfect for this, but we’ll see. I can always start with the letters.

 

Like A Painting

KarenLeave a comment

Being under-employed means we can go to places we’d never attempt on a weekend. Like yesterday’s trip to Mill B in Big Cottonwood, which I don’t think I’ve ever hiked from? We didn’t do the longer trails but the north overlook was just right.

The light was doing its best “German Romantic landscape painting” impression–just a gorgeous day.

 

See what I mean?

Tuesday Project Roundup: Shocking Pink Sweater

KarenLeave a comment

I hope it gets cold this winter because I have another sweater ready, bringing this year’s count of completed sweaters to five, four of which got finished within the same calendar year (!). This is a shocking pink Ozetta Lakes Pullover, last seen in April: A bright pink saddle shoulder sweater laid flat on an orange background

 

My version didn’t end up quite as oversized as the sample shown in the pattern–I’m not sure why other than math is hard? (I know I kept going on the sleeve decreases just based on vibes, so…) But it’s still loose enough to be comfy and, of course, not itchy in a 70% cotton/30% merino blend (Cascade Cantata from Harmony).
A woman in a bright pink sweater and light wash jeans takes a selfie in front of a mirror. There are two cats in the background.

 

The pronounced saddle shoulder is what drew me to the pattern, and I really like the detail it adds to an otherwise plain sweater.

 

(Special thanks to the Giardia Brothers, who arrived at the end of this project but gave it their all to help me block this and take pictures.)
An orange cat and a gray cat walk over a pink sweater that's pinned to a blocking mat. They are the Sweater Inspectors.

Semi-Retirement Is Pretty Great?

Karen

Doc is 55, I’m 46; a few years ago, I told our financial planner my goal is to be able to go part-time in 10 years so when he retires/also goes part time, we can go have adventures.

I currently have about a part-time job’s worth of freelance and he has random weekdays off, so I’ve been dragging him up canyons and trying out my future plan. Spoiler: I love it so much. If I didn’t have to actually earn enough money in the present to make that future plan happen, I might never go back to full-time again.

Wednesday Essay

Karen

This investigation by Rachel Handler is a depressing look into late-stage capitalism, a deep dive into a single subject, and a source of incredible sentences: “The Chocolate Conspiracy.” (Subhead: “Everyone in my life agreed: It tastes different now. I ventured into the molten belly of our crumbling world to find out why.”)

Some incredible sentences:

It was a classic American story about men and the things they will do to cheat death (betray their fathers) and how, with enough drugs, you could lose the ability to taste or feel things.

Perhaps for Hershey—or anyone—it’s easier to smile and pretend nothing has changed and nothing will change, that we were experiencing endless moments of goodness. That everything was the same balance of chocolate and peanut butter it had always been. I understood and empathized with this reality; it was one I visited whenever I ate a combo THC-CBD gummy and watched Emily in Paris.

Eating [faux chocolate] evoked in me powerful dystopian fantasies. I imagined Sam Altman’s grandson’s buxom AI servant handing it to me to tide me over as I waited on a line thousands of people long, flames licking my face from a nearby data-center fire, to bid on a bed in his Tesla-sponsored underground-bunker pop-up.