I finished the queen-sized quilt top - bright homespun 6" squares sashed with white cotton. I'm looking for time and space to sandwich it with the batting and backing. I use safety pins to baste and I'm going to machine quilt with yellow thread -- simple straight stitching l" apart through the blocks, stitching in the ditch around the sashing. I should have some nice l l/2" squares at the corners of all the blocks.
In each of those I'm going to sew a white shirt button from the huge jar of them Terry's mother saved from the shirt factory in Marshall. I think every woman, and many of the men, in Searcy County worked there at one time or another. I'm sure the buttons will make the quilt heavier, but they're shirt buttons, so I don't think it will uncomfortably so.
I'll post pictures when I'm done. Publishing pictures is not my favorite thing to do -- I never can remember what procedure I use for what application -- Facebook, Ravelry, blog, etc. -- so, no pictures of stages, just final product.
I've started taking a new class that derives straight from my Project Runway obsession. I've signed up to take fashion design classes from Jamileh Kamran who owns a boutique in Little Rock. Last Saturday was the first lesson. We learned to measure correctly, sew on two- and four-hole buttons, tailor tack, and run a serger and industrial sewing machine.
I was kind of surprised that a couple of the other students had signed up without even knowing how to run a sewing machine.That makes the learning curve must steeper, I would think, but it also reminds me that not everyone in the world grew up with a mother who sewed every stitch of clothing she work from birth through college. At that point, I bought my own sewing machine, an inexpensive Singer that I recently gave to my oldest granddaughter, with my first paycheck from Democrat Printing and Lithographing. That was in 1980, I think, and I sewed most of my clothes on it for many years. When I finish the five courses that Jamileh offers, I should, she says, have a $1500 suit that I have sewn for much, much less, or much, much more if you count the cost of the classes.
