Postby BookSaver » Tue Mar 12, 2019 9:54 am
This past Saturday was the first sewing group big meeting since early December. It was good to see my sewing buddies and admire the projects they brought to show. The program was by a retired museum curator who now has several personal "collections" of ordinary antique household items, which she has turned into traveling exhibits. She loans them to libraries for free and charges a small fee to give presentations with history lessons. She brought us her exhibit of sewing tools, gadgets, notions, and stories. Because of my interest in history and previous job at a Victorian-Edwardian era house museum, I've seen a lot of the items, but she had some cool things I've only seen in photos.
She had several sweet little sewing kits in a wide variety of shapes and styles (commercial and home made), pin cushions galore, toy sewing machines, all kinds of tools related to the lost craft of darning socks, a few buttons, a few things about embroidery -- and mentioned a whole separate collection of embroidery, tatting, and crochet items. She was a great speaker and the whole meeting was a lot of fun in spite of the nasty weather and bad roads to get there and back.
Now I am preparing to go to a 3-day sewing camp March 21-23. I'm the organizer and caterer for this one. I cannot get out of work on the Thursday so I'll go in the morning to unlock the building, make coffee, set up the tables, haul in food and leave instructions for supper (which will be "pull ingredients out of the refrigerator for everyone to make their own sandwich or chef salad"), and take in my machine and project box. I probably won't set up my machine on Thursday, though, since I'll have to leave at 11ish a.m. to drive to the library for my shift.
A couple of years ago at the spring sewing camp, I set up my machine and organized my personal space (built my nest) on the Thursday morning and left for work, with the plan that when I returned Friday morning all I'd have to do is plug in the machine and start sewing. Unfortunately, when I unlocked the door Friday morning and walked in, the first thing I saw was that someone else had put their machine in my space and moved all of my stuff into a pile somewhere else. It took me more time to reorganize everything and put it back together than if I hadn't set it up in the first place.
This time I'll carry my machine into the room but leave it in it's travel case because I know I won't have time to sew anything Thursday morning after I get all the tables and chairs set up. Actually, now that I think about it, I might wait and not load my machine in the car until Friday morning anyway. I'm sure I can figure out something that can be cut out or pinned in the short amount of time I'll have Thursday morning. In fact, it's probable that all of my Thursday time will be used helping everyone else bring in their things and set up.
So far,
(1) I have a knit top cut out that I'm saving to sew at camp. I've made the pattern enough times that I'm confident I can keep the instructions straight even with the many interruptions that happen at a typical sewing camp.
(2) I remember another top that I started a couple years ago and stopped because I didn't like the way it was turning out. It just occurred to me that maybe all it needs is a lining and that might solve all of its problems, so I'll look for that project bag.
(3) I also remember pajama pants that are half done, if I can find them to finish. I think at the time I had forgotten the elastic at home so I had to stop at the waistband.
(4) If nothing else, there are lots of cat mats that need no brain power at all so they are perfect for chatting while running the machine.
editing to add
(5) Origami market bag - I want to try this simple pattern, but it takes a specific size piece of fabric with a non-directional print. If I have time to look for fabric in my stash then I can try the pattern. I'm not going to go shopping for supplies for this camp, since I already have Too. Much. Stuff!
(6) Reading pillow - 16 inch square pillow with a pocket to store a book. Scribbled the instructions during that 24-hour webinar I saw in January.
(7) Pieced star pillow, also from that 24-hour webinar