April 2025 – agilejack

It’s been quite some time since I posted here. Life has been about the same. Work has been really stressful. Spring has come to the Pacific Northwest and I’m glad to see it.

Over the last two months since I posted here I’ve actually put my hands to some fabric, have completed one project (and almost all of another) and even had a little vacation. I’ll get around to posting what I’ve been up to but I’m going to take it easy and not do it all at once.

I read a post from someone I follow on Instagram and they said their creative life is made stressful by the feeling that they have to be constantly posting content… on social media, on blogs, etc… I totally get that! I think that’s part of what has caused the burnout that I’m trying to make my way out of. It’s been a long haul. I have to be honest… I’m sort of forcing myself to make this post tonight. So I’m going topic myself and not feel obligated to post several times a week.

Anyway, several weeks ago I took a six hour class at a local quilting store that was all about servicing and maintaining Featherweight sewing machines. I had been waiting for months for the class to be scheduled again and when I saw it was on the calendar I signed up immediately.

The instructor found my machine and the one next to me particularly interesting of all those in the class. Nice to know my machine is special.

The Featherweight sewing machines were designed to be easy to service and maintain. But I had always been a little intimidated to dig in and work on my own.

Well, I loved the class! There were around 10 people in the class, all with their gorgeous little machines, and we took them apart, oiled and greased all the parts, learned about how the machine and all it’s parts work, and then put it all back together again.

They had us bring a pie plate to keep all of our spare parts contained. You can see the blue paper towels I used to clean out grease and dirt from inside my machine.

I bought a really cool little magnetic thread cutter at the class!

I’m so glad I took this class! Now I feel confident taking care of this sweet little machine and keeping it humming for many more years.

After being in that room with all those machines and hearing them hum, I got the urge to get mine set up and start a project. So I decided to dig out my Kaffe Fassett woven stripes and shot cottons that I started cutting into 2.5 inch strips back in November of 2022.

I had already cut all the shot cotton pieces I needed. So ironed the 20 woven stripes that had been waiting for me and got one 2.5 inch strip cut from each one.

OMG! Look at all that gorgeousness! These really are amazing fabrics and the colors are so incredible. I could stand there all day and just look at all of this!

Now that I had 40 strips cut from 40 different woven stripes I paired each strip with a shot cotton and sewed them into strip sets, then cut, sewed again, etc… I got 20 blocks made and up on my design wall.

The close up photos are much more representative of the fabrics.

That was all a couple weeks ago. Then tonight I dug in and started sewing the final 20 strip sets together.

I got all 20 sewn, then finger pressed and ironed each one using my metal ruler method. Here’s a video I made a couple years ago showing how I do this.

I love the way my strip sets come out perfectly straight!

These stripes and shots are quite delicate and it would be really easy to press some wonkiness into these sets if I wasn’t careful.

I cut each strip set in half then sewed those twenty sets together.

Then pressed and sliced again. All 20 sets are ready for one more seam before they are sliced the final time.

The final seam, press and slice will go pretty quickly. Then I’ll carefully pin every seam so they nest perfectly. It will probably take a couple nights to get these done. Then they will spend some time on the design wall. It will be fun to see all 40 blocks up on the wall.

We celebrated Bender’s 12th birthday on April 9.

This kid is really showing his age the last few months. All the sudden he seems like an old dog. I’m pretty sure he’s got some doggie dementia going on. He is developing some odd behaviors. He’s always been a quirky dog, but he’s being creative with new quirks.

I’ve been enjoying spring. We’ve had lovely sunny spells paired with rainy and cloudy spells. So everything is growing like crazy! My lilacs are currently in bloom and the yard smells glorious in the evenings.