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Did you know the members of each successively earlier generation of a bee’s family tree are counted by the Fibonacci numbers? Starting with a drone or worker, one bee, there is one parent, the queen. The queen has two parents, a queen and a drone, and between them they have three parents, two queens and a drone. Among those three bees they have five parents, three queens and two drones. And it goes on: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …

I learned this from a lovely page on the Fibonacci numbers generally, that I found years ago while looking for teaching resources, and it came to mind when quilting friend of mine said she would love to make a Fibonacci quilt, but didn’t have a pattern.

My first design test is a stained glass quilt square. In stained glass quilting, the fabric is bordered by black or dark gray material (usually bias tape) to look like panes of stained glass. My square is 8″x8″ plus a 1/4″ allowance. Except for one corner, all of my “leading” was in straight lines, so I was able to substitute black ribbon for the bias tape I didn’t have. I attached everything with fusible web: Wonder Under for the contrast fabrics and Stitch Witchery, cut into thirds, for the ribbon. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) kept me company.

I started at the top, and was able to hide all cut ribbon ends under other ribbon without any folding except for that lower right corner out in space. That took a fair amount of manipulating and some extra Stitch Witchery, and made me grateful for my retractable tweezer fingers.

My other ideas are more traditional quilt formats, and hence less intriguing to try out, but will follow in later installments.

When I made my new weekender, I made a little matching tag that had my name, number, and address written on muslin in fabric pen. I didn’t have time to make a little strap to hang it from the handle, but in the meantime I decided if I were going to keep the bag for as long as I hoped and put a lot of effort into constructing an attractive tag, it should be one for which the information was changeable.

When I returned from the inaugural trip with my bag, I did just that. The tag buttons onto the handle of the bag so that it can be removed for bag-laundering purposes, and inside there is a clear vinyl pocket slightly larger than a business card.

You need small amounts of fabric, interfacing, and clear vinyl, and a button and ribbon that coordinate with your fabric. I had the vinyl on hand from a project I did ages ago, pulled a lovely wood button from my late grandmother’s button box, and had the rest leftover from bagmaking.

Cut two pieces of fabric and one of interfacing, 10 1/2″ by 3 3/4″. Cut one piece (or two pieces, if desired) of vinyl, 3 7/8″ by 2 5/8″. If your button is between 3/4″ and 1″, cut 10 1/4″ of ribbon of comparable width; if your button is much larger or smaller, lengthen or shorten the ribbon by twice the difference in button diameter (or don’t; the strap will be longer or shorter but there’s give to it).

Pin the fabric right sides together with the interfacing against one wrong side and stitch together with a 1/2″ seam allowance, leaving an opening on one long side for turning. Trim the corners. I pressed the seam allowance out before turning it so it would be easier to get crisp edges when I turned.

Once you’ve turned, topstitch around the edges, fold it in half, and press a crease into it. The next step is to stitch the vinyl on to one or both sides. If you are only doing one pocket and have a preferred front side to your tag, put the vinyl on the back side. First make sure it fits, with about 3/4″ clearance between it and the fold line. Trim as needed. I used a nail to perforate the vinyl so I could use my regular light needle without trouble. The nail had a big flat head and I was able to make the holes pushing it with my thumb. I also trimmed a tiny bit off of two corners that shared a short edge, to be at the corners of the fabric. I made a template for the holes and scanned it in before poking holes in it. I used blanket stitch to attach it to the fabric, going only from fold to fold because I am lazy. I didn’t bother being neat by the fold because the last half inch will be hidden away.

Fold the tag in half and stitch a half-inch from the fold to make it want to stay shut. Now prepare the strap. Since my button was 7/8″, I turned one end of the ribbon 1 3/8″ and then folded it in again. You want your button diameter plus 1/2″ to be the depth of the first fold. Stitch it a quarter inch from each fold line. On the other end, fold it 1/4″ and then fold it again, and stitch very close to the first fold line. You can decide whether to fold them toward the same side of the ribbon or opposite. I did the same side, but opposite would be more standard for how it’s going to attach to the tag.

Make a buttonhole on the side with the deeper fold, essentially down the center of the ribbon from stitch line to stitch line. It will be a snug fit for your button, most likely, but you don’t want this to come off accidentally. Pin the opposite end of the ribbon to the back of your tag (the side with the pocket, if there is only one) so that it lines up with the outside edge and slightly overlaps your original stitch line, and restitch along that line to attach it. Line the other end of the ribbon up with the opposite outside edge and mark how far in the center of the button should be.

Finally, sew on the button, centered just above your original stitch line and at the marked distance from the edge. Button the tag onto your bag!

It was not too long ago that I discovered the twin needle. They come in various widths and weights, make two evenly-spaced lines of stitching a cinch, and mimic the commercial stitching of hems in t-shirts and other knit clothing. The bobbin thread zigzags between the two stitch lines on the back, tacking down the turned-up edge if you line it up right.

Last year I redid a bunch of shirts, bleaching and re-dying some that had faded and hemming others; one had some pinholes I could eliminate, one was far too long, and three were somewhat too long but also had an obnoxious silver Calvin Klein logo on the front left hem. That was when I learned about twin needles, doing research online into sewing knits. I had one in the machine cabinet drawer, but had never used it.

This summer, packing for a long trip, I discovered that instead of the five or six tank tops I thought I had, there were only three in the drawer. However, I have a stash of t-shirts I never wear, for various reasons, and one was way too big. I was quite surprised to discover it was only a large, as it looked like at least an extra large.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a “before” picture.

I made a quick and lazy alteration to it. I laid it out on a table, lined up a well-fitting tank top at the shoulders, and cut around it, leaving about three quarters of an inch on the sides and neck and more like an inch and a quarter at the bottom hem. This meant the armhole corner of the sides cut into the sleeves of the shirt, but I did not care. Then I turned the neckline and armholes under a half inch and stitched them down with the twin needle.

The armholes had to be stitched a second time, because between my complete lack of use of measuring instruments and the fabric pulling back a little as it stretched along the fold, a lot of the armhole turn-under was not caught by the stitch lines.

I pinned and stitched the side seams with a single needle, tried it on to check how even the bottom line was, and turned up and stitched the hem with the twin needle. Done! Easy. It is not perfect, but it is perfectly adequate.

Now, I did get some skipped stitches and bobbin art, but the stitching will hold. I took my machine in for a tune-up while I’m out of town and the mechanic told me that skipped stitches are hard to avoid entirely with a twin needle because the bobbin hook has to catch both top threads, and it’s only designed to catch one. The machines that make the twin seam lines on commercial t-shirts have two separate bobbins. He said to minimize the problems, though, to turn the stitch length and tension both down. My stitch length settings run from 0 to 4, and I usually have the machine set to 3, with 4 for basting and gathering stitches. He said between 1.5 and 2 would be appropriate for twin needle stitching. Easing the thread tension so the top thread is pulled under the fabric a bit helps both with avoiding skipped stitches and with increasing the amount of stretch in the seam. ‘Twill be tried at the next opportunity – which may be more t-shirt remaking, now that I’ve done it once.

My dear BF sent me a birthday package that included some fun fur yarn in variegated green, blue, and yellow. It made me think of Muppets. I had some fun fur in my stash already – some black that is waiting to become Barbabeau, and some bright purple and hot pink that, actually, the BF’s mother handed down to me – but this stuff inspired me to actually make a stab at crocheting something now.

My first attempt was with the steel hook I use for embroidery floss (2.75mm), since the main strand of fun fur is not very large. I can’t recommend it. The fluff makes it very hard to see what you’re doing anyway, and also means that even with a larger hook the fabric is solid enough to keep stuffing in. It’s not that I didn’t succeed in crocheting in my first attempt, but the result didn’t look like much. My second attempt was with my trusty E hook (3.5mm) and went much, much better.

I freehanded this because it was just too overwhelming to try to keep track of stitch counts. It started out with 6 sc, then 12 sc, then I increased in every other stitch for a while, then sc’d around a few times, then decreased with every other stitch for about two rounds, then stitched around once or so, then started increasing in every other stitch for a while. Before I’d decreased too much I put in the eyes. At some point in the body I chained out and sc’d back for arms, and later chained out more and hdc’d back for legs, and finally chained out still more, sc’d four times in the first chain and then slip stitched back for the tail. Then I tried to decrease at a rate that would make the bottom flat. The initial yarn tail sticks out the top like a Dr. Seuss drawing; my inspiration was that combined with my image of a Creep or Woodie from the Moomintroll books.

As good as it gets, visibility-wise.

Some things I learned, besides the fact that the hook shouldn’t be too small:
- the “right side” is what would in normal yarn be the back/inside. At least for me. That’s the side the fuzz wanted to mostly be on.
- a magic circle doesn’t work at all – once you’ve got a few stitches into it, you can’t pull it tight because it’s all hung up on the fluff. You have to slipknot, ch 2, and work the first round into the first ch.
- likewise, I didn’t try to do an invisible decrease. It could be done, in the back loops instead of the front loops, but it seemed more difficult than it was worth. Also, the yarn is not elastic, adding that difficulty.
- of course, half the time I sc’d into the back loop only anyway, because finding the other one was too much work. Visibility is poor. On the other hand, no one looking at the finished work can really make out your stitches anyway. Freedom!

And then I discovered all my tips were already available from June Gilbank.

They all end up in trees. In this one you can see the initial yarn end hanging.

The baby I made first.

Do you want a yarn Möbius strip? Of course you do – who doesn’t?

Every Möbius strip needs ants.

One of the crochet techniques I have yet to master is working in the round when the beginning is an open hole instead of a magic circle or a chain that is worked on both sides. I can’t connect the ends of the starting chain to my satisfaction; there is always a big wonky bump at the join.

However, some experimentation has led me to the following discovery: it is easy to make a crochet Möbius strip that requires no sewing. This is hardly news, as the internet will tell you, but I think my instructions are easier, or at least more specific, than the ones I’ve seen online.

Crochet Möbius Strip: Make a chain as long as you want. There will be a natural way for the chain to come off the hook to the left with the back bumps facing up and the front teardrops facing down. With the back bumps facing up the whole length of the chain, bring the slipknot end toward you and to the hook to make the chain into a loop. Insert the hook from outside the loop to inside the loop through the back bump closest to the slipknot, and slip stitch to join the ends.

The back bumps go around the top when it’s set down like this.

Now, crochet around, using the back bumps, until you get back to the slipknot. Crochet into your initial slip stitch. It should be natural to make your next stitch in the front teardrop of the chain closest to the slipknot. Now the next time you get back to your slipknot it should be natural to crochet into the first stitch you made after slip-knotting the chain into a loop. Keep going until the Möbius strip is as wide as you want, making sure when you end, the rows are aligned on each side of the slipknot.

I found that my yarn tail was a useful indicator – if it faced toward me after I had put crochets on each side of the starting chain, then I needed to finish with it facing toward me.

Of course, this method makes the Möbius strip curl a bit into an S cross-section, since stitch rows tend to lean forward or back. I tried to change direction for the last row, but as you can see I ended up with a little nub at the turning (bottom center):

I tried a second time but didn’t come up with a solution that satisfied me.

Mesh Crochet Möbius Strip: Looking at the Escher picture made me think of crocheted mesh, so I tried that as well (see the crochet abbreviations). For this you must chain a multiple of 3 – it is better here to use the same size hook throughout. Slip stitch to join as described above, and chain 5. Skip two chains and dc into the next, in the back bump. (ch 2, sk 2 sts, dc in back bump) until you get back to your slip knot. This is a bit wobblier than sc, so make sure it is not twisted, ch 2 and do the next dc into the front teardrop of the first ch you made – it seems like you’re skipping 3 sts, but the joining slip stitch and initial chain are really the same stitch. (ch 2, sk 2 sts, dc in front teardrop) around, until you get to the ch 5. Ch 2 and sl st into the middle ch of the ch 5.

Now, *turn if desired, ch 5, (sk 2 sts, dc, ch 2) around (i.e., twice around initial chain), sl st in middle ch of ch 5; repeat from * until the Möbius strip is as wide as you like.

I washed these to see if the mesh would even itself out a little; the ch-5 squares and the squares on the starting chain didn’t really match the others. Of course, they crumpled up.

Q. How does one block a Möbius strip? A. With an iron. They smoothed out nicely. And are very decorative on my lampshade.

I travel a lot, rather more than I would like, and decided before a recent trip than my usual carry-on was just too heavy. Even empty, it was a load, and part of that was due to a large number of internal pockets and partitions, none of which I really needed. It was also very sturdy and probably waterproof, but I decided I valued lightness more than those properties.

I went to the fabric store with the intention of getting some clearance upholstery fabric and making a new bag, perhaps even reversible, but was drawn in by an amazing calico instead (it was with the clearance upholstery fabric).

I could wad this up and bungee-cord it around my belongings and it would be pretty.

A pattern for a similar bag gave me an estimate for yardage – which turned out to be a massive over-estimate – and I bought small amounts of two semi-coordinating fabrics in case I wanted them. I also got some wide grosgrain ribbon and a zipper, and the best interfacing ever, pictured below. Also pictured is my bodkin, another essential tool to this process.

Gridded out in 1″ squares. The height of convenience.

I measured my previous bag and made myself a pattern, and then a bag. The rest is a tutorial in case you care to do the same.

You’ll need about 2 1/2 yards of 44-45″ wide fabric (pre-washed) and 1 to 1 1/4 yards of interfacing, as well as 31″ of 1/4″ wide elastic, cut into four 7.75″ pieces, a zipper at least 18″ long, and 122″ (not quite 3.5 yards) of ribbon between 3/4 and 7/8″ wide. Cut pieces from fabric and interfacing as follows:

If you have less than 3.5 yards of fabric or interfacing, of course you’ll have to piece the straps. In fabric, add 1/2″ to two of the pieces and 1″ to the rest, if you have more than two. In interfacing, add 1/2″ to all but one of the pieces. You could also use iron-on interfacing, which I might actually recommend for the strap.

Actually, I kind of wish I’d made the fabric for the strap a little wider – maybe three inches of fabric and an inch and a half for the interfacing. That would not only give a wider strap, but it would allow the fabric to stick out on each side of the ribbon a bit more, which would be more attractive. All the assembly steps are the same; just make sure to center the ribbon and do your stitching right at the ribbon’s edge.

Width versus height is not important for the bag bottom or the strap (well, or anything, if your fabric does not have a directional pattern). The sides are a sort of trapezoidal shape. I made them by measuring out a 9×14 rectangle, then marking in one inch on each side of the top 9″ distance. Then I draw a diagonal connecting line between the now-7″ top and the 9″ bottom, starting a half inch in from each of the top and bottom. A schematic is here.

I will give instructions to assemble the main body of the bag and lining, then construct and attach the strap, then construct and attach the top with the zipper (which happens when the outside and lining are connected). Construction of the strap and zipper assembly can certainly be done earlier/along the way.

The first step is to attach the interfacing to the appropriate pieces. Pin the appropriate interfacing pieces to the wrong side of the outside front, back, and side fabric pieces, and to both bottom pieces. Stitch at 3/8″ from the edge (or iron on).

Not quite all of the outside of the bag.

To make the side pockets, fold each pocket piece in half into a 9×11″ piece. Stitch at 3/8″ in along the fold and the edge opposite to the fold. The former makes a casing for the elastic, and the latter is to make it easier to attach to the side pieces. Feed each piece of elastic into each casing (bodkin time!) and stitch at 1/2″ on each side (the elastic should line up with the fabric at each edge). Give a couple of tugs at the ends to spread the gathers evenly. To attach to the sides, it is probably easiest to start by pinning the center bottoms together, and then the bottom corners. Pin about 2″ in from each side so the layers lie smoothly on each other. You’ll have too much fabric between the center pin and those 2″-in pins; smooth it into a pleat on each side that overhangs the 2″-in pin. Then pin up the sides and sew at 1/2″. If you are concerned about your thread showing (my thread matched well enough and the fabric was busy enough that I wasn’t) sew just under 1/2″, but as close as you can.

Next, form the vertical part of the bag: pin two sides, right sides together, to the front outside of the bag and the other two sides to the front lining of the bag. You will find they are about 1/4″ too tall; this is because of the slant of the sides. I lined them up at the bottom and found it didn’t matter much that they were off at the top. Stitch, and repeat with the back of the bag and lining to make two tubes.

To complete the basic bag shape, sew in the bottom pieces. This is a little tricky and I tried it two different ways. The one that I think worked better is this: pin the short sides together (right sides together) and stitch corner to corner. This may require walking the machine with the hand wheel at each end. Then, pin the long sides together and stitch corner to corner. It is awkward but not too time-consuming. Finally, stitch a wide zigzag in the seam allowance, just outside the straight stitch, and trim the extra fabric just outside the zigzag. You’ll probably want to press the outside of the bag so the folds are sharper.

Before the two halves of the bag are joined, the strap must be sewn to the outside part (you could sew through both layers, but I suspect it would be very difficult to get the inside smooth). To avoid using thousands of pins, I ironed the strip of interfacing to the fabric with Stitch Witchery. If you used iron-on interfacing for the strap you could just do that. Then fold the edges of the fabric over the interfacing and press.

Partially ironed.

I thought it would be a genius idea to then use Stitch Witchery to attach the ribbon to the strap, to cover over the raw edges of the fabric. I figured I could get away with a lot fewer pins that way.

Harder than I thought.

Well, I started by laying the ribbon on top of the rest of the strap and pressing. That left me with fabric bulges. So I pulled apart what I’d done and turned it all over so the fabric was on top, always ironing with motion toward the loose ends. That worked better, but the Stitch Witchery didn’t keep everything together! Maybe I could have done it with two layers, but it wanted to stick to the ribbon and not the fabric (which is the opposite of what I would have guessed). I ended up having to pin it before pinning it to the bag, just so it wouldn’t totally come apart while I was pinning it to the bag (which was an awkward operation anyway).

Starting to look like a bag.

When you pin the strap to the bag, the centers of the straps should be 5″ from the side seams and 8″ apart from each other. Each loop should be 25″ from top edge to top edge – make sure to fold the edge down inside 1/2″ before sewing the straps! Also, flatten the seam allowance toward the side of the bag rather than the base.

About half of the pins below are just through the strap, and the other half to the bag as well. Pinning took a lot of patience and a little blood. Where the ends meet, I just folded each one under and abutted the folded edges. I ended up having to redo the folding/pinning at the sewing stage.

I had only two pins left in the box when this shot was taken.

Sew the straps however seems most manageable. Since my sewing table seems to like to grab pins and remove them, I did both edges of each strap first, starting and ending a couple of inches into the bag, so I could remove those pins before sewing the rest. The body of the bag I did as four continuous stitch lines, backing up to stitch a total of three times across each edge of the spot where the ends meet. To get a neat(ish) line, I moved my needle to the right and sewed with my presser foot lined up with the edge of the strap.

Before doing anything else to the outside of the bag, turn it down 1/2″ all around the top and press. At this point if you like you can stitch the base of the bag and lining together. I just straight-stitched through the seam allowances at the corners and the middle of the long seams, bases flat together and seam allowances sticking out around. After that you can line things up and press the top of the lining down to match the outside.

Short edge first, and pin, then long edge.

The last piece you need is the zipper section. First, fold the short edges of the flaps down 1/2″ and press. With that fold in place, sandwich the zipper between two flaps, right sides together, and stitch (hat tip to Hannah for this method). I let the base of the zipper (the metal stopper) sit just outside the flaps; doing it again I might put it at least a half inch outside the flaps. I used my regular foot and let it run along the bump of the zipper, and that worked well. Do the same on the opposite side.

Fold the flaps away from the zipper and press. Line up the folded edges and stitch them together, close to the edge. I suppose you might want to topstitch to hold the flaps away from the zipper teeth, but that didn’t occur to me at the time.

Take each zipper tab and fold it in half, right side together. Stitch each of the two edges adjacent to the fold at 1/2″. Trim the corners and turn, working the corners to a point, and press. Fold the raw edge inside about 1/2″ and press. Slide one tab over the foot of the zipper, trimming the zipper tape if needed, and pin. Sew across the open edge of the tab to close the tab and attach it to the zipper.

For the head of the zipper, I moved the zipper slider just inside the fabric flap area and trimmed the loose end to just over 1/2″ farther than the flap edge. Again, I might make that just over 1″ doing it again. Slide the tab over the raw edges and stitch. Make sure when you sew this one on you do it very securely, since it will double as the zipper’s top stopper.

Finally, and I do mean finally, mark a line 1/2″ in from the raw edge of the zipper flaps (I used four or five pins on each side). Slip the flaps in between the lining and outside of the bag, centering them on the front and back and lining your mark up with the folded edge of the bag. Pin and stitch all the way around. I stitched once with my needle to the right and once with it centered, both with the presser foot lined up with the top edge of the bag.

You are done!

May’s Amigurumi Army mission was flowers. Actually, the week from Apr 28 to May 4 in Iron Craft was also flowers, but I did not complete anything in time. I had a sad half-done daylily on my end table for half the month.

Finally I decided to go for it, finished the daylily, and made a flower that I intended to be a carnation but which may have ended up more like a small rose.

Patterns! Note that both flowers involve stopping or turning in the middle of a row. Abbreviations are explained here.

Rose or Carnation:
In any plausible color. (which with dyed carnations is pretty much any color)
- ch 37
- sc in second ch from hk, (ch 2, sc) five times, sc 30, ch 2, turn
- hdc 18, sc 12, ch 3, turn
- sc, (ch 3, sc) eleven times, sc, (ch 4, hdc) seventeen times
- ch 1, sc down side edge, FO.
- Roll up starting with narrow end.

Daylily:
make 5 in orange, yellow, or desired color.
- ch 10, sl st in second ch from hk, sc, hdc, sc 5, sl st
- ch 1; on opp side of starting ch: sl st, sc 3, sl st
- FO. Sew together overlapping each petal on the previous. To match real daylilies, the first petal should be completely on the top and the last one completely on the bottom.

After sewing the flowers together I wrapped the loose floss ends around pipe cleaners and wound them with florist’s tape.

Meanwhile, I joined another monthly crochet challenge group on Ravelry, and their May theme was food. I had previously made a lemon and an apple, but my food crochet was pretty limited. I couldn’t think of what to do, until I realized I’d never made a cupcake, which seems to be the canonical crochet foodstuff. I freehanded one over the course of two days. Afterward I discovered I couldn’t find any pins with plastic ball ends (nor the tomato pincushion I think they were in…) to be sprinkles. I did, however, know where my leaf-ended pins were, so I made another rose to top the cupcake. The one I made sure to sew so the bottom was a flat disc, not too tight, and then fluffed out the petals a bit more.

I finally had time to do the Iron Craft challenge again, which this week was called You Are Here: make something with a map or make something that looks like or is inspired by a map.

In my stash were two world maps sent by the charity Doctors Without Borders, and a piece of scrapbook paper I’m pretty sure I didn’t buy that was a piece of a road map, but I couldn’t think of what to do with them. While doing something else at the sewing machine I looked over at the scrapbook paper and thought about stitching the lines onto fabric, but that with all the red roads it risked looking like a bloodshot eye. Then I thought topographical maps would translate really well to embroidery, but tried in vain to find a good topographical map relevant to my life (I am from the flat lands, and also there are a great many websites that promise free topographical maps and provide nothing of the sort). Somewhere along the line the idea of a topographical map of something non-topographical popped into my mind, and after a little more research and work I present to you Landscape of Love:

If I did it right, it is a topographical map of a larger-than-life pair of lips (and surroundings). The fabric is cotton calico and the floss is DMC satin, which is a terrible thing to work with – even if you spend time pumicing your fingertips and filing your nails between each session, it catches on the needle itself. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet, though it would make a good boudoir pillow. Although actually, I’m not so impressed by my stitching. I am very proud of the pattern, though, and in case you like it too, I actually made the effort to put it in sharable form, suitable for size changes.

Mending! Perhaps the greatest practical use of basic sewing skills. In this episode: rips and tears.

The bf was given some pajama pants by his nieces many years ago, and after a small hole became an amazingly gigantic multiple-direction tear after a trip through the washer and dryer, he put them in a drawer. Near the beginning of this year he asked if I could fix them. Since the area (front of one leg) would show but didn’t have to be fancy, I did a combination of seaming the torn edges together and patching the areas where that would be too much diameter lost. I forgot to take a “before” picture, but I have a half-fixed picture (seams, no patches). I made the seams with a very narrow zigzag in an effort to keep them from fraying out easily.

Patching fabric was chosen to be as lightweight as possible while coordinating colors as much as possible.

The next two pictures are the fully-repaired pants (which hopefully will hold up for a while). Inside-out, you can see my patching method: stitch down the new seam lines, stitch around the edges of the holes, trim the loose corners of the patch.

It’s been through the wash already.

Inspired by that (it is always easier to get going on projects for other people than for myself, I find), I fixed a skirt lining. I had performed a graceful and ladylike squat/bend to retrieve something from the floor, and heard that terrible ripping sound. Fortunately the wool skirt itself was fine; the lining had come apart at the seam in the back.

I was extremely lazy with this one. Since it wouldn’t show, I just pulled the seam allowance flat over the ripped side and zigzagged it to death.

Then there is the project currently taking up too much space on my sewing room floor. The sofabed frame and my washer and dryer team up to rip up my spare mattress pad. Admittedly, it is not a high-quality pad to begin with – the part that wraps around the sides of the mattress is oddly papery.

As of this writing I have not fixed those tears, but I have a previous repair job on the same pad to show you. The papery material feels a little like lightweight interfacing, so that is what I patched it with. A zigzag around the edges of the patch and some more to tack down the edges of the rips, and it’s better than new.

My small library of sewing books (mostly vintage to some degree) say very little about mending tears. The one that addresses mending most extensively says if the fabric has worn so badly that it’s tearing because it’s weak, you shouldn’t expend energy on it. Otherwise it discusses darning and patching for holes, and restitching seams that have come apart. I suppose the pajama pants would fall into the “worn too badly” category, but their sentimental value (and the fact that the fabric is oh so soft and comfy) made them worth fixing anyway.

So, I did some searches to see what the Internet could tell me about mending – which also turned out to be not much. The only place I found a suggestion to create a new seam out of a tear was on eHow. TLC has a lengthy article titled “How to mend clothes,” although it is only half mending; the rest is alterations. Finally, a lovely alternative to patches is filling holes in woolens with crochet.

I hope you have art galleries to go to! Last month, I was at Boston Logan airport looking at their two George Rhoads rolling ball sculptures. By the time this appears I will be at the Upper Valley Food Co-op‘s First Friday open house celebrating their 35th anniversary. The Sew-Op is having an open house in conjunction with it and we’re hoping to lure people in to not only take classes, but attend open sewing hours and be teachers, teacher’s aides, or open hours monitors.

Once again, if you don’t have a gallery to go to, I’ve tried to provide a (sorely inadequate) substitute in the form of artistic links.

I have been pondering my upcoming Summer of Embroidery. I signed on to teach a beginning embroidery class in the fall, and am going to stitch a sampler this summer as part of the preparation for that. Expect a number of entries with bits of that as I finish. I have another project I’ll be writing about soon, and have been inspired to try to put an image from a dream into solid form via thread painting and ribbon embroidery.

When I was looking up the examples above, this beautiful tree came up under thread painting. It’s not that, but it is fiber art of the best kind.

Now that I’ve had a chance to process my photos, here’s a great picture of Burly Hot-Pants at the wedding:

As for coming attractions…. well, I’ve been trying to make a summer hat for myself for a while now. I keep posting pictures various places in the hope that announcing the plan will induce me to actually complete it. I am midway through the design process, but not at all done. Here’s one more announcement!

Instead of a second preview, I’d like to take a poll. My first “real” crochet pattern will hopefully be finished and posted soon; which of the following would you most like to see a crochet version of?