Sewing Machine Fun Facts

I happened across this YouTube video on the history of the sewing machine that I thought was pretty funny.  Also informative, as in I had no idea!  

You'd think it would have been pretty straightforward:  Some bright star invents the beloved machine, which is met all around with, "Hey, what a great idea!"; the gizmos sell like hotcakes and the rest is, well, history.  Right?  

Not exactly!

The real story is full of twists and turns, litigants and lawyers, murky maneuvers and mass marketing. 

Abby Cox does a brilliant job in the video.  It's always a plus when you can laugh while you learn!

* * * * *

Several months ago, I was sorting through and organizing some papers for genealogical purposes when I came across this insurance policy from 1892.

Do I really need to keep this? I wondered, as my eye scanned down the page.  My great-great-grandfather had insured his farmstead, itemizing its contents on the front page.

Do you see what I see?  Listed among the buildings and livestock was another valuable piece of equipment:  A sewing machine valued at $25.00 (about $800.00 in today's dollars).

Worth half as much as the barn and less than the onions*, but still an important item to enumerate and insure.  I thought that was pretty cool!  And yes, I do need to keep this!

*He was a fruit and vegetable farmer who marketed his produce, so I assume the onions on hand in January were his stock to be planted for the upcoming season.

~Paulette

Checking In

Where, oh where has the summer gone?  I know it's not quite over yet, thankfully, but it's winding down and I feel like I haven't much to show for it and haven't done all the things yet.

(Cattle grazing along a bike trail.)

But I have gotten a couple items moved along, for however much (or little) time has been spent in the sewing room.  Specifically, the String-X quilt is now quilted and finished.  

I am planning to gift it to a nephew (who doesn't read this blog—I don't think, anyway).  He's an avid hunter and has a birthday in a couple months.  I'm hoping he will like the fall colors.

I had a couple extra blocks left, so I made two throw pillows.  One to go along with the quilt and one to keep.

Recently, the hubs and I took a little road trip to the southwestern part of the state.  

(View from Wyalusing State Park overlooking the Mississippi River - note smoke haze in distance from western wildfires)

I took my sewing machine along and worked on some Carolina Chain piecing in the evenings.

I thought I had cut enough strips/pieces for the quilt, but when I came to the end of the fabric I'd cut for the predominantly light blocks, I counted them up and compared it to the pattern instructions, and realized I was only ONE-THIRD of the way done making them!  And that was just the light ones.  Then there were the same number of predominantly dark ones to make. Augh!

When you're only part way through making the same quilt pieces (and, let's be honest, bored with the process), what do YOU do?  

Soldier on?  Work on something else?  Cut more bits?  Put it away completely for a while?  Bake some brownies?

(Recipe HERE)

All viable options.  What I decided (after baking the brownies) was to reduce the size of the quilt and change the layout from on-point to straight on (or whatever that's called), and probably add a stop border and an outer border, when I get that far.

That's the current plan, anyway.  Stay tuned...

In putzing around the sewing room, I recently rediscovered a piece of vintage decorator weight fabric among the stash.  It was fairly small and had a gnarly seam running through it (by the manufacturer), but I thought it might make a nice tea towel if I could piece it together somehow.  

But I know me.  If it's "too nice" a fabric, I won't want to get it all stained up using it.  And how many "nice" tea towels do I currently have languishing in drawers, unused?  (Answer: Quite enough already.)  

Looking around my sewing space a few days later, I spied my flatbed scanner with its vintage embroidered dresser scarf tossed over it as a dust cover.  Thus, a plan was hatched to go ahead and make the tea towel but use the piece as a new scanner cover.

And it makes me smile to now see it in use, serving a function versus decorating a different drawer.

(Courthouse Steps quilt in children's bedroom at Villa Louis.)

We toured an historic mansion, Villa Louis, on our recent getaway.  There were some beautiful antique quilts on some of the beds.

(Log cabin quilt in butler's quarters at Villa Louis.)

(Metal insert in door arch at Villa Louis.)

And I thought this metal insert in a high door arch was quilting inspiration, too!

There were a few stops along the way for fabric shopping.  A Ben Franklin store had a small table of fabrics at $2.99 per yard!  I bought a few.

 
At another very nice quilt shop, I left empty-handed but took a picture of this cool steampunk-inspired vintage sewing machine turned lamp. 

Pretty cool, huh?

What's Not Working

I spent the last three nights glued to PBS from 8 to 10 p.m., watching the American Experience series on World War I.  It was a very good program.  "Good" from a historical perspective, and I learned a lot.  I didn't know much about the Great War, other than the few paragraphs I recalled from History class all those years ago (and maybe Downton Abbey).  This series painted a broader picture of what was going on at home and abroad during those years, and that was very enlightening.

Old oak along the walking trail.

Striking that there's been 100 years between then and now, yet some of the same or similar issues persist.

An ancestor (center) during WWI.

My overall takeaway:  We human beings can most certainly be good to each other, espouse lofty goals, try to behave morally, get along and work toward a greater good—and at the same time we are capable of doing awful, shitty, horrific, and terrible things to one another and our world.

I know.  Nothing new there.  We all know this.  We love and we hate.  We want peace and make war.  We rain down destruction in the name of our ideals, but in moments of truce, we celebrate and shake hands and share food and commonalities.

From an ancestor's personal photo collection - Local WWI Red Cross volunteers.

Things are not ever 100% black and white, right or wrong.  They are complex and nuanced and cast in varying shades of gray.  And we don't particularly like gray.  We prefer clarity, often to the point of inventing a vision of it and disregarding or quashing anything that would threaten to cloud it.

Can you see it?

What can we do?  Must history continue to repeat itself?  I don't have the answer.  But I think we strive do the best we can with what we have, what we know or can know, and then do better.  Be open to other perspectives, new information, old information if we didn't comprehend it the first (or 100th) time around.  Get out of the trenches of our biases, groupthink, self-interests, and us-versus-them mentality, and cultivate compassion and greater understanding.

This pair has been checking out the yard - male wood duck and female mallard.

   * * * * * 

Well, how to segue to sewing from there?

I put the Solstice Challenge Quilt-Along blocks on the design wall last week and was promptly underwhelmed.

Meh.  It's just not working for me.  But that's okay.  

I've decided not to worry about catching up on the rest of the blocks that I'm behind on, and will just put it away for now.  Later on I'll look at it again and maybe have a different perspective.  Perhaps parts of it will wind up in a donation quilt or two.

In the meantime, I've started to pull and cut fabric for this year's Hands2Help charity quilt.  Sarah posted some eye candy recently that tripped a light bulb for me, and I ran off to round up some bright graphic scraps.

I'm excited to get started on it!

Sunday Sundry 10-16-16

We took a road trip the first week of October, which came about in part due to a shift in employment for me.  One of my part-time jobs was ending because the doctor was retiring, but before I ramped up my hours on my other job, Norm and I decided to hit the road.  

I'd never been out in the direction of Mount Rushmore, something I've always wanted to see, and it seemed a driveable distance, given our timeline, and a decent time of year to go.  So we headed west!

Some of the highlights were:   Badlands National Park...

 

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial...

Devil's Tower, Wyoming...

The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs...

There were so many other interesting things to see.  I wanted to learn more about Native American culture, so we stopped at the Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center  on the grounds of the St. Joseph Indian school at Chamberlain, South Dakota.  Fascinating history in the exhibits and information as we toured the museum.  

I found particularly interesting to read about the history of quilting among the Sioux culture.

 

After we left the museum, we paused to see the new 50-foot sculpture installed along I-90 near Chamberlain.  It's called "Dignity" and depicts a Native young woman receiving a star quilt.  According to sculptor Dale Lamphere, “Dignity represents the courage, perseverance and wisdom of the Lakota and Dakota culture in South Dakota. My hope is that the sculpture might serve as a symbol of respect and promise for the future."

It was 37 degrees and raining steadily when I hopped out and took this photo.  But it's a beautiful and inspiring piece, rain or shine.   

There were a couple stops at quilt shops along the way, notably Calico Hutch in Hayward, MN and Heartsong Quilts in Hot Springs, SD.  I could have spent hours (and more money) at both stores, they were fantastic!  As time was limited and we had to be moving on, I was happy to find out I could visit them anytime online.  

I did some stash replenishing between those two, as well as shopping the 50% off clearance fabric sale at Jo-Ann on Columbus Day when I got home.

I addressed my deficit of low volume fabrics in the stash, and I think I did okay.

The last hotel we stayed at on the way back, Microtel in Rochester, MN, had some interesting carpeting in the hallway.  

Quilt inspiration is everywhere!

Sunday Sundry 7-6-15

I know it's not Sunday anymore, but as I intended to post this yesterday as an installment of my irregular and random "Sundry" posts, I'm sticking with the theme.  Things like that happen when you procrastinate.  Sunday turns to Monday, the days to months, and so on.

It's amazing that we're smack dab in the middle of summer already.  I notice the stores are starting to get back-to-school stock on the shelves and that seems way too early.  But I'd be the worst retailer ever with my tendency to put things off.  Where are the spiral notebooks and pencil cases, you ask?  Oh, we'll have those out by Halloween.

Let's climb aboard the random roller coaster, shall we?

Dialing back a month or so ago, my chives were in blossom and around that time, I saw an interesting blog post about how to make chive blossom vinegar.  So I did.

HERE is the link to the instructions I followed, but basically I snipped a handful of blossoms, put them in a pint jar, and covered them with vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar, but I think any clear vinegar would work).  

Put a lid on it and set it aside for two weeks, then strain it, and voila—pretty pink chive blossom vinegar!  It has a mild onion-like flavor that goes well in oil and vinegar dressings, etc.

Some other recent snapshots of the flora and fauna around here include this pair of goldfinches having a breakfast of seeds from the spent purple-flowered spiky things in my garden, the name of which I don't recall.

And this little dragonfly resting on the hostas.

Last week, we took a mini-vacay to Galena, Illinois for a couple days.  It's an historic, once thriving old mining town whose downtown area has been nicely restored and features many shops, antique stores, boutiques, and restaurants.  It was also the home of Ulysses S. Grant, as well as a number of other generals and officers during the time of the Civil War.

We visited the local museum, which houses the famous 14-foot original oil painting entitled "Peace in the Union" by Thomas Nast, depicting the surrender of General Lee to General Grant at Appomattox.

A lot of interesting history, including that of the lead and zinc mining industries so vital to 19th century Galena.

The streets are steeply terraced from the river valley.  We learned that twice a day, at noon and after work in the evening, Grant would walk up these steps from his family's leather shop on Main Street to his house on the hill.  (We also learned that he stood 5'8" tall and weighed 135 pounds, and his wife wore a size 4 shoe, which was average in those days—wow, people were smaller then).

Later that day, I coaxed Norm into making the same trek.  We only went up the steps once, however, which was enough to make my leg muscles feel jittery for a while afterwards.

This view is somewhat deceiving, as we had already walked up one street level when I took this picture, and beyond the end of the steps you can see, there were another couple dozen we climbed to the next street level as well.  I counted 245 steps on the way down, give or take a few.

We drove up to Chestnut Mountain Resort a few miles outside Galena for a view of the Mississippi River.  

On the way back to town, Norm spotted these barn quilts, so I pulled in for a closer view.

As I was walking back to the car, I noticed these huge thistle blossoms, the largest almost the size of a tennis ball!  

Beyond the thistles, a few sheep grazed lazily along a stony creek bed.  Such a lovely bucolic scene.

Back home, I've started another kennel quilt.  I'm making big half-square triangles for this one, which will end up probably 42 x 70 inches, the largest one so far.

Did a little thrift store shopping this weekend, where I found a vintage paint-by-number to add to the collection.  A dollar ninety-nine, what a deal.

I took it out of the frame to clean the glass, where I noted the toy company and name and number of the panel.  This one probably dates to the late 1950s and is in really good shape.  The somewhat shaky execution of the paint job is all part of the charm!

Now it's back to a normal work week for us.   How's your summer going so far?