Sewing Adventures and Tips

Welcome back to the land of the living!  ...Stress from rejection, sewing frustration, finding out that I have gained enough weight in the past year to make the majority of my clothes below the waist feel tight, if not completely unwearable... in all, a sad state of affairs leading to little work done and no posting!  I even got up to 4 mini pepsi's each day this past weekend.  Ugh!

In other news...

Wicked afternoon storm Tuesday, view south.

Major sewing needle haul at the unprecedented, 70% off notions, one day sale at JoAnn's this past Sunday.  I probably would have purchased more notions had the flyer arrived before Thursday and I had more money.  As it stands, there is only one item I regret not buying and when I tried to go back to the store in the afternoon for it, after a wicked thunderstorm ended, the product was out of stock.  On the plus side, I did get six sets of twin needles and can finally finish three dress I have in the works.

However, twin needles on knit jersey, which are the majority of material I am working with right now, have a learning curve...and thank goodness for the internet!

The first 10 trial runs of using the twin needles yielded this:

...a knotty, tangled mess that stops my machine.  Thankfully, it hasn't torn the fabric and the front/top looks fine.  This with a stitch length of 3 and above, and ease on the bobbin tension.

Sadly most internet resources that talk about working with twin needles and jersey knit material do not cover more trouble shooting issues than the usual "it must be a tension or stitch length issue"! Perhaps their machines are wonderful and never give them this problem...though it is safe to say that none of those authors appeared to be using a Bernina.

As it so happens, I learned from Bernina's official website/videos that in order for the sewing machine to use the twin needles correctly, only one thread should be in the thread guide! Granted I have a different machine than the one presented in the video but same technique applies. The Bernina 801 Sport has been in my family for 27 years now and neither my Mother, the original owner, nor myself, the current owner since she upgraded to a fancy-smanchy computerized sewing machine, have known this tiny and very significant piece of information.

Here's my Bernina 801 Sport illustrating the solution.    ---------------------->

Watch the original video

Other wonderful things I have learned upon my research and experience include:

1.  Stretch taffeta, if indeed it is the correct label for the material, whilst lovely to the touch, is a huge pain in the ass to work with and very temperamental!  Finding the right needle that will not entirely kill my machine or fabric is tricky and there appears to be very little online information about other people working with this fabric.

2.  Rereading the flat bolt tag information, it would appear that the stretch taffeta I am using as lining is defined as 100% nylon with PU coating (yes, that is what it says, PU coating).  Apparently the PU stands for polyurethane and helps make the fabric waterproof; uses include outdoor gear (clothing, packs, sleeping bags, etc), lingerie and even sandwich baggies.  ...A quick Google search of the fabric indicates that home sewers have not utilized this fabric or if they have, the information is well hidden.  Strangely Ebay had the best resource with their Guide to Sewing Water Repellent or Waterproof Fabrics.  Here's what I took from it:

      a. Once the material is punctured, either by pins or needle, it leaves a hole where water can get in.  Pin above the seam allowance, if you must pin.  Holes can be covered with sealant but who wants sealant on an every day garment.

      b. Use sharp needles and change them often.

      c. "Most coated fabrics will not fray and do not require serging, pinking or finishing. Lighter nylons and uncoated fabrics will however fray quite easily and should be finished."  The text does not say explicitly how the fabric should be finished.

      d. "Increase your stitch length (for fewer holes) and increase your tension slightly. As with any project, sew a test swatch first."  Increasing the tension is not something I would have considered.

3.  I also found the following to be quite pertinent to my current projects with the jersey knit material.  According to the user plrlegal on "Sew What's New" message board (last comment on the first page):

I actually would use a 3-3.5 mm stitch (8-10 stitches per inch on my Pfaff 4.0) and a silk wrapped polyester thread. Taffeta is one of the fabrics that if you use small stitches on it, it will tend to pucker, especially with polyester thread that has been tightly wound at high speed onto a bobbin. Polyester thread is one of the threads when tightly wound a high speed onto a bobbin will stretch and then when it is sewn into a seam will shrink back to its original length, thus causing the puckering in garment seams. If it is at all possible, you should wound polyester onto a bobbin at a lower speed to prevent stretching.

...Of all the books I own on sewing, I do not know if any of them cover this.  Then again, I have not read them all cover to cover.  There are three dresses I am currently working on and that I need to finish by the beginning of next week, as I would like to focus on truly completing the Getting and Cleaning Data course offered by Johns Hopkins on Coursera.  I have had such difficulty with this subject previously that I think I will devote most of my energy in August to this one class, enrolling in no other.

Tuesday's artistic sunset, view northwest.

I have much to learn!

'Til next time. This has been Young Grasshopper, signing out.

Hello Again!

Summer is close to half way over and the heat has really been zapping my energy.  On the plus side, Albuquerque finally got more rain on 16th of July than it has in 80 years!!  The previous record was set in 1933 at 0.71 inches.  That may not sound like a lot but in a high desert in a drought that is a ton of water.  Read more about it here and here.

Typical late afternoon storm brewing over ABQ; View: east southeast from my patio.

As to activities, I am almost finished with two dresses...just need to find double/twin jersey needles for the hems.  Finally finished Irish Sagas and Folk Tales by Eileen O'Faolain and am now reading Ross Poldark by Winston Graham, which is a much easier read than the former.  I have done a little bit of knitting but nothing on the Aran sampler.  Also got more of the Patons Silk Bamboo yarn for $3.00 per skein, which nearly 60% off the original price, as JoAnn's was clearing out their stock!


Swagbucks earnings have been going well and something I let the computer do while working on one of the many projects.  This months points will focus on Amazon books...but I think I mentioned that in the last post.

I have attempted to retake the Johns Hopkins Coursea course "Getting and Cleaning Data" but cannot get the data into R properly.  Thankfully this course repeats next month but this is frustrating me to no end as I cannot move forward with their other classes I wish to take.

This is probably why I am drinking more mini pepsis than I should be.  I am up to 3 - 4 a day!  Not good. :(

With any luck I will get more done before the start of the Outlander series.

The Book That Would Not End

Finally...FINALLY...completed The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow this Thursday.  By the end, it felt like I had been reading this book since the beginning of the year.  Sadly, as my library receipt shows, I have only had the book checked out for close to 2.5 months.  Just take a look at my reading progress/updates from Goodreads.com, starting from 18 May to 11 July.

Hard to read but "pages read" are on the y-axis, "date" on the x-axis.

Having taken so long to complete I thought I might write something about it.  All page references refer to said text.

I picked up this book hoping to read more about the development of French and how Cajun varies significantly from it.  The short answer is that after the Acadians were forced out of Arcadia, now Nova Scotia, to Louisana, the Acadians became effectively isolated, linguistically speaking.  "Since 1763, French Canadians lived a kind of linguistic Lost World" (p. 213).  According to Nadeau and Benoit, the next French ship to arrive in Quebec wouldn't be until 1855, "ninety-two years after the end of the French regime" (p. 213).  It would seem then that Cajun is closer to the last court French than modern French.  And that would be the most interesting point on the Cajun language in the whole book.  Sadly, the remainder of the chapter talks more about the conflicts in maintaining French and little about the linguistic differences, with half of the chapter also devoted to the isolation of French in Quebec.  Did I mention that I had to wait until chapter 10 to get this tid-bit?!

Truthfully, getting to chapter 10 was not so hard nor any less engaging.  Indeed I learned some very useful points that should be shared:

1. If you wish to take over a country, do so by cultural assimilation and educate the masses.
2. Education of a new foreign language is best done through translation from the mother tongue, especially when you have few native speakers of the new language available.
3. French was born out of a mixture of Latin, Frankish and other Germanic languages after the 10th century (p. 28).
4. England spoke Norman for four centuries after 1066 and it was not until Henry IV that an English king spoke English...but, linguistically, French and English still help each other out (p.30-31).
5. "Starting in 1967, most American universities suppressed the mandatory foreign language tests for Ph.D. candidates" (p. 288).
6. "Diplomats constantly try to keep the playing field slanted their way when they have the upper hand, or to level the playing field when they are at a disadvantage" (p. 290).
7. Places with library and health services for a community increase national exam scores 3-4 times than those places without.  At least in Burkina Faso. (p. 348)
8. Oxytonism - when "the stress in words (fall) on the last syllable and, in sentences, on the last word" (p. 369).  Penultimate - stress on the second-last syllable (p. 370).  A change in French that has been occurring since the end of World War I, from former to latter.  (...This is probably why all of my antiquated French textbooks were so cheap.)
9. You cannot afford to successfully run a country without a ministry of culture or some sort of cultural protection.  "...Quebec knows that if it doesn't make its own cultural products, someone else will, and they will inevitably be imports" (p. 411-412).
10. We really have Francois I, late 15th Century French ruler, to thank for kick-starting French into what we know of it today (p. 51-52).

The majority of the book is about France's and francophone countries' use of French than the nuances of linguistic variability.  It is worth a read but I must warn you, as I have seen other reviewers who have come before me, the last third of the book tends to drag on.  Fortunately, the chapters are nearly self-contained so if you thus desired, you could skip around and read only those chapters that interest you.

As to learning more about Cajun language and people, I will have to seek other works outside my state's meager public offerings on the subject.

How Was the 4th of July Weekend?

I like to think that my weekend was pretty good and I was able to get a fair amount done despite all the evening storms.  But let's check.

New Mexico monsoon at twilight, looking south from my patio.

Made my first NY cheese cake with an Independence Day theme.  At least that was what I set out to do: the colors turned out to be the 4th of July colors of those chosen by an 6 year old girl!  Only planned to make half of the cake but added too much heavy cream.  The result was a mousy cream cheese cake that eventually deflated.  The taste was good, despite look.  ...According to the recipe, the cracks in the cheese cake are a result of over mixing.  Glad it is just me eating!

Plus

U.S. Federal census records were free on Ancestry.com and I found some new lines of evidence as a result.  
Plus

...But had no time to finish reading The Story of French.
Minus

Got a free RedBox rental via email.  
Plus

Made practice rhinestone necklace from Jo-Ann free pattern.  
Plus

....But ran out of crimping beads before completing desired necklace.  
Minus

...Although, I did make two other necklaces made using jewelry pieces that I have had for about 6 years now.  
Plus

Purchased awesome retro Butterick patterns during a JoAnn's sale (5 for $7...equating to more dresses) AND got a craft size package of cotton batting for only $5.  This means I can start making the circle quilts with all the quilting fabric I have stockpiled.  
Plus

My serge protector strip of 14 years finally gave out last night.  Nothing plugged in was damaged but the loss still sucks.  Yes, the switch is what blew off/out last night, just as I went to turn off the strip.
Minus

Then this morning, two of my ordered item using SwagBucks.com-awarded Amazon dollars arrived.  A dough hook for my KitchenAid mixer to replace the one damaged by the dishwasher and the new Outlander book, despite the fact that I am just starting book 5 in the series now.  At least my Mom can enjoy this before the TV adaptation series starts.
Plus

And finally, one of the books I ordered through Paperbackswap.com arrived in great condition with the companion CD (ROM?) unused.  The book: Getting to Know ArcObjects, for ArcGIS mapping software.
Plus

Grand Total

Minus   Plus

    3             7

Not bad considering how much pepsi I have had over the past weekend.  ...Minus!