The Daily Jane Sews

Last fall, I signed up for a class at Modern Domestic , it was a beginning quilting class focused on half square triangles.  My plan was to make a quilt for my friend Erin...well, her first baby, Mara.  It turned out pretty good and I found it pretty fun.  So, I always viewed quilting as something I would pursue...probably...when I got old, haha...well, I guess that time came at the ripe age of 42.  I got the bug and away I was swept.   I enjoyed the tediousness of the work, its fairly mindless work for the most part, but at the same time, Its fair to say that I'm a perfectionist about these types of things so mindless may not be the best way to describe it.  I felt a bit overwhelmed with all the fabric possibilities but I nailed down some nice gender neutral choices as Erin is not much for girly-girly.  My favorite thing about the quilt process is cutting the fabric, and my absolute favorite part is the binding--making it and hand sewing it--I lov...

Several years ago, as a medical student, I was gifted an amazing first aid kit from an EMT friend.  It included a cheap hemostat which I never had the misfortune to use.  I broke this out when I was making my first quilt.  Instead of buying the little wooden stick that one uses to pin the quilt sandwich, I tried this.   Ever since, I have discovered a new thing to use it for on almost every sewing project.  Just last week, I used it with my #69 foot (Roll and Shell Hemmer Foot)--I can grab and twist near the end, when the folded part starts to rove to the right which causes the hem to be uneven-- I just grab, lock and twist, get it going again and release at the last second.  I use is for pulling pins at the last minute while sewing, basically anywhere my fingers can't easily get in.  Its also great for tying knots when you have almost non-existent short thread--you just throw a surgeon's knot (which there are tons of videos on YouTube showing one h...

It was so time... When I run, I think about this...about sewing, about quilting, about writing about sewing and quilting.  I look forward to my runs, in large part because I can obsess about sewing--what will I make, what I have made, about fabric, about patterns I want and about altering patterns I have.  My mind is otherwise occupied--I have 2 wild boys, ages 2 and 5, and an psychologically draining job. I started sewing seriously about 16 years ago.  Before that, I'd taken home economics in high school and one semester was sewing; I loved it then but had ambitious plans for college and travel, not a homebody then--sewing wasn't for me.  In 2001 I received my first sewing machine, a Kenmore.  In those days, I sewed at least 8 hours/day, I was making my own patterns and obsessively sewing...as any unemployed, 20 something year old in Portland, OR could--you know in the 90s and early 2000s, it was just the place for "retired" 20 somethings to move (its much ...