A Look Inside My Lull

There was a lull in sewing last week for a couple of reasons, the heat and poor sleep. I am at that peri-menopausal point where I have a really difficult time sleeping. I'm usually hot which is a problem because DH's heart medicine makes him cold. This combination usually finds me asleep on the couch in the cool bar basement or in the guest bed with the overhead fan on high. Plus, even if I'm comfortable temperature-wise, sometimes I can't get to sleep or I can't stay asleep or I wake up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep. The result is that I'm tired, sluggish and unmotivated to do much.

Add to the sleep issue hot & humid temperatures and I lost several days of sewing. We've had such great unseasonably cool weather that last couple of weeks that I was caught off guard when we had 2 days around 90 degrees with typical August humidity. Thinking I would just make it through was a mistake. Although my office was o.k. (It is in the basement.) my sewing studio was miserable. The weekend brought yard and house work.


But all was not lost. Wednesday I spent most of the day with my youngest daughter, Chef M. (Technically she's not a chef but she's working on it!) We met for coffee then hit the last day of the YMCA book fair. Books were $10 for any size box you could carry. Chef M. found some cookbooks along with some sci-fi novels for her SO. I found these items. The Stitch by Stitch book has a variety of knit, crochet, & sewing projects. I purchased it for the knitted lace baby blanket project. There is an interesting needlepoint/cross stitch Santa in the Holidays in Cross Stitch book. And the tailoring book is from Palmer/Pletsch, always a good resource.


Chef M and I hit the local Goodwill store also. In addition to be a talented cook, she also has the knack of finding great buys at thrift shops. I have lost count of the number of times I have commented and her clothes and her reply is she got it at Goodwill. I'm looking for a man's brown cardigan I can use in the needle felting project from the current issue of Sew Stylish. No luck that day, but I'll keep checking back.

I spent a lot of time this past week searching for the trim for my Chanel-style jacket I'm working on. Here is my fabric. The variegated cross yarn can be pulled out easily. So I tried braiding it, weaving it, crocheting it and knitting an I-cord. Nope. Didn't look right. So I purchased lots of samples of trims from a LFS. They were too wide, too narrow, too plain, too intricate. I tried black, white & black & white. I considered grosgrain ribbon, petersham, (I was amazed that the manager of the LFS did not know the difference between petersham and grosgrain ribbon. How sad.) satin ribbon, silk bias ribbon. I spent hours looking at trims on the Internet. Nothing really seemed right.
Then yesterday as really a last ditch effort I stopped in at Jo-Ann's and bought about 6 or 8 more samples of trim. Lo and behold, one of them looks really good, and I am trying out adding the variegated yarn from the fabric. I should have a sample by the middle of the week. I'm so excited!

Just need to make buttonholes and sew on the buttons of my Bells shirt and it will be finished. I hope to do that this evening.