Summer's here

At least it feels like it. It's been up in the 90s (32+ for you Celsius folks) since last week, and April is WAY early for it to be this hot in this part of Texas. But I've been indoors working away on those revisions. I'm down to 590 pages, and hope I don't have to cut too much more.

Spent the weekend visiting. The youngest came up from college with a big pile of homework for his theater costume class. The class is crowded, with a lot of kids needing to use the few sewing machines in their shop and a lot of students for the teachers to spread their instruction across, and he needs a lot of individual instruction on this sewing stuff. So he brought his fabrics and his assignments and I brought my machine down and we set up shop in his grandparents' upstairs office. He had to make a medieval peasant shirt for one project, and then for his final grade, he had to make a costume. Any costume. But it had to be more involved than just a pair of boxers. A bathrobe was okay.

So we decided on an Arthur Dent costume from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Arthur spends the whole movie in his bathrobe and pajama pants. Friday night, we cut out the peasant shirt, and the flannel pants and the bathrobe (after going to buy the fabric at Walmart). Late Friday, he sewed up the pants without me. (He'd already made a pair of "peasant" pants for another project, so knew all the steps.) And Saturday, he spent all day sewing the shirt and bathrobe. He did all the work. He just needed somebody to tell him what to do and how to do it. Just reading "Gather top sleeve edge between notches" in the directions doesn't tell you how to do it if you've never done it before.

Mom (aka, me) made a major mistake on the shirt...We didn't mark which piece was the front and which was the back, and I had him sew the front facing piece to the back of the shirt. And slash it open. Oops!

The only difference it really made was that the back was a little higher at the neck than the front. Since the whole shirt body was just gathered into the collar and didn't have to lie smooth, I trimmed the piece down to match the "real" front and we had no problems. (Didn't have enough fabric to cut another back...) Good thing the shirt was meant to fit loosely, though. (Whew!)

Other than that, things went smoothly. And you can see the finished project here.

The boy hated all the sewing. He kept saying his fingers were too fat for this kind of work. But I kinda had fun. It reminded me of all the fun I used to have sewing clothes. So when I got back home again, and needed to go wash all the bugs off my windshield, I stopped at the Outpost (which is a combination gas station/pharmacy/deli/convenience store/jewelry-gift store/five-and-dime with fabric store) and bought the LOUDEST piece of fabric I have seen in years (it's black with bright, bright horse silhouettes on it) to make a shirt for myself. My zodiac shirt is wearing out and I need a new loud shirt. Yes. My name is Gail, and I'm a fabricoholic...

But I'm Determined to make time for these things I have enjoyed in the past. Yeah, I know. I still haven't cut out the compass quilt strips...it's on my list!

Meanwhile, my mornings are devoted to revising the New Blood proposal.