October 30, 2020

Kathleen Lewis's featured exhibit at the Woolworth Walk in Asheville will be up until November 29, 2020 so hurry down to see it!  Kathleen has been a regular at our V-Handwork Circle so we have seen some of her work in progress and heard lots of interesting stories of her present work as well as her previous professional sewist work.  If you don't make it, you can still go to her booth in the Woolworth Walk.  

I was particularly interested in our discussion of Cormo fleeces since Sebette Hamil farms sheep including Cormo.  Apparently, Cormo is a cross between Corriedale and Merino sheep.  The "Why Cormo Sheep" page of The American Cormo Sheep Association explains.  Cormo is very soft with a 3" staple and 17-23 micron fiber diameter for you spinners and can be spun or felted.

Katya mentioned the solitary bee house and some of us silently considered, what the heck is that??  Well these houses put together form a beautiful and interesting hotel for solitary bees.  This kind of bee lives and reproduces alone and doesn't make honey.  Here is a really interesting document with images entitled  "Building and Managing Bee Hotels for Wild Bees" pdf from Michigan State University Extension. 

Doll making @localclothorg resource for supplies including fabrics and much much more can be found at:

https://dollmakersjourney.com/fabrics.html

FASTENERS FOR STABILIZING LAYERS OF CLOTH FOR  QUILTING:

Safety pins, Kwik Klips, basting, and Q-snaps.  Guess the category!!?  Correct: quilting.  These are all things handy for stabilizing the layers in a quilt prior to topstitching either by hand or machine.  

safety pins.  Everybody must be familiar with these, but extra large ones are handy for quilting since unlike straight pins, they won't prick you and cause blood stains on your quilt.

Kwik Klips.  There is an amazing display of colorful kwik clips, wonder clips etc on amazon.  But how in the world would one use them on a quilt?  I must ask Paula which I failed to do during the v-circle, but in the meanwhile, a quick internet search reveals.....  another lesson on internet searches.  A trick that advertisers use? The trick of inserting "Kwik Klip" into the search tags for alternate types of products to bring page clicks. It is like searching on Etsy for handmade items--100 t-shirts handmade in China. Or, possibly the spelling alterations that are automatically inserted into the search when you type kwick or kwic or kwik?  Upon further research, I discovered that the Kwik Klip is tool, "The Kwik Klip Tool"  that is used to close safety pins.  It helps one avoid finger damage and speed up the process of inserting safety pins across your quilt layers.  Here is a blog link showing the tool and a movie demonstrating its use.  Paula Jean Creations is closing after 29 years apparently.  They are the holders of the Kwik Klip Tool patent.  Interestingly, they claim they are retiring the patent upon closing.

Enough said.  Get out your needle and thread.  

Q-snap.  The Q-snap is advertised for embroidering and stitchery.  Paula is an expert on using them for quilting and finds them very handy.  Here is the link for this item on Amazon where I snagged this image.  

See ya'll soon.

Susette