Innovation on Board
With Dennis having left this morning on his road trip with nephew Brett, I had better have a lot of innovations on board for these next few weeks. I am quite sure that all of Dennis’ planning of all things Stauffer . . . I am going to be just fine.
My first agenda this morning was to watch YouTube videos on tricks of the trade sewing with velvet fabric. When a seam is to be sewn, it slides, it glides, its objective is to not have nicely sewn seams. It’s as simple as that. I had a few supplies in my sewing studio that were mentioned as possible tricks.
With chalk in hand I made sure I had arrows drawn on the back side of the yardage. All pieces of the patterns need to run in the same direction, top to bottom, to follow the nap of the fabric. Having one piece of the front of the jacket pattern lying up-side-down, it will look as if you had two different colors of the red velvet when all was said and done.
It was a struggle to get the jacket off of Santa. One of the arms is mechanical and needs much TLC. The other arm is not mobile. What to do? This afternoon I cut the original back portion of the red velvet jacket right down the 
middle from top to bottom. I have decided that the jacket will be slipped onto Santa in two separate pieces. The right side will be totally finished off as the left side will be. What will fasten them together is the frog closures in the front. What will fasten them together in the back will be enclosed Velcro running from the neck to the bottom of the jacket. No more taking a chance of dislocating arms of our 55- plus year-old Santa.
The best part is that Kevin will get all of his Python Velcro straps returned to him. Over the weekend I had been pondering this project and low and beh
old, I had a package of white inch wide Velcro. At one time we had used it to make a display for a trade show Dennis had gone to. I made sure to beef up the hemmed edges of the back of the jacket with inch wide bias tape that I had in my stashes. It will take the stress off of the velvet with the Velcro being opened and closed. It takes quite a tug to release the hooks and loops.
The rest of the late afternoon was needed to take care of Dennis’ livestock for the evening chores. The last thing I did was to take the empty ice cream bucket, fill it with shell corn and put it out in the bird bath dish for the deer. Dennis enjoyed watching seven deer last night as they took their time coming and going from our backyard.
Cats taken care of with food, water and litter box . . . check! Make sure the Koi haven’t knocked over the bubbler . . . check! Fed the deer . . . check! This calls for scrambled eggs and toast for supper.