Hot days of summer

Summer business has settled down and now we are left with heat and humidity and a lot of free time.  It is nice to be able to sleep in (no crosswalk guard duty) but it gets too hot to go outside for more than a potty run with John.  Tetsu spends most of the day napping and listening to baseball on his cellphone.

Going to the pool has been the most regular part of our summer routine but even that has changed a bit because though the outdoor pool opened (I love floating around watching the clouds) there are so many children and families that it is nearly impossible to do any swimming.  In the afternoon we are often met with thunderstorms and then the lifeguards all frantically signal for everyone to get out of the outdoor pool and head for safety in the overcrowded indoor pool.

The last week of July our old cat Cleo, suddenly took a crash-dive regarding health and we were in waiting mode for the end to come.  Trust me, you don't want to hear all the details but watching him during this time was terrible...  Japanese vets in general don't believe in putting pets to sleep and Tetsu doesn't really want to consider it either.  After all the animals that we've loved and seen through to the end, I've gotten used to the idea but I am sure if we were in the States the vet would have recommended euthanasia for Cleo.  Surprisingly though, he has come back around and is rather enjoying himself again, eating well, jumping up onto the bed or the windowsill...  He's not ready to give up yet and I've just been happy to have had these extra three weeks with him...

Cleo the black striped kitty is 21.  Toi, the orange one is 17.

While we were keeping watch over Cleo, we were also staying close to the TV as on July 29th there was the large earthquake in Russia which kept the world watching for tsunami.  All of the coast of Japan was on alert the whole day which meant people were on rooftops and in the hills for hours during the horrendous heat wave we were having.  The prefecture we live in doesn't have a coast so basically we weren't affected though Shinkansen and other modes of travel came to a halt for most of the day.  I used the time in front of the TV to do some hand quilting and I finished off my current quilt.

My goal with M-san was to use up some of the leaders-enders squares that I had and she took home the bin of 2 in squares while I pulled from my 2 1/2 inch square bin.  I decided that I probably wasn't going to be up in the sewingroom during the hot summer so I chose to hand quilt this even though it is pretty large.  It was very pleasant to sit in the air condintioned room and work on this for the first days of summer!

Yeah!  Another finish!

Another sewing project that has been in the works for MONTHS has been the renovation of a kimono into a coat.  Let me tell you, this is probably an endeavor I'll never do again... especially the way I went about it.  Probably back in winter I noticed that a lady in the English class that I help with, always wore a shirt or coat made of kimono.  I have so many kimono's passed on to me by my mother-in-law or through friends whose parents have passed on.  I asked the student if she could give me advice on making something out of a kimono and she said she would be happy to make me something.  I appreciated her offer but really wanted to do it myself and so she said she would think about it and find a pattern that would nice.  

A month later (I only help with the class once a month) my student had a pattern ready and an idea in mind for a reversible coat.  I had brought three or four dark kimonos and she evaluated their quality and choose a brown one.  She pulled from her own stash of kimonos, the yellow one and then told me how to mark and baste a pattern.  Hey, I can do to this...  I've sewn quite a bit (not clothing though).  Well, basting clothing (or kimono, I'm not sure which) in Japan is completely different from how I learned to baste (did I learn to baste?).  You use TWO strands of basting thread and very short stitches and then gently pull two layers of basted fabric APART, and CLIP the threads leaving snippits on both pieces of fabric.  Of course this had to be done on both the brown and the yellow pieces...

I don't know how many times I did a step, sent my student a photo and she'd text back, "No, that isn't right.  You'll have to do it again."  Things like I didn't baste my corners exactly or my basting wasn't exactly on the line.  Same with when we got to sewing on the sewing machine.  I'd do the homework, bring it to class the next time and she would say it wasn't exact enough and to take it out and do it again. I really can't complain because my student (now she was my teacher) was always right...  I was never exact enough and things had to be moved a milimeter or so...  I blame it on my laize faire attitude to quilting.  "So it's wonky.  It doesn't matter.  No one will notice."  This was NOT my kimono teacher's philosophy!  It got so that I began to dread working on my kimono coat... And Tetsu wasn't helpful by pointing out that he couldn't imagine me ever wearing a kimono coat (bright yellow at that!).

The reversible coat.  Brown-side out...

Yellow-side out.  I've sent these last photos to my student/teacher and she says I still need to tack the shoulders and collar and maybe take out the hem and do it again...  but as I say, it is too hot to be in the sewing room right now so I'm taking a break.  Someday I'll model this for you...

I've been taking a sketchbook design class with Shari Blaukopf and she gave us the challenge (after showing examples and sharing ideas) of designing a page of things meaningful to us and so I pulled many of the tools of making a quilt and spent a day drawing and painting this.  I'm so happy with it!  And now my latest quilt is preserved on paper!

And that's about it for the past couple of hot weeks!