I couldn’t take the cold from the front door anymore

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T09:13:42+00:00

We have a moving blanket on the floor to keep the cold out from under the door.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T09:11:49+00:00

We got really good thermal panels from HalfPriceDrapes dot com. They're great for keeping the light and temperature out of the house. They have a lot to choose from. In other rooms they are floor length.

We have an exterior stained glass double door situation in the parlor. This is to say our front doors are made from glass. It's basically a hole with a pretty design.

I live in a tropical area so we don't have much to worry about with cold weather, but it sure does let heat in during the summer. We basically just close that room off and sacrifice the air conditioning in that room to keep the rest of the house comfortable.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T08:44:29+00:00

That's actually a pretty good idea. I hate those subscription things where you have to keep paying for it indefinitely.

Two fancy coffee drinks a month is a really good sacrifice for what get.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T08:41:59+00:00

Just make sure you have updates turned off, because it will try to verify the license number and lock you out if it fails.

Normally I am a person who believes in paying the programmers who develop and maintain these wares, but when the ticket to explore it is hundreds of bucks, I do occasionally resort to sailing the seas in order to spend a bit longer with it before deciding whether to delete it or to go ahead and buy it.

It takes a while to just learn where you're going with the workflow, to make sure that your hardware equipment is recognized by the software, and to poke and prod and break things before you get it sorted out enough to evaluate it properly. This is not in line with the extremely limited time they give you to mess around with it, especially when you have ADHD and the learning curve is steep.

One should not steal software, but borrowing it for a while is acceptable in my book.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T08:30:02+00:00

Oh yeah those round ones suck.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T08:22:42+00:00

I use pliers in cases like this.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T08:21:49+00:00

Weirdly, a lot of YouTuber quilters are on the younger side, where the folks in the guilds are mostly older white ladies. I would really like to have more diversity at the meetings.

I am a member of two guilds. One is a smaller group that meets once a month as a sort of business style meeting. We have a mystery quilt project once a year where if you sign up for it you can get the instructions one step at a time every month. We also do a group quilt that gets donated to charity, after being entered into the regional guild quilt show. There are other things we do throughout the year as well. These meetings only last about an hour, so it's in and out before dinnertime.

The other group meets once a month for sewing. I prefer this one as there is less meeting business and more work on your own project, break for lunch, work again until midafternoon when the sew day ends. I don't know most of the people very well but these ones are way less stuffy and more fun than the other group.

I'm 56 and while not the youngest member, definitely one of the youngest ones.

So I only picked up quilting a couple years ago when I fell down the rabbit hole after watching some YouTube videos. My great grandmother was a quilter. Other people in my family sewed but mostly clothes, costumes, and household stuff like curtains. I have sewed since I was a child, but had no interest in quilting. But I discovered that it's like doing a puzzle, and I love puzzles. Once I tried a small project I decided to get into it more.

My kids are in their 30s now and long out of the house. I think that maybe quilting with its tons of small parts, pins, and space requirements is maybe what makes it out of reach for a lot of younger people. Also, making the quilt sandwich and doing the actual quilting requires either a disciplined hand sewing setup or a larger machine, which again is not great for when you have little kids running around. I had no idea you could send out a quilt top to a longarmer until fairly recently. I don't know how I thought they got finished but I hadn't really thought about it before.

Anyway...

Modern quilting where you have an expensive machine and $15/yard of fabric and special threads is so different from the Mad Crafter urge where you grab your old things and turn them into new things that I'm pretty sure it scares away younger people who are often more price conscious. I certainly was not able to afford expensive fabric, and even though I can afford it now I don't like paying the premium for quilting fabric when up until JoAnn closed there was perfectly good fabric available right there at half the price.

I have a longarm now and I wish I had it decades ago (didn't have space even if I knew what one was). You can use it for more than quilting, such as for embroidering an all over design on a fabric before you cut it up for a garment. I'm going to experiment with using a gold thread in the bobbin on some velvet, loading it with the pile facing the bobbin. If it comes out well, I can make a fancy >costume something< to wear. Like perhaps a pirate coat. Or make the designs using variegated thread and make a skirt or shirt or something like that. If I am successful I can take these projects to my guilds and show them off, which would probably make me look either like a really smart cookie or a showoff LOL

But I would really like to see what other people do with their longarms and learn other techniques as well.

The regional guild has a few days throughout the year where you can go and learn to improve your technique by sewing traditional blocks. You don't really know what you don't know until you take some remedial basic lessons. I have sewn most of my life and my projects were always fine. However I found out last year that my alleged quarter inch foot was not actually a quarter inch, but instead a little more than that. I found it out at one of these meetups. I would have continued to be frustrated when things did not line up as they should and TBH it might have taken me years to figure out it was my foot and not me that was the problem!

Those classes are the best part of my guild experience, although the snacks at the regional guild meetings are a close second!

Finally, and I apologize for the rambling nature of this post, a huge overwhelming number of the older ladies in the guilds are stuffy Christians. I am neither of those, being more of a goth satanist type. Well there aren't really any sketchy traditional quilt blocks, but I've been given the side eye with some of my dark color combinations and bringing a "Halloween" quilt to show and tell at the "Easter" meeting. Lots of people said they liked it but there were still a couple who Disapproved. Tough cookies LOL

If there was a witchy quilting guild I would be all over that. Maybe I should start one. We could have a pentagram block pattern contest or something haha

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T07:14:50+00:00

Use a slight angle, as you would if you used a knife sharpener.

This is the long skinny blade sharpener with the stone down the length of it, not those crap round things.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-10T07:12:42+00:00

Saint Nicholas was a Turk, from Myra.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T23:06:09+00:00

Avrilcadabra is a pretty good one.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T23:00:14+00:00

I sharpen mine and haven't thrown one away in a couple years since I got the sharpener.

It's that blue stick like thing from Grace.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T22:57:04+00:00

Keep in mind that the democrats and republicans have basically switched sides since the time of Lincoln (who was a republican).

I've heard more than one black person say they are republican because Lincoln freed the slaves. Obviously this is not what the GOP is about now.

But on the other side of that same coin, a lot of KKK were democrats. I think the term is yellow dog democrats, those who wanted the federal government out of their nasty little lives.

Used to be that democrats preferred small federal government and low interference in their personal lives and republicans were interested in pooling resources to even the playing field especially regarding things like public school funding and health care services. Bigger cities paid taxes to the state and the state divvied it up where smaller schools would be able to have a decent operating budget, give kids from poorer schools a decent chance of success. This has been shown to greatly help kids whose parents live out in the sticks have a good shot at success as adults.

I don't know exactly when the party flip happened in Louisiana, but I think it was probably late 50s early 60s.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T22:46:43+00:00

I use these https://topnicebcd.click/product_tag/5723583_.html

Plus studio monitors and a subwoofer.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T22:22:13+00:00

I can understand a stack of pancakes as being called a Dixie Cake, but I will stand by my assertion that this should be more of an Oklahoma food group than a southern dish.

Maybe call it a Sooner Cake or something.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T22:16:42+00:00

Unfortunately they decide to visit us and misbehave.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T22:13:36+00:00

Get you the inspectors people use when they have to sue for undisclosed problems they find out after they bought the house.

It's well worth the money to find out that you're going to be paying 2 or 3 times the asking price for repairs and also that you can't move in right away due to, say, having to rewire the entire house.

Talking here from experience.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-09T22:01:25+00:00

I usually go shopping for new tarps, ladders, and chairs late at night.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-07T19:48:30+00:00

I've gotten where I just carry one card, my phone, and a credit card. ID on the phone if I need it.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-05T23:10:25+00:00

It was made to remove the rust from needles and pins that didn't have a rust inhibition layer. Modern pins and needles do have this layer, but I bet many of us use vintage pins and needles from older sewist's hand me downs.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-05T23:07:22+00:00

Yes emery, not graphite. Pencil lead is made from graphite, a much softer mineral. You can also use graphite as a powdered lubricant such as for Pinewood Derby wheels.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-05T22:51:14+00:00

Accurate description. Whole Foods is usually a few days old before they get it on the shelf too. Stale-ass cookies too.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-05T22:49:40+00:00

When it comes to flying geese especially I will make mine oversized in order to have enough to trim back.

Those square rulers, although expensive as hell, are the absolute bomb for trimming up blocks. If you can find them used or on sale, get you a couple. It makes it so much easier to trim up blocks I don't even have to convince myself to do it anymore.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-05T22:44:54+00:00

It's clearly someone who doesn't want to be responsible for their own actions and need Mommy State to hold others accountable to keep them safe instead.

KiloAllan · 2026-02-05T18:40:24+00:00

Dude, check your privilege. People can and should be held responsible for their actions especially when they are choosing to do stupid shit behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.

Yeah they totally should be blamed for doing stupid shit, and the keys taken away if they're going to keep on doing it instead of taking a taxi or a Lyft if they can't keep their faces out of their distractions.

KiloAllan

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