Like the rest of the country, Denver was hit with some frigid weather in January. January 15th the high temperature was only 2 degrees F (-16.66667 C) which broke the record from 1930. January 16th tied the record low temperature of minus 19 F (-28.33333 C) from 1930. The last few days of January warmed up to the high 50s and low 60s. Looks the temperatures froze up the group as only two have sent notes for our get-together.
Dorothy
We'll start with Dorothy, who was able to get out in spite of the frigid temperatures.
I did get to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum and saw Courtney's quilt! It is a lovely quilt. Kind of amazing series of quilts displaying a lot of talent!
The first meeting of the Longmont Stitchers was a small group, but larger than anticipated due to a date change. The original day was one of the freezing days. We anticipate Feb meeting to be better attended as there will be better notification!
See you all in March!
Courtney
Courtney also was able to get out and was able to pass off a sewing machine.
Dear All,
I am hoping things calm down a bit now that the holidays are over. It was great however having our daughter home for the longest time in 25 years. I did get a nice looking Singer 301 for Christmas ad I taught my last Featherweight Maintenance on the 14th. Since both the December and January classes were threatened with bad weather, I have decided to hold off on more classes until we can count on better weather. The next weekend was rather hectic. Connie and I were both guests at a science fiction convention in Colorado Springs. We went down on Thursday afternoon for a dinner and panels started on Friday afternoon. I had to leave my 4 o’clock panel a little early to drive up the the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum’s opening reception for their Quilts Made by Men quilt show. Because it was early evening on a Friday my guidance system kept changing how I should go as the accidents started to accumulate. I wasn’t completely stopped anywhere but it was slow going once I got to Denver. I finally made it about 5 minutes late. I was very excited that they did their introductions and program directly in front of MY Pythagorean Theorem quilt (See picture.) I didn’t want to drive back to Colorado Springs late on a Friday night so I stayed with some old friends and made the drive down the next morning in the daylight. I will be on a men’s panel for the museum’s Sunday at the Museum on February 11th. While back at the Science Fiction Convention I was able to hand off the sewing machine and other articles for my friend’s son who is visually handicapped. I thought it was fun researching all the information on sewing for the visually handicapped.
Since the weather is supposed to be very nice this week I am trying to build two or three boxes to hold some sewing machines. They are not very fancy just 23”L x 10”W x 16.5”H but should help protect some on the machines I move around regularly like the hand-crank I got from Cheryl and Chris. I hope things quiet down some soon so I can get back to a more regular life!
Courtney
When asked as to which machine that was handed off Courtney replied that it was a more modern machine
I gave him a Kenmore 385.1622. It is made by Janome and appears to be similar to a Janome HD 3000. It seems to be a very study manual machine which I think will be important. It does have a drop in bobbin and a rotary hook which constantly pulls the thread to the left. It has a good needle threader that actually threads the needle without too much trouble. (I think most needle threaders are harder than doing it the old-fashioned way.) I also gave him a Dritz needle threader which pushes the thread through the eye. I found it the best of all the various needle threaders I tried. Finally, I gave him some of the Schmetz easy thread needles which are truly easy threading. I wanted to give him as many options for threading the needle as possible. The one problem with the machine is the stitch changer. It is not easy to work with but as a beginner I think he will be using the straight stitch, and I don't think he will be using the stitch changer much. We will cross that bridge when we have to. The other machine I was looking at was a Singer 4411 Heavy Duty. I went with the Kenmore because I had it and it was ready to go.
Janey remembered that Courtney had done a differently colored Pythagorean Theorem quilt back in 2022, which can be found at
Colorado get-together?
"Proof
The green square is inscribed in a larger square with four triangles. The red and orange squares are inside a larger square with four triangles. The large squares are the same size (each side is equal to the short leg plus the long leg of the triangles) so they have the same area. Since each large square has four of the original triangles whatever is left must be equal, thus the green square is equal to the red and orange squares."
In Closing
That is all we have for this month. Thanks to our contributing members and to all who read. We will post here again next month.