We have stole fabric!! and lots of plans...

Accidental/serendipitous fabric search happened on Monday when Elaine and I found ourselves in my car together with a couple of hours free after I dropped the kits at the vet and picked her up from her oil change place which is right next door... so we decided to go see what fabrics we could find for the stoles. (Read: anyone who was anxious to be in on this outing we are heartily sorry, but hope that the incredible beauteousness of the fabrics we found will help soothe your disappointment!)

Anyway - long story short, we found (and She Sings members attending Monday night agreed) what we think is The Perfect Fabric for the common side of the stoles at the quilt store in Central - will look great for multiple occasions, not just WSSR, will look good next to everyone's faces, evokes many nature ideas including the sky and water, leaves and flowers, and has lots of other colors here and there making the choice of our shiny fabrics for the other side of the stole much easier than it might have been.

Elaine and I are heading back to Hobby Lobby this Friday afternoon (yell if you'd like to come!) to go ahead and purchase various colors of the shiny cotton/poly fabric for the back sides of the stoles. Some people put in their dibs on certain colors Monday at rehearsal. We will buy a variety and are confident everyone will be happy with what they end up with as their reverse color for WSSR. We'll go ahead and buy for 10 stoles' worth, as many colors as possible, both for WSSR use and beyond.

I will baste and launder the fabrics, then Saturday, October 27, we will have a fabric pressing and cutting party at Elaine's. It is tentatively set for 7pm - I will let Elaine fill us in on final time and what we should bring (wine/appetizer to share?).

We will need for sure:

• a few sets of good fabric scissors, and/or sharp rotary cutters and mats
• couple or three extra irons and ironing boards
• some extra sets of straight (sewing) pins

We can plan more for this at rehearsal next Monday night (10/22). I think it would be good to make it as assembly-line-ish as possible, which would necessitate only a couple of people on each task.

If the remaining robe fabric has arrived and is ready we can press/pin/cut it as well. Elaine and I got the pattern for that as well. (Sandra Sanderson has kindly offered to sew the remaining robes and we felt she would be more comfortable working from a pattern.)

We tentatively discussed doing the actual sewing of the stoles that night as well. Let's confirm this closer to time. (SUSAN DISCLAIMER: The sewing of the stoles was supposed to be my job so please everyone know I am perfectly happy for it to remain that way but others brought up the idea of starting the sewing that night - me being me, I want to make it clear I'm not shirking my stole task! :)

So, we might need, too, depending on how we end up orchestrating things:

•  2-3 sewing machines 

I will make a muslin prototype of the stole between now and then and make/bring paper pattern pieces for us to use as we pin/cut.

Please toss in any ideas you have as we prep for this. We realize there were a handful of people unable to come Monday to rehearsal and that you all might not be free 10/27; please do not worry. I think we could have a very successful evening with just 4-5 of us there, tho of course the more the merrier and quicker (so more time to sip wine, sing, snack...)

We will do some more brainstorming about it at rehearsal 10/22.