It's In the Jeans

When visiting Texas, I learned that my Great Uncle "Doc" Van is an amazing tour guide! When we got back from Dallas, he had a tour of the American Cotton Growers Denim Mill in Littlefield,Texas all planned out! I really didn't know what to expect, but once we met our tour guides and got our first glimpses of cotton fluff in the hallway I was fully on board and excited!

 The mill produces denim for companies we see everywhere including All American Clothing Company, and Denimatrix who distributes their denim to many other big name stores. My ears perked up because I've been thinking a lot about clothes and where they come from. This is a result of my friend Christa giving up  her wardrobe for lent. (She's still wearing clothes, just limiting them to 9 items.) She is using this time to think about the labor behind our clothes and the side effects of "Fast Fashion." Our tour guides did say that most of their material is exported because of the cost of garment making in the United States. All of this was on my mind as we continued on our fabulous tour!

They start out blending all of the different grades of cotton to make more consistent yarn fibers.

 At this point the cotton still has lots of pieces of dirt and plant in it. 

The cotton is fed into this machine which blows it up and fluffs it while the heavier non cotton material is allowed to fall away from it.

Then it is fed into the carders. 

 It is filled with many wire bristles like a mega hair brush and comes all of the fibers until they are all aligned and going the same direction getting it in better condition for spinning! Same process as hand spinning just on a much bigger scale!

It is removed from the carder in this long tube of roving.

Look at that giant skein of mega yarn! Imagine making a blanket out of that scrumptiousness!

 They then take 6 barrels of that freshly carded roving and ply it into another roving.

 This makes it more durable for the mechanical spinning. Because cotton is a shorter fiber it's trickier and more delicate to spin!

 Here you can see all of the sections.

 Then it is spun down into threads to weave into denim.

In some cases it is spun with spandex for stretchy jeans!

Remember all of those pictures in your history books of kids in factories changing spools of thread and tying together broken pieces of thread and yarn? Well this little machine replaces the void left by them when labor laws went into effect. 

 The roving comes up from the green barrel, in around that yellow piece and is spun at really high speeds behind that blue plate.

 Different weights and styles of spins go on different colors of bobbins.

 Then, they come along the track like guitar strings to be gathered up to be dyed.

 They come together through this comb like tool and the fan blows the lint back away, all to keep the yarns from getting tangled.

 They're bunched into an un-spun rope like this and then rolled onto a tractor tire size spool to be dyed.

These bundles are sent up into the air and back down into the indigo to be dyed.

 The indigo needs "air time" for the color to gain intensity. This is why it comes out of the dye and then back in. In the picture below you can kind of see three different shades in the dying process.

 After they are dyed the right color they're rinsed and steam dried. In other words steam fills the barrels and makes them hot, and when the yarn passes over them it dries.

 Now the yarns have to be re-separated so they can be more easily woven.

 This man is taking about 5 at a time and sliding them into another comb like tool. There is a giant roller below the comb rolling them all onto the spool in an aligned format.

Then came the weaving process. It was happening so fast you could hardly see it!

 The white threads with stretch were going horizontally and were getting trimmed off the edges as they were being rolled.

Ever get a pair of jeans and have them shrink on you? Or even worse, have the legs twist so the seam lies on the front of your leg instead of the side? This machine's job is to prevent all of that. Because the yarn is spun in one direction, there is a tool that un-twists the fabric!

 This is a camera that scans the fabric for any defects. An inconsistent thread, a blemish in the weaving etc.

 It makes a map for the person who is cutting the bolts so they can cat the bolts without any blemishes in them. Here's a whole wall of examples of errors that came back. Anything from not untwisting enough to an irregular amount of acid in the dye or wash causing an extreme amount of distressing!

 The final step that takes place here is the gentleman following the map produced by the camera and making large bolts to go to the jean manufacturers.

 Look at all these tubes!!! Can you say boy heaven? They're light sabers, no they're swords, mines a lance!

It was a really cool experience! It's changed how I look at denim! Now if only they had a souvenir shop where you could buy a pair of jeans made from it! 

Thanks Uncle Doc for setting that all up!

WiP Wednesday- Playing Catch Up

I just got back from Texas yesterday and today I had a lot of works in progress!
Starting with a big fight with our wireless internet router and then the customer service woman. I know it's not her fault but gosh I think it stinks when you have to purchase an extended warranty on something you already bought just to make it work! It's working now, no thanks to LinkSys or Cisco.
Today began round one of seed planting. I'm using lots of variables for starting my seeds so that MAYBE one of them will work! The one I tried today was a seed starting kit.

Each cell came with this condensed "dirt" and I added water to them and they puffed up! Pretty cool! And not too messy. The only issue I came across was when some of the dirt pods turned sideways when I poured the water in and then expanded and got stuck. (Don't let your kids and husbands flush these down the drains folks they didn't budge!)

I made a 72 square grid on the computer with colored dots that correlated with the dots I put on the plastic planting containers and then wrote which seeds I put in which cell!

 Then I made some granola! Luke LOVES to eat granola with Greek Yogurt every morning. I can be in the bedroom and hear him crunching away while he watches ESPN. Normally, I buy granola from Costco in giant bags but we have no Costco and I don't know when I'll get there next. I considered buying it from the regular grocery store but they just don't carry cost effective Luke size bags.

 Luke doesn't care for all the expensive nuts so its not too pricey to make myself. Plus, I still have giant bags of oats from my last Costco trip!

 I worked a little on machine quilting this quilt! I got a new walking foot at the Dallas quilt show, so I'm back in business!

 I made 9 more freezer breakfast burritos for Luke as he completely depleted my stash while I was gone!

Lastly, I worked a couple more rows of my latest knitting project! It's a Magrathea scarf for ME! I'm already in love with it. As my family in Texas saw, after every row I hold it up and admire it for a bit.
Whew! I cant believe I got all that done today plus a little more! I think I'll put my feet up and do a little blog reading.

I'm linking up to WiP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced!

Doing Dallas

Early Friday morning Aunt Maggie, Aunt Lois and I hopped in the car and headed for Dallas!
When we got there the first thing we did was go straight to the Dallas Quilt Show or also known as Quilt Celebration 2013, hosted by the Dallas Quilters Guild. Our first order of business was to deliver Matt and Val's wedding quilt to Kathy Bradbury of Bear Paw Machine Quilters so that she could take the quilt home with her to long arm machine quilt it!

 Aunt maggie was so kind as to take pictures of the whole process! Let me tell you, It was kind of a relief to hand the quilt over to Kathy! Kind of like handing in a final essay or something! She has some great ideas and I cant wait to see what she does with it!

We did a general walk around the rest of the show but didn't stress about seeing everything, because we knew we'd be back Saturday. So we headed to the hotel which was across the street from Matt and Val's apartment to get Aunt Maggie, Aunt Lois and Pat checked in! (I got to have a sleep over at my sisters.)

 Check out the floor on that bathroom! I LOVE it! It will go in the floor on my dream house.

Valerie received a last minute assignment Friday afternoon/evening, so Matt, her husband, drove all of us ladies (my this time Cousin Pat had joined us) to a fantastic pizza place called Fireside Pies.

Pat, Maggie, Lois

 Matt, Me

Aunt Maggie has Celiac which means she cannot have anything with Gleuten in in and Valerie (my sister) did her research for the trip! She found out that Fireside Pies has a Gluten free pizza crust (above) so Aunt Maggie could have pizza too! The rest of us had the regular crust but upon sampling them, there was hardly a difference! We all had more than enough pizza and ate some of the leftovers with dinner the following night!

Valerie joined us toward the end of our meal and tried each of our pizzas for her dinner! (That's the way to avoid entree envy if I ever saw one!) Then went to their apartment for some visiting time!

It was so nice to be re-united with my sister again! I have MISSED her! 

On Saturday morning the quilt show didn't start until 10:00 so Matt took us to Children's Medical Center, where he works, and showed us the Train Room!

It was so neat to have an official tour guide! The train room was thought up by one of the CEO's of the hospital and features many trains zipping around on the many tracks. In this section you can see the Dallas skyline. They change the scenes multiple times a year so that the children who unfortunately have frequent visits to the hospital can have some distractions. They even have a scavenger hunt! (Matt didn't tell us about that until after, for fear that we might want to spend all day looking for things!)

 After our train tour, Matt dropped us off at the front door of the quilt show. Now we didn't actually know the quilt show would be there until after our trip had been planned, but what a great coincidence!
I've been eyeing  long arm quilting machines and Aunt Maggie and I had a great time trying them out! I also found some fabric I'd been hunting for, my favorite thread, and a  walking foot to replace the one I broke last week or so.

 Another highlight of the show was that the Dallas K-9 search and rescue was there. Aunt Maggie participates in the California Search and rescue so that was pretty exciting for us to see!

Valerie had been able to get out of work earlier than she had originally thought that afternoon so she picked us up from the show and us girls went out for burgers! Once again all of her research was apparent because she found Village Burger Bar and they had just added Gluten Free hamburger buns as a menu option!

 Aunt Maggie said it was one of the best Gluten Free bun's she's ever tasted!

My Burger and fries were delicious too! These fries were some of the tastiest shoe string fries! So tasty in fact that they were half-way gone before I remembered to take a picture!

We went back to Matt and Val's apartment for more relaxing visiting and its at this point that you start to notice more and more of their apartment buildings charm! It's an old building and you see great signs of it everywhere! Start with the woodwork over the entry:

and beautiful scroll work on their mail boxes.

Then notice the OTIS elevator!! I couldn't think of what movie it was in....then I finally remembered just today! It was Kate & Leopold!

 Anyway, the elevator to get to their floor is this great Otis Elevator!

  Metal door gate and everything!

 There was a big storm Saturday night and Matt was actively tracking it on his iPad and out the window. 

We also played a round of this fun game they found called Tsuro. 

Then Val and I talked and talked until we both fell asleep on the couch!

Sunday morning we were dealing with side effects from the time change (and staying up too late) so we got a slow start.

Valerie and I grabbed some Starbucks coffee. (Yes they have Starbucks in Garden City, but it's in Target and that's just not quite the same.)

 I'm really glad, that I remembered to get a group picture! (Thank you Matt!) There are three generations in this picture!

From Left to Right: Aunt Maggie (My Dad's Sister), Valerie, Great Aunt Lois, Cousin Pat (Lois's Daughter, Maggie's Cousin), Me (Jessica)

The grand finale of our Dallas weekend was a trip to Lulu's Gluten Free Bakery. 

Whether you have Celiac or not, this place had confections fit for a queen!

And a queen she was! Aunt Maggie found lots of goodies to take with her!

  So did the rest of us!

 Aunt Lois had a cupcake,

Pat tried two different breads and took the rest home for Monday's breakfast (smart move!)

 and Valerie and I each got a different kind of quiche to share. Her favorite was the spinach and mine the tomato ham.

 I also got to meet these guys after seeing them through the window! They're poodles! I never would have guessed and they were SO SOFT! Their owner says they get groomed about once a month with the same length cut allover.

Aunt Lois, Aunt Maggie and I drove back to Olton Sunday afternoon. 

When we got here, Uncle Van had these two beautiful surprises waiting for us! Whata guy!