Excuse my rant, friends.  I should be allowed to do that in the age of Covid-19 and stay home orders.  What I will not do is name these businesses because they, too, are dealing with the Covid effect; I do want them to be successful even though as a customer and consumer of the products listed below, I ain’t happy.

1. Fusible interfacing that does not fuse: all are from the same online retailer but one works beautifully. The other two do not; the two are shirt interfacings, one firm and the other medium firm. I used each one THREE times, exactly per instructions. No fusing action – at all.

   

2. Marking pens that do not mark: This was an Amazon purchase. I should have stuck with the Frixion brand which is great; this order is from a major sewing notions manufacturer. The white pen is dry, dry, dry.  The red pen has a faded pink output, and the blue and green are much better even though they are best when you repeatedly mark the same line.  A fabric marking pen should make a discernable line on the first attempt.  On the good side, they do disappear with the touch of an iron.

   

3. Bad fabric (yellow denim): Ordered online about 7 years ago. Things went south on receiving the package, because what was advertised as mustard stretch denim turned out to be a daffodil yellow stretch non-denim; most importantly, the stretch went vertically (parallel to the selvage); not sure why because any one-way stretch fabric has the stretch going width-wise. Into the stash it went until I could figure it out. It came out this year for my Neon Spring 2020 plan; I would give it another shot for a pair of stretch pants but trying to eke it out on the crosswise grain didn’t work out.  Moral: online retailers must have true authentic, knowledgable information for customers.

   

4. Sewing thread with fuzzies:  The lower strand has the fuzzies!!  This fuzzy brand used to be stellar and that is all I used; until I didn’t. I noticed the fuzzies on a strand of this spool when little specks of crimson coated my machine’s thread path and the presser foot.  You can see the difference in the two strands below if you look closely.

   

Take good care of yourselves, my friends. I am now wearing a mask each time I venture out. My masked and gloved venture into the local crowded post office shocked me. There was just one other person wearing a mask!! We both threw our pre-paid packages (thanks, Click N Ship) in the bin and hurried out; bravo to the USPS personnel who were all wearing masks.  The rest of the crowd was standing close to each other without a protective glove or mask in sight.  Come one, people! Let’s beat this thing. My mask would not have protected me from inhaling the virus, but I sure as heck protected the people in that lobby.

All my good thoughts with you,

Samina