Maple Cottage Designs

 

I have fallen in love with this Maple Cottage Design called, Starlit Dreams Quilt Pattern & Pillow!

Now you know I am not a quilter at heart like most of you sewers.  I only quilt when I find something that I just think is darling.  I love this quilt so I bought the pattern.  Now I have to find material and decide what size I want to make.  Do I want it to be a wall hanging so I can look at it everyday or do I want to make another quilt for the bed in our RV fifthwheel.  Then I can trade off with the quilt I made last year.  Or was that two years ago?  Can't remember for sure.  When I get everything together, I will post as I go, again, so you all can see how I do.  I think I will make the pillow also!!!  It just looks so clean and fresh to me!  Let me know if you like it!!  

Gathering Material for a More Professional Look!

 I just wanted to let you know that I made another you tube video if you are interested in watching.  I am showing you how I gather material for skirts, etc. and making it look more professional.  I can always tell when someone is wearing a homemade garment if they do some gathering.  Most people don't know this tip.  I discovered it for myself many years ago, but I have seen it at other places since.  I think it makes a really big difference.  Please watch and subscribe!  Thank you so much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf8hh7X6rv4

 Hello everyone, I have been trying to get back into my sewing room.  It has been finished since about January but I just have not had time to actually sit down and sew until lately.  I finally started to make this top a few weeks ago.  It is Charms Pattern, Hepburn Top.  

  I wanted to practice on it and I found this material at Walmart for $2.00 for 2 yards.  I could not believe the price! I thought it would be perfect to give this pattern a try.  When I brought the material home, I actually loved the fabric and didn't want to just practice on it.  I then decided to just cut up an old sheet to make sure of the fit and use my $2.00 red fabric once I was happy with the fit.

  What I wasn't very happy with was this pattern.  I thought it was kind of hard to follow and my pattern pieces were very washed out and it was hard to tell which lines for cutting out the pattern were the ones to follow.  I don't think I will use her patterns again.  She has a large following and everyone loves her, but it just was not worth my time to figure it out.  Here is the top.  I thought it turned out very nice.

 

I also wanted to show you the floor in my sewing room now that it is finished.  I know I showed you all the mess that it turned out to be after we pulled up the carpet. I love the way it turned out when finished and I can scoot all over the room!   LOL 

It ended up being such a terrible job and I had sanding dust everywhere in the house.  I had all of my machines covered but I did not cover my thread, oh my, I was so upset with myself when I looked at all of my thread with dust-covered over every spool.  I had my thread hanging on the wall and never gave it a thought.  I ended up having to take it all down and throw the spools into a large garbage bag.  Then when I watched tv, I had to wipe off each spool, and some of them I had to wind down to the next layer and throw some thread away to clean them up. 

 I wanted to make sure they were dust-free because I am sure that would ruin my machine if I got all of that dust into it.  After this was finished, I had to clean the dust in every room of the house.  Even though we were so careful when he sanded, it still traveled everywhere.  

I also did add one additional project to my room that I just love and that is I got my hoops hung up.  This will keep them from warping and they are nice and neat and out of the way.

Thank you for staying with me over the years and I will try to post more often now. My plan is to really get back into sewing.  I miss it terribly, so more will be coming!!

SewingRoom OverHaul

I guess in my last post, I forgot to tell you that my sewingroom has been unusable since July. When my mother passed away, we had a dumpster which my husband decided to use up as much as possible.  I had carpeting in my sewingroom which I really did not like.  I had mentioned this to my husband on several occasions.  So he decided to rip up the carpeting in my sewingroom and throw it in the available dumpster.  This really was not the best time for this, but I wasn't thinking to clearly and just said that was fine with me.

Now here is the problem.  He had done this is in two other bedrooms and they had lovely hardwood floors underneath the carpet.  It only took a couple of days to get this job accomplished.  Well we were shocked when he ripped up the first piece of carpet.  Underneath was nothing but something that looked like sawdust.  For some reason they glued down the padding to the pretty hardwood floor (who would do this??) and whatever it was that they used disinigrated the padding into a powder.  Now you know my expensive machines are in there and the last thing I need right now is another great big mess and sawdust flying around my machines.  I told you my mother's things that I wanted to keep are still stacked in the dining room and now I have my sewing machines all covered and taken apart in my spare bedrooms.  So I have not sewed since July and I am missing it terribly.  My husband had gone up into the room and he started to hand sand the floor.  My sewing cabinets have all of the tops off of them and I could just imagine how much dust would get into them.  So I had to hurry and grab some sheets and cover them all up.  Then they sat there like that because we had several camping trips scheduled and a three week trip out West in September planned.  No time to work in my room.  When we came home from our three week trip, our camper took quite a beaten going up and down the mountains and there was about seven projects in there that needed attention before we took our last tiny trip and then put the camper away for the winter.  Now we have that finished and gosh it is Thanksgiving already.   He is going to put up the Christmas lights tomorrow and I still have some pretty hugh messes and I just dont feel very Christmasy this year.  Do I really want to drag out all of those decorations on top of the two messes I already have??  No not really!!

Well, I cleaned the kitchen extra good this week and I put some Christmas Fresh Cut Fraiser Fur wax cubes in my little burner hoping that would help!  Guess what, I think it did, I am kind of getting in the mood now!!  I guess I will drag out mess number three and have a Merry Christmas and worry about the rest later!

I will show you a couple of pictures of my sewing room and spare room messes!  He is not satisfied with the floor it still has spots of glue on it.  He rented a big sander from Home Depot and is bringing that home from work today.  He TOLD me that there won't be any dust because the machine will catch it!!  I sure hope he is right!  I am cleaning downstairs and I sure hope I don't have to start over or someone just might get coal in their stocking this year!!  He said he will have it down by Tuesday!!  We will see!!  LOL

HOW TO SAVE MONEY WHEN YOU SEW!

Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well.  So sorry I have not posted for a while.  It has been a bad summer for me.  My mother passed away in April and it was a hard time, plus we had so much to get rid of and try to sell and clean up.  We are finally past that but now my dining room looks like a cyclone went through it.  I have all the things that I wanted to keep in there and no place to store them.  My mom wore lots of jewelry, which I do not, so I have all of that and not really sure how to handle it.  I also have a hugh box of pictures that I just can't bare getting rid of.  If anyone has any tips on what to do with the jewelry, I would sure appreciate it!

I have two couches in my familyroom that are in desperate need of replacing.  Everywhere I checked, there was a year of waiting.  Oh my oh my!!  I did finally find a set that I liked at Furniture Row and purchased those.  My husband tore my old couches apart for me, because you just would not believe what you might find in a couch that you would want to save.  I made a video, so if you would like to watch it, I attached the link for you.   

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BABpVaCiPrU&t=306s

BAILEY ISLAND HOBO BAG - PART 6

 I got my handles finished and I designed them a little bit different than the directions.  I two toned the handles by sewing the black and colored fabric together.  The directions are for the handle to be in just one color.  I also made them a little bit longer.  It fits better under my arm this way.  

You take two lengths of batting for a heavier handle and two lengths of the material and stack the two materials facing each other on top of the batting.  Sew around the edges leaving an opening and then turn right side out. 

This turning is a little tricky if you have never done it before.  The directions did not explain this step, I assume there are you tube videos on this.  I will try and explain it, the ends of the handle are sewn all the way around including the ends leaving a opening on one of the sides.  Then you try and push in on a end while grabbing just one layer of material.  Then you push the ruler in and as you push the ruler you gather up the handle and then push it out the opening that you left and it turns everything right side out.  This is not a good explanation.  Sorry, just look for a video this is hard to explain.  If you make this and need a video, I will make you one.

You then top stitch around the handle a couple of times and it is finished.  You feed it through the opening you made at the top of the bag and then gather up the handle as far as you want it to be gathered and tie the two ends together.  Then sew down the opening where you fed in the handle to hold the gathers in place and the bag is finished!

My finished Hobo Bag, but this will be my beach bag.  I chose these colors because I have three bathing suits each a different size.  You know how it is, smaller, medium and 10 pounds to much.  One is, black, one is blue and the other is aqua.  This bag will now go with any suit that I wear!!  I love the bag!!

BAILEY ISLAND HOBO BAG - PART 5

A few more steps on the bag.  After you gather the edges of the bag, you need to sew across the edges to hold the gathers in this position.  The batting that I used was the Warm & Natural Needled Cotton Batting which is one of my favorites.  I was able to sew across all of the gathers, but  it is getting harder now because this causes a lot of thickness.  I did draw a line across the top so I would sew straight.  I just used a magic marker because I needed something to see well and I knew this was not going to show.

I ran a double line because before you sew, you are suppose to trim your line evenly.  Well this creates a problem because after you trim the edges, you have to be very careful because your zigzag stitches start to come apart.  If I make another bag, I would try to trim my strips before I sew them together and try to be able to skip this step. When you trim this you are cutting off all of your tie off stitches and the zigzag stitch pulls apart very easy.  You have to be very careful.

Now comes the binding for the tops of the bag where the handle will go through.  This is just suppose to be a straight piece of just material, but I thought it would be to flimsy since I was making the biggest bag so I added a layer of batting to that also and I added a strip of fabric down the center to add a little accent.  I then added diagonal stitches all the way across this binding and I really liked this better but it is not necessary this is just my touch to the bag.

Then I sewed this to the edge of the bag.  Now I did have some trouble with sewing this.  I think it was because I added one more layer of batting.  It now was hard to fit under the presser foot.  I sewed it on the back of the bag first with my machine but I broke a couple of needles and had to go very slow. Then when I brought it around to the front I just felt I would not be able to get it top stitched as neatly as I would want it so I decided just to sew this down by hand.  I used a heavy weight thread and just used a over cast stitch and it doesn't show and it is very sturdy.

I gave these a good steam pressing, which doesn't show here because I took the picture first and they turned out very nice.  Now you sew up the sides of the bag and make box corners.  Usually when you make a box corner there is a seam at the bottom of your bag to tell if you have things straight.  This bag just folds in half so I folded the bag in half and then took the edge of a sliver of soap and drew a line to show the center of the bottom of the bag.  Then on the front of the bag I stuck a pin in on the seam to line up the back and front together so I new everything was even. 

You then sew a diagonal line on the edge of the bag to make the bag sit up and fold this edge to the inside of the bag.  I gave it a couple of tack down stitches by hand to hold it in place.

I have one of the handles made and as soon as I get the second one finished, I will have the bag finished and post the final pictures.  I just love it!!!