Sewing Sunsets

Angel wasn’t quite so much of an angel yesterday.  She has a sweet temperament, but she is also rather sneaky and stubborn.  I thought she was acting odd when she went to the sewing room door (which I always keep closed so she can’t get in when I’m not there) and then I saw her open the door (hubby isn’t so good at closing the door properly) and come right back out with a big doggy grin on her face.  Later in the day, I discovered why–she had decided to take care of “business number two” in the sewing room!! She had an accident in there the other day and I guess she decided that will be her new place to “go”.  I don’t think so–even if she did dig out an old issue of Sew News magazine (www.sewnews.com ) to distract me. 

Even though Angel is doing her best to prevent me from sewing, I have made a little progress on the little girl’s dress, and when I say a little progress, I mean a little progress!   I have corrected my mistake and cut out the front of the dress, plus I have pressed the front and back yokes, so I’m almost ready to sew—whenever that will be, of course.

What confused me about this pattern is that I didn’t realize that the facing is included on the pattern piece so I didn’t allow enough fabric for that on the main skirt of the dress front.   This particular pattern piece needed to be placed on the crosswise fold. The pattern piece is not placed on the fold, but the fabric is folded differently than it is when it comes off of the bolt.  

It’s a little hard to see, but the fold lines are indicated on the front yoke pattern piece seen above.

This is the fabric as it looks on the crosswise fold.  The fold is at the top of the picture instead of at the side, as the fabric comes off of the bolt.  It’s easy to tell the straight of grain by simply pulling the fabric a bit; it will stretch if it is off grain.  Folding the fabric this way solved my problem and allowed me to have enough fabric for the front of the pattern.

The above picture shows the pattern piece pinned to the fabric that is folded on the cross grain.

This is as much progress as I’ve made on this sewing project.  I will have to see if Angel allows me to return to my sewing any time soon.

Happy Mother’s Day!  My wish for all of you is lots of uninterrupted sewing time today and/or a nice trip to the fabric store.

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

I thought I would show the Angel that has been preventing me from sewing lately.

The bottom picture shows Angel when she really is being an angel because she is staying busy.

One of these days soon, I’m going to get back to my regularly scheduled sewing and I’ll be able to share more sewing pictures with you here as well.

I’ll even share my sewing oops and goofs, too.

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

I have been so busy lately that I’ve barely noticed the date!  Yesterday, I realized that Sunday is Mother’s Day!  Oh, my! In our family, we also have two birthdays in May so this is a busy month for us.  Birthdays and “holidays” like Mother’s Day always mean gifts.  I like to make my own gifts, but this year I don’t think that’s going to happen.   However, I still have some ideas for some quick Mother’s Day gifts for those folks who have the luxury of sewing.

I think pillows make a nice gift.  They’re quick and easy to sew, and pillows can be simple or elaborate.  They can be embellished with machine embroidery, applique, or beading, or they can be a patchwork quilt and quilted.  Pillows can be used simply for decoration or the less elaborate pillows can be used as throw pillows and be great to use for those cool, rainy days when it’s nice to curl up with a good book.  

Pillows can also be any shape or size that you wish; they can be round (www.sewseamless.com/Page22.html and www.sewseamless.com/Page23.html ) or square (www.sewseamless.com/Page24.html ), or any shape that you like.  For Mother’s Day, it might be nice to sew a pillow in a heart shape for Mom. 

Blankets also make a nice gift any time of the year.  Sewing fleece blankets is easy because all you really have to do is purchase a couple of yards of fleece and either serge finish the edges or trim off the edges for an instant blanket.  If you want a more decorative edge, trim the edges with pinking shears.  This is one of the quickest and easiest gifts to make, and fleece comes in a nice variety of solid colors and prints.

Pillowcases are also fun, quick, and easy to sew.  They can also be embellished with machine embroidery or applique or they can be plain.  Sewing a little lace around the edge of a pillowcase is also a nice touch.  I like to use about one yard of cotton fabric when I sew pillowcases.  Cotton sateen might also be nice if you’re making pillowcases for a Mother’s Day gift.  Pillowcase sewing tutorial and pictures can be found at www.sewseamless.com/Page41.html , www.sewseamless.com/Page42.html , www.sewseamless.com/Page43.html , www.sewseamless.com/Page44.html

My friend, Donna, of This Year’s Dozen (www.thisyearsdozen.wordpress.com ) has been sewing small pockets that can be hung on belts or purses.  These also make nice gifts and are easy to sew.  It’s a great way to use up those fabric scraps, too.   Donna has also recently sewn some small purses that are quick and easy to sew (only one pattern piece!) .  Donna chose some novelty cotton fabric for these purses, and they were cute, but if you wanted a dressier purse, you could use velvet or satin as well. 

I recently sewed some small tissue holders from left over cotton fabric.  The technique can be found in the posts “Sew Simple Sewing” and “More Simple Sewing” ;both posts are found in the April archives.  These tissue holders are also quick and easy to sew and might be part of a nice gift for Mom.

As I said earlier, I have lots of ideas for home sewn gifts for Mom, but ask me if I’m sewing gifts for my mom this year. I think my doggy may have other plans for me, so we’ll stick with a nice card,  a special dinner, and a different type of gift.

Happy Mother’s Day everybody!

And Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

As my mother would say, I shouldn’t wish my life away, but this week has been frustrating for a lot of reasons and I think I’ll be glad when it’s over.

Yesterday was the day that I go see my mom and usually, unless she has a doctor’s appointment, those days are spent just chatting with each other over lunch, or we might choose to go to a fabric store or shopping at a nearby department store.  This week, my college aged daughter is here, so she went with me.  We all had a nice time, and then my daughter and I headed to the doctor because of a little cyst that had been bothering her. 

My biggest concern wasn’t the doctor’s visit, but how long my doggy was being kept in her crate.  She is still learning the ropes around here and I try to make crate time no longer than four hours when I’m away, but yesterday, it turned out to be longer than that and we all paid for it.  The doctor was extremely busy and the wait was long, and then she removed the cyst, and while the actual procedure didn’t take that long, there was still a lot of waiting around.   By the time we got home, the poor doggy needed to go outside and take care of business, plus she was quite rested and bored, and really needed to run off some energy. I needed to start supper and try to manage the dog at the same time, which wasn’t easy.  It was just a stressful evening period!

After supper, the dog was still restless so I took her outside and she caught the scent of a pesky (but cute!) rabbit in our front yard and I nearly lost the dog as she pulled at the leash and tried to chase the rabbit.  I started yelling for someone to come help me, but my family couldn’t hear me, nor were they paying too much attention to what was going on right outside the front window.  Finally, my husband took the doggy on a very long walk, and even that didn’t tire this dog out!  She played tug of war and fetch the ball with me for at least two hours and after that, she played with a toy that has food hidden in it for at least another hour and a half.  I was worn out just watching this dog!

Needless to say, I am in desparate need of some sewing therapy right now! For lots of reasons, I’m not a huge fan of Mother’s Day, but the best present my family could give me this year would be several hours of uninterrupted sewing time!

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever have time to sew again.   When my kids were small, I thought that when I was in the empty nest phase of life that I would have lots and lots of time on my hands and that I would fill that time with sewing and crafting.  That has not proven to be the case.  There are days when I feel I have less time to sew and craft than I did when my girls were small.  I can’t really complain too much because both of my adult girls call quite often, and even though this takes away from my sewing time, their phone calls are always welcomed.

It really is odd that since moving to our new area a couple of years ago, hubby and I find that we almost have to “fight” to find time to exercise, and in my case, sew.  This is a slower paced area in many ways, and really should be more conducive to lots of exercise and sewing time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Perhaps it’s because it takes longer to travel to destinations such as the grocery store, church, and other assorted necessary destinations. 

Even though I haven’t had time to actually sew this week, I did manage to get the extra fabric (the fabric I needed to correct my sewing oops) washed.  It still needs pressing before I can start cutting out the extra front pieces for the little dress I want to start sewing soon.   Hmm…… I wonder if exercising my sewing skills would also count as physical exercise?

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

I managed to have another really big “oops” last night!  This time it isn’t a sewing oops.  Nope, last night I was chopping an onion to go into our main dish for supper and somehow my left thumb managed to get in the way and I sliced my thumb right along with a piece of onion!   At first, I thought I might need stitches because it bled and bled and bled and bled……..  I finally managed to stop the flow of blood and put a bandaid on the wound–applied very tightly of course.  Then I went back to preparing supper.  Do you know how hard it is to try to do things with a wounded thumb?!

Oh, yes, immediately after slicing my thumb and finally getting the blood flow stopped, I also managed to touch the same thumb (different area) to the hot skillet, but thankfully, I didn’t get a bad burn. 

This latest oops is the latest in a string of rather unfortunate events.  Saturday, I found a tick on my back and thankfully, it hadn’t settled in for a nice nap, but it had already bitten me and that just made me mad.  Lyme disease is prevalent in this area so it made me even madder that some foolish tick would decide that I would make a tasty meal.  As if that weren’t enough, I also found a different kind of tick crawling around on some clean clothes that had been folded and were ready to be put up!  That happened Sunday.  The tick got killed and the clothes got re-washed.

Somehow, these past few days just haven’t been the best of days for me.  I think I will go back to bed, sleep for a few days, and start over.

Now that I have a wounded thumb, I wonder if I will be able to sew?  Hmmm….it could be rather interesting.  Thank goodness I’m not left handed!  One of these days I’ll return to sewing and be able to find some good quality sewing time.  After all, I have a big sewing oops to fix and I really want to start making that dress soon because it looks like it will be sew much fun to sew.  Of course, my wounded thumb and my dog may have something to say about that.

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

Actually finding time to sew these days seems to be getting harder and harder.  At first, my new doggy, Angel, didn’t seem to want me to sew, but I think she’s ok with it now.  And it seems that my weekends are getting more and more hectic as well, not to mention that my routines (such as they are) keep getting interrupted as well.  I can’t complain too much, though, because I have a really great dog to keep me company during the day.  Also, our college aged daughter is coming home to visit us for a couple of weeks before she heads back to her university in another state to go to summer school.  

I don’t know if I’ll get to do much sewing during the next couple of weeks or not, but I can at least talk about sewing here.   After my big sewing oops that I wrote about yesterday, maybe I should take a break from sewing anyway.

Today I hope to wash the fabric that I bought to correct my sewing mistake and if I have time, maybe I can cut out the front of the dress correctly this time.  This particular pattern is really cute because has gathered sleeves (we used to call those “puffed sleeves”) with a cuff, and the bottom of the dress has a ruffle.  Even though I’ve looked over the pattern, I don’t remember if these sleeves are set in sleeves (www.sewseamless.com/Page8.html and www.sewseamless.com/Page17.html ) or whether these sleeves are sewn in flat (www.sewseamless.com/Page28.html , www.sewseamless.com/Page29.html , and www.sewseamless.com/Page30.html )  Either way, this is going to be a fun dress to sew.

There is also a collar (www.sewseamless.com/Page6.html and www.sewseamless.com/Page16.html  ) on this dress and those can be fun to sew as well.  However, this dress doesn’t have separate facings; the facings are included on the pattern piece, and this is what contributed to my big sewing oops when cutting out the pattern.  Instead of sewing a separate front and neck facing, I will be folding the fabric to create a facing for the front of the dress.  In some ways, this is an easier method for creating facings, but in another way, it’s a bit more complicated.  The front facings are easy, but I always have trouble with the small bias piece that is used as the neck “facing”.   Hopefully, that won’t be another sewing “oops” when I get to that point.

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

I love to sew; I really love to sew!  However, even though I’ve been sewing long enough to know what I’m doing and not get frustrated when I encounter sewing difficulties, I still make some really big sewing blunders once in a while.  And a really big sewing “oops” is just what I did when cutting out my latest sewing project. 

Before I cut out a pattern, I look over the pattern instructions to make sure that I understand the sewing instructions, and I also look at the correct pattern pieces for the view of the project that I am sewing.   This time, I am making a cute little girl’s dress that has a yoke; the main part of the dress is gathered and sewn to the yoke; and the dress buttons down the front.  I thought I had looked over the directions carefully, but….. what I didn’t realize until it was too late is that the facings were included on the main pattern piece instead of being a separate facing (front and back facings sewn together first and then sewn to the main body of the garment).  As a result, the pattern piece for the front of the dress was a little too wide for the fabric.  I have encountered this problem before, but that was when the pattern piece was cut on the fold; this was not cut on the fold and my usual way of resolving this sewing issue did not work at all!  One front piece was correct and the other front piece was much narrower then the other.  Hmmm……I thought and thought and then had several ideas of how to correct this problem, but nothing worked.  And of course, even though I bought extra fabric, I didn’t buy quite enough extra fabric so even though I had fabric left over, there wasn’t quite enough to cut out another front pattern piece.  I finally decided that the best thing to do would be to make a trip to JoAnn’s and get extra fabric to cut out the correct size pattern piece.

Last night, I went to JoAnn’s and was very lucky to find the exact same fabric almost immediately.  And it was on sale at 40% off, too!  So even though my sewing “oops” will cost me a litte extra time and effort, it wasn’t very expensive–about $5 is all the extra fabric cost me.   And I made sure to buy enough to cut out the correct size of the pattern piece.

This is the pattern that I’m working on now:

This time I’m just sewing the main dress and not the pinafore.  I am making the short sleeved dress shown on the left.

I’m not sure that you can see the fabric print very well here, but it’s a green watermelon print that is cute and summery.  I was very lucky that JoAnn’s still had the same fabric!

I thought I had a picture of my sewing oops to show you, but I can’t find it just now.  Maybe my camera was even embarrassed by my big sewing oops!

I’ll take another picture and show you the big sewing blunder in another post.

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

Well…..at least her name is Angel.  Actually, she’s a pretty good girl, but she still has so much puppy in her that she tends to want to eat lots of things that aren’t good for her–like the spool of sewing thread that I found in her mouth this morning. Angel still likes to chew and even though she has lots of good chew toys, she still wants to chew on the furniture.  And she also unstuffs her chew toys, plus she likes to eat the strings and destroy the fabric on one of her favorite toys–also liking to eat the fabric/thread.  Hmmm…….I wonder if this means that she might be a doggy will be soon be interested in learning to sew?

Angel was very nice and allowed me to sew yesterday.  I finished some volunteer sewing projects and cut out a little girl’s dress, but I made one very big boo boo and I need to go get some more fabric so that I can cut another front piece.  I’ll share my big sewing goof with you in another post.

In the meantime,

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

I think my dog and I are finally getting to know each other and she is beginning to settle in.  Yesterday, I discovered that she  likes to look out the window as I work on the computer.  There were lots of critters–birds, squirrels, rabbits, and lots of other activity, too.  All of this kept her entertained for quite a long time, and it allowed me to get some work done.  Today, the critters seem to be sleeping and I guess the people are, too because doggy is already bored and has wandered off to another room to explore.  Because she was entertained and had a full tummy, I also got to spend some quality time in my sewing room yesterday.

Right now, I’m still working on sewing projects for Odyssey Healthcare (www.odsyhealth.com ) which is a hospice in Gulfport, Mississippi. This is volunteer sewing, and I am really enjoying it.  It always makes me feel good to think that even sewing a simple handcrafted item might brighten somebody’s day just a little bit.  I have made various size pillows out of fabric scraps and I have also made four neck pillows as well.  Because they’re so easy and fun to sew, I’ve made 20 small tissue holders.  Those are fun to sew because they use up some of the  smaller fabric scraps, and they’re also a very quick, easy sewing project. Yesterday, I also machine embroidered two pillow tops.  Those will need to be sewn together today.  Other than filling the last couple of pillows with fiberfill, all I need to do is hand sew the other pillows closed and then they will soon be on their way to Mississippi.

A couple of other friends are also doing some volunteer sewing for Odyssey.  Michelle,  Sleepy Cat Hollow (www.sleepycathollow.wordpress.com ) is sewing some beautiful lap quilts.  Donna, This Year’s Dozen (www.thisyearsdozen.wordpress.com ) is making at least one custom jewelry item and has also sewn some small purses that she may donate as well.

When I finish sewing these small projects, I am going to start working on another little girl’s dress.  This is a pattern that I’ve had for a long time, but haven’t sewn yet.  It looks like it will be fun to sew!

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com