Sew Anything

Hmmm, come to think of it, Lloyd Dobler's jacket
reminds me of a Marcy Tilton pattern.  Another project?

I am at long last back to sewing.  My bathroom renovation is complete, and as soon as the Christmas decorations were put away, I started sewing with a vengeance. What's on my table?  What's not on my table is a better question!

I was so excited to get my "sewing room" back, that I really didn't know where to start.  The yellow and pink flannel is my daughter's Christmas break project.  They remain her WIP, as much as I'd love to just finish them myself before they turn into a UFO.  It is nice to see her interested in sewing, though.

The marsala ponte is another pair of Vogue 1378 pants for me.  As soon as I started laying out the tissue, I remembered that I had not finished lining the black dress, so that became my priority (top left of picture above, as well as the black thread and silk bias strips).  It took quite a while to hand stitch the lining and cover the armscye seams with silk bias binding, but the inside is now almost as pretty as the outside.

Thread's Fancy Fabrics Finalist!

Speaking of my daughter's black dress, it is a finalist in Threads(R) Magazine's Fancy Fabric contest.  What a thrill!  I am in awe to be a nominee, as there were many beautiful entries.  I would love your vote.  Link to the contest here.

At the end of the table, my husband's new cords that he ordered un-hemmed.  Normally, I wouldn't be too excited about these, but it was nice just to sew anything.

Thread and drapery weights for curtains in my daughter's bedroom.  We had to order the fabric, as Joann's doesn't keep enough home dec fabric in store inventory.

Even my kitchen sink overflows with sewing projects: attempting to darken a cotton/poly blend from cherry red to cardinal. It was fairly successful and now waits patiently to be cut.

What you can't see: a lot of PolarTec(R) from MillYardage.com that I ordered one cold winter day.  Idle hands really can be the devil's atelier.

Finally, I am sharing before and after photos of the DIY project that took most of my time in fall 2015.  I love the end result, but have decided that, at my age, sewing is a much more suitable hobby than laying tile on my hands and knees.  I repeated that mantra many times a day for many weeks.

Hint: the purple fish theme is "before." It dates back to my daughter's choice when she was 5 (she also had an "I Dream of Jeannie" bedroom theme).  The earth tones are so much nicer. We converted the basic builder's tub/shower to a tiled walk-in shower, among many other changes (it was a complete overhaul).

A New Gizmo

I love my sewing machine.  My grandmother gave it to me several years ago, after realizing that she just couldn't sew anymore. It may be my most treasured material possession.

It's a Bernina 930 -- a workhorse that I've used to sew clothing, draperies, quilts, upholstery and even a very heavy fabric awning.  It sews a multitude of stitches, many of which I have never even tried.  However, it doesn't make great buttonholes.  It makes decent 5-step buttonholes, but 9 times out of 10, I choose to hand-work a buttonhole or make a bound buttonhole.

Several times I have considered purchasing a newer computerized machine with all the fancy options, but I was mostly happy with my 930, and just couldn't justify buying a newer machine.  Then I realized that with my short shank presser foot adapter, I could use this with my 930:

Greist Vintage Buttonholer, style #1

It was patiently waiting for me on ebay for the low price of $18, which included shipping.  This model is from 1956, and it arrived in perfect shape.  It makes nice buttonholes with five little templates and even comes with a keyhole version.  I used it for the buttonholes on the waistband of my red pants.  It was fun to watch, simple to use and they came out very nicely.

The width of the stitch is adjustable and the stitching will appear thicker by running it around more than one time.  Here is the 1 1/8" keyhole buttonhole in contrasting thread:

I'm still figuring out the nuances of lining up the fabric and stitch width, but it's super fun, and I'm very pleased with my purchase. I'm a little worried that I may never hand-work a buttonhole again!

Spring Cleaning

My husband has been politely reminding me to get my sewing room cleaned up for quite some time.  Why does he care what my sewing room looks like, you ask?  Well, because my sewing room is actually our dining room!  It is really a nice place to work: it has great natural light, it's near the kitchen, and the table quickly expands to 96".  Unfortunately, I also tend to pile my fabric and patterns and tools on it, too.  So I agree, it can be quite messy.

Several years ago, we realized that we rarely used the dining room and my husband had the idea to convert it to a "craft" space for the kids and me.  A few friends (including real estate agents) warned us not to do it, but we had no intentions of selling in the near future.  We added some built-in cabinetry to house the supplies, as well as a pop-up mechanism for my sewing machine, so we can quickly hide it when we do use the room for dining.  In theory, it would work as both a formal entertaining space and a sewing studio.

In practice, I have taken over the entire space with my various projects and the cabinets are over-flowing with fabrics and patterns and notions, and things are rarely put out-of-sight.  Sometimes, I start a second (or fifth) project before cleaning up the previous project(s).  I'm just not very organized.

Fabric waiting to be sorted

So I began by pulling out the contents of the cabinets, piling it on the table and started sorting through it. In order to get a better idea of what I was storing, I measured the fabric and cataloged everything.  Even after throwing out the smaller, unusable pieces, I have over 80 fabrics in my stash!  Most of the fabric is left-over from previous projects, but 35 pieces are at least a yard in length, and 20 pieces are completely unused.  Before my clean-up, I had no idea that I had a hoarding problem.  Okay, I knew I had a hoarding problem, now I recognize the extent of it.  I have sworn off purchasing any more fabric until I've worked through some of the stockpile.

Fabric Catalog (in Excel)

The cataloging slowed the process a bit, but after seeing how much fabric can be stuffed into the cabinets, I wanted to have the inventory information at my fingertips, mainly so I can avoid any future impulse to run out and buy more fabric (at least until I've worked through most of this).  It's a simple Excel spreadsheet, making it easy to filter by color, content, size, etc., so in theory, it should be quite useful for me to find a fabric quickly.  We shall see.

I now have a lot more space for storage and I know where everything resides (or is supposed to reside).  I even set myself up with a little system where I have a fabric storage bin to hold everything I need for the current project (assuming there is only one), and it's easily stored during any hiatus in sewing or for entertaining dinner guests.  It sounds good, in theory.