Work on it Wednesday

Sheesh! I'm working on trying to catch up. I was buried under the Halloween costumes (I still need to get it together and post a picture! what a slacker!. Now, I'm hard at work on Christmas gifts. We're going to see family for Thanksgiving so the pressure is on to knock out some of these gifts so I can take them with me. That won't leave much time for much else since I'm a notoriously slow crafter. I've got a long list of holiday sewing planned to...now just to find the time for it. Sometimes I wish I could clone myself, lol.

Work on it Wednesday

Continuing on the Halloween sewing. It's a perfect day to be at the machine too since the weather is rainy and gloomy. I've finished the Cinderella costume for which I was pronounced "the best mom ever!" I'll get a picture posted as soon as the weather brightens up. I've started working on E.'s costume. It will be pretty quick and then I need to make something for M. I'll finish this stuff up in the next week and then start planning for the Holiday sewing. I still have a few gifts to sew up and I'd like to do an outfit for the kids to take the picture for our family Christmas card.

Work on it Wednesday

All quilt, all the time. I'm going to do some hardcore sewing today. I'm almost, okay actually more like half way done with the quilt I'm working on. But, I will finish it well ahead of the deadline, woo hoo. I might be able to get into this quilting thing since it's turning out much better than I could have imagined. I also seriously need to decide if I'm going to do end of the year teachers gifts. I think it's a weird peer pressure thing around here, but I also know that teachers are underpaid and under appreciated. I really like M.'s teacher so I'll probably do a couple of market bags or something for her. I should be able to whip those up pretty fast, no pattern needed.
Interesting sidebar in my quilting adventures to share. You may know that I love vintage machines and have a few. Well, I've been piecing the quilt top on my lovely Viking, Brownie (I know so original, right). Well, last evening when I was working on attaching one of the borders and I noticed the upper thread tension was just awful. Now you must understand that my Brownie is absolute sewing perfection and I had a real full blown panic attack when I thought something was wrong with it. I rethreaded it (always a simple place to start your troubleshooting). Made sure the bobbin was in correctly, changed the needle. I even broke out my manual. I had to crank the tension way up just to get the stitch a bit tight, but it still looked awful and so different from Brownies normal stitch. What could be wrong? Finally I thought, hmmm...let me change the thread. I had been using a small spool of cream color Coats and Clark XP. I don't have a problem with C&C thread, although I prefer mettler or gutterman, but you know those sales will get you every time. However, something I hadn't noticed was that the thread was considered "heavy". I must have purchased it to sew purses and grabbed it without thinking. Brownie did not like it at all. She's a girl who knows what she likes and C&C ain't it. I switched it out for some gutterman and holding my breath I made a test sample and it was gorgeous as always. I'm not ashamed to admit that I almost started crying when I thought something was wrong with my Brownie. I know it silly, but there it is. Luckily it was an easy fix and I'm back with my foot to the pedal sewing away.

Holiday Gift Planning

It's know it's only April, but my abundance of yarn and fabric, along with the sage words of my dear friend Linda have inspired me to do handmade gifts for the majority of gifts I will be giving this year. I have been carefully considering all the people in my life and what would be the perfect gift for them. I've scoured magazine, my patterns (both knitting and sewing), looked through my abundant stash and I think I'm ready to begin. I have some birthday presents that I need to get done and then it's full steam ahead for Christmas sewing/knitting. It's kind of exciting and a real challenge to myself to endeavor to gift handmade. I'm not the fastest knitter in the world and while I can sew quite well, finding the time and motivation to do so isn't always a reality. I hope others will join in and try to gift more handmade items, even if you didn't make them yourself. I think it's wonderful to support the artisans in our communities.
What will I be making you ask? Well, I can't tell you now can I, or it wouldn't be surprise.

Simply Christmas

I had to post a picture of O's Christmas dress that I just finished today and share a funny story with you. I'm pleased with the outcome. It's a very simple pattern from the Martha Pullen favorite appliques book. Very straightforward. Well, I decided to embroider a super cute Christmas tree that I got from SewForum (love that site!). Normally it wouldn't matter, but since I wanted the design to be on the front I carefully marked the piece I thought was the front...notice I said thought. I go through 10000+ stitches, 5 thread changes, sew it up, making sure I carefully press, turn and stitch my hems, attach the rickrack to the hem and was just about to mark where the buttons went when I realized that I had stitched out the design on the back of the dress! I was so annoyed, lol! It turned out not to be such a bad thing as my first stitch out was not very good and I needed to really loosen the tension on it. The second attempt was much improved and I was super careful and applied the design to the front this go around. It's just in time for O's Christmas program tomorrow. Oh and aren't the Christmas tree buttons just the cutest. I got them in a bag of buttons from Chez Ami...perfect.