sewing

Product Review: Ironing Pad

Posted by Nat on Aug 15, 2010 | 1 comment

I hate ironing.  No really.  I hate it.  I know of some people who love certain household tasks (my mom and my brother-in-law love to vacuum).  I have yet to find one that I look forward to. That being said, I love a product that makes any household task easier or better or faster.  This one that I have found does all of these things.  I love it.

We are blessed with a laundry room in our house, which is great.  Not having laundry in the garage seems to be an anomaly here in SoCal, so I was really pleased to know I would have a designated space for laundry and a place to keep chemicals and other things up high.  However, our laundry room is pretty narrow, and an standard, run-of-the-mill ironing board would not work.  I didn’t want to use our guest room or another room for ironing because I’d never take it down, so we’d always have piles of fabric and clothes needing to be ironed, and one more thing to do.  Up to this point I’ve been either a) avoiding ironing all together or b) using our old, over-the-door ironing board.  It’s loud- when I take it down it’s creaky, and when I iron it’s creaky.  The board itself is too small, too.

I wasn’t exactly in search of anything, but then I was looking through Improvements catalog and found this.  (Improvements is one of those catalogs that you never know what you’ll find when it shows up.  Lots of great things for your house, and then as you’re flipping through it they spring things on you like the “health and intimacy” pages- oh my.)

I love this thing.  It’s the answer to my ironing prayers.

Here’s my dryer before:

And here it as after- this was a great “forced organization” for me- I reassigned some things in about 10 minutes to make way for the pad (okay, and I also finally put away the carpet adhesive).  Now the dryer is always clear.  Love it!

What I love it for best is pressing/ironing fabric that is ready to be sewn into something.  I throw all the fabric behind the dryer and pull it forward as I’m ironing, like this:

(Sorry about these photos- they were taken at night.)

It’s great.  I have to shift it to the left or right as I go, but I still get ironing done so much faster, and having nothing to pull out or set up makes it so great.  I wouldn’t say I love ironing now, but I’m enjoying it much more than I used to because of this thing.

So far it’s held up great.  The only place I’ve noticed with any wear and tear is when I ironed some very small parts of sewing projects to press them, the area around it did show some heat damage.  Also, when it comes it reeks of plastic, so if you’re sensitive to smell you may want to open it outside and let it air out before bringing it inside.  Last possible negative is that it covers the lint filter on my dryer, so I have to remember to clean it.  If you have a fancy dryer like the one I dream of I’m not sure where the filter is, so it might not be an issue for you.

I think for $13 you can’t beat this thing.  I’m wondering if one could make one on their own with more fun prints or something.  Maybe I’ll add that to my list…

Happy Weekend!

Fuzz Patrol

Posted by Nat on Aug 12, 2010 | 2 comments

I realize that sewing machine maintenance is not the most amazing thing to post about, but it might help someone out, so I thought I’d post just in case.

I was having some problems with my sewing machine.  It kept jamming the thread when I was sewing simple things, and it was getting quite frustrating.  I emailed my friend Kari at Handmade Mommy to see if she had any thoughts on why it would be jamming up.  I call Kari when I really need help- I feel so lucky to have a friend who is not only smarter than me about sewing but also generous in sharing her knowledge.  Kari suggested I try a new needle, but I already had a new needle, so at least I knew that couldn’t be it.  Then I had a revolutionary thought:  consult the manual.

I pulled it out and looked in the back.  I love manuals that are written by people who don’t speak English.  They crack me up.   Thankfully this part of my manual is very well done (most of it is, really).  It said to clean things up a bit, so I flipped to the section that told me how to take off the needle plate and opened up my machine.  I laughed heartily when I took it off because this is what I saw (sorry for the big photos, but I thought it would be nice to see how bad it was in there!):

Then, when I removed the bobbin case, THIS is what I saw:

No wonder I was having problems!  And do you recognize that color?  Gee, I wonder if all of that copper-colored lint might have come from this project.  I used a small, soft paint brush (with no paint, of course) to get all of the lint out.  Now it runs like a champ.  Here’s the cleaned up “after” photo:

Much better!  I imagine one is supposed to do this often, so I will be checking underneath my machine’s “hood” a little bit more frequently.  Hope this is helpful to all my fellow sewers!

Eek!  Update:  I emailed Chris at Pick Up Some Creativity and shared my post with her.  She then so nicely posted this on her blog- I’m in a list with some pretty amazing bloggers!  Thanks, Chris!

Fabric Inspiration

Posted by Nat on Aug 1, 2010 | 3 comments

Oh my.  Oh my, oh my.

I went to the fabric store.  I had some coupons.  Oh dear.

I know- the white isn’t that exciting, but one has little polka dots on it- cute but simple.  The other white is flannel- lining for more crayon rolls so I can make them whenever I want, for whomever I want.  It’s all been washed.  It’s all ready for creating.  What shall I make?  Only time will tell.  I’m horribly excited and scared at the same time.  But I love it.  I stare at it.  I nearly drooled on it.

Here are a few close-ups.  I can’t wait to see where these babies pop up on this here blog- I wonder what they shall be….

Martha! I Made It! #2: The Duvet

Posted by Nat on Jul 22, 2010 | 15 comments

This is going to be a long post.  I hope you read it and validate my psyche, because after this project, I need some validation.  Whew!  I am, however, totally okay with you just looking at the pictures and then posting a comment (ha!).

This project started a long time ago in my head.  Michael and I have been dreaming of getting a king-sized bed for months and months.  When your husband is 6’3″, you need a big bed.  In mid-June Michael noticed that Macy’s was going to have a stellar sale on mattresses and said we should go ahead and do it.  I was so excited and petrified.  We chose gray for our master bedroom, and while I like the gray, I’ve had a hard time deciding what to do with the bedding.  I don’t want more gray bedding- to dreary and plain.  And supposedly gray is neutral, but I think it’s a tricky neutral.

I did have two sources of inspiration.  I saw this photo in a magazine and loved the look of orange, white and gray on the walls.  (My dog is cuter than that dog, BTW.)

Then I saw this photo in (you guessed it) Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts.  It’s on page 150/151.

(I took this photo with my iPhone and hope I don’t get in trouble for posting it, but couldn’t find it online anywhere).

I didn’t like the idea of having a white comforter. With a little black dog who likes to snuggle in our bed while we get ready in the morning, I could just see it getting covered with little black hairs.   And Michael and I are hard on things- white would just get dingy and dirty too quick.  But the tones in Martha’s book were a bit too muted for me- I wanted something a bit more striking.

I headed to BB&B and found some sheets.  I chose a copper color- it was as close to orange as I could find.  I did like it a lot.  I wanted to add a second color as an accent, so I chose an olive green that was near it because they just seemed to go together.  What follows is a sort of pictoral journey, if you will.  But if you don’t want to scroll through them, I’ll put the finished product first to save you the scrolling (aren’t I nice?).  🙂  Ta da!

(Please don’t look in my closet– it needs some work.  Should have closed the dang curtain…LOOK AWAY!)  I think the white pillows made it look complete.  I love it.  Really, I do.  I’m just not sure about the color combo with the gray walls.

Now, onto the process….ah, the process…

One of the wonderful things about Martha’s book is you get templates and patterns.  Lots of them.  This particular template was a doozy, though, since it’s soooooo big.  Many pages to tape together.  I also used that to cut out the teardrop templates.

I set to cutting out the appliques.  There were a lot of them.  It took me an entire morning- I caught up on a lot of Oprah.  The process outlined in the directions basically tell you to use the template to trace the pattern onto your sheet with transfer paper and a tracing wheel.  Transfer paper is also… a doozy.  I even bought the same transfer paper used in Martha’s book- you can find it here.  I wish I could tell you that I love transfer paper and it worked like a charm. I do not love transfer paper, and it did not work like a charm.  After 45 minutes of tracing the pattern onto my sheet, I pulled it away and there was very little to show for my lower back workout.  So I had to resort to my own brainpower because I wanted to get to sewing.  Bad.  What I ended up doing was placing the appliques and tracing them with disappearing ink.  I learned, however, that on this particular sheet at this particular time of year, the disappearing ink disappears quickly- overnight.  So I worked one circle at a time.  I placed the appliques on the inner circle and then sewed them down.  Then I worked my way out from there.

Tracing paper (and Sophie, wondering what in the world I’m doing)

One of my learning moments was the stitching for this project.  Martha’s book talks about using a satin stitch, but I couldn’t find anything in my sewing manual about satin stitching.  So I zig-zagged the appliques to the copper sheet (Martha and her editors said that would be okay).  Let me tell you- a king sized sheet- that’s a lot to work with.  This was my world for several days:

Things moving along…

Here was my problem, though- sometimes the zig-zags turned out okay (pre-trimming)…

And other times they pulled away- either due to my poor stitching skills or they just pulled out of the threads- a little bit of both.  When I saw this happening, I became a bit depressed.  I spent so much time on this project, and felt like it wasn’t going to pan out.  Then (enter angel chorus music) I asked my friend Kari for help.

Thankfully, Kari didn’t have to make a special trip- she was already coming over for a get together.  I brought her back to check it out and she set me straight on how to satin stitch.  Basically you set the zig zag setting on your machine at opposite ends to make it as wide and as close together as possible, and ta-da!  Satin stitch- looks much better, eh?

Once I finished up the satin stitching (several days later) I was finally ready to make the duvet.  I followed the directions in Martha’s book on page 147.  I’m glad I took my time with this part.  My white sheet was significantly larger than my copper, AND they were both larger than my comforter, so I had some work to do.

Ready to sew it up!

Up close in our room.

And the final product again.  *sigh*  I love it.

New Series on Crafting Crazy: Martha! I Made it!

Posted by missmusic1976 on Jul 21, 2010 | 6 comments

I love Martha Stewart.  For a while I was in denial.  I was one of those people who was all like, “That Martha- she’s too perfect.  Who really lives like that?  I mean, it’s nice and all, but…..”  Then I couldn’t deny it any more. I just like the look of nearly everything in her magazines.  I don’t watch her show very often mainly due to a lack of time, but I do like the simplicity of the Martha Stewart Style.  So, I gave up, gave in, and now I’m a Martha Wannabe.  I have a long way to go.

Enter her new treasure, “Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts.”

Soon after I purchased my sewing machine I went out and bought this book.  (Thankfully I had some help with a generous gift from our PTA at school- it was Teacher Appreciation Week and we all got $50!  Nice, eh?)  I actually went to Barnes & Noble and pulled a bunch of sewing books and literally sat on the floor and drooled over patterns and pictures of things I’d love to know how to make (remember- no idea what I’m doing).  I ultimately chose this book because it has a little bit of everything- clothing, gifts, doggie coats, you name it.

I thought it might be nice to showcase what I make from this book.  It’s one thing to look at a project in any book and say, “Hey- that’s rad.  I could make that.”  It’s another thing entirely to follow the directions (I’m not always good at that) and see if you actually get what’s pictured.  And since I’m such a novice, I think at the very least I will give a good laugh, right?  So here we go:  Installment #1 of, “Martha!  I made it!”

On page 311 in the book are “Felt Baby Shoes.”  They looked adorable, and awfully simple to make. First I just went to Michael’s (or Joann Fabrics- can’t remember) and bought a cheap sheet of crafting felt in pink and white.  I wanted to see if they would turn out right using the pdf pattern included with the book.  In less than 15 minutes I had an adorable pair of shoes, but because the felt only cost 29 cents/sheet, I could tell they were not going to last very long.  So I headed to the back of the Encyclopedia and looked up where Martha got her felt. I love the back of the book- you can look up where they purchased certain fabrics and such- not everything is listed, but in this case I was lucky.  I surfed over to Magic Cabin and ordered some of their wool felt.  When it showed up I started drooling it was so nice.  And here’s my end result:

First and most importantly, meet Clare.  Isn’t she adorable?

Clare’s mommy, Elizabeth (E for short) agreed to let Miss Clare model my shoes.  Of course, Clare gets to keep them, too.  I wanted to see if they would actually fit a baby’s foot.  For reference, Clare is 3 months old.

Here are the shoes- I think they turned out adorable.  You’ll see that I added a little heart to the bottom of one for flair.  I know- I’m so forward-thinking, right?  No one does that, I’m sure.  Ha.

And now my critique of the directions and steps in the book.  I think these will be helpful to anyone else in case they decide to make something from this book.

This How-To was great– the pattern was easy to use, the felt is very easy to work with.  I do need to buy some smaller pins because I did stick myself a lot since I only had standard size pins.  I used a 1/16″ punch for the little holes just as they described and it was very easy to use.  I have to wonder if gluing rick-rack, as they suggest would hold up, but that will have to wait for another pair.

Other notes:  In the future I will not use buttons.  These shoes barely fit Miss Clare, so these are best used as a newborn gift so that mommies can decide when to use them. Because Clare is 3 months old, the buttons had to be readjusted a bit and they did work, but I would worry about the felt not holding up to her little kicks and such since the fit was a bit snug around her cute ankles.  Clare was also kicking up a storm, so they were hilariously challenging to get on.  I did use a crafting knife to cut the button holes- it was very easy, but I’m glad I used the sharp knife and not a pair of scissors.  This allowed me to be more exact.

A few other photos to share:

The shoes on Miss Clare’s adorable feet (this girl has long toes!)

Full shot- I feel horrible for cutting off her head, but still- is she not just the cutest?  Talk about baby fever… E said that she wore them for quite a while and didn’t seem bothered by them at all, which is also nice to know.

Thanks, E, for letting me use Miss Clare!  I can’t wait to see what other shoes I can come up with.  I have all sorts of color combinations in mind.

Next up on Martha, I Made It!:  a duvet cover.  Yikes.  It’s coming!

If you got this far, please leave a comment and show me some love- thanks!

What was I thinking?

Posted by Nat on Jul 11, 2010 | 2 comments

….or WAS I even thinking?  Not sure.  I will have more to post about this soon, but thought this might entertain some of my crafty friends.  If you hear moans and groans of frustration, it’s probably me.