Scotts, Pt 2 (Sewing Sundays Edition!)

One of my favorite things to browse at antique shows and such is linens.  I love to see their monograms and Scott's did not disappoint!

I thought the following monograms were spectacular!  I am working on hand monogramming and would love to do linens with one like the first one below!

What am I thinking?

I am not normally one to set goals and advertise them to everyone.  It just is not my thing!  Instead, I prefer to keep to my little ole' private self!

Today, I am going to change that, I made a few goals for myself recently (and to make you know I am serious, I have taken steps to help achieve said goal already!).

1. Stop drinking my obsession...AKA Dr. Pepper - I have made it 1 week with only 1 Dr. Pepper (That is a miracle...I also have avoid my favorite fast food place where I would drive thru just to get a Dr. Pepper on their perfect ice so that helps too!)

2. Start walking regularly - My friend E and I walked twice last week for about 1.5 miles and have plans to meet up again on Tuesday for another walk (Go ME!)

3. Be a regular blogger - Yeah you are a priority now!

4. Try more new recipes, especially Gluten Free options since Hubby's fam is not gluten friendly

5. Take more pictures - This one needs some work because I have no clue where the camera charger ran off too...I hope I find it next week because with no battery charge I take no pictures

6. Finish the birthday dress for my friend J's baby...It's due by the 15th of April but I want it done by 1st of April!

7. Sign up for another sewing class...I am so excited about this hobby but I feel like I still need some direction

Some of these hobbies are possible due to the extra time I have on my hand from LML being out of town for work most days.  Well I am off to get ready for Sunday lunch then church (small hometown = Catholic church falls in the afternoon when the priest can make it!).

Sewing Sundays

Last week, I covered a few things I have done to organize my closet, but I should have taken a before picture so that you can understand the need to write two different posts on it!

When LML's grandmother passed away, I inherited a large collection of sewing items.  In fact, some of my favorite things I inherited were here wooden thread spools with the original thread.  One day I am going to figure out how to display these items, since I cannot bring myself to use.

I also inherited loads of embroidery floss from LML's grandmother.  I have finished sorting through all the DMC brand and placing it on the corresponding labeled bobbin.  I still have a box full of other brands of floss.  They are in good shape, but I am not sure that I would want to tackle a project with floss that I may not be able to match if I run out of it.

Source: DMC

I even have these items sorted in numerical order to ensure that I can always find the color that I need.  

Another thing, I inherited was all of her buttons in a few tins.  They were a jumbled mess in these tins, so I just simple went through them and gave away all of them that I would never use.

While my closet is no where near completely organized, I do think I have made some progress.  

One of the things that I have really gotten into recently is smocking.  I have finished smocking an insert for a friends's baby, but I still need to assemble a dress (that project will be coming up in future posts).  And a goal I have for the new year is to learn how to make a bishop dress and pleat it myself.  (I know I am lucky that my mother in law has two pleaters that I can use when needed!)

With my future sewing in mind and my love of smocking plates, I think a container like this one would make for a perfect place to organizer both patterns and plates!

Source: Art Bin

Do you have any suggestions on how you organizing your sewing area?

Brain Dump

A. Camera Card Reader is stilling missing. I hope to locate tonight or else I will have to purchase a new one in the morning!

B. Work cracks me up...Where I work, I deal with forms that people fill out.  People who must list their name and address among many other things!  First of all some people scratch out what they write to the point where you are not sure what they want you to update.
    Additionally, there are students in my area who do not know their own address.  This just baffles me!  How can you live somewhere and not know your address?  What if you have an emergency?

C. Winter Storm 2010 (do not laugh those of you who reside in places that actually get winter weather regularly) still has the grocery stores wiped out! I know that before the storm you have the usual run on milk and bread...not that I understand it!  But it is Wednesday by gosh sakes and we still have no produce in the grocery store!  I had a friend over for her birthday dinner last night and I had to defrost a meal I had frozen since there was nothing to make her at the store!

D.  I have my first owner's class for my new sewing machine in the morning before work!  I am excited (probably doubly excited that I would have been if they had not cancelled my sewing class last night!).  Yes, I am a dork!

E.  I am heading to Atlanta this weekend to see my great-aunt and great-uncle.  I have not seen them in over a year.  I miss them!  I wish they were in better health and visited my hometown still!  I hope to make some of my olive dip and maybe one other item to take over to visit them but the grocery store best restock first!

F.  I have not cooked much this week due to item C and the state of the grocery store.  This weekend I did cook. LML asked me to cook up the potatoes that were going bad, so I decided that I would make gnochi out of them.  Let me just say, I burned my thumb really badly while peeling my boiled potatoes!  It was not pretty and I was not much fun for a while!  It is healing up right now pretty well, I will give credit to my mother-in-law's Christmas gift of homemade hand cream (Baby lotion, vitamin E cream and 1 other ingredient I forgot all mixed together).  My gnochi was a rated a 6 out of 10 by both LML and myself.  I think the dogs rated it a 10 plus.  They all three kept begging for more after I slipped them their initial bite.  I think I am going to try again since mine was too dense...I blame myself for this!  I know I can do better.  And next time, I will be more careful with my hot potatoes!

Sewing Sundays

This is a different type of Sewing Sunday, in that I am sharing a few things that I use to help organize my sewing closet!

When I was just sewing to mend items back in college, my mother purchased me a set of snapware containers like the one below with a divider trays in one of the levels.  I have used this regularly as my portable sewing box.

Source: Snapware

Source: Snapware

In the past year, I have out grown my one box and have been looking for something else to help organize the mess in my closet.  The day after Christmas at Tar-Get I discovered they had the holiday version of this container sans the dividers on sale.  I grabbed the last one eagerly. I mean red and green handle does not mean I cannot use it regularly!

Source: Snapware

I then purchased a set of dividers at Jo-Ann's Fabrics.  I also distributed the number of boxes between the two so that each set has three boxes (as opposed to one set of four and one set of two!).  

I also folded up all of my fabrics and placed them inside a bag, so that they are all contained and not drifting throughout the closet.  

Currently for my threads, both embroidery floss and machine ones, I have a few different boxes that I inherited to contain them.  For Christmas my Sister in Law, henceforth called Miss Marvelous, received an awesome container from her husband.

Source: Art Bin

I asked him about it and found out about it.  After organizing everything that I could, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a container online.  Currently, it is in transit to my house and should arrive tomorrow!  Can we say, "Yippee!"

Tune in Next week for more on my organization and a picture of my closet now!  

Also, please be sure to check out the give away that I am hosting!

Fabric Inspiration

I am in a holding pattern right now in terms of my house.  There is a lot of stuff that I would love to do for my house, but I need to hold off and save up to pay for them.
Today, I was browsing the internet for inspiration to make curtains for my bedroom.  The last room that needs curtains in our house.  I have a vision in my head of just simple floor to ceiling curtains in a bold blue pattern.  I am leaning towards geometrics, but that is not all I am considering.

Source: Lewis and Sheron Textile Co

Source: Lewis and Sheron Textile Co

Source: Lewis and Sheron Textile Co

Granted currently, all I am doing is considering fabrics until we save up some money.

What projects are you thinking about tackling next?

Sewing Sundays

Recently, I made curtains for my Living and Dining Rooms.  I have had them complete since the week before Thanksgiving, save the final hemming.  The week before Christmas, LML and I finally hung the curtains so I could pin them.  After I pinned them, I removed them and hemmed them.

The curtains are the in the Background (sorry I do not have a more detailed Picture!)

I like Curtains that sweep the floor. LML wanted them to not quite touch the floor, Can you tell who won??? 

Sewing Sundays

I know this is a Wednesday and not a Sunday.  I do have a calendar ya'll!  Unfortunately, I failed to make two sewing Sundays in a row, and this project is a super special Christmas Sewing Project that would not make any sense at all after Christmas!

I made my sister- and brother-in-law an advent calendar!  I am not going to pretend that I am perfect, but I do think this a cute and personal gift that almost anyone would like!

Materials Needed:
1.5 Yards Base fabric (I used a cheap muslin)
1.5 Yards Fusible fleece (go ahead and cut it at the fold so that it is the width of the base fabric when folded in half)
1/2 yard each of two coordinating festive fabrics to make the pockets, numbers and letters
Plenty of coordinating thread for the festive fabrics
A WHOLE LOT of straight pins
Print out of the numbers in a font you like and make sure that they are big enough
36-40 inches of cording, ribbon or rope to make hanger
1 Dowel rod
Hot Glue Gun
(I used a ruler to ensure that I evenly spaced them, so I would recommend this unless you have a great eye)

1.Wash and dry all fabric.  (Believe me do not ever skip this step!)  Then press with an iron all fabric to remove wrinkles.  

2. Fold the base fabric (in may case cheap muslin) so that the selvedges meet.  Crease the fabric with an iron. Here is where you have a choice to make you can either be a cheater like I am sometimes and not cut your fabric apart and just use the crease and skip the next step (go to step 4).  I was not on this project but believe me I do not judge.

3. Cut the fabric along the crease.  

4.  Put right sides together so that both wrong sides are facing out.  I take the time to pin it in a few places.

5.  Adhere the fusible fleece to one of the wrong sides according to the directions provided by manufacturer.  

6. Follow the directions here to do a French seam on one long side only.   (or if you already know, do it!) - Believe me you are going to want less product to sew through when attaching the pockets in a bit.  

7. Cut out 10 pieces out of the festive fabric of 17 inches wide by  5 inches long.

8. Cut out 5 pieces from the fusible fleece that are 16 inches wide by 4 inches long.

9. Again follow manufacturer's direction to attach the fusible fleece to one of the wrong sides leaving more fabric at the top that is not attached to the fleece.  

10. Put together two wrong sides of the festive fabric and sew a French seam on ONLY THREE SIDES!

11.  Repeat with the remainder of the cut out pieces.  

12.  Put this fabric right side out and press smooth.  Then fold down the excess of the fabric to the back and press.  

13. Sew a decorative stitch about 1/4" inch down from the top all the way across the fabric lengthwise.  This seals up the pieces.  (At this point, I usually divide up the piece into 5 equally sized pockets and baste a stitch or two for my reference.) Do this for all five long pieces.

I pinned the numbers into the fabric to keep them from shifting while I was cutting.  

14.  I then took the second festive fabric and cut out the numbers using the template I had cut out onto card stock.  If you do not have card stock, you can just trace the pattern out that was cut out of regular paper.  (Note: If you want to speed things up, cut out little squares and stack them so that all of the fabric faces the same direction.  I did not take this step and got a few numbers that were cut out in the wrong direction...oops!)

Do you see my little helper?

15. Pin the numbers within the corresponding sections on each long piece.  

16.  Sew the numbers to the long piece of the fabric using an applique technique.  (Here is a tutorial!)

The settings I used!

Some finished long pieces

17. After all numbers have been attached, lay out the base fabric with the side not attached to fleece's right side facing up.  You are now going to pin the long pieces to the base fabric.  (Take care to not pin through the fleece.)  As you can see, I spaced my long pieces about 2 1/2 inches apart, but you can play with it to match your own personal aesthetic.  

18.  Now you are going to applique all long pieces to the panel on three sides. 

19.  After all long pieces are attached, you go back and put a decorative stitch between each number at the mark where you basted a stitch or two.  This separates and defines the pockets.  

18.  At this point, you are going to put wrong sides together and sew a French seam on the bottom and the other long side.  This leaves the top open. 

19.  Turn the calendar right side out.  Now you have a choice, where this can be the end of your sewing, or you can add their name to the top like I did for mine.  

20.  I cut the name out of the same fabric as the numbers and then appliquéd it to all layers since when I tried it with one layer, it bunched up.  

21.  Once you are done, take a dowel rod that is 1 inch longer that you calendar is wide and fold the excess fabric at the top over it.  Pin it so that you you have just a smidgen

22.  Make sure that the rod pokes out about 1/2 inch on each side of the calendar.  Using a braided cord, rope or even ribbon, you are going to make the hanger.  Start on one end with a hot glue gun and draw a bead over about 1/2 inch length of the rod.  Wrap the rod with the rope, braid or ribbon. 

23.  Figure out how much you want the calendar to hang down and leave enough slack and then repeat the hot glue and the wrapping of the other end of the dowel rod.  

You now have a advent calendar that you can fill with presents or as I did with cards saying verses for each day.  This can start a wonderful tradition in your own family or make a perfect gift for you friends and family.  Just be warned, this can be slightly time consuming!

Sewing Sundays

I still owe you all pictures from my curtains, but that will have to wait to next week.

Over the past year, I have learned to smock.  I know this sounds like something our mothers or even our grandmother would do.  Well the truth is, my mother and mother-in-law both smocked.  I adore the way smocked bishop dress look on little girls and boys look equally adorable in bubbles, among other items.

So far, I have just smocked one piece on an insert.  I hope to start smocking a dress for my friend's baby girl soon so that I can learn house to smock and assemble a quality dress.

I know many of you think I am crazy, but smocking is quite simple and easy to complete.  If you are interested in smocking, I have quite a few of my family's various smocking plates on my email.  Let me know if you are looking for a certain motif, I might be able to help you out.

Sewing Sundays

I am trying to start a weekly blog post on sewing, I cannot promise that I will post something every week.  I can promise that I will try to post as frequently as possible.

My Old Singer (sorry best picture on file)

As I have already stated, I just received a new sewing machine in advance for my Christmas gift.  I already love my machine, but it was not a decision that was made lightly.  I received an older model singer last year  from LML's late grandmother.  It is a very simple yet reliable machine.  It is still loved and will continue to reside in my house to be my "back-up" machine.

I used that original machine to make a few major projects for my house.  My first curtains (our of drop clothes) for a guest bedroom and currently making my curtains for my living and dining rooms.  The curtains for the living and dining rooms need to be hemmed, then they are ready to hang.  I also made a few baby slings for friends who had children and I should never forget my first ever sewing project, the apron.

Up next in my project list, I plan to make the valences for the living and dining room windows.  I also want to go ahead and learn to make heirloom quality clothing prior to having kids of my own.

I also hope to make my sister-in-law a smocking travel caddy so that she can transport her smocking supplies in one handy container.