Earlier this week my local quilt shop hosted a charity sewing event. I think it was the highlight of my week. It wasn’t that it was a morning sewing with others in a fabric store, no less, which could easily be the highlight of a typical week for me. No, the highlight was what we were doing that […] Read more…
Why I Failed the Me-Made-May Challenge & What I Learned
Me-Made-May is a month long, set your own level, challenge for people to wear their self-made clothing. My Me-Made-May ’17 challenge was to wear one me-made item every day and to mend/alter eight items from my mend/alter pile so I would have more me-mades to wear before the month was out. Well, it wasn’t a complete […] Read more…
Guide to Hand Stitches: The Slip Stitch & The Fell Stitch
Although you could sew most garments entirely by machine there are many times and many construction techniques that you could sew more accurately, with more beautiful results, and maybe, in the long run, sew it even faster, if you turned off your sewing machine and stitched by hand. This is a tale of two hand […] Read more…
A Little Bit Fancier Brush Roll Up
Have you ever needed to make a simple little something but you made it more complicated then it needed to be? Well, actually, I do that a lot. Maybe “complicated” is too negative, let’s use the word “fancy” instead. Like when you make a sandwich but you take an extra step and add lettuce. Fancy. I […] Read more…
Me Made May 2017
I did it. I signed up for this year’s Me Made May. It’s my second time now and I’m uppin’ the ante. Zoe, the hostess of and genius behind, Me Made May, says, “Me Made May ’17 is a challenge designed to encourage people who sew/knit/crochet/refashion/upcycle garments for themselves to wear and love them more.” If only all my […] Read more…
How To Make Fabric Necklaces
These necklaces appeared in a half-awake, half-asleep dream one recent Saturday and on the following Monday, I saw them on someone else’s Instagram feed. You can say great minds think alike or the collective consciousness or just simple timing but actually this simple tube necklace has been around in traditional craft and jewelry for a very long […] Read more…
How To Sew On a Button
Sewing on a button. My dad might say, “There’s a right way and a wrong way” but really, if you got that button reattached, with thread, then you succeeded. You “sewed” it back on. Job done. However, there is some truth to my dad’s way of thinking. There is a way, and it’s not very […] Read more…
Altering Your Clothes: How To Copy & Transfer Adjustments
There was a time I would wear whatever I made even if fabric puddled up on the garment in some places or it was too tight in others. I made it, I was going to wear it. The same went for ready to wear pieces too. I bought it, I liked it, I was going […] Read more…
How to Shorten a Dress with an Overlay
Once in awhile, someone will ask me a sewing question and sometimes I get to turn their question into a blog post. Such is the case with Rosemary’s question. Rosemary asked how to shorten a dress that has an overlay which is attached in the left side seam. What to Know Before We Go (aka; The […] Read more…
How to Patch Stretch Jeans so They Still Stretch
Adding spandex to denim was a genius idea. There may be no going back to the ol’ fashion itchy scratchy jeans after owning a pair of jeans with stretch. What can you not do in them?The only downside is they don’t always hold up like the 100% cotton twill weave denim. Is it the fiber […] Read more…