Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Bonnie Woven Top in Orderly Fashion
Friday, May 5, 2023
Two Zip Hipster Bag #3, modified
A few years ago (oh gosh, it’s been over 11 already!), Jess asked me if I would make her a Two Zip Hipster bag from the pattern by Dog Under My Desk. I did so, and it was such a great pattern that it began my love for all DUMD patterns, most of which I ended up testing after they were written. She then thought it would be fun if I made a second Hipster out of another of the canvas fabrics she designed. Since I thought it’d be fun, too, I agreed. So this one is the bag she carried for many years until it finally wore out (she had gifted the first one).
Fast forward 11 years, and she asked me if I’d like to make her another Hipster! Who am I to say no? Ha! This time she’d seen some fabric I’d gotten in a terrific grab box I’d come across, and she asked if she could have it for the bag… even though it was blue, which was MY favorite color and hers is orange. 🤔 She had an idea of how she wanted it to look. Sure, why not?
The fabric turned out to be some really tough water-proof stuff. It was a good choice for sewing on that new machine of mine. I just love the perfect stitches it produces!
Thursday, April 13, 2023
LSZ-1 and Tiny Bin
If you read my last post, you’re probably curious about that blue machine sitting in my new sewing room. First and foremost… no, I did not replace my faithful 52-year-old Kenmore that I bought new all those years ago! I could never part with that machine. I’ll probably take it with me to the grave. (Not really. I think it’ll be inherited by my sewing protégée, Miss Courtney. She’s already experienced in using it.) It has served me well and made it through everything I asked it to, albeit sometimes with some hand cranking and an occasional lockup and/or broken needle when the seams got too thick. I still love that machine.
That being said, I’d thought long and hard about getting a heavy duty machine for those thick seams I mentioned. It would just make my life easier. Bags nowadays seem to be calling for more thick fabrics, particularly vinyls, and of course they make the seams bulkier. I had gone so far as to check out some heavy duty machines online, and I had picked out the one I’d hypothetically get. Then came Black Friday last November. It had a pretty good sale price! I thought some more, even debating until the last day of the sale. I could resist no longer and went for it. I also bought the made-for-it table that it’s sitting in.
So here it is, the Sailrite LSZ-1 (now upgraded and just called LSZ).
Labels: sewing, sewing machine
Saturday, April 8, 2023
I moved!
Grab a cup of coffee… this is a long post!
Did you notice the title? Yes, I moved… my sewing room, that is. I’d been thinking about it, for years really, of how I could make things handier. My sewing room was in our downstairs bedroom, which was also our guest room, so when anybody (namely Jess & Alex) came to stay, it required monumental effort to rearrange and pack away stuff so they could get at the bed have a reasonable amount of room to set their things and move around. Then when they left, I’d have the task of making it into a sewing room again (and trying to remember where I’d stashed stuff to get it out of the way). It was not a good arrangement at the best of times, crowded and always with a bed in the way (although the bed usually held a lot of fabric, so there was that) and a NordicTrack skier that I use regularly. It could be tricky just getting from the sewing machine to the ironing board.
I thought of getting a futon or something to replace the bed. That way it would be folded up and out of the way in between visits. But that still would make for a lot of moving stuff around for visits. My other thought had been to get rid of the twin bed in the third bedroom upstairs and make that into my sewing room. No one ever used that bed anymore; it served more for holding fabric, as the room contained most of my fabrics… and other stuff that was just stored in there. The question was, was the room big enough to hold everything I needed it to? I wanted to add a cutting table so that I’d no longer have to use our dining table and put whatever I was working on away every time we needed to eat.
I was discussing this with Jess one day before Christmas, and she said Alex, being the engineer, loved to arrange rooms, and she volunteered his help. He arrived last Christmas armed with graph paper and ready to get to work. He drew out the room to scale, and then he and Jess made to-scale drawings of everything on my list that I had made of sewing room essentials and their measurements. Here’s the tentative room with its arrangement:
Labels: Sewing room
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Mav Pack
Linds Handmade Designs has done it again! She already has another new pattern out, just released yesterday, in fact. I’d like to see inside that mind of hers… it must be constantly swirling with ideas for new bags that just MUST come out into a pattern!
I was fortunate once again to be able to test the latest, the Mav Pack. It’s a smallish (about 7”x5”x2”) sling bag that can comfortably be worn on one’s front or back. It’s even a fun size to use for a child. Here’s the front view of mine.