Best Practices: Pin Perpendicular to the Seam

I have a confession to make.  With few exceptions, I am a perpendicular pinner.  Though you may find it counter-intuitive, I am unapologetic.  No matter what your grandma taught you, I'm pretty sure I'll have you converted by the end of this post.

Wanna take that challenge? 

Top 10 Tips for Working with Silky Furry Fleece

1.  Accept that sewing with Silky Furry Fleece will turn your house into a Muppet barber shop.  The mess won't stay contained to your sewing space either -- you'll track it all over the house.  If you would never shave Chewbacca in your living room just for the joy of the thing, this is probably not your fabric of choice.

Okay, now that we're over that hurdle, read on.  (Take comfort in knowing I'm a classic Type-A freak.  If I can work with it, anyone can.)

How to Make 10-Second Prairie Points ... or in my case, dragon spines!

Prairie points have been around for eons, and many quilters use them to decorate the edge of a quilt.  But they're not just for quilts:  I used them this week to make the row of spines down the hoodie and tail on my son's Toothless dragon costume!

Like everything else, people have designed all manner of ways to make something really simple, well, hard.  For example, check out this tutorial for continuous origami prairie points.  I'm impressed -- it's really clever -- but I like the plain, simple way my mam-maw taught me.  And it takes -- literally -- like 10 seconds.

It goes like this...

Tutorial: How to Patch a Pair of Shorts...(or most anything, really)

When Big Boy hopped off the school bus last week, I immediately noticed a quarter-size hole in his favorite shorts.  I asked if he wanted me to patch them, and of course, he said yes.  I'm tickled that the kids think it's no big deal that I can patch things, shorten sleeves or make them a pair of "comfy pants" (read: fleece) and let out the hem the next year when they're too short.  For once, being taken for granted makes me smile. 

Best Practices: Changing Your Needle (Secret Tip!)



 



UGH! Changing out your sewing machine needle can be a total pain.  Once you pop that little lance out of the package, it's tough to tell what size or type it is.  That's no problem if you slide a new one in for every new project, as many experts recommend, but some projects are small and don't put much wear on a needle.  I try to get somewhere between 6-8 hours sewing time out of my needles.  (No, I don't keep a stopwatch by my machine.)

Sewlympics! Get a gold medal machine for the price of a little copper...

So you want to learn to sew, but you don't want to spend a fortune on a hobby you're not even sure about.  Let me show you how to butterfly-stroke your way to a machine worth its weight in gold medals for the price of a little copper.

Best Practices: Stabilize That Machine!

If you've had the pleasure pleasure of owning an antique machine and then purchased a new sewing machine, you may have noticed one major difference as soon as you picked up the box:  New machines are generally much lighter than their ancestors.  Older machines were typically cast iron beneath the surface, while new machines are filled with many more plastic parts.  Newer machines aren't quite the workhorses that their predecessors were, but if you're taking lessons or classes that require you to drag your machine around, you may not mind so much.  Lightweight = Easier to transport.  However, the first time said machine tips over or your serger goes dancing off the table and crashing onto Rover, you'll see the obvious downside.  (Ask me how I know...)

Best Practices: The Rat's Nest

I only ever had one sewing lesson -- It was the free lesson on how to use my machine that came with my purchase.  I had been cobbling together curtains, throw pillows and tablecloths to outfit our new home for months on my mother's old Singer and a temperamental secondhand serger when SuperHusband said I could have a new sewing machine for my birthday.  We'd been married less than a year, and a $300 gift was no small thing.  (It still isn't -- If anything, we're cheaper since the kids came along.)