Deb's Sewing Room

For New and Future Mothers

Deb's Sewing Room — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:13:08 +0000

Stephanie became interested in making cloth diapers recently. They turn out very nice and since more and more new mothers are using the cloth diapers it seems to be a good venture to begin. I tried making diapers and diaper covers when my first grandchild was born. I did not find them easy to make, but perhaps I didn’t have a good pattern? I thought…how hard can it be? I used to make my own diapers, but they were just simple shaped diapers and then I used Gerber plastic pants over them. The diapers these days include a layer of waterproof fabric and make them much easier I think. Before I made my diapers I used the kind of diaper that I had to fold or rather figure out how to fold! I am not sure they make those kind of diapers anymore. So, all this has me thinking of other things new mothers need after childbirth. I know that nursing brings with it leaking, so I decided to try may hand at making nursing pads. When I was nursing I took men’s cotton handkerchiefs, cut them in half or quarters and stuffed them in my bra! Now they have all kinds of wonderful things they didn’t seem to have in 1980! So I have made a few pair of nursing pads. One pair I have given to Stephanie’s sister-in-law to try out. They have a layer of PUL which is leak proof and 2 layers of cotton flannel and on the outside of all these layers is Organic Bamboo Fleece. I want her to try these and “critique” them for me to see how they absorb and feel. There are concerns with waterproof pads not allowing enough air through and possible infection. However, I have found many sites that use the PUL in pads. The main thing I think with those kind pads it is important to change them often I suppose. So, today I made 3 pair of pads but I left out the PUL. These nursing pads have darts in them to give contour and a better fit inside the bra. The ones I made today are made with 4 layers of Cotton Bamboo Fleece. This fabric is 4 times more absorbent than other cottons. The feel leads me to believe that these would be good for heavy leakage as they are quite thick. I may try some that are 3 layers thick and see how they feel. This picture doesn’t do the pad justice as the contour distorts it in the 2 dimension of the picture.

New Design Board

Deb's Sewing Room — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:44:46 +0000

I just spent a wonderful weekend with family, relaxing and enjoying the sunshine and visit! Well, actually I just finished recuperating (I spent the first day back relaxing and doing nothing). So today I got moving. I forced myself to get out of bed earlier than I have been and actually making the most of the day. I was determined to “accomplish” something today. I had been eyeing a couple pieces of fabric that I had in my sewing room that would make some nice pillowcases, so that is what I was determined to do! But, first I had to spend the first hour or so letting my body recuperate from the night’s sleep…have to sit in my chair and have a cup of coffee, then get off to the shower. Then I was ready for work. I pulled out the fabric and since I was not going to embroider these pillowcases I didn’t need to do much but cut the fabric and sew them together. Not quite sure why this has taken me most of the day, but I do have to rest in between steps I guess. Anyway, on to the title of this post. Over the weekend my sister so kindly gave me a metal thing (I tried to call it a board), but it hangs on the wall and you can attach magnets to it and I thought when I saw it that I could attach items that I make to be photographed or I could use it for a design board for quilting, just need to use a magnet to attach things. So Doug put it on the wall in my embroidery room and stuck the magnet things that she threw in with the deal. I was anxious to get going on putting something on it to take a picture of , so here it is:

So, what I found was that the magnets were not as strong as I thought, so it took a lot of them to hold the pillowcase up. Oh, by the way, this is one of the pillowcases that I made today. I made a set of two, but will sell them separately if needed. I will be posting these to my Etsy store. As for the new design board, I believe I will need to find some very strong magnets to hold my designs! But, thank you to my sister for the board!

Machines

Deb's Sewing Room — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:37:30 +0000

I have several sewing and crafting machines in my house. I have a mid arm quilting machine (Babylock Quilter’s Choice Professional), a sewing machine (Babylock Quilter’s Choice), a serger (Babylock Imagine), two embroidery machines (Janome MB 4 and a Brother Disney machine). One of the things I sometimes forget until the machine tells me is that I need to clean and oil the machines! My MB4 is often cleaned as I want to make sure my embroidery is perfect. I was making my pillowcase dresses and using my serger. I don’t use the serger all the time, but I do when I am sewing garments and whatnot. When I was putting the dresses together I noticed a “sound” when it serged through the thicker portions of the garment. The “sound” is hard to describe, but seemed odd to me, so I thought, hmmmm wonder if I should see if this thing needs some oil or new needles or something! I know it does and I know I have not been good about doing it, but it has been getting a workout this spring with the dresses for the wedding and now these dresses. These are just some random thoughts.

I love my machines. I first got a White serger nearly 20 years ago! I had a love/hate relationship with that machine! It was extremely difficult to thread and seemed like the tension was always needing adjustment. I finally got rid of it at a yard sale….big mistake. I could have traded it in on the one I now have that I have a love relationship with! If I don’t oil it I may develop a hate relationship, but I don’t think anyone could convince me that there is a better machine out there. The reason is that threading it is a breeze (literally) and the tension is never out of sync! The other machine I don’t think I will ever give up is my embroidery machine. I truly love my machine and yes, I do wish I had one that had more heads to it (mine is a 4 head) but boy it does some beautiful embroidery and I cannot imagine a life with out it!

Just some weird random thoughts! I guess I am trying to convey the fact that we need to take care of our machines and use them to their full potential!

A Day’s Work

Deb's Sewing Room — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:39:01 +0000

Since having surgery my days work can sometimes be finished by 9 a.m.! That is how it is today. Yesterday I went to town which is a huge thing these days since I don’t get out much. Anyway, yesterday I went to the fabric store to return the fabric cutter that doesn’t work and then went to visit the school that I work at. I thought I was arriving at school during an assembly with the hope that I would see only a few people, but the assembly had not begun, so I ended up being barraged with kids and staff! It was nice, but I did get a bit tired. Then I went to my doctors appointment and to the grocery store. It was a long day of being out, but I felt pretty good and got along walking better than I had anytime before. But, I was worried that I would pay for it today and perhaps I will! I got up at 7 a.m. and had my coffee, let my bones rest sitting up a bit ate my breakfast, then went to work since I think my daughter is coming down to do some embroidery and I had some embroidery to do before she arrived! At this point (now 9:30 a.m.) I have finished the dress I posted yesterday (forgot to embroider on the top of the dress…looks much better now!), got a roast, potatoes, and carrots in the crock pot to cook for dinner, embroidered a quilt label and got it ready to ship out! Now it is time for a rest! I may spend the rest of my day planning my next pillowcase dress sitting in my easy chair.

Here is the quilt label I made today:

Sorry my pictures are not coming out as good as they used to…my camera is in my car and I have used my phone to take the pictures…obviously not a high quality camera!

Granddaughter Dilemma

Deb's Sewing Room — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:05:38 +0000

Having 4 granddaughters presents a bit of a dilemma. As I wrote a bit ago I have decided to try making Pillowcase Dresses. Well, when you have so many granddaughters it is difficult to make something like that without making multiples! This presents a dilemma because when Olivia saw the first pillowcase dress she immediately claimed it…she called me a few days after I showed it to her and her mother and she said to me “grandma, do you have my dress finished?” Well, what can I do???? So I guess dress # 1 is Olivia’s. Then there is Brenna….she is the same size a Olivia and I so wanted to try the dress (Olivia’s) on Brenna last weekend to see how it actually looks on a child, but if I did that then Brenna would claim the same dress. And the last thing I want is MORE competition between two 5 year old girls! So now I have spent days trying to get the embroidery machine working as I know the mothers of my other 2 granddaughters want a dress for their girls too! I now have finished dress # 2, but it as I said took days to make as the issue of thread breaking caused me to spend hours trying to get the embroidery to work. Here is a picture of that dress:

This dress is the one that I had trouble with the green thread. I think it came out nice in spite of all the frustration. Once I get all the dresses done for the granddaughters then I can make one to put in my etsy store!

It will work this week

Deb's Sewing Room — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:30:31 +0000

I have several things to talk about today. One of them is the frustration I have had in making my second pillowcase dress! Of course the second dress is not made due to those frustrations. I have a 4 needle embroidery machine which is very nice…I can put 4 colors of thread on it and let it go with the embroidery. The embroidery design I am using for the second dress has 5 colors in it and the color #1 is a shade of green that I would describe as between green and teal. It is beautiful and I assumed that the spool I had was one of the best threads I could use. But, low and behold, I was constantly re-threading my needle. The thread continuously shredded every few stitches. This is very frustrating and annoying. Of course, there are several things that can cause shredding of the thread, so I tried everything I could think of such as changing the needle, turning the thread over, running floss through the thread track, etc. I thought I had done everything to stop the thread shred, but no. Just more frustration. Then the fact that I didn’t have the same color thread in a different brand meant I had to wait to go to a fabric store to get another color. So I gave up for a few days. I finally got to the fabric store on Friday, but did not have a chance to test out the new thread until Sunday afternoon. But the first thing that happened was that the thread shredded! Boy I am going to give up on this design if the new thread does this same thing! But I found that the thread had been caught in spring thus shredding it! So, I am optimistic that this will work this week! My plan is to have 2-3 pillowcase dresses finished by the weekend! Wish me luck!

The other thing I want to talk about is the danger of taking a husband to the fabric store. Not only is it distracting to see him seemingly bored and just wandering. This causes a person to think they need to hurry up and get him out! Well, before we got out of the store he discovered this machine that could cut fabric and was electric! Looked nice, and boy was the price right. It was a $90 machine marked down to $25. Now really, that should have been a clue that something was wrong, but he seemed so excited and he picked it up and said “happy anniversary”. Well, this is not quite what I wanted for my anniversary, but it was just kind of cute that he thought he was getting me the best gift he could find! I think he has a hard time figuring out what to get me sometimes! Anyway, we bought the machine and a table to fit around it that was also marked down dramatically. I didn’t have a chance to use the machine until Sunday afternoon, so I was anxious to see how well it would cut fabric. I pulled it out and plugged it in, stepped on the foot pedal, and ran a piece of fabric through it. It did nothing! So, I went back to the 1 page instruction that was included with the unit and discovered that I needed to tighten a screw. So I found the flat head screwdriver and set about tightening it. Now I run another piece of fabric through and it came out looking like a perforated piece of paper. So I was able to pull the pieces of fabric apart, but should I have to do that with a fabric cutter??? So back to the instruction paper and tightening the unit again, but when I turned the screw to tighten it I watched it turn itself back! That isn’t good. So I tried and tried and got nothing but perforated fabric! So to the computer I went to look up information about this fabric cutter and what did I find? 13 bad reviews! and 3 good reviews! This is not encouraging to me at all. All the “bad” reviews stated the same issues I was having. It seemed to be more work than it should be to cut a piece of fabric! So, I packed it back up in the box and will return it to the store and hopefully get my money back. Wish me luck! And don’t fall for too good to be true bargains!

What happens when an embroidery does not work as planned

Deb's Sewing Room — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:27:28 +0000

Yesterday I posted a picture of a pillowcase dress that I made. It came out beautiful and I was very happy with it. However, it did not all start that way! I had some issues as I worked on the border. I have a strip of fabric embroidered with the same border design that was just sitting around. When I showed my daughter how the machine had messed up (couldn’t have been me she suggested using it for a valance for a window in our house. I started thinking about that and since the error was not really that bad (no one but me would have seen it probably) I decided I would do that! So, look for a picture in the near future of a valance made with the same design!

A New Creation

Deb's Sewing Room — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:05:16 +0000

Something I have been hearing and seeing lately are Pillowcase Dresses. I decided that I wanted to try making one of these dresses. They looked fairly simple and I can make my own pillowcases! I wanted to embroider a border along the bottom of the pillowcase and had some designs in mind, but I have been procrastinating the process of learning how to make a border…it seemed quite a big job considering I would need to measure and be so precise in placement in the frame! Well, it isn’t as daunting as I originally thought and I was able to space he designs and am quite happy with the outcome. Here is picture of the dress I made:

Summer Fun

Deb's Sewing Room — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:56:26 +0000

Summer is almost upon us! You would not know if from the weather, but none the less, kids will be out of school soon if not already. Most local libraries sponsor summer reading programs. With that idea in mind, I decided to make a book bag for summer reading! This bag is completely hand made with a box bottom. It measures 11 1/2 inches by 12 inches, with a box bottom to hold more books!

More Finished Projects

Deb's Sewing Room — Mon, 30 May 2011 23:52:41 +0000