• General,  Sewing/Quilting

    Seams Right

    What is it? – Let’s just take a minute and think about the actual process of your last sewing project. You’ve measured, marked and cut your most treasured fabric into the required component pieces. With great care you’ve pinned those fabric sections together just like you wanted. All is well. Now you’re ready to put it all together. You sit down at your sewing station, switch on your amazing sewing machine and start to put stitches to fabric. This is the scary part though because it’s now becoming more or less permanent. Adjustments are…

  • General,  Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting,  Tool School Extra Credit

    Extra Credit: Soothing Eye Pillows

    We try to take a little time for self-care each day. Try… Whether it be exercise, yoga, reading a book, listening to music, or just taking a moment to close our eyes, we all need a little pampering every now and again. Even if it’s just a small thing, a few moments of self-care go a long way to making sure we don’t end up under the dining room table with a box of cheese crackers, a bottle of wine, and a gallon of ice cream. When you need just a…

  • General,  Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting

    Wonder Pins

    What is it? – Basting just may be one of the least enjoyable elements of the sewing process. So why do we do it? Well, we have to. Basting ensures greater stitching accuracy. It makes the difference between something we’re proud to show and something we quietly and secretly put in a bottom drawer somewhere and forget. Basting with either stitches or pins is like a practice stitch or a trial run before we permanently sew our final seam. Turns out it’s just the best way to temporarily join layers of fabric together while we adjust…

  • General,  Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting

    6-in-1 Stick ‘n Stitch Guide

    What is it? – Did you ever wonder why we have all of these sewing notions? All of these tools that we use almost every time we sew? Quilting, fashion, heirloom, home décor or crafts, it doesn’t really matter. There are tools that apply to all of them while some notions are very specific to just one in particular. But why do we need them? When we start any project, we envision exactly what we want the finished article to look like, whether we’re replicating a sample or have something more original in mind. We…

  • Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting,  Tool School Extra Credit

    Extra Credit: Sashiko Book Cover

    We love books; cookbooks, novels, photo albums, and journals. Visitors to our home on more than one occasion have marveled and asked, “have your read all of these?” Yes, we have. Many times over… Because of that, we occasionally have to cover a favorite book with a homemade cover to keep it safe, just like we did with our science books in grade school. Often a simple cover will do but, for our favorite books and journals we give them a special cover. For this project, we are using one of our…

  • General,  Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting

    Tailoring Tools

    What is it? – Open any catalog of sewing notions and you’ll immediately be overwhelmed. There are so many specialty tools with each designed to assist us in our various sewing tasks. But as the “specialty” moniker suggests, they often apply only to a specific niche (or even micro-niche) of a particular sewing operation. But what about the other sewing tools, the ones we use all of the time? What about those sewing notions that have expansive applications to a wide spectrum of sewing requirements? Take tailoring or dressmaking for example. What are the operations common to most…

  • General,  Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting

    Marking Tools

    What is it? – Let’s think about it. What do we do when we sew? What comes after the creative vision is set and after finding the perfect fabric and the perfect accessorizing thread? We cut that beautiful fabric into smaller pieces and then, well, and then we sew it all back together again into a larger piece of fabric. But it’s the shape of those pieces and the way they are assembled that brings a smile to our faces. So how do we do that? Measure, mark and cut. The more precise each function is accomplished, the more…

  • Session 21,  Sewing/Quilting,  Tool School Extra Credit

    Extra Credit: Use the Mesh Transfer Canvas to make a Butterfly Shirt

        If you all have seen our previous blog posts and Tool School Extra Credit projects, you know by now that we love a good embellishment! For this project, we are going to be using the Mesh Transfer Canvas from Clover and let us tell you… it is so easy to work with. Also, because it is clear, you can use it to trace an outline from any photo or printed design. Once your item is traced onto the canvas you simply place the canvas on top of your fabric and trace…

  • General,  Session 20,  Sewing/Quilting

    Mesh Transfer Canvas

    What is it? – Fashion, fashion accessories, heirloom sewing, quilting or home decor. At one time or another all of these project genres present us with a blank canvas to which we can apply our own creative brilliance. Or maybe we can just plagiarize someone else’s brilliance just a little. In any case, we’ve found a really cool design that would be perfect on our project. Take it to the next level. Unfortunately that design is often in a magazine, part of an individual picture, on another sewn project, in an old coloring book…

  • General,  Session 20,  Sewing/Quilting

    Straight Pins

    What are they? – The devil is in the details. Isn’t that what they say? How can that possibly apply to us? Just think about what we do when we sew. We spend hours selecting a delicious design or the perfect pattern. The same amount of time is spent finding the most fabulous fabric (and no, it’s not in your stash) and some awesome thread. And then after all of that it’s the details of measuring, marking and cutting our fabric to create those fabulous fashion, elegant heirloom, quintessential quilt or curiously clever craft projects. And we go…