Cleaning and sorting

I'm kind of a pack rat. Shhhh!! if you know me in real life!  I'm moving all the sewing stuff out to the newly heated barn to make room for kids in the house.  I have way more stuff than I would like to admit, but I found some neat stuff in my notes too! Here is a poem I found. Silly, but it is a limerick!

I'm a girl who loves to sew,

I press the pedal and go!

I make some mistakes,

'cause that's what it takes

to learn all there is to know.

This is also why I have a hard time getting rid of things sometimes. Wanna know what else I found? My bank statements. Arranged neatly in a notebook from Dec. of 1989 till Sept. of 2000.  When did I meet my husband? Oct. of 2000. Heh! So its all his fault! 

The good news is I'm teaching sewing classes, all will benefit from my too much sewing stuff.  I'm glad I can supply so much to the eager learners.

Needleworks: Session 1 - Recycled T shirt drawstring bag

I'm teaching a hand sewing class at our homeschooling co-op. The class is limited to 10 students, because my brain can only stretch so far.  I thought it would be fun to post what we are doing here.

Session 1: A recycled t-shirt drawstring bag.

Supplies needed:

• 2 adult sized t shirts, used or thrifted, logo is OK, but will be upside down on the finished bag. One cannot have side seams, the one for the bag part can be with or without side seams.
• Scissors or  Rotary Cutter  with Cutting Mat
•  Ruler
•  Chalk
• Hand Needles
• Coats Dual Duty Thread
• Assorted Safety Pins (some t shirts have a smaller hem, so its a good idea to have a couple sizes, but each kid only needs one)

 This tutorial starts out the same as the no-sew recycled T shirt I wrote here.

I lay the t shirt on the fold on the table or cutting board. If you are using  scissors, chalk your line. If you are using a rotary cutter, ruler and cutting mat, cut it now.(I prefer the rotary cutter and mat because it cuts nice and straight.  Someone once told me, buy the largest mat you can afford. Mine is almost 20 years old. Yikes!)

Nice and straight.

Here I am cutting 2 inch strips for the drawstring. You need 2 for each bag. This T needs to have NO side seams. I also discovered that the strips do not stretch correctly with printing on them, so don't use that part.

  Cut each once.

I brought a pile of strips and had the kids each stretch theirs. 

Cut an opening at each side. You do have to be a little more careful if there aren't side seams, to keep it even. Cut next to the side seam, not on it, if you have seams.

Ready to thread the casing.

Patiently, all the way through.

One side done.

Repeat. This time the ends come out on the other side.

Then we turned the bags inside out and used a needle and thread to do a running stitch all the way across. Of course you can do this by machine, but it isn't possible at this time to do these by machine at our co-op. So hand sewing it is!

Finished!

I did reinforce the bags with a machine stitch at home, because they were going to be used for 14 weeks to carry projects back and forth. (the link is for a good little machine, similar to what we use at the Aud, mine isn't available retail anymore)

Another option is to cut the side seams, at the bottom of the bag, about 1 1/2 inch up and put the cording through it for the straps to make a backpack!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, if you'd like to see it as a slideshow please visit my article here.

My entry in ASE Out of the Box Challenge

 Well, my entry is home.  I'm still very proud of it, but it turns out I do not know innovative! 

Look at the winners. Now these are innovative!

I will still enter again if I can in the future.  And I'll have to think long and hard about 'innovative'.

As I said before, I didn't make it to the American Sewing Expo this year.  Would anyone who did care to do an interview about your Expo experience for a Detroit Sewing Examiner article on examiner.com?

At the Rust Belt Market

I decided to try something new and go to the Rust Belt Market in Ferndale to sell my Reconstructed clothing.  I paid way back in April of this year, because I wanted to motivate myself.  It was a good thing I did, I would have chickened out otherwise.

Since I paid so early I accidentally scheduled it for the same weekend as the American Sewing Expo.  I needed my niece to help and was working around her schedule. Such is life, in the future I will pay better attention.

I only took a picture of the booth set up before it was open. The lights are off and the back isn't attached yet. When it was open I put some clothes on the back wall and some bags on the shelf. I recharged my camera and then forgot to take any pictures. I was even going to have one of me! Maybe that is why I forgot...



Selling my clothing takes me way out of my comfort zone.  I'm a happy sew er, for myself or others. I'm having tons of fun refashioning clothing, but I need feedback from customers.



I did OK at the Market. I made back my fee, plus a little extra.  I brought too much old stuff, and it detracted from the new really good stuff.  My booth was not as welcoming as it could have been.  I also needed more signage to let people know things were recycled.  Many browsers were surprised to find out.  I'm going to focus on etsy.com for a while, it fits better into my life right now. Unless I get the chance to share some space at the Rust Belt.



I bought recycledseams.com for my recycling clothing business, I think it has a neat ring to it. I also started a FB page, please like it there if you are inclined.

Katwise is Fabulous

I found Katwise on Etsy a while ago.  I was looking to see if recycled sweaters were selling there. I often think I'm nuts for wanting to cut up something and make it into something else.

Her sweaters are fabulous! They are probably more interesting than anything I will ever make, but I found myself squinting at the computer screen trying to get a better look.  Then she listed a tutorial! I didn't want to buy it because I didn't want to copy.  But, my curiosity got the best of me and I bought it for myself on my birthday this year.

It is well worth the price.  It is full of color and fun just like her website. She gave me a lot to think about, how to choose sweaters and how to use them.  She recommends the little Juki MO-644D Garnet Overlock that I've used and think is great.

I wasn't going to link to the video that I got in the email with the tutorial,  but it shows up on the first page of google when I put Katwise in the search box. So here it is!

She also has a great one of her spinning in her coats on her colorful farm in NY.

I'm not sure if I will ever make one, but I have a lot more to think about and I am grateful.  Well, maybe I'll make one...

ASE Out of the Box Challenge

This photo was included in the most recent ASE Swatches email Newsletter. The caption is: ' This is what Special Events Director, Diane Kroll's office looked like on Tuesday morning after receiving a mountain of Out of the Box contest entries over the weekend.'

My box is right behind, to the left of the chair, in the old blue Priority box with the stickers! :)

My guess is its OK to show you now since all the entries are in.  My four things to use in my 'quick gift' were:
  
 1 YKK 9" Designer Accents zipper, color Persimmon
            1 Signature spool of Size 20 Cotton Tropical Brights
            1 Robison-Anton spool Decorative Floss, color Pastoral Green
            1 Robison-Anton spool J Metallic, color Blue

OK, first off, it turns out Persimmon was BRIGHT orange.  And the other three were threads!  I was a little miffed at first, not much to go by.  A zipper, some hand embroidery thread, machine embroidery thread and some thick varigated thread.  How the heck was I gonna get all those threads to work together?  

Well, the zipper was the perfect size for a cosmetic case, and I'd been meaning to make a pattern anyway.  I was able to use the varigated stuff as topstitching, the decorative floss was really very good and I got alot of practice on my blanket stitch.  The machine embroidery thread was the hardest, but I got it in there.  It was a bear to use as hand sewing thread, but I will try it out on the Janome MC300E one of these days.

My entry:

Interior view:

The shell is recycled denim, the lining is some thrifted fabric and the pocket interiors are recycled t shirt.

It was fun! I can't wait to see what everyone else did.

Old Sewing Books

Lately, I've become enamored with 1940's and earlier sewing books. I started collecting them almost 20 years ago when I shopped vintage clothing for stores in California, Florida and Michigan. Back in the mid- nineties every church rummage sale had a bunch of them and a sewing machine for $1 on the last day. First with the invention of online selling sites and now with the help of things like Project Runway, more people are sewing and buying on and off the Internet.

I usually don't spend much time perusing the books, I've always just used them to find out how to do something I wasn't sure about. But I will be teaching a Needleworks class at our co-op and, true to form, have been digging through my collection of books for ideas and explanations.

I am especially taken with the sections on remaking and reusing clothing. The 1925 Women's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences book on Dyeing-Remodeling-Budgets as well as New Encyclopedia of Modern Sewing from 1943 actually have pictures of how to lay out patterns on previously used clothing, much like I did on my denim jacket here.

They describe a number of ways to redo dresses, shirts, jackets and make childrens clothing from adult clothing. Even the current Sew News magazine does an article on how-to upcycle three blazers into one fabulous jacket. What is old is relevant again.

Also neat about these books is how thoroughly they cover the topics. I do believe I get more out of them now than I did 20 years ago because my sewing knowledge is greater. Comparing a 1949 Singer Sewing Book to a new one is like comparing apples to oranges. Both delicious but completely different in flavor, smell and availability. Although this new Singer Complete Photo Guide to Sewing - Revised + Expanded Edition: 1200 Full-Color How-To Photos looks interesting! 1200 photos? I think I'll have to check it out!