the sewing room

We live in a two bedroom apartment, so the second bedroom serves double duty as the sewing room and the office. Storage space is at a premium in there! Most of the furniture in the room came from Ikea. Here's a basic floorplan of the room:

The sewing machines are on a rolling desk, which let me move it forward into the computer area when I need more room, and backwards into the sewing area when I haven't had time to sew for a while or my husband needs more room on the other side. This desk was definitely the best option for our small space.

Here's a view of the sewing half of the room, seen from the closet area. The corner of the computer table is just visible at the right side of the photo. I keep my serger and my regular machine side by side on the desk, making it easy to switch back and forth. I can slide either out of the way if I need more room for the other (and I can move the desk away from the cutting table if needed), but it's rare that such adjustments are needed. You can't see it, but my dress form is just to the left of the ironing board. Hanging on the wall is a quilt made by my Aunt Candy, a gift for my college graduation. I love to look at this quilt while I'm working.

On the cutting table, I keep my Gingher rotary mat, the accessory box for my sewing machine, and my embroidery machine (it's under a vinyl cover in the picture). There are two lights over this table, which are adjustable and provide a huge amount of light. I have a pegboard to the right and a tool rack in front of this table. Between the two, I hold all of my rulers, scissors, tools, and marking utensils. Under the table, visible in the next picture, are two Ikea drawer units and an old rolling cart. I keep pattern paper, interfacing, hair canvas, and stabilizer on top of the drawer units, which house thread, ironing supplies, buttons, zippers, works-in-progress, and decent sized fabric remnants. The cart holds mostly fiberfill and batting.

Next up is the shelving unit between the closet and the door to the room. There are four shelves attached to the wall, hanging over a sewing cabinet that I made in college. I keep completed projects that don't have other homes (such as portfolio pieces) inside the cabinet. On top of it, there are two crates that house my stash of patterns, slopers, and Threads magazines. The shelves face a window, so I keep them covered with a piece of draped fabric to prevent fading. On top of the shelves but not visible in the picture, I store my embroidery thread set and a bin of trim.

Here's an image of the shelves with the drape pulled up. I fold the fabric into uniform piles by wrapping each piece around my 6" ruler. These shelves aren't really organized by type, but it's not a hindrance for me when I'm choosing fabrics for a project. I swatch all of the fabrics before storing them, and I constantly refer back to that notebook when I'm planning something new.

The closet is awkwardly designed, in that there's a lot of width mostly inaccessable given the size of the door. To make the most of the space, I have shelves and a hanging storage unit in there. The shelves hold "other" craft supplies including a light desk, my husband's Speedball kit, cross stitch supplies, tissue paper, and small remnants of fabric. There's also a "need to mend" bin. The hanging storage includes clothing items that are waiting to be altered into something new, and some towels that will be embroidered at some point in time.

Finally, the bookcase holds all of my craft books, as well as my husband's computer books and boxes of office supplies. My books are organized by subject. I used cut-up manilla folders and neon green labels as dividers; these are just visible in the picture.

long overdue update

It's hard to believe that it's been two years since I last updated this blog! I finished my MA in September, and have spent the last several months focused on submitting PhD applications and reacquanting myself with my husband. An awful lot of my time has been devoted to sewing costumes in the past two years, but little to none has been spent on sewing for myself. It's time for that to change!

First, a couple of my recent projects.

One of my dear friends had a baby boy last month, and it seemed like a fine time to break out the sewing machines and use up some of the baby flannels in my stash, not to mention go shopping for more fabric. I sent her a set, two double-sided flannel receiving blankets, four curved burp cloths, and a bear "rug." The burb cloths were based on this tutorial: Shaped Burp Cloth, although I adjusted it a bit given the size of my remnants, and I edged it with my overlock machine rather than sewing and turning. I did the same for the receiving blankets.

The bear is from the Cotton Ginnys "Animal Blankets" pattern. I stitched the eyes and nose in embroidery floss rather than applying pieces of felt so that it would be safe for a baby, and only the head is stuffed. I love this series of patterns; there is an elephant, a hippo, and a bear in the kit. I made the hippo several years ago for another friend.

Next is a purse which I made for myself this weekend. It's a nice change to sew something for me instead of a costume for someone else! This is from Burda #8560, the same pattern that I used for the blue paisley purse which I gave to a friend in 2007. I've been in love with this pattern ever since, as it has a nice shape and is a great size (15" across and 11" tall at the center front). This time, I used a chocolate corduroy and a pastel swirled heavy-duty woven fabric. It closes with a magnetic snap. It's been so long since I sewed the first purse that I'd forgotten the major problem with this pattern: the lack of lining in the original design. It calls for interfacing, but leaves the inside bare below the facing line. I again chose to add a lining to the bag so that it is finished. I used a coordinating peach cotton fabric. The best part of this one is that all three fabrics and the interfacing came out of my stash, so it was effectively a free project.

That's all for now. I'm going to be posting images from some of my sewing and craft-related school projects over the next few weeks, as well as tackling a few new ones. Next on my list is trying my hand at machine embroidery. I bought an embroidery machine for as a graduation present for myself, and my parents gave me Embird Basic and Studio for birthday and Christmas last year. I'm working my way through Carolyn Keber's tutorials, and am so excited to get started with creating designs of my own.

embroidered towel

Changing pace a bit from sewing to embroidery, this is a towel that I finished last month to give to my mother for Christmas. I found the towel at Joanns - it's the size of a kitchen or hand towel, terry cloth except for a panel of embroidery fabric at one end. The fabric is tricky. Traditional aida is more stiff than the towel, and the fibers tend to hold their place unless the thread is pulled too tight. The towel had a much looser weave, and I had to be extra careful not to pull any of the stitches because any stress on the fabric greatly enlarged the size of the holes.



The pattern is an example of Assisi embroidery. I learned about Assisi work from a book that I found at the library sale last year. According to the book, the designs were originally based on the stonework around Assisi. The blue stitching is Holbein rather than the more common backstitch, which means that the outlines are stitched in two sets of running stitch (leaving every other stitch empty the first time around, then filling them in on a second pass). This allowed the detail to appear quickly, and halved the time spent studying the chart. The yellow stitching is cross stich, and took significantly more time than I was expecting for a piece of this size, because all of the background was filled in.

blue purse

I haven't had much time to sew for fun since starting graduate school, but did manage to squeeze in a few projects in December.



This purse is from Burda #8560. I made it for an undergraduate work study in the costume shop; I drew her name for the Secret Santa gift exchange. I love the pattern and the fabrics chosen, and was highly tempted to keep the purse for myself when I finished it!

I had a more difficult time choosing fabrics than I expected, especially because I don't know the recipient very well and didn't want to give her a purse she would never use. I knew I wanted to use a corduroy for one half, but had a lot of trouble finding an appropriate pair. The paisley fabric was suggested to me at a store on Fabric Row, and luckily they also had a matching corduroy.

As written, the pattern calls for two coordinating fabrics on the outside, and the facing of the same two fabrics but reversed so that the print has a solid facing and vice-versa. I didn't learn the pattern's major defect until I brought it home: the facing stops a few inches down on the inside, and the white interfacing is visible for the lower 2/3rds of the bag. Yuck! I added two lining pieces to the lower ends of the facing pieces so that the bag would be fully lined, and I understitched these to keep the seams neat.



The interfacing that I chose is a fusible interfacing designed for shirt collars and cuffs. It worked really well with the fabrics, holding firmly and providing adequate structure to the bag without causing it to appear bulky. To finish, I used a magnetic snap and edgestitched all the way around the top of the bag and the strap.

apron

I finished this apron about a week ago but have been occupied with school stuff in the meantime. For Christmas 2005, I bought a retro apron pattern by Simplicity so that I could make an apron for Laura. It turned out really cute - a full apron in blue cotton with all the borders in a orange and white check with spiders (a Halloween fabric that year that actually looked more picnicky than spooky). I'd been wanting to make an apron for myself since then. The orange and blue flowered cotton that I used is apparently a favorite of mine - when I was inventorying my stash I discovered that I'd actually purchased it twice!



I was supposed to use bias tape around the edges with a row of rickrack just inside that, but with the busy-ness of the fabric I thought that might get to be too much for the apron. Instead, I found a 5/8" aqua satin ribbon at Joanns. I folded it in half so that it was the same width as the bias tape called for in the pattern.

I love how the apron turned out - the shininess of the ribbon gives a nice contrast to the fabric, and it's comfortable to wear. The pockets are purposefully not flush at the top so that you can get your hand into them, which makes it a useable apron.

Craft fair and current sewing project

Daniel and I drove to Wilmington today for a craft fair hosted by the PA Guild of Craftsmen. This was a juried show, something that was obvious in the work displayed - there were some really stunning booths. My favorite of the day was something called Sculptured Papercutting created by Sue Keefer. From a distance it looked similar to quilling (interestingly, the only booth that I recognized today that I visited at the Kutztown festival last month was Paper Petites quilling), but up close it's entirely different. She uses a combination of painting, cut work, lifting, and shaping to create 3-D work from a single sheet of paper, and her work is beautiful. Unfortunately she has no website and we didn't have the money today to spend on artwork since I start school next month, but I hope to see her again at local festivals.

There wasn't a lot of needlework available at today's show - one booth of full size quilts, one of really lovely miniature quilts, and this woman, who creates fabric pictures through the use of applique and decorative machine stitching. Up close, her work had a really amazing amount of detail in it. The rest of the fiber artists were mostly weavers or selling clothing or purses; there was no needlepoint, cross stitch, or embroidery at all which was a bit disappointing. Daniel did find several glass booths to browse, though, so it was fun for both.

Over the past several days I've been working on a long coat for which I cut the pieces my freshman year of college, but that I'd never gotten around to stitching. I don't remember why I laid it aside; it's too bad that I've taken this long as I love the pattern and the fabric combination (a red felted fabric with a gray lining and a gray tussled-looking faux fur trim) and it is cut to fit the freshman me rather than the me of today. But I needed something to work on earlier this week and I thought it would be nice to clear out the space in my sewing cabinet while finally seeing this coat sewn, so I pulled it out. Right now the outer coat is assembled and I've begun to add the trim and sew the lining. I love having the serger here as it's making seam finishing much quicker, particularly on the easy-to-fray lining. I'm not sure exactly what to do about a closure for the front of the coat but otherwise it should be complete later this week after which I'll post some pictures.

Serger class, Wild Ginger, and an Etsy project

Monday night's serger class at my sewing store was great. The teacher - daughter of the store's owner - has been working with sergers since they became available for home use many years ago. There were only about nine students in the class versus the 20 that were in my last sewing class at the store, and one of her sisters helped out so that everyone was able to receive individual attention when needed. It is not nearly as difficult to thread this machine as it first appears and we learned several cool tricks for serging. I also picked up a book that came highly recommended on http://sewing.patternreview.com, The Ultimate Serger Answer Guide.

On Tuesday I took the plunge and purchased the pattern drafting software that I have been eyeing for a while, Wild Ginger's PatternMaster Boutique. Daniel helped measure me and I constructed a dress sloper based on my measurements to test it out. The sloper is complete other than the zipper which will have to wait for this weekend's trip to Joann's. I think there's going to be some adjustments needed to the measurements but it's hard to tell for certain until the zipper is in place.

Lastly, I've been working out some plans for a small bifold wallet. I traced some credit cards and cash in my notebook drawing the wallet around it, and then constructed a 1/2 size mock-up in muslin. It has a vinyl sleeve for an ID plus five credit card slots and two pockets for cash - I'm still uncertain on what closure to use or if I should just let it go without. I think it will do well as a first item for my Etsy store, though I'm having some trouble deciding on fabric. It looks like a guy's wallet to me and most of my fabric stash is littered with flowers or girly paisley. I think some more fabric hunting may be in order.