New Industrial Sewing Machine and Sewing Room Organization

Every sentence I can come up with right now will make this sound like I just gave birth to a new baby. And there he is! I brought home my new Juki on Saturday. It's got everything I wanted. A new kind of Servo motor which is absolutely silent; even when I sew it's quieter than my home machine. A maple table top which makes my bedroom look only halfway like a garment factory. These industrial Jukis are wonderful; a sewer who has only used home machines just can't understand until they test one out. A Juki responds to the material being sewn. It can sew almost anything from delicate chiffons to those bulky jeans hems (provided you go slowly and have the right needle). It has a knee lift for the presser foot, which is especially helpful when going over those aforementioned jeans hems because you can raise the presser foot a tad to help it over the thicker parts and still have both hands free to guide the fabric.

We got pictures right away, so I was still breathless. Those things are heavy. It took my dad, two sisters, and me to get it up the stairs. But it came from the shop fully assembled and with the motor synchronized, which I'm so glad I didn't have to do myself. It's so satisfying to purchase something you saved for and put off buying even when you could have used it earlier. And when you find that it didn't even cost as much as you anticipated and you have the start of your next machine fund!

Since I had to move the armoire and the bookshelf to the other side of the room, I deep cleaned and reorganized all my sewing supplies. Yes, that is organized! Well, at least I know where everything is when I need it. The armoire is a beautiful piece of furniture that hides all my ugly electrical cords and sewing machine oil cans and all those other things I don't want to see when I'm not working! The two hat boxes on top hold zippers, buttons, interfacing, boning, and all that stuff.

I have two large canvas boxes (bought at Joann) on the top shelf: one for scrap material and one for works in progress. They have these nifty window pockets on the front where I put a running list of all the things in that box, and I just cross things off when they leave the box. If I have project in mind, I can read through the list and I'll immediately know if something in that box is just what I need.

Since I draft a lot of my own patterns, storage and organization is a problem. For now, I've jammed all of my patterns, both self-drafted and store-bought into one drawer. I used to put each pattern in a gallon ziploc bag, but those don't file nicely.

Now I put newly drafted patterns into small manila envelopes, and so far I'm liking this system much better. More expensive, but more tidy. I write the name of the pattern on the outside. This is where it makes sense to give the patterns a real name (like Georgina) that you'll always remember, rather than a description.

The other three drawers hold my uncut fabric lengths. One drawer for knits, two for wovens. I use the list method to keep track of my inventory here too.

All of my design, sketching, patternmaking, and sewing books fit on one shelf, along with about five or six binders of technique samples and notes and charts taken from classes and library books.

Look what I found when I was cleaning out my room. The first thing I ever sewed when I was eight years old. She was a Christmas present for my baby sister. I sewed her by hand, and I thought it was so hard. I would not have been happy to hear that I would be sewing for a living later in life! It would have been hard to throw her out, had she not been disintegrating and puffs of... something... coming out every time I set her down on the table.

And this little clothes pin doll. I used to make these all the time, but this one was my favorite. I took a photo to remember her by before I threw her out. I don't have room in my life to be sentimental about these things. If I have a little girl one day I'll certainly teach her how to make clothes pin dolls then!

Sewing Stripes, Stripes, and More Stripes

I've completed several projects in the last couple weeks. Hacking away at that fabric stash to make room for bigger and better things! This brown and gold striped knit is lovely. And I used all my creative problem solving powers to make two tops out of it!

The Batwing Top

This was taken in my sister's mirror since I threw away half the things in my room including my dresser and the mirror along with it! I'm not sure how to style this top, yet. With jeans, of course. I wore it one day with light khaki twill crops and gold gladiator sandals.

Side view on the dress form. I drafted the pattern for this top, basing it off of a top I saw at the store which I really liked except for the too-big neckline. There are only 4 pieces- front, back, and two gussets under the arm. The ruffles are just an extension of the front and back. They're widest at the top and taper down to nothing at the hip, just about an inch from the hem.

This is my room in the midst of rearranging furniture and awaiting new fixtures for the room! I feel like I'm moving. Every time I do my hair in the morning, I have to rummage around for my stuff in a plastic bin on the floor.

Things I learned from making this batwing top:

• You can use plum colored thread on a brown and gold top, even though there is a lot of top stitching. It's different if you actually peer at it closely, but it looks good anyway. Why buy more thread when what you have will do?
• If you decide that you want to cover your shoulders a little more after you've completed the top, just use a zigzag to hold the two juxtaposed pieces together. I kinda wish I'd zigzagged all over these seams.
• You can try to leave the neckline unfinished, but it will eventually roll. (I was lazy, and I tried.) To finish all the raw edges on the neckline and the ruffles, I folded the edge under 1/4" (single-fold, not doubled over) and stitched it down with a narrow zigzag (set on 1mm)
• You need to stretch knit fabric as you sew with the zigzag on my machine. The tension turned out much better on this product than on the flyaway I did recently. I don't have to be careful at all when I pull this shirt on and off or move around, because I gave it that stretch.

Dolman sleeve top

I designed this top to be most flattering on my pear-shaped figure. A horizontal stripe on a dolman sleeve top usually means that the stripes start turning downward on the shoulders, which on broad-shouldered women is really flattering, visually cutting off their shoulders. On me, it practically eliminates my shoulders altogether. I like the horizontal stripes in the center of the shirt, so I added style lines, and cut out my fabric in two different directions. Instread of turning down at the shoulder, the stripes turn out. Voila, instant shoulders!

I'm loving it. The cut, plus the stripes, plus the color, looks so eighties. But I'm still loving it. It also looks sort of athletic. I'm picturing it with tracksuit-inspired drawstring pants and wedge sneakers (neither of which do I have nor do I plan to buy) or tweed crops with a racing stripe down the side (which I have actually seen and might buy if the colors look right together.)

I didn't design this pattern entirely on my own. I started with this McCall's pattern in size Medium; raised and slightly broadened the neckline; raised the hem about 4 inches; added style lines; cut it out and let the pieces hang so that they get any wonky stretching out of the way; sewed it up and found it to be too baggy; trimmed off a total of 3 inches all the way around the circumference (I was able to do that without interfering with the sleeves, thanks to my style lines); removed two inches altogether from each sleeve (from the bottom only! If you do this, you don't want to remove anything from the top or you won't be able to raise your arm very high, and you'll cut off your shoulder!); sewed it up again, and it was perfect! It's so odd. Based on my measurements I really should be a medium, but clearly I'm not. Ai, ai, ai, this is why I don't use commercial patterns; so much trouble.

Asymmetrical peplum top

I thought I would like this top more than I do. It reminds me of an ice skater's dress, and I can't decide whether that's a good thing or not. My sister Kayley loves it for that very reason. She is a ballet dancer, and it's very much like her. I like the tarzan neckline with a wide strap covering the other shoulder, the alternating diagonal lines, and even the peplum, but all together? I just don't know. I wanted to make something like this for a while though, and I'm glad I did it.

My Bedroom/ Sewing and Design Studio

I have a slanted wall (or ceiling, I'm never entirely certain which it is). When I was in junior high, I thought it looked really bare, and I covered the wall/ceiling with Christian music posters and pictures from magazines. At some point I realized how tacky it looked and removed all the paper, but I felt it needed some sort or decoration or definition. That's when I put up my first generation of lights. They were multicolored Christmas lights on green wire. I took apart a silk flower lei, cut the holes in the center a little bigger and put a flower over each light. I really liked them. They would be really cute in a bright, beach themed room, but they didn't go with my room, especially as I got older and added more decor- which took a romantic turn with burgandy, mauve, ivory, and warm brown (the colors in my bedspread and pillows), plus a little black and pewter. For my second generation of lights, I started with a string of clear lights on white wire. I got a pack of clear disposable plastic cups, 8 ounce size I think, but I shortened them to about half their original size, and cut a hole in the bottom of each cup that fit snugly over the lights. Then the fun part! Actually, it turned out to be the really long part. Ribbon doesn't wrap around a conical shape very well, so I cut lots of little pieces and wrapped them vertically or diagonally around the cups, overlapping the ribbon more at the small end of the cup. I covered all the ugly cut ends with one more ribbon on each border. With wider ribbons, I just pinched the excess ribbon out of the way at intervals and glued it down.

I have lots of knick-knacks and doodads. A lamp in the right size with the right colors was the hardest thing ever to find. My sister discovered this one at Garden Ridge and gave it to me for Christmas. It's perfect.

My space doubles as my bedroom and my sewing and design studio. This bulletin board is where I stick my inspiration (and any paper that I find floating around in my room. I make a list for everything and this is usually where all those end up). I got a cheap-o picture frame at the charity store (which should have cost less than it did), spray painted it a modern gold (that turned out to be more expensive than I thought it would be too) and sealed it. Rather than buy a mounted corkboard, I got a roll of cork at the craft store and cut it to size. Then I cemented the cork to a thick layer of corrugated cardboard, weighed it down as it dried, and tried not let impatience get the better of me. The cork and cardboard together were thicker than the space in the frame, so I had to glue it to the frame too. A lot of work it was, but it's so much nicer than a basic corkboard.

There are exciting changes coming to my room soon (on the sewing side of things) so I don't think the room will look like this much longer.

Daddy's Birthday Celebration

My dad chose fajitas as his birthday supper. Heather brought us some clementine juice and blackberry juice that they were getting rid of at her store; I love having a sister who works for a grocery company.

A great shot of our VCR, which got some use again during Daddy's party. While Daddy was reading about the Newsboys on Wikipedia, he learned that the band made a movie (we can call it an art film) back in 1996. So he promptly bought it on VHS for a few dollars on eBay. It's an elaboration on the Newsboys' song "Reality," which is a prodigal son story about a kid who runs away to join the circus. In the movie, lead singer at the time, John James, inherits a bankrupt circus when his Italian uncle passes away, and John needs to put together one more show so that he can pay his uncle's debts and let his widow retire to Orlando. (I don't know how Steve Taylor and the rest of them came up with this stuff.) Most of the circus members leave, and John recruits the other members of the band, which is at the height of its career but having a hard time getting a bass player, to join the circus for just a week. All of them along with the motley assortment of circus performers who are left are then put through a crash course circus school. Meanwhile, Newsboys bass player (hint, hint) Phil Joel, who plays the runaway son, is doing everything he can to get them to let him join the circus. It's really satirical, just like the classic Newsboys lyrics. And like their music, parts of the movie were funny, other parts I just didn't get. The only thing I didn't like was that Duncan Phillips' character was a little leering towards the twin girls in the circus; there was no reason they had to do that.

Here's my dad with his birthday presents. My sisters and I gave him an omelet pan, two polo shirts, a slim pocket calculator (the one he's had since college is finally going out), and a World Market gift card so he can get himself a bunch of snacks and sweets.

 Kayley made an amazing Tres Leches cake!

Recent Sewing and Craft Projects

A few months ago, I kept seeing sailor knot bracelets on Etsy. I'm the sort of person who likes someone else's genius idea and then copies it rather than paying them what they deserve! So when my sister asked me if I could make anything with a pair of white and silver shoelaces she had, I said "Yeah!" I made four identical sailor knot bracelets, one for me and each of my sisters. Then I googled the term "knot" and came up with images for all sorts of beautiful, elegant knots that would make fabulous bracelets. I only made a couple more simple ones, but a chunky, smooth cord reveals the beauty in even the most basic, ordinary knot. I rummaged through my yarn/cord box and found a red lanyard, which I made into the anklet in the photo. (I knew I was saving that lanyard for something!)

I've had this striped knit jersey fabric in my stash for over a year. I often feel hesitant to cut up fabric, because once I do, I can't change my mind and make something else! I decided on shrugs because I have a few solid brown tops that desperately need a complementary second layer. The reason I like stripes is the way they make shapes look wider or longer and the way they interact with each other when they converge. No lines straight across and parallel for me! I cut the shrug on the bias so that the stripes would point up to the shoulder and make my shoulders look wider, which I think they do. I cut the sleeves on the bias too so that from the front they also point up and draw the eye toward the shoulder from the other direction.

What I learned in making this shrug:

• It might be a good idea to let bias pieces that will be stitched to a straight of grain piece hang after cutting and before sewing . It's not extremely noticeable, but the front did stretch out a little- except where the front binding was stabilizing it, creating a few stress wrinkles.
• I should have made the stripes on the left and right of the front binding symmetrical. I thought about all the other pieces, but it's these stripes that are most crucial because they're right next to each other and horizontal too. Oh, well, I just won't pull it closed when I wear it.
• The stretch stitches on my machine never turn out well at all, so I've learned how to use the zigzag for knits. I put it on a stitch width of 1 mm. That allows the seam enough give that it at least doesn't break when I pull the garment on (when I'm not in a hurry anyway). When using a zigzag stitch on a knit, it helps to stretch the fabric a little. Not a habit I've really picked up since I got most of my experience sewing knits on a serger at school and we were taught NOT to stretch the fabric. If the fabric still looks tense around the seam, I pin one end of the seam down on my ironing board and gently stretch the seam while steaming it with my iron. That eased some of the tension in the shrug, especially at the back, which hangs beautifully now!
• I intended for the front binding to reach all the way to the hem, but I forgot to include the 2-inch shoulder pieces in my calculation. How long will it take me to learn to measure properly?! I like the way it looks though. Chance is sometimes a better designer than I am.

I couldn't wait to take pictures once I was done with the shrug (Thus all the sewing mess in the background.) I'm going to keep it new until the fall weather comes along. I'm not sure I'll have much money or time to sew things then so it will be nice to treat myself.

I really like the perfect chevrons at the back.

I made an asymmetrical peplum tank top out of this material too, but I'll save that one for another post.

Cow Appreciation Day

Oh, the things my family and I will do for free food...

"I'm not too chicken to dress like a cow."

Heather got off work at 7pm, which was a nice surprise since she hadn't expected to be able to go at all. Even before she got home, Andrea and Kayley were already helping her by putting her costume together. By the time we left for Chick-fil-A, it was after 8, and we were good and hungry. We drove with the windows down and Air1 blaring (If anyone noticed the minivan full of rambunctious cows, they didn't let on.) Once we got out of the car in the Chick-fil-A parking lot, we elicited some laughter and toots on the car horns. To be fair, it was all my dad. Being with him made the rest of us just look good. The Chick-fil-A employees rang the cow bell when we came in and gave us stickers, and they were really interested in how my dad made his costume (I'd like to blab it all here, but he doesn't want to share his secrets =). The restaurant was still packed, and we like eating at home anyway, so we took it to go and sat around chatting and enjoying each other's company. And Mama made three different vegetables, as usual. We must be the only family in America who eats three vegetables along with their Chick-fil-A!

Awkward and Awesome Wednesday

I started this blog partly so I could do A+A Wednesday, but it was harder than I thought to come up with admit stuff.

Awkward:

• Standing outside a store in the Texas heat, offering to sell your gift card to the people going in at a discount, while trying to look nice and honest and normal and not do anything to arouse the suspicions of them, the employees inside the store, or the security guards down the street.
• Not getting anyone to buy the gift card but in the meantime spending $4 on a strawberry-banana smoothie so you don't die of dehydration.
• Taking pictures of the bricks in the sidewalk on your phone just for the sake of looking like you're busy when people walk by.
• Cutting through a subdivision to save time and going down every single unmarked cul de sac before turning around and going out the way you came.
• Finding yourself whispering in the morning even though everyone in the house is awake.

Awesome:

• Not spending any money on your lunch break at work. Food from the fridge and paid for by your parents + an exciting library book (that's the important ingredient) = A break to look forward to without missing the mall food court.
• Watching an old Blimey Cow video on how to write a worship song in 5 minutes (or less)- and laughing so hard you hurt.
• Sitting around with your family and making your own cow costumes for Cow Appreciation Day (coming up Friday!), and everyone's costume is completely different.
• Eating cherry Jell-o without fruit or cheese balls or any of that stuff in it.
• Being able to say no to opportunities that you might have liked but aren't the best for you right now, and not having any regret at your answer.
• Listening to the sounds of humming insect wings and cooing doves out your window. It can't feel like home in the summer without it.