wow... I gotta get better at checking in....

so tonight is date night with the hubby...  and of course I didnt get many chores done this weekend...   I am now washing my 4th load of laundry in hope of catching up & preparing for the workweek.... in between loads I decided to cut out a pattern or 2... at the same time I realized I have NOTHING to wear tonight...  suppose I can kill 2 birds with 1 stone?? We shall see...  when the next load of laundry finishes, I will put in this fabric ( fuchsia polyester georgette)


wish I'd snapped a better pic...  its currently hanging on the ironing board awaiting the washer load to complete

~~~~~~~~~~~~


SOooOoOooOoOoo I guess we will go with Plan B...   Im out of time.... will find another outfit but add to this as I go on with this project later in the week...  hopefully I will finish by Saturday.... This fabric is a LOT harder to cut out than I remembered....

long time so see...

so much has been going on....

Good News/Bad news...sorta...
Just kinda checking in.. The house repairs are 90% complete... my daughter moved up North with my mom ( and her other grandma is a block away) to finish school, work etc....

so while Im sad to see my "baby" move on to a new phase in life, Im happy that she is making adult decisions on her own AND... I get to semi-take over her room as my sewing palace...

She had a HUGE desk/hutch.. she barely used in in HS, always studied sitting up in bed.... so as of now it is sitting in the family room awaiting me to take pics to list it on CL and/or freecycle...
I had her bed, headboard and footboard leaned up against a wall with enough room to lower it if/when need be... her dresser and nightstand fit as they were...



but also added was 1 of my sewing tables on which I save the SM and serger....





the 2nd tabletop is against the wall , tucked out of place until I need a cutting area... I can actually leave it out most times since she, for all intent & purposes, isnt using the room.... I just like the way the room looks neat and clean...I dont think Ive seen it clean since she was about 13 years old...

The contractor built her a nice big closet in which Im gonna use to hang UFOs and store some of my stash ( well as soon as DH finished installing the shelving that I purchased 2 weeks ago) .... the rest of the fabric that wasn't damaged in the flood discussed here has been re-washed, dried and safely stored in rubbermaid totes... I have an old portable TV-DVD player from back in our mini-van trip days.... Im gonna put it in there  use my son's old boombox to have for when I want to listen to music....

 My only regret is that the room is not big enough for me to put in a lounge chair....   Otherwise its GREAT!

I even stuck in her old college dorm fridge ( on which I also use to hold more containers that store patterns & notices & scraps and well, whatever)











I was gonna finish an UFO today but when I realized I've gained 20 lbs since I started them, I just put it back in its zip-loc...    my son has a broken zipper so repairing that will have to be my sewing fix for today...  I am working ( nights) through most of the holiday week but as some of you know, I have LOADS of downtime at work...  I already have patterns & fabric in my car and plan to cut them out at work this week....  By the time I am off from work, during Xmas week, I should have several projects ready for me to zip right through....

hopefully between sewing & getting back into my exercise routine will get me through this BLAH period I'm in right now.

invisible zip

The video that will save my sanity.... or we hope...







and maybe Threads Magazine can help me too

Sewing In a Zipper - Threads

I HATE putting in zippers...

Did I say I HATE putting in zippers??   maybe I should qualify that by saying I HATE putting in zippers because I have not mastered the art....    I have had exactly ONE zipper go in nicely, others have been methods that rival back alley surgeries.... The "Sandra Betzina" Method is the latest that has been recommended for me to try....and so I will give it the old college try one day soon.  

In the meantime, this is similar to the way I  installed a zipper the one time I got it in nicely....  

Knitting - Casting On: Single Cast-on

Sew-a-longs

so on www.patternreview.com , I've joined 2 sew-a-longs...   this should be both fun & educational....  I'm still sticking to easy patterns though...

The 1st is "one-garment-a-month"...   I really thought this would be easy but I'm finding the time and the days slipping by so fast.  My initial plan was to sew 3 times a week for 2 hours each time, that way I could get out 3 or 4 garments a month...... and here we are at March 6th...  I sewed on Sunday March 1st  for 2 hours and ain't had time to even look at my sewing machine since.... it ain't looking so well.... I will get my 2 hours in today though.

http://sewing.patternreview.com/SewingDiscussions/topic/36954

My 1st garment is B4557, view F

I'm using a bright yellow cotton that's been in my stash for about 2 years....... I've preshrunk and pressed it and cut it out on Sunday...Of course I will post pics when I am done, hopefully today

The other is "technique sew-a-long" ....   this is a monthly challenge and should prove very interesting if nothing else...  In this, we challenge ourselves to try various seams and hopefully even perfect them by the end of the month...I really need help in this area...  I can say over & over again, Ive literally forgotten EVERYTHING... Some things are coming back to me faster than others, thankfully.

http://sewing.patternreview.com/SewingDiscussions/topic/38387

I was getting so much online help from pages of this book and another 1 similar, I decided to purchase it...  Its a very good reference book for sewists of all stages...  I highly recommend it.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240" caption="Singer New Sewing Essentials: Updated and Revised Edition (Paperback)"][/caption]

For this challenge, I won't make a garment for each technique but I will use scraps to practice most of them and maybe I will get pretty good at a few.

McCalls 3341

I added pics last week on ASG but forgot to update my blog...

here are pics of the final project, well at least the areas that gave me initial trouble..... Don't know why I forgot to add pics of it right side out