A Little Nook to Stitch In

I have a little sewing nook. It's just one part of my crafty corner of the world.

Here's what I've managed to place in one small sewing nook: a small table, definitely vintage, I've had for years, a shelf overhead for some vertical storage with hooks underneath to attach ribbon rods, and a shelf unit hubby built on top of the table. There's a bit more storage underneath the table as well, since I don't sit at it.

The shelf lets me have extra, usable, active storage, and let's me stand while I sew at the machine, which I often prefer. Since my machine is easily portable, it can be moved to the dining table for a big, day-long project if needed. I have a Brother sewing machine which is also an embroidery machine--so it's nice to have all the attachments and machine extras organized here in one place. When I need to convert it to embroidery mode, I make room there by moving my sewing caddy, attach the extra arm, change the foot, and I'm ready to go. My sewing caddy box with the handle came from Michaels last year--I used the coupon so it was a great deal. It's usually sitting there by the machine--but it is full of supplies that can travel around the house if I'm doing a hand-stitching project.

Here's a peek behind the table shelf--since there is room back there, I have a place for my spool rack, and some sewing extras.

It's nice to have the ribbon handy there too--they are actually hanging on very sturdy, dried out tree branches. When I think back on how my mother sewed, I realize how different I am with how I do things in my little sewing nook. My mom had a big, gorgeous sewing cabinet, and a quite expensive for the time sewing machine. Everything was inside her sewing cabinet, so when she wasn't sewing it was nice and shut up. I have no room for a huge sewing cabinet like that, and I'm a little more eclectic--plus, I love to stand when I'm stitching because I just feel like I have more control, and it's kinder to my back. I do remember how excited my mom was when I got this sewing machine. I definitely got my love of stitching from that beautiful, amazing lady. And I always think of her when I start on a project.

I've been reorganizing to make the most of my stash all year! I think being organized and knowing what you have, as in "active storage" rather than simply being a warehouse for stuff you've lost track of, is the number one way to dash your stash. Saves money! And it's a plan that applies to every room in your house. Happy Stitching.

Stash Dash 2015
Organize Your Fabric
Reorganizing My Craft Desk
Reorganizing My Small Stamp Collection
 



Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch

A Sewing Room Tag

 Last week's "Tag Tuesday" theme was "Pleats, Folds, and Tucks" so I thought I'd share my themed tag (just in under the wire). I just reorganized my sewing table, and this will be perfect to hang there!

Visit the Tag Tuesday blog here and see last week's inspirations, and then come back tomorrow for "Maps, Charts, and Diagrams."

Happy Tag Tuesday on a Monday!

This is an extra large tag - perfect for hanging in your sewing corner!

Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch

Handmade Knitting Needle Bag

I just had to share this gorgeous gift, received from a dear, wonderful girl who lives across the ocean.  

Well, in fact, I call her my British soul sister because we are the same age and have so much in common. I love it! One day, a few weeks ago, it had been a trying Friday, and I just returned home from a doctor's visit where everything went well, except that I have fattened up over the winter--a bit too much! Worn, weary, and now facing the prospect of future starvation--I opened the mailbox, and there was a package from Jan.

It was such a wonderful surprise, that it deserved its own blog post! Jan can take what she calls scraps, and simply make magic. My knitting needles have needed a nice home for quite a while, and they were delighted to move into this gorgeous fabric. The fact that it's fabric from the UK, also makes it quite special. But as we all know, there is something about a handmade gift that you really treasure.  Thank you dearest Jan!! I love showing this off to everyone almost as much as I love using it!

Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch, Knit

Patches of Happy -- My Bohemian Bag Story--It's Wearable Art!

Sometimes, when you really want something special--you find a way to make it yourself! My patch-happy bohemian bag came to be for several reasons. I do a lot of walking, and I love cross-body style bags. I prefer eclectic, imperfect bags. I love to be green and repurpose things. And, I love just about anything made with patches--especially when the fabric making up the patches holds memories and sentiment.

So there you go.

Oh, and I'm not a fan of using a pattern! I tend to free-stitch and make things up as I go along. This can be good and bad...and I'm showing all the warts here! Mistakes that I made because of the fact I didn't use a pattern. I think the next bag will be even better though!

I started by cutting up fabric scraps.

This denim was a little boring--so I quickly embroidered these patches.

I realized I wanted a lot of embroidery--and I found some my talented mother-in-law stitched, decades ago!

As I started pulling fabrics and scraps, I cut them all into 3X3 squares. This was the perfect size for my bag. Each side ended up with four rows of five squares each. So, a total of 40 patches! I was so happy to find some embroidered motifs my mother-in-law had stitched long ago and gave to me at some point. It was in my stash, and of course, I had forgotten all about it. I love this embroidery now, on my bag! So her work is now part of my wearable art--sweet!

This one is one of my faves--she looks like Snow White!

After arranging my patches, just the way I wanted them--I started stitching the rows together first.

There's a little owl I embroidered a few months ago.

This looks pretty easy right? And it is easy to stitch the patches together. But here's what happened...not all the rows seem to line up perfectly when I started to stitch rows together. I have no idea why, because I did stitch the patches pretty uniformly--and they are all measured fairly perfectly. So who knows--it's a good thing I don't care if it's perfect!

I was pretty excited when I got each side done. I had to lay them out and admire them for a day or two!

Even after ironing my pieces--with a regular iron, not this one--there was a stubborn wrinkle, so I set this extremely old, very heavy iron on it for a couple of days!

After staring at the stitched-together patches, I realized I would need a border on the bottom, so I cut two three-inch strips of ticking (nice and heavy duty) which would be the bag's bottom, and the same fabric for two strips around the top. I decided to use an old lanyard for the bag's strap. I snipped one side of the lanyard, and then embellished it with small strips of fabric, and a few buttons. At that point, I began thinking about adding eyelets.

In the meantime, as I sewed the first strip of ticking to the bottom, I had a mishap--when I turned it over, it had pinched and gathered on two of my patches! Here we go--my lovely imperfections. So...I added decorative buttons. (when stitching gives you lemons--make lemonade)

I love the butterfly patch here--it's from a pair of jeans my daughter used to wear when she was ten!

It didn't completely hide it--but good enough for me.

The other bottom strip stitched up just fine. So then, I used some iron-on paper to add some chintz fabric for the lining, and also to stiffin it up--that's when it started to feel like a real bag! Mistake number two: I was so excited about the eyelets, that I put them into the top strip (to eventually attach to the strap) before I had stitched the sides together. I had put them way too close to the edge! 

The bottom strip seemed a little boring on this side--so I appliqued a heart!

Before stitching the sides together, I had added a pocket to this side of the lining, and pinned in a part of another old lanyard, so that I could use it to clip in keys! I love this feature. Please everyone--send me your old lanyards!

I added the eyelets in the proper place after stitching the bag together.

 I added button holes for the bag's closure too. I love these flower eyelets.

I used the clip that was already part of one side of the lanyard, then added an eyelet and a ring to the other side to attach my strap.

The green satin patch is from my costume I wore in the King and I--and I stitched a crochet flower to another patch.

I love my bag and all its sentiments and imperfections! So what's next? A bag for my teenage daughter, of course. She LOVES owls, so I am embroidering 20 little owl patches to make a very cool owl bag. I might try a zipper top this time, and hopefully no bumpy patches in the stitching!

EAT, WRITE, DREAM, AND STITCH IT YOUR WAY EVERY DAY.

Cooking-n-Crafting Couture--The Scrappy Apron

Will all the apron lovers please stand up, tighten your bows and show off your lovely extra layers? I adore aprons, and sometimes I really get into apron-stitching mode. After all, aprons are great for the kitchen, the garden, and the craft room--and if you have a really cute apron, it can be adorable over a t-shirt and jeans. My daughter has a friend who wears her vintage aprons to school--so cute!

My aprons have to have an attitude...a personality...or a past. One of my aprons was actually made from one of my mother's housedresses from the 1960's combined with some vintage lace and embroidery. That one is fun because I remember a little me seeing my mother vacuuming in that housedress with curlers in her hair! I didn't let that housedress go in the scrap heap--it now gets its turn, being cute and functional.

I have a couple of one-piece aprons stitched completely from a bolt of Laura Ashley home furnishing fabric that I dearly love, because I've adored Laura Ashley fabrics for decades. I remember buying this fabric, with no special purpose, and it was nice to be able to make one-piece aprons from it.

Really though--all you need are strips and scraps to make THE most adorable gardening-cooking-and-crafting couture!

My latest ruffly cutie-cute girly apron began with this thin floral material for the bib--I wanted the bib to be very lightweight and papery--and it's trimmed in a festive ribbon. The skirt is nothing but fabric scraps of some of my favorite material, all sewn to a white tee towel. After an hour of ironing, pinning and stitching it together on the sewing machine, I have my second girly apron. (I think the tie in the back took just as long as the whole rest of the apron.) You can see my first girly apron here.

Now if you're a skinny minnie, like my wicker model, this might wrap all the way around you--but I made it for me, and it fits just the way I want. Another bonus to making your own apron!

Pinning the ribbon to the bib.

Grandma and my mom.

Wish I had this apron my mom wore as a young bride--she was so cute.
My next apronology goal is to make a waterproof apron. If I can get my hands on some cute oil cloths--that could be a possibility. One of the local salons told me they would love to have some cute aprons like that for all of their beauticians! Hmmm.

Eat, Write, Dream, and Stitch in an apron!

A little birdie told me...

My little embroidered birds are flying around on their ribbon hangers in their new location on the greenhouse.

This gold stand is actually meant for Christmas decorations, but my little birdies like it just fine.

I created and embroidered them last winter--see my birdie blog here.

There's no time now...but come November and December, I'll be embroidering on felt again--making birdies...fat cats...owls...I can't wait! They look cute attached to Christmas presents. When I was in the middle of this project, I had a little plastic box with all my cut-out pieces and floss, so this was a nice portable project. We like those!

The Floss-aholic

There is a reason to thread a needle, every day. (as far as I'm concerned) I am a sewist, and a stitcher, and I love it. And I was sitting around wondering why I love it so much. I've talked before about the differences we have in stitching as an art form--all that mixed-media we love--and sewing because it's 1911 and you're a factory worker in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. How my heart goes out to those women--I think of them often. I also think of the Titanic often. I just went to the museum a couple of months ago. Hmmm. There's something about my fascination with 1911 and 1912...I don't know what.

Click here to see why there's Ten Good Reasons to Thread a Needle Every Day.

Sew...hee hee...it did finally hit me what I love so much about the stitching I do. I am a floss-aholic! I'm pretty sure of this. Hi, my name is Sandy, and I just can't seem to get enough of those beautiful skeins of floss!

I love thread too--but my heart is with DMC.

I come from a family of sewists, crafters and stitchers. My Aunt Margaret taught me how to knit and crochet when I was ten. But it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I became fascinated with embroidery. Now, back then, you couldn't just google up "embroidery." You had to go to the library and get a book, or go buy a kit in a store. So that's what I did. I bought kits. I liked it a lot...but I still didn't really know what I was doing.

It was the 1980's and I met a group of ladies at my work who were bonified cross-stitch-aholics. What a great group they were! They taught me everything about looking for patterns, not kits, buying aida cloth and flosses. We had the prettiest cafeteria/breakroom at that company, and we would take breaks and sit around and cross-stitch on our projects, gossip, laugh, tell stories. Oh, those were happy times. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was painting with floss, I loved it, and I never looked back. One of the things that was so great about floss was, it was cheap! Back then, really cheap. I came across an offer in one of my cross-stitch magazines--yes, I was now subscribing to them--and I ordered every single color of DMC that existed at the time, for $15. It was an amazing offer to get over 320 full skeins of DMC flosses! (bags and number stickers included) I was beside myself when they arrived in the mail! I organized them in the floss bags and filed them in a big plastic box.  This would be my floss foundation--my library--and I would keep all my flosses updated regularly. I was pretty good about it for quite awhile.

My original floss box.

All my beautiful flosses organized by number.

But then, after many years, I moved on to other ways of organizing my flosses--and they work well for projects. But I tell you, I still can find much of the floss colors I need for something in this box. It's amazing. And the price of a skein of floss has certainly gone up since I started stitching, so it's pretty nice I still have skeins and skeins of floss that I paid less than 20 cents for. I'm such a bargain hunter. And even now, if I have to go buy a lot of floss, I use a coupon to get a discount.

My DMC Stitchbow floss holder--I use this a lot

What I like about my Stitchbow floss bag is that it has lots of pockets and all zips up with a handle and away you go! So while my floss foundation is in numbered bags, I have the ole Stitchbow for projects, and then, here's my newest thing. This happened when I started playing with my linen flosses. Once DMC started producing beautiful new textures of flosses, like satin, linen, and all the sparklies, I didn't want to mix those up with my floss. I like to look at them! (that's a floss-aholic for you) So, I didn't want to put them in bags, or on the Stitchbows.

There were some clothespins laying around on my desk--and now, here we are. I just started wrapping floss around clothespins. It's kinda vintage looking! I like that. I can see and touch the floss. I can label it. And it just puts the fun in functional. I wonder if anyone else is doing this. Probably--it's even fun to wind it on there.

Who knew, when I was ten and had to help my mom hang up the wash in the backyard, that I would ever love clothespins this much. AND...clothespins are cheap. At least they are until DMC gets wind of this and brands them somehow. Ha! Flosspins!

This looks really cute in my stitching studio--it's a keeper. Seeing all the flosses out like this just gives me great embroidery and cross-stitch design ideas! Anything that you can do to keep your idea factory going is what you should do! Floss is now eye candy. It's getting dangerous though because I'm wanting to go floss shopping!

Eat, Write, Dream, and Stitch up some happiness for yourself.

Stitch Happy

Today is the last of my blog-day theme week...Monday was "Eat"...Tuesday was "Write"...Wednesday was "Dream" combined with What's-On-Your-Workdesk-Wednesday...and today is "Stitch." What a fun way to spend the week, and I hope to do it again one week next month!

Threading a needle makes me happy. I don't know how else to say it. I love fabric, floss, hand sewing, machine sewing, knitting, sewing things onto things (applique) and there's always more to learn. My Aunt Margaret taught me basic knitting and crocheting when I was ten years old. I still have those old pink metal knitting needles and the little silver crochet hook. Maybe I'll pick up crochet again someday. I think my love of knitting grew even more when my daughter picked up my old pink knitting needles, and she never put them down. Now, like me, she has dozens of knitting needles and baskets of yarns. It's so fun to share this with her.

Minnie loves it when we knit.

  I love being at home, more than anywhere else, and stitching, baking, gardening, and scrapbooking make me feel happy, peaceful, and connected to everything. Writing reflects on all this and makes the circle complete. Besides that, there are even more reasons to thread a needle. Read about ten of them right here.

I can stitch and visit with people. I can stitch and watch a good movie. I can even stitch when I'm sick in bed! I've actually done this before, and it made me feel better. Of course, I'm talking about my favorite handwork stitching such as cross-stitch, embroidery, knitting, and any kind of piecing or applique I do by hand. However, I'm getting ready soon to spend some time at the sewing machine working on a few mixed-media projects and sewing myself an outfit. I'm excited! I'm sewing a dress!

Today I stitched a button onto a cardstock tag. I love sewing on paper too! I found directions on how to make your own knitting needles recently. I can't wait to try that. I have a perpetual shopping list for my favorite craft stores, and when their 40 and 50 percent off coupons come out each week, I try to go get at least one thing on my list of these wonderful new supplies and tools for sewing and crafting. New supplies keep your creativity fresh! I have a couple of big things on my list too--like a sewing machine that embroiders. However, I know several people who swear by their grandmother's old Singer sewing machine. I would love to have one of those treadle machines myself--in case the power goes off!

So I say, go ahead and get in touch with your inner stitching diva. We really are so fortunate that stitching is a leisure and a luxury, in a way. I was watching The Story of England on PBS, and they talked about the old knitting industry, where people worked all day long on these huge knitting frames to manufacture gloves and things. These people had to work long, hard days and pay extremely close attention to their machines. That's intense. Not really happy knitting in my mind. When I think of my knitting, I feel so peaceful and happy. Completely different story! Then I think too of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the early 1900's when so many young women lost their lives. They were worked ridiculously hard at sewing machines all day long--hardly allowed to take a break or go to the restroom. That was misery and heartache, and it hurts to think about it now. So I do know that the luxury and leisure we have to enjoy this pastime on our terms is truly a blessing. I am not manufacturing. I am creating. And that's the difference. It's fun, relaxing, and rewarding. I have no rules. No boss. No deadline (except my own). This is a great time in history to stitch!