Miss Loreen's Schoolhouse

Farmer's Market

I've been busy trying and I do mean TRYING to get ready for the Farmer's Market.  I've tossed around a bajillion (sp?) ideas for so long my brain hurts!  Went around to a few of the fabric shops because, of course, I didn't seem to have all the fabrics I need.  I'm not sure why because I could insulate a house with the amount of fabric I have now.  I decided to do some simple table runners that I had an old pattern for.  I've noticed in my fabric store shopping that this particular table runner is making a come back once again.  I even saw a vendor at the market who was doing fabric stamping (very nicely too!) and she was using a similar pattern.  If you sew long enough, you get to see the same patterns and tools come and go!! 

I have plenty of veggie/fruit fabrics but needed coordinating fabric to go with them.  Imagine coordinating to vegetables and fruits.  I picked up a few to try before I foolishly buy yards and yards that end up not working.  See, I am improving my spending!!

Hopefully by tomorrow am I will have a bunch finished and will post pictures for you to see.

Keep stitching,
loreen

What a embroidery nightmare!!

Tell me this has happened to you..........PLEASE!!  I am working on pincushions for the farmer's market.  I wanted to do some samples with embroidery on them as you have probably seen in one of my photo albums.  I digitize four designs at a time that fit nicely in one hooping.  I made the designs all the same so there would be less color changes.  Ok, working good so far.  The embroidery is going along fine and I finally feel comfortable enough to leave the room.  Not the best idea apparently.  I just wanted to go to the bathroom!!  I came back and one of the designs is practically sucked down into the bobbin area.  Of course, I have to hack it to shreds just to get it out of the sewing machine.  Did I mention that I put the hope down on top of another fabric before I started cutting away??  Now I have a hole where one of the designs was when I left the room and another innocent fabric with a few random slices in it.  Sounds like I saved three designs easily, doesn't it?  NOPE.  You see, the designs weren't finished stitching out and now I have this big hole where there is no fabric, no stabilizer, nothing.  Now I have to become Dr. Frankenstein and patch up the hole with pieces of extra stabilizer, making sure I don't tear the good stabilizer.  Did I mention that I was using "tear away" stabilizer???  Did I mention that I have to keep everything hooped so it will all line up again??  Now I'm sure that you expert embroiderers (is that a word?) will scoff at my solution but I decided to patch it up and use a little hand stitching to keep everything together.  Maybe I just have to be neat, I don't know.  I only had about a half inch between each design so I could only spray adhesive on the bottom but I needed a little something on top so the foot wouldn't catch in the shreds.  Ok, I didn't think to shut the overhead fan off so the top piece of stabilizer would just stay put on its own.  I was pretty hot by that time!

Got it done and save the remaining three designs so I guess that's all that matter.  I didn't think at the time to take pictures for you to laugh at........I mean LOOK at.  You could picture how a stuffed animal might look after a dog finished with it and that would be close.  Now back to work!

Keep stitching,
loreen

Senior Discount!!

I went to Denny's for breakfast yesterday and noticed that the senior discount menu was for ages 55 and over so I thought "What the heck!"  When the waitress came over, I gave my order and waited patiently for her to question whether or not I was old enough for the senior's menu!  HA! HA! HA! I'd have had a long wait!  No, she never asked me.  Never batted an eye, raised an eyebrow or hesitated one little bitty second before writing down my order.  The only thing she asked me was what did I want to drink.  Now how deflating was that.  It's not like I'm 65 or 70.  I'm 58!  That's only three years over the 55 required age.  Back in the day, I was asked for ID to prove I was over 21 and I was over 30.  I guess the years haven't been all that kind and my mirror is really telling me the truth.  All this time I thought it was bad lighting..............

I'm sobbing in my sewing,
loreen

Embroidered Pincushions

Well, I started on the embroidered pincushions.  I digitized the pincushions so that I could sew the back to the front while still in the hoop.  The stitching wasn't as great as I had hoped so I went back to the drawing board and shorten the stitch length but I still wasn't thrilled with it.  I think I will try digitizing a bean stitch as my last resort.  A bean stitch is a triple stitch so hopefully that will give it the strength t hese cushions need since they are stuff pretty full.  I went ahead and stuffed the pincushions I had done so far and I now need to hand stitch to close the little openings.  I practiced using some of my old workmates names and/or initials.  Hopefully, I will be able to give these to them some time in the future as a thanks for being fun to work with.  Hope they won't peak at the pictures beforehand!  LOL!!

The round pincushions didn't come out as nice as I would have liked.  I think it may have been the tear away stabilizer that I had used.  I had a very hard time getting the stabilizer off where the regular stitching was and didn't want to yank on that area too hard.  I used a cheapy stabilizer so I've learned my lesson there.  It was practically a cutaway instead of a tear away.  Live and learn!

There's one picture showing the back fabric I used on all of the cushions.  It's a Loralie sewing notions fabric.  Pretty cute! I added an extra picture with the pincushions (in Sewing Necessaries) showing how I embroidered four tops at a time.  I haven't pressed these yet and hopefully, the wrinkles will come out easily.  Wished I could same the same for the ones appearing on my face!!

Update on knitted socks!

Not much progress on my knitted socks.  I am knitting from the toe up and must admit I had to start the poor toe twice before I got the hang of it.  I've made it beyond the toe and now on an easy section between the toe and heel.  I'm using five double pointed needles.  I did have the option of using two circular needles but that seemed like a catastrophe waiting to happen so thought I'd avoid that mess!    Check out my knitting projects photo library for more pictures.  I used the yarn that automatically makes a design as you knit the sock. There is a picture of what the sock pattern actually looks like if knitted correctly!  Unfortunately, I think this is configured on knitting the sock from the top down and I am knitting from the toe up.  I thought I might be able to fix this problem by starting the yarn from the outside end instead of the inside end.  Since I haven't knitted something like this in quite some time, I'm not sure if things have changed and knitters now start with the yarn tail that is on the outside.  I remember years ago having to fish around inside the ball of yarn for the start end and creating quite a mess pulled outside in a pile before finding the starting end of the yarn.  You may have some pointers for me on this sock design business!

Back to knitting!
loreen  

New Blog Look!

It was time for a change on my blog so I'm going to try out a few looks over the next few weeks.  This is the newst look.  Hope you like it! 

Poot (Caspian) and I went to the park the other day.  He enjoyed the swing for about three minutes then wanted to run around!!

Happy sewing,
loreen

Pillowtalk!

I've been diligently working on pillowcases.  First I cut out all of the fabric, then sewed on the borders (hem edge) at the same time as I sewed on the little trims.  Once all of those were done, I sewed the side seams with a french seam and finally the bottom seam on the serger.   I did serge some of the side seams but decided I didn't care for that.  It went pretty quickly and the nice thing was that when I was finished I had a whole pile of pillowcases!  They make great gifts!  I will have to do some with Christmas fabrics. Check out the Pillowcase Photo Album for more pictures of these newest pillowcases.

Next project is a bunch of little pincushions. I want to embroidery some with names, some with initials and the rest with sewing notion embroideries on the top.  I'm going to try to sew a few round ones.  I have two choices on those.  First, I can get the embroidery done then sew the circles on my sewing machine with the new circular attachment I have. Secondly, I could digitize sewing the circle after the embroidery is finished.  I must remember to leave a place to turn the little devils right side out.  We'll see how that works out!  Wish me luck!!

Hope you're sewing today!
loreen