Family issues going on now and I have a new puppy which is making sewing difficult!
I still haven't decided what to make V for our trip and we head to the states in a few weeks and I have more/different material selection.
I am making a Wishes themed dress. I think the Grace ruffle dress. I'd love to do it in a black fairy frost or something. I want a sparkle to it, without it looking tacky. I'd like to have some bit of sparkle representing the night sky but not overdone. These are the fairy frosts, I can find but I'm not 100% sure on any of them. None are "sparkly" more so shimmer/two toned. Does anyone know of a different material that will give that sparkle that I'm looking for? Another option would be some sort of glitter spray that I could spray the fabric with and use a more solid black?
Thanks!
Erin
Cute puppy! You've got to tell us more about him/her!
I love the idea of a Wishes dress! Good luck with it! I actually have an idea for one in the back of my mind for our next trip, but that won't be for a couple of years yet.
I think this would work, it's not black but neither is the sky.
Joann's has a great fabric that might work for you.
I found this in the store but not online....
See the hidden Mickey's ?
Love that! I may need to grab some for future use!
Now that the package has arrived, I can share pictures of a small pixie dust project last weekend. I made a pair of cross body bags for one of the posters here. However, I left the straps off because I have no idea how long to make the straps. I am sure they can tie ribbons or something to the loops for the straps. The pattern is the Out and About Zipper Bag pattern from ymct.
The picture isn't the best quality as I took the picture using my phone at night.
Those are darling, Flora! What a great idea to make them with loops for adjustability!
Yeah!! People who won't roll their eyes when I talk about tutus and who will understand my dilemma when I say I have more ideas for outfits than we will have days at Disney (what to do, what to do?) I live with all males (even the dogs), and unfortunately my boys are too old to force them to wear cute stuff (16 and 19). Luckily, my sister moved nearby with her little girl (4), and she (my sister) has no interest in sewing or shopping, so I do get to make pretty things now.
I haven't read much of the thread yet. Wanted to subscribe so I wouldn't lose it. But I will be looking at your pics and eventually posting my own.
BTW, sorry if my signature seems a bit boring; I had to turn them off because there's too much flashing and blinking on them (migraines for me) so I haven't spent any time on my own since I wouldn't see it anyway.
Welcome! We'll look forward to seeing your projects!
Are we posting stash pics?
Here are some of my sewing room...
sewing room reorganization by
doodledodesigns, on Flickr
This is my room, those boxes along the bottom hold my stash. I'm a quilter first and foremost, so that's mostly quilting cottons broken down into colors. There's a cubby on the left that holds large cuts and all my apparel fabric is behind that.
Fabric Storage by
doodledodesigns, on Flickr
That's some detail of how I organize my quilting cottons. See the hidden Mickeys?
Love your sewing space! I drool over such a clean, neat place to work! I share half our finished basement with dh's computers. It's not bad, but I could use some more white shelf space like you've got! Thanks for sharing!
That is really cute, Lois! I like the colors!
That makes me feel better about what I just did...I broke down, with a little prodding by DH, and bought a PE550 from Amazon for about $30 less than the HE1 I was looking at. Yes, it's only a 4x4, and I may be getting some symathetic, friendly "I told you so" in a few month when I get hoop envy, but it was in the budget, and it's a reward/prod to get me to finish cleaning my sewing room.
I should get it by Wednesday...we'll se what happens then. I'm a little excited.
How exciting! So many new (or new-to-us!) machines around here lately!
Embrilliance. I love it. I am a life-long Mac loyalist (and former apple employee married to a current apple employee so not changing ever...) And it's great. They JUST came out with an add-on like last week called AlphaTricks too which lets you map alphabets you buy, like Heather's Disney Font or any of the 600+ 8clawsandapaw fonts I got in their subscription deal last year, and instead of using them as 26 individual PES files and placing them manually, you can literally TYPE using those fonts. I have already mapped a few dozen that I use most often, it saves SO much time. (But I do a LOT of custom shirts with names so I use that option several times a week. If it is more a one-off thing you can just do what I have been doing for the past several months and manually place them in the Embrilliance without the alpha tricks add on. Also you can put embrilliance on as many computers as you own (We have 3) and they have a 30 day guarantee if you buy it and don't like it they will refund it. They have great tech support and have been really responsive. I posted a weird behavior on their facebook forum and they released an update and messaged me to let me know they fixed it.
It's around $150 I think, and Alphatricks is on special since it is new for $79, actual price is $99 I think. You can also PM me if you have specific questions about it, I am happy to help.
I got as far as unboxing the new machine and getting it put together, except for the power cord, before my kids woke up from their nap demanding to eat, so we took Grandma out for dinner as a thank you for all her help, and just got back. They are watching a short show before bed and then I intend to go play!
Funny story, they are watching "Classic Mickey Collection" of these early Mickey Mouse cartoons. They are in color but are probably from the 1950s maybe? Anyway, they watched it for the first time on Friday with Grandma and now they are demanding endlessly to watch "Plastic Mickey!" instead of Classic Mickey. It's very cute. And I love that they are enjoying the old stuff.
I love the "Plastc Mickey" quote! How cute! So, now you're making me rethink getting Embird. That AlphaTricks add-on sounds amazing! I use a Mac, too, but with Virtual Box so I can keep SEU for as long as it's around, or until I save up enough to buy something else. I tried the Embrilliance demo a while ago, but was annoyed that I couldn't stitch out my testing, so I kind of wrote it off. I'm going to go check it out again, though before I buy Embird.
Here is my newly, sort of organized sewing room. I would really like to add a second L shaped desk in the other corner so I can put one machine on each surface, the sewing and serger on one and the two embroidery machines on the other. (you can see the cute thank you I got from Trev's Star Wars give, I loved it so much I hung it on the wall.)
The PE770 look so tiny compared to the new machine.
All my scraps under 1 yard or so are organized by color-ish, and then I have a few bins for novelty and character fabrics (and it bugs me that they are not all the same, I need to go buy more clear bins!)
Sadly, I have not even plugged in my machine yet, I have been trying to organize and unbox and then my husband decided that the car needed to have alignment and tires TODAY, even though it has been needing it for a while, and he says it is too annoying to take the kids to run errands. (Really? I hadn't noticed when I have to do it EVERY DAY.) So anyway, the kids are here with me so I must wait until nap time.
Pictures of the other wall and corner purposely ommited since it is a huge pile of stuff relocated from that side of the room...
Congrats on your new baby! How exciting!! Love, your organization too! Where are your cube shelves from?
Looking for opinions.
I want an embroidery machine that does it all for me. Something that will use my computer skills but not my lack of sewing skills. Is there anything out there like that?
If so, what would you suggest for top of the line, mid range, and inexpensive?
I want to be able to put my kids names on shirts and some character pictures, etc. Put my husband's company logo on a polo shirt. Stuff like that.
Thanks!
From the sounds of what you'd like to do, a Brother PE-770, sounds about right. It's what many of us have as our first embroidery machines.
So, a couple weeks ago we talked about pulling threads out from the needle rather than backwards to protect the machine's tension. My mom mentioned another tip she picked up at a class that I found useful and thought others might too.
Her teacher said NOT to use a spool cover (the circular disk that goes on the spool pin after the thread spool) when embroidering. At first I thought this was crazy, but I tried it and it really works well and saves time during thread changes. The only time I use one now is for winding a bobbin or if a spool happens to be notched or rough so that thread catches on it. I even discovered that some of my Marathon spools that unroll 'backwards' from the way they are supposed to enter the machine work fine this way. If you're interested, try it out and see what you think!
I've gotten a lot done on my towels and charms this week. I even had time to applique a dress for dd. The dress itself is from Kavio, who has lots of more girly styles than I've seen elsewhere. You do have to watch the weight on their stuff though since some of it is thin like tissue t's. Anyway, here it is:
Applique Close-up - it's from Bunnycup, a raggy design:
This is a shirt I did for myself a few weeks ago from Heather Sue's superhero designs after discovering that you cannot buy a Batgirl shirt in anything but Junior sizes.
The guy at the comic shop was impressed.
Hope you all have a great week!
Regards,
C.
It is so exciting to get a new machine. It is awesome you got rid of so much clutter too!
