Getting My Sewing Machine Out

I used to sew on a daily basis, making clothes for myself and my kids back when fabric was so cheap it was worth sewing clothing. Not so much today what with fabric on the upside of $10.00 a yard. I also sewed crafty type things to sell at holiday boutiques and spent a few years making fabric purses to sell.

Then one day I just got tired of sewing and put the machine away, actually ended up getting rid of it entirely, it not being a really great machine to begin with and my sewing muse having withered up and died. I did buy the bottom of the line Singer at Walmart a few years back, a little machine for 'creating and mending' that I used in an attempt to make crepe paper ruffling for paper crafting purposes. The crepe paper ruffling was kind of a pain to make and back into the closet my machine went.

Until now.


I had been on Etsy working on my shop and saw some kitchen towels where they had taken retro type kitcheny fabric and embellished the towels with strips of fabric. How cute, but at $12.95 a towel, a bit steep for something you are going to wipe your hands on.

But, hey, I've got a sewing machine, so maybe I'll just make some for myself. I went downtown to Beverly's where I wandered about the fabric department and chose a few fabrics and some huck toweling material, then went home to experiment. I did wash all the fabric first and then played around a bit with the sewing of the towels and adding the fabric strips. Since I didn't really know what I was doing, the first few came out okay, but not quite what I had in mind and the toweling material was rather expensive.

So, over to Walmart to see if I could just buy ready made towels to decorate. I did find a pack of 6 bar towels for $6.00 so brought some of those home, washed them to see how well they would hold up, then played around some more with the towels and the fabric. I also tried a few coasters with the scraps, those coming out pretty well.

Then, the fabric buying bug bit me full on, and off to Joann's, where I did find some more fabrics but had to put up with the store smelling like poo for some reason. Also, they don't have any music playing so you kind of feel like you are in a warehouse. A little depressing shopping in there actually.

I also shopped for fabric on Etsy, there are quite a few fabric sellers there but the downside is paying shipping and then waiting for your order to arrive.

I went online to search for any other fabric stores here in town and SCORE! a quilting shop that I'd never heard of that wasn't too far from the house, so off I went again. And oh my, this quilting shop was like walking into a candy store! It's called Strawberry Patches and walking in there was instant inspiration, with the store laid out in little areas of coordinating fabrics with all sorts of quilts, pillows, girls dresses, aprons, etc made out of the fabrics offered in each little area. Bright and clean and colorful, and I'm going to start making all kinds of stuff so that I can keep going back to this store! I didn't take any pictures but did find a few online.

I bought about 10 different fabrics that day, just for starters, ha ha, and did make a towel and coaster set that I'm going to send off to stepson James in Florida. He is really into cooking so I think he will enjoy the towels.

And now off to get the sewing machine out again! And yes, everyone will be getting towels and coasters for Christmas this year.

I Finally

Got me some inspiration. Bet you thought I was going to say cleaned the house or something, didn't you?

The past few weeks I've been feeling kind of discouraged and down and not very into making things. I had done some collages for the ceramic tile coasters out of sheet music from a 1930's school book and some pictures from a black and white 1940's Mother Goose book and a lot of them got ruined by the resin even though I put 4 layers of sealant over the paper. The resin will seep under the edges and stain the paper and the whole thing is ruined, or you'll miss some bubbles in the finish or a stray cat hair and again, the whole thing is done for. Then I kind of have to hide the trash because Keith gets all weird when I throw stuff away saying that there's nothing wrong with it and nobody will notice a bubble or a cat hair. Well, I notice it A LOT and I don't want someone to buy something that's messed up, so in the trash it goes and stay out of my trash anyway!

Like this one here, looks okay at first, and I just loved the way the collage came out, but along the top is where the resin seeped and there is a huge bubble right in the middle. You can't see it in the picture, but it's there and it's huge!


So, not wanting to ruin more of the sheet music or cute pictures from the mother goose book I thought maybe I should use the more fragile papers for regular collage, but what exactly did I want to do with it?

I cut some paper for the backs of the collages but didn't like the size of them or the flimsiness, didn't have any poster board or thicker paper, didn't want to have to go buy poster board or thicker paper, and then thought about all the book covers that get tossed after I've cut up the insides of the books and went hmm...

So, I cut some book covers up into the same size squares that I use on the ceramic tiles, made a collage on one which came out nice, but it was just not finished enough looking, so inspiration hit and why not make a dimensional collage with another bigger piece of bookboard behind the collage with coordinating papers on it?

And voila! I put some ribbon hangers on the back by gluing the ribbon down and then gluing paper over the entire back to cover up the ribbon and the book cover.



I made quite a few today, they are all drying here:


I was trying to decide if I should open up a second shop on etsy again for all the stuff that isn't jewelry but second shops are kind of a pain if someone wants to combine purchases and it's getting so hard to be seen with a new shop so I'll probably just stick with the one for now. I don't like to have too much in the shop, though, I know when I'm looking at a shop I get kind of bored after about 10 pages, so who knows what I'll do right now. I'll take some pictures of these tomorrow and then decide I guess.