Tag: sewing

Hope Springs Eternal-I’m Taking a Stab At This Blogging Thang Again

My News

After much long neglect, I have decided to once again try this thing called blogging. If nothing else it will be good for me to keep track of my travels teaching for SVP Sewing Brands (Singer-Viking-Pfaff). I will try to add some sewing tip/info to each post. So far this year I have been to Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Tennessee. Also I would like to keep track of where I have found healthy, whole food, plant based foods. This is to help other travelers (and myself for future visits to those places). Small towns and airports are often especially challenging.Road Warrior Healthy Eating Tips
My general strategy once I land is to find a Whole Foods or other large  health food store. If they have prepared foods as Whole Foods does, I get dinner to go. If not then it is often a crap shoot/challenge. Ethnic restaurants are sometimes the best choice, but they also often utilize too much oil in their cooking. Steamed dishes at a chinese restaurant, mexican food, hold the cheese & meat, and Thai foods are usually available in even small towns.

When All Else Fails

Since I teach full day classes I bring a shaker bottle with a pea based protein powder,  mixed with dried greens to my classes. I then add cold water at lunch time. I get these powders at my husband’s chiropractic office. I also bring a container of ground flax seeds to add to my oatmeal that I have almost every morning at the hotels’ buffet breakfasts.

My shaker bottle go to’s.

Sewing Tip

Did you know that you could do machine appliqué circles and decorative stitches with a simple attachment? Take a look at this video using my Designer Epic sewing machine in sewing mode. Many brands of sewing machines have these optional attachments.

Circle play on my Designer Epic with the Circular Attachment. Yes the circles practically sew themselves. #husqvarnaviking #designerepic #nancybronsteinsews #applique #ilovered

Posted by Nancy Bronstein on Friday, February 1, 2019

Double Sewing Teacher Certifications!

I am now, in addition to being certified as a Martha Pullen Beginning Sewing Teacher, I am also a certified BurdaStyle Sewing teacher.

 

embroidered jacket
BurdaStyle 109 Jacket

Above is a picture of the last project that I did for BurdaStyle.

The pattern is for a cropped jacket, but I wanted something a bit longer so I added to the length of the jacket, front and back, as well as my usual need to lengthen the sleeves to accommodate my longer than average arms.

The embroidery was done before assembling the jacket and is from the Premier +2 software that I use for machine embroidery.

Jacket Embroidery

Here’s a picture of the jacket inside out so the lining is viewable.

jacket lining
Jacket inside out

Vogue 9212 Jacket Pattern Review Pt. 2

Front

This is the finished jacket. As I cut out the individual pieces, I machine embroidered the designs. Kind of says gypsy carnival barker to me, but I like it. My husband said I should make one for him  and we can recreate Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I think not.

The tricky parts were:

-the 90 ° turn at the collar

-I did a floating hem and it was time consuming and took some finagling with the back because of the way that part falls

Back

-the front hem also was a bit of a struggle to get it to hang right and not stick out at right angles from my hips-not an attractive look. I would suggest, if at all possible, to have someone pin the hem while you are wearing it.

Vogue 9212 Jacket Pattern Review

I recently made this pattern. I cut out my size and I ironed on thin interfacing to the back of the pattern as I don’t really like working with the usual tissue paper.

I buy the interfacing by the bolt when I have a 50% coupon from Joanns. I like taking the time to do this for a few reasons:
1) no pattern pieces skittering across the room with the slightest breeze
2) the interfacing sort of grips the fabric you are cutting a bit and less pins are needed
3) without a doubt increases the lifespan of the pattern without having to trace everything including markings
4) I like to mark the seam allowance and pin the pattern together to check on fit before I cut anything if it is a casual garment and I’m not willing to put in the time to do a muslin first.

After pining the pattern together at the seam allowance I realized that I needed to take 1/2″ off of the shoulder seams and add 1″ at the waist area to make it longer since I have a long torso. I usually have to add at least 1″ in the sleeve area but with this pattern I didn’t need to make any adjustments there. I added 1″ to the hem of the lining since I had read on Pattern Review that there were issues in that area.

Part 2 to come soon and it will complete this review with a picture of the finished jacket.

New Tote

PC Barbie
Not exactly the Barbie I had.

This is a picture of a new tote that I recently sewed for a Martha Pullen class. I learned to sew a million years ago. I started out with clothes for my Barbie doll. If that doesn’t date me then you are either really old and or a lot younger than me.

I moved away from sewing while establishing my career and having my 4 children. As the kids got more independent I dabbled in other crafts but have come back to my first love-fabric and all one can do with it. When I sit down at my sewing machine, I smile to myself and probably make a little happy sigh.

I have recently decided that I may some day want to share my love of sewing by doing some teaching. I have taken at least a dozen Craftsy classes and taken classes at various sewing expos but no other formal, structured classes since those I had to take in junior high school. By the way, I highly recommend Craftsy. The classes are always available online so once you purchase a class, you can view it over and over again. You can set bookmarks for that pesky technique that you always forget how to do and go right to it whenever you need a reminder.

In addition to the above, I decided to try to find a course on teaching sewing. There are a few online, which with my schedule is what works best. I signed up and I completed Martha Pullen’s Teaching Beginning Sewing Class.  The bag is  kinda retro right? I will be doing the BurdaStyle Teaching Certification Course in about 3 weeks. I can’t wait to get started.

I sewed this on a domestic machine and since it is vinyl, it took some finessing. The handle instructions would produce a nice looking strap but it would be 4 thicknesses of vinyl which my domestic would not have rocked and rolled over in an uniform fashion. I decided to use quilting cotton (matching the lining) and vinyl to make the straps thinner.

Strap Instructions/Hints

 Picture

I first pressed a seam down the middle of the length of the cotton to mark for later. I then drew a line down the middle of the length of the wrong side of the vinyl (red line in picture)and then sewed the 2 strips right sides together (vinyl and cotton).

Picture

ThenI folded and pressed the unsewn edge of the cotton to the cotton fold line.

Picture

I used wonder clips to fold the vinyl to the red marked line on the vinyl and then brought that (newly folded) vinyl to meet the cotton. I would suggest doing the topstitching with the vinyl side up so you can keep an eye on your stitch line and use the appropriate foot for your machine for vinyl and the correct tension settings. My Viking Designer Deluxe has an automatic setting for vinyl and a teflon foot.

Picture

Picture

At this point the strap still seemed a bit thick to do even topstitching once the strap was sandwiched in between the outer vinyl and the drop in cotton lining. I decided to not chance doing wonky stitches in the vinyl and used rivets instead to neatly attach the handles. I think it looks better and is also more stable.

Of course my mystery quilt is languishing now-about 3/4s quilted. Quilt guilt! I need to get back and get that done but it was nice to take a break and work on these quick projects. ​​

Random interesting links I’ve recently visited:

DIY Quilt Design Wall Tutorial-

​www.shannonfraserdesigns.ca/2016/02/diy-quilting-design-wall.html

Well written and very funny description of quilters from a quilter’s husband-

​kaythesewinglawyer.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-speech-on-quilting.html

Mystery Quilt

I have a couple of sewing friends (friends that share my love of sewing). We decided to try our hand at making a mystery quilt. For those of you, not in the know with quilt jargon, a mystery quilt is one where the pattern maker walks you through constructing a quilt, block by block, and what the finished product looks like remains hidden until the final reveal at the end. Since I did not know if I would like said mystery quilt, I used only fabrics from my stash. Which I feel worked out well. However the pattern I chose was for a double/queen size. I just ran with that not looking at the actual dimensions. Sigh. 64 X 64″ on our queen bed looks like a tiny yarmulke on a big man’s head-like you know it has some significance but adding warmth to the head is certainly not happening. I then started to cook up ideas to add both width and length.

quilt border
Mystery Quilt border with embroidery

I decided to do a turquoise strip and a lime green. Then I made some flying geese and alternated them to form this effect which reminds me of a big ribbon. Then another lime green and a turquoise strip.
Today’s task is to get it pin basted to the batting and backing. I got it about 3/4 done and ran out of safety pins. Even though I have about 3000 of them. Another sigh. We live in a small town, we have no quilt shop and our only department store recently went out of business. Maybe the grocery store?
Addendum-The picture above was taken after basting and doing some decorative stitches with size 12 thread.

My First Appliquéd Quilt

Last March I went to the MQX (quilting) expo in Manchester NH. This is an event where thousands of middle aged women and 3 men attend classes on every facet of quilting. Ok, there were maybe 5 men and a few lost husbands wandering around. I took 2 classes from Mark Sherman-one of the 5 men. One of the classes was on making “stained glass” quilts. Mark is a big fan of Louis Tiffany and he has made some incredibly beautiful quilts. The above is the end product from that class (many hours later). Below is the picture that inspired the quilt. This was my first experience doing an appliquéd quilt. I had done reverse appliqué on a coat (ala Alabama Chanin).

Mark is a great teacher. He is warm, funny, and very generous in sharing his knowledge. If you get a chance don’t hesitate to sign up for one of his classes.

Resources-

-Apliquick-fabric turning video-Applique tool tutorial

-machine applique tutorial- machine applique tutorial

-machine applique video-machine applique video