When we were asked recently if we wanted to review Nancy Zieman's new book...the answer was undoubtedly YES! Nancy Zieman....she is the queen of all things sewing and I grew up watching her series on PBS. And her book is exactly as I thought is would be...delightful. She talks about her growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, overcoming Bell's Palsy, and her sewing career in all its paths. And how it all started with one 4-H demonstration of showing how to put on a waistband. She says, "There is ... View the Post
Handmade Baby Gifts
I have been very overdue (hee...hee) for some baby gifts for some friends so I sat down one afternoon last week to play catch up. I first made two of these little dresses. I did two sizes 12-18 months mostly because these babies came last fall and I haven't been on the stick enough to get them a gift. So, large sizes were in order! I hope that they will fit next summer.... I added some cute pink rose trim that I found in the stash. And some matching pink buttons ... View the Post
Because sometimes a cartwheel is in order…..
I am not a coupon-er, although I wish I were. I have some really good friends that are mind-blowing at it....but I just couldn't keep up. The clipping, the filing, the wrong math additions (that's a personal issue) was just more than I could do---which is completely my fault. But I know that there are good savings (my brain says it)! And every time I walk into a store, part of me wants to follow someone around with a coupon binder to soak in all of their couponing knowledge because let's face ... View the Post
Zipper 101
Did you all have a good weekend? I hope so. Liz and I are both home again and happy to be back to a bit of normalcy. We were both laughing about how we have never had so many days in a row of wearing "real clothes" and not our usual mom uniforms of yoga pants, jeans and tees or sweaters. We do have a few more stories to tell you about our conference over last weekend...and some things we learned, but I feel like I am still processing a lot of it. But I promise we will share soon! And now ... View the Post
How to Sew a Dart
Sewing darts is another one of those things in sewing that seemed so complicated and hard when I first started sewing. But as time went on and I got braver....I finally tackled darts. And again, I wondered why I was so nervous. But I guess seeing all of those markings on patterns, I was more than a little intimidated. There are lots of kinds of darts. The picture below shows a pattern with one dart, but there can also be bust darts, curved darts, or even double darts (that look like a ... View the Post
How to Sew a Buttonhole (and let your machine do all the work!)
Today we are talking buttonholes...and I know, I really do know. Some of you are still afraid of them. I was. I would *conveniently* ask my Home Ec. teacher to "show" me how to do a buttonhole over and over and she would end up "showing" me but doing the whole thing for me. It was my trick for years. And then later it was my mom...until one day, I said that it was time to learn the buttonhole. That was years ago and now I laugh at how scared I was of something....but it seemed so ... View the Post