I’ve been thinking a lot about change and “stuff”. As the year begins, I’m feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in my sewing room. I’ve spent the last couple of years doing a first level “Swedish Death Cleaning” in ..read more

Have you seen this? I offer it to you because I discovered it, and now I want to share. The Royal School of Needlework has been around since 1872. They are located in London (and all around the UK.) Last ..read more

Presumably, Thomas Paine was not talking about the soles of socks, and I am also left to presume that women wore clothes during revolutionary times, as well as men. Nevertheless. Here we are. Repairing our clothes. Or as my husband likes to say: “You are working on your post-apocalyptic skills.” Now I’ve seen some videos of people who literally have a tiny knitting machine that they use to darn holes on knitted fabric. I imagine it works on any fabric. But before I got myself into anything too complicated, I tried a simpler, slow-stitched, hand technique. As you can see above, the trick to re ..read more

I bought a pair of those baggy overalls the young people are wearing. For me, they are at the very least, cool and comfortable. They are not flattering. They should be worn while working around the house. Not in public. (Not by me, anyway.) However, I got it into my head that I wanted a row of flowers across the top of the bib. It was not a difficult task, but it is a challenge to transfer a drawing onto a dark background. I don’t have the solution to this yet. For these, I just redrew the image I wanted directly onto the overalls using a blue wash-away pen. Then I stitched it out. I thought ..read more

Do you have a pair of pants that are past pretending to be cool with all their holes? Shirts with stains? ( I seem to have a lot of these, I can’t seem to keep my food in my mouth. Kids, this is something they don’t tell you about aging. You constantly have your food on your shirt. Yes, it’s gross. You’ll get there soon enough.) My husband is particularly good at wearing down the hems of his pants. (Another sign of aging…you seem to get shorter and your pants drag on the ground.) Although for those of us who have never been considered tall, dragging hems is a lifelong problem. But hey! We fix ..read more

My niece is having a baby at the end of this month. My nephews and nieces all get quilts when they have a baby. Thank heavens, I think they are slowing down now. This may be the last one. And this baby (we know it’s a girl) is getting a cute one for sure. So I just want to say that I am not terribly fond of these somewhat complicated quilt instructions. If I had my way, every quilt would be improv. Or my other preferred way is 300 blocks of the exact same pattern. That way, a bad cut or a mis-measurement is not that big a deal. Lots of focus on color and design…not so much on fussiness. Plent ..read more

A lot to choose from this year, but I thought rather than try to write a recap of the year, I would just show you in pictures. It seems I did a lot of walking out in the woods. And took a renewed interest in hand-stitching. So, enjoy. Oh, and Happy New Year ..read more

I love a good list. So when I needed some gift ideas, I thought…why not go to my sewing room and share with you some of the tools I use the most? They are things I probably would not want to live without, and I’m sure each of you would have your own items to add to this list. But I recently came across someone online who was fairly new to sewing and didn’t have any quilt shops nearby. And I thought, well, if someone is new to the hobby, and getting a machine for Christmas, or just is interested in the tools I use non-stop…well, here’s a peek. Whether you are a beginner or an old pro, I hope yo ..read more

In my quest for a white-ish, neutral holiday color theme, I got the crazy idea of making some of my own putz houses. Now, you need to understand that I really am not adept with paper crafts, and I’m demonstrably terrible with a glue gun. I rarely use one. But in googling putz houses, I found some svg files on Etsy that seemed like something I would like to do. You can find files to purchase all over. Just google putz house svg files. My first inclination was to print them out and then cut them out by hand. Silly me. I couldn’t see how to print the files. I did, however, locate accompanying pd ..read more

It’s that time of year. When the last leaf falls… Anyone remember that line? It’s from A Bug’s Life. My son was old enough to watch it over and over and over again until I had it almost memorized. The grasshoppers threaten the ants to come back for their winter supply of food “When the last leaf falls”. Well the last leaf has not quite fallen, but the temps are finally starting to drop, and that means only one thing: get ready for the holidays. As I get older I find that I am SO SICK of the same old holiday decorations I’ve had for the past 30 years…some even longer. And I know, I know…TRADIT ..read more