Nina's Valentine Project

Nina is 11 years old and has been taking lessons with me for about a year now. When she first started she was kinda quiet. She was very interested in sewing, I could tell, but I would have to ask a lot of questions to get her to say what she liked and didn't like. Then she came out of her shell a little and she started to talk a little bit about her ideas and ask questions. Along the way we did projects geared toward learning basic sewing skills like planning the project, cutting out pattern pieces, working the machine and sewing a nice straight seam. With each project she would get a little more confident with the machine and her sewing ability.

I use a really cute book to get ideas for projects for kids. I usually end up altering the instructions a bit to suit the individual child.

Nina made a cat/fox from the book. The project was a cat or a dog that used many different pieces. She decided to make a two tailed cat/fox. Nina loves animals so this project was really fun for her as she got to combine animals! It turned out adorable! It gave her practice cutting and sewing small pieces. We did not use the method in the book that uses wax paper as the pattern pieces- we just photocopied the book page and cut them out. She had to go slow and stitch carefully around the small curved edges. This project was great for teaching patience and carefulness :) We used some hand sewing in sewing on buttons. Then she did the cutest thing! She glued cotton balls onto the ears and tails to make soft fluffy tails.

Here it is ! :)

Now lessons are hoppin' as when I present our next project, she is just bursting with ideas and ways to make it her own.

Here she is with her first purse that she made. She chose the fabric as it has cute dogs on it. It is fully lined and has a rick rack trim on the front:

For Christmas presents we made tissue holders. We used only hand sewing with this as I am still trying to convince them that hand sewing is necessary. For some reason the young ones think that sewing means just using the machine and only the machine. We also practiced sewing on buttons, tying knots and cutting using the pinking shears. The pinking sheers are hard for the young ones to hold onto sometimes. I am trying to find a smaller pair but so far haven't seen any.

She made this one for her grandmother. I forget why she chose the green fabric and ladybug theme but she had a really cute reason. These tissue holders fit a travel size tissue pack. They are made of felt, which is about .25 a sheet. I like to buy it on sale at Joann's for .19. The felt is very forgiving to young fingers trying to work a hand needle. Each of the Saturday Girls made this project with me in lesson then took home the instructions so that they could make some on their own to give as presents for Christmas.

For Valentines day I had planned a project that we could do in an hour. A year ago, this would have taken us two lessons. Now when I talk about creating a pattern piece, sewing it with the seams showing, using pinking sheers, stuffing, etc. she understands what I am talking about and we can get right to the fun.

I had to project idea for a Valentine's pin- we would cut felt shapes and stack them together, sew them , add buttons or whatever decoration she wanted, then stuff it and glue a pin onto the back. She loved the idea but wanted to change it. She wanted to make a Valentine's lollipop pin for her dad. I think that is just fantastic! We are at the point where she understands the idea I have for the project, but redesigns it. (To me this also means I am doing my job :) She gets it! Hooray!!)

Here she is after creating the pattern piece for the lollipop. I have discovered that people learn the intricacies of patterns easier if they start out making them. So we drew out the lollipop and heart on paper. She also thought that it would be cute if the lollipop already had a bite taken out of it.

She then pinned the pattern pieces down and cut them out of red felt.
She was very good about keeping her fingers back and carefully turning the felt piece to stitch around the curves of the heart. Curves are not easy to sew, especially small ones, like the heart. She took it slow and did an absolutely beautiful job. And see how her fingers are back outside of the throat plate? That is exactly how they should be! :) :)


We use a piece of Peltex for the lollipop stick. Peltex is very thick super sturdy iron on interfacing. I use it for the bottom of purses, to make christmas ornaments and to back decorated pins. Nina then pinned it to the backing and sewed around the edge of the lollipop.

Here is the finished lollipop.


We glued a pin onto the back.

And here is one last shot of the lollipop. She wanted one photo to have the hail in it. As we were finishing up the lollipop it started to hail. It was crazy! Luckily it wasn't the really big car denting kind of hail. Just little granola sized hail.

Nina also wanted the lollipop to say" lollipops are like love" But I told her that she should draw her dad a card and put that in it. There was just no room on our lollipop to write" lollipops are like love" :) :)

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Doug & Diane's Kitchen Valances

Happy New Year!!!!! Woohooo!!! Christmas is over!!!! Please do not think I am a scrooge or a humbug- I am as gung ho happy about Christmas as you can get. But this year I was really ready for the peace and quiet of January.

Right before Christmas I finished up with Doug & Diane's valances for their kitchen and laundry room. They wanted matching valances for a bay window in the kitchen, a window over the sink and one for the laundry room, which is right next to the kitchen.

Doug & Diane are the cutest couple! They are two of the nicest people on the planet. They are so fun to work with as not only are they nice, but they have really great ideas about what to put in their house. And speaking of their house- it is beautiful! When I was going to install these valances, it was a couple of days before Christmas. As I was driving to their house, I said to my self "Self, I bet their house is the most beautifully decorated on their street" . And I was right! :)

Here is the Bay Window we were covering.

And here is the sink window:

When we started to talk about the style for the kitchen, I asked them what they liked. Doug likes tailored. He doesn't want any fluffy, frilly business. Diane liked the idea of a handkerchief valance: she had mentioned one in a friends home that she liked. The continuous style appealed to her. Doug did not care for the casual look that those can have. I combined their likes/dislikes and realized I had to find a valance pattern that was tailored not frilly, continual on piece design, could incorporate two fabrics, and be able to be altered to accomadate two smaller windows over the sink and in the laundry room, and also look great over the main bay window. No problem! And here was the kicker: install in less than one inch of space.

Look at the pictures above of the bay window and sink window- I had an inch above and an inch to each side. That was it. Yep. 1 inch.

I looked through my patterns & books. Nothin'. I looked on line. Nothin'. There were a lot of patterns that fit a few of the criteria but not all. And then I went to the Pate Meadows Window Treatment pattern website. Jackpot!

I love Pate Meadows patterns. They are wonderful because:

• They include very clear directions with drawings and detailed descriptions.
• They are printed on heavy white paper. This paper is much easier to work with than commercial tissue paper, especially with home decor fabrics.
• They are easily alterable for different size windows.
• Customer service is awesome! They ship fast and have great communication. Also, I lost my install sheet at some point for the Erin valance . I couldn't remember how long the side bar pieces needed to be cut for the supporting frame . I called them and they were so nice as to read that part of the pattern to me right over the phone!
• They turn out freakin' gorgeous every time. And I mean absolutely freakin' gorgeous.

Drawbacks:

• They are not cheap. Average price: $29.95. Yea. For a paper pattern. I am the girl who won't purchase commercial patterns unless they are on sale for .99. But I will buy these, they are that good. Spend money where it is worth it- I always say. And Pate Meadows patterns are worth it.
• They always seem to overshoot on the fabric estimate. I now know to fully figure out my own yardage - I don't go by their estimate. I draw out exactly how I am going to lay out the pattern pieces on the fabric and figure out my yardage that way. Yes, some extra is good: I don't do a project without some sort of extra factored in. But each of the 4 patterns I have made so far had much higher fabric estimates in the pattern than it turned out I needed. That is my one and only issue with the patterns.

We chose the Delaine pattern. It is a wonderful design that incorporates two or more fabrics, has a welt corded edge (Doug likes welt cording :) ) , can install in next to no space and is just really cute!

We had found the right fabric by accident. In my search for the fabrics for their den, this fabric was one of our options. It didn't work for their den, but it was perfect for the kitchen.

This is the Stripe:

When searching for a fabric it is sometimes easier to take pictures, rather than write down the name , price and colors of each option. Plus, some fabric stores are chintzy with the samples so taking a pictures gets me a much better idea of the pattern. This is the end of the bolt for the stripe. I found it at Hancock's for $9.99 a yard.

I found our main floral fabric at Blaney's in Norfolk. Way out on Military Highway past Janaf, past the airport = out in the city version of the boonies. They have great prices and are very nice. I left my favorite sweater there in early November. When I went back in they had it right there for me, knowing I would eventually be back in :) I was sitting in front of their counter, checking out thinking that the sweater on the chair looked very much like mine. The one I couldn't find.

The colors on the fabric matched the colors in the pretty artwork that Doug & Diane have in the kitchen. We all liked the red background and the fun, painterly flowers in bold colors. And that it was $14.98 a yard. That's not bad.

I almost had a heart attack when I went in to buy the fabric. It had been about a month since I had gotten the sample. I went to where the fabric used to be located and ti wasn't there. I searched the store and couldn't find it. I believe I was slightly hyperventalating. When I asked about it, they helped me search it out- it was hidden in a corner behind a ton of other bolts and down to the last 6 yards on the bolt. Luckily, I only needed 5.5! Whew!!

The stripe that I found at Hancock's did have a matching floral that went with it but it was very tropical and that is not the look we wanted in the kitchen. I must have been researching this fabric in the summer because you can see my foot in the left upper corner! I think I took these pictures when I was finding fabrics for their den... I had liked the stripe for their home from the beginning :)

To make these valances first I made cording! I learned a most wonderful way to make cording from Mary Parker, slipcover maker extraordinaire. Out of Ptown, Va. You make a fabric ' tube', cut around it and you have one long perfect continuous strip to cover the welt cording. It takes half the time of cutting out each strip.

Here I am cutting it out. I took pictures while I was creating this cording to put into a lesson for my students about welt cording.

You end up with one incredibly long beautiful strip of fabric!

Then I cut out all of the pieces for the valances. Each swag and pleat section were seperate pieces. So I was cutting for hours, it seemed like. Each valance has a face fabric, a back lining and a flannel interlining.

Here is my dining table with the pleat fabric laid out on it ready to cut out the pleaat sections.

This is the face fabric of the valance sewn together. Look in the back! There is my Christmas tree! :) In this post we have gone from a shot of my sandled foot in a fabric store in summer to my Christmas tree. I guess we weren't in a hurry on these :)

I then applied the cording to the face fabric

• Here is the greatest tip you will ever get about cording in your life: sew it on with the CORDING ON THE BOTTOM and the FABRIC on the top. The welt cording should be against the feed dogs. This ensures that the fabric does not pucker.

In this photo I have finished sewing on the cording and have sewn all three layers; the lining , interlining and face fabric, together. I then turned it inside out, slip stitched the end closed, pressed and sewed the pleats in place. Pressing did take a while as you really have to press the living sunshine out of the fabric to get it to stay.

Once I got all three valances finished I needed to put my idea of how to hang them into motion. Pate Meadows uses really neat adapters that screw right into the wall . They extend 3.5 inches from the wall. The valances have loops sewn into the pleats that the valance hangs from on the posts.

We couldn't use them. The base of adapter post is about 3 inches across. We only had an inch of space in which to install. Again thank you o inconsiderate home builders who didn't think ahead that these lovely homeowners would eventually want to hang window treatments in their home.

So my idea was to cut dowels into 3.5 inch pieces and paint them to match their moulding (Luckily we just moved and I still have a can of ultra super bright white gloss paint!) Then we would screw a decorative knob onto one end and the other end straight into the wall.

This is my dowel painting contraption that I made. I took a pice of scrap wood and hammered nails into it, leaving about an inch out of the wood. The dowels (cut and drilled by my sweet husband) could then stand up on their own . This made it so easy to paint them.

Here is a side view of the post adapters from the Pate Meadows website. They are really nice, I was upset I couldn't use them. I do think the dowels turned out fantastic as they blend right into the molding so you don't really see them at all.

Double sided screw. Also called a splicer screw. Use a #8 size for drawer knobs.

Here is the final valance! The posts that the valances hang on are installed in between the windows in that one inch of space and on teh molding itself.

The bay window:
See how the fabric matches thier paintings on the left side? perfect!

The bay window and the sink window. While Doug and I were installing, Diane was searching for and found her mothers pound cake recipe. I cut it out of the photo but the counter was piled with butter and cream cheese and all things yummy to make pound cake:)

Here is an up close view of the front of the bay window valance.

The laundry room window. I suggested that they paint one wall of the laundry room red. Wouldn't that look really cool?

The sink window. I love the Santa's on the window!

Here is the side of the bay window valance.

Halloweeen!

Ahhh. Long time no blog, I know. I would love to sit down regularly and update this thing. I am envious of the time and discipline of bloggers who update every day. I follow a couple of blogs that post daily and I love to read them. My goal is once a month. So far I am not hitting that goal :) but I am getting there!
I have SO BUSY! I have lots of new students and they are fantastic! Also, I have suddenly been hit with many new clients who have naked windows for me to cover. And then there was halloween.
I love halloween!!!!! I love pumpkins and halloween decorating. I love everything about halloween- especially getting to wear a costume. And since I now have my own darling mini-me who shares my love of dressing up- I have two costumes to make each year.
This year, Eden decided she wanted to be a princess. Ok. We can do that. But I would not allow her to cheat and go the disney route. We had to make it unique. Also, Eden wanted us to match. I found a costume pattern that came in a child size as well as an adult size. We decided to do as princess and queen going to a masquerade ball. My plan was for us to both have matching dresses, her in pink & white and mine in black & red and masquerade masks.

We decided to do Eden's in Pink & White. Here she is!

To save a bit of money I used Wright lace hem tape for the edges of the sleeves- it was three yards for about $2 . I gathered it using my handy dandy ruffler foot. I also used the Wide lace hem tape for the trim all along the edge, where the pink meets the white. It turned out to be MUCH less expensive that buying pre-gathered lace trim.

Doesn't she look like a pretty frosted cupcake?

Sleeve detail:

I ordered the mask on Etsy from Lyssane. You can visit her beautiful shop here:

The mask was perfect!! Absolutely exquisite! I loved the attention to detail- there were little sparkles inside the flowers and all of the ribbon pieces were neatly tucked inside. The mask was even lined on the inside with super soft felt so it was super comfy for Eden to wear. The mask made the outfit!! If you need a mask- don't go anywhere else! It was perfect!





My dress was completed at the very last minute. I had planned on more time but woops! Ran out! I used a different method (pivoting the pieces ) to alter the bodice and I wish I had stuck with my normal method ( painstakingly cutting them apart and piecing ). After making up two muslin test versions, I still wish I had had time to alter it once more. I changed the front to a lace up detail, instead of the bows on the pattern. I also added in a piece at the top of the bodice so that it was not so low. ( I was asked to read to Eden's class for Halloween and I really felt that the dress was just a bit too revealing for 2nd graders.) Also, to read for her class I needed to be a story book character. So at the very last second, I changed my costume into the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. I appliques hearts onto the front of the dress. I ended up not needing a mask. I drew hearts on my face and my lipstick was heart shaped.

(You can see my husband and Eden in the reflection in the glass door :) )

Here I am after I read to Eden's class.

My Mini-Me & Me

I used a satin edge stitch for my sleeves as I was not going for the 'frosted cupcake' look of Eden's dress.

Happy Halloween!

Brag Photos

I love my job. Have I told anyone that recently? I am sure I have but I need to say it again- I love my job. One of the reasons I love my job is that I have the sweetest , brightest most creative students.

One of my students is Rachael. She is 10. Rachael is going to grow up to be an awesome fashion designer! Here is her first skirt she made along with the tote we made to match.


And here is the tote


I am so proud of her!!!



Another of my students is Daisy. She is 17 and studying fashion marketing and design.
This skirt has a zipper in the back. We also made a zipper clutch to match.

So Cute!!!!

Here is the skirt we just finished. We learned gathering and attaching a ruffle on this one:


Daisy is now moving on to clothing from patterns. I will post pictures of her next project soon! :)

Flower girl dresses

I finished the flower girl dresses!! Hooray! Yippee! Hale-freakin-lugia!! I worked on these for a month! Here they are!

They are fully lined with huge layers of crinoline inside. They have invisible zippers and tiny hems. The bows are pinned on so that the girls could remove them later after the ceremony .


While making these I almost got dragged into a bridezilla moment with the bride and her soon to be sister in law. I did my best to stay out of that but I have learned my lesson once again: weddings create insane, white satin spewing, hemline dictating, obsessed over the tiniest of detail that no one ever, ever, ever is going to see, monsters....out of what are normally nice gals.
I therefore, from here on out, am going to try to stick to my rule of not sewing for anything wedding related. I broke my rule for these folks as I used to live next door. But uh-uh. Weddings make people crazy and I have enough crazy in my life, thank you very much, without going looking for more.


Also , for the wedding I made organza swags to go around a railing that went around the center of the reception. I didn't take a picture of those. Sometimes you get so sick of working on something that you don't ever want to see it again. That was the case with these swags.
The bride's mom was very specific while at the same time being very vague about what she wanted- so I had to interpret her gestures. I created 8 "tailored, but not pleated, identical , but 'flowy looking', gathered at the sides, even, but on purpose, like you meant to do it, but it just happened naturally....swags". Yea. With ribbons at the sides and in the center to hang it onto the railing. I was happy to see them hanging at the reception and looking tailored... but not.
Again, here is my solemn vow- no more sewing for weddings!!:) :)