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A Few Words on Our Favorite Subjects...If there is one thing we’ve learned over the years it’s this: Sharing sewing and quilting how-tos, tips and tricks is part of the fun. So, we’re passing along what we’ve learned so you can work smarter, not harder. If you find these postings helpful, keep the knowledge flowing by sharing this website with someone you know. |
Tips & Tricks: Managing Thread While Stitching On The Go
Pack lighter on your next trip by winding bobbins of thread to use on your handwork project instead of taking the whole spool with you; then store them in a Bobbin Tower disc. The discs each hold 5 bobbins and they are stackable so you will never be limited by the size of your storage container. The rubber holders keep the thread in place so in does not get tangled. Plus, they come in two different colors so you can easily distinguish between different weights of thread. So, when it’s time for your next class or trip just pop off one of the discs from your tower and toss it right into your bag! It’s that easy:)
My Favorite Fabric Pencil
I tend to be a little heavy-handed when writing and break freshly sharpened lead points constantly. My solution is… Sewline Mechanical Fabric Pencils. They have a specially formulated ceramic lead that is strong, non-gritty and glides on fabric more smoothly than any other pencil I have tried! The special cushioned point mechanism protects the lead from breaking under writer’s pressure saving me a lot of frustration and wasted lead. Because it is a mechanical pencil, it uses a fine lead that gives you a sharp point all the time without sharpening. The clear, clean lines are easily removed* with the attached eraser, dabbing with a damp cloth, or washing. It is available in a great variety of colors that you can use on most fabrics (black, green, yellow, white, pink). And the best part is that both the lead and eraser are refillable! Each pencil comes packaged with one container of 6 ceramic lead refills. Because it is comfortable to use, always sharp, writes smoothly, resists braking and is refillable, it is one of my favorite tools!
*It is always a good idea to test fabric pencils/markers on a swatch of the fabric to ensure lines can be removed satisfactorily and erase pencil lines before ironing fabric because the heat can set the marks from some pencils or markers permenantly.
The Gathering Foot
A Gathering Foot (Bernina #16) allows you to gather your fabric quickly and
easily in a one step-process. Gathering feet can be used for many different purposes, and are fairly simple to use.
There are two main techniques with everyday applications:
1) Standard Gathering which can be used for stand-alone trims (which can be sewn on at a later time to a project)
2) Gathering Fabric and Sewing it to a flat piece of fabric in one step. With this second technique you can add flouncy edging to a skirt or apron.
Here is how to accomplish standard gathering:
1) Press and Starch Fabric
2) Align the first edge of the fabric with the right-hand edge of the gathering foot as shown (however, depending on where you would like your gathers to be for your trim you can place it on either side or in the center):
3) Set your machine to straight stitch and, depending on the frequency of gathers desired, increase or decrease stitch length (be sure not to adjust width for this technique!) (Stitch length smaller – less frequent gathers; Stitch Length Longer – more frequent gathers)
4) Lower Presser Foot, and begin sewing until you reach the end of the strip. When finished, your strip should look something like this: (this example shows the maximum amount of gathers you can accomplish with the gathering foot (Bernina #16), so don’t worry if yours does not look like this, it just depends on what you set your stitch length to.)
To attach a flat strip to a gathered strip of fabric follow these steps:
1) Press and Starch both strips of fabric that you are using
2) Place the strip of fabric you would like to be gathered underneath the foot “pretty side up”, and lined up with the right side of the foot so it looks like this:
3) Using the hand-wheel on the right side of your sewing machine, turn the knob towards you until the needle takes two stitches. By the time you do that it will look like this:
4) Slide the strip of fabric you want to be flat “pretty side down” and place it inside the slot in the left side of the gathering foot. Lean it up against the needle and ease the strip in with the hand-wheel taking stitches until it looks like this:
5) Carefully begin stitching taking the end of the top strip and lifting it to the ceiling, and leaning it towards the right so it stays butted up against the inside of the foot. It will look like this:
6) Sew until the end of both strips, making sure that each strip stays lined up with each other. The finished project will look like this!:
At first the gathering foot can seem a little tricky, but after following these pictures and tips gathering techniques will be a snap! Thank you so much for letting me share my knowledge about the gathering foot with you! Until next week!
Tips & Tricks: How to Prevent Fabric Shift When Hooping
Ever have trouble keeping your fabric lined up while hooping for machine embroidery? After you¹ve spent so much time marking just the right spot does it shift at the last moment when tightening the hoop? This simple trick is a huge time saver and cuts down on a lot of the frustration: Try some Wonder Tape (double sided thin water-soluble tape)! Just stick it to the underside of the inner hoop, line up this inner hoop on your fabric where you need it to be, then press it down on the fabric. Then take these two pieces that are now stuck together and insert it in the outer hoop and just like magic the tape holds the fabric in place keeping everything lined up perfectly!! I hope you love it as much as I do!
Product Review: Patterns on CD
Have you ever bought a pattern, tucked it away, and then when you found that perfect combination of fabrics for that pattern you couldn’t find where you put it? Trust me we’ve done the same exact thing. Pattern CDs are amazing for any quilter who is looking for different patterns in one simple location. They each have three different patterns on the same CD, all for one low price! No more looking through drawers of patterns trying to find that specific one which you can never seem to find when you need it. Next time don’t blame the gremlins, grab a pattern CD, pop it into the computer, and start sewing!
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Take time for you!
I mentioned a few weeks ago that recently I have had a series of events that have made me stop and take a look at my life. In the past three months I have had an aneurism scare, a bad mammogram, and test results that indicate I may have rheumatoid arthritis. Let me tell you that just the first thing is enough to get you thinking about your life! But by the time you have gone through multiple things that make you evaluate whether or not you will be happy if you had only a short time to live you are making plans that involve serious change! I haven’t done a good job of taking care of myself, I work way too many hours in a week, I only sleep 4 hours a night, I rarely have time to eat, and when I do it’s usually driving through somewhere on my way to and from work. And exercise? Forget about it. Never had the time for it, and if I did have time, I spent it with my family or sleeping. I have decided I need to do something for myself.
The more people I talk to, the more I realize that this is common with women. We often sacrifice ourselves for the ones we love and to help others. I think it is so important that not only I, but that we all make a shift in our thinking. Maybe soak in a hot bubble bath once a week, commit to drinking more water, go for a walk with the one you love, get a massage, a manicure, a pedicure, or better yet get ALL three. Think about it, what is the thing you love to do that makes you feel great but you just don’t take the time to do…then DO IT and share your experience with us…I’ll be sharing mine!
…now you know “the rest of the story”
I remember hearing that phrase when my Dad would listen to AM talk radio. I can’t remember the name of the guy who said it because I was young but I loved it! Anyway, back to my story… early in 2009 we started looking to make a change. We had been trying to find a Store Manager, but as many of you know, this was a difficult process. I don’t think many people realize how difficult of a job it is to run a quilt/sewing business. And I have high standards for how I want my business. We eventually found a wonderful school for our boys in Utah and enrolled them for the upcoming 2009/2010 school year even though we still didn’t have the whole Store Manager thing settled. We kept our house in Reno and now split our time between Reno and Utah. Neff and I still own, plan for, give direction for the store, and take turns commuting to work in the Shop.
The boys completely LOVE their new school and are thriving! That’s right, boys plural! We have home schooled our kids until 8th grade before putting them in private school but we love this school so much that we enrolled Brenden as well! Yes, I am making sacrifices to give my boys what they need, and it is not easy being away from my family when I am in Reno and traveling so much, but it is worth it to me to see them so happy and successful.
Sometimes You Just Have To Take A Leap Of Faith…
So where does that bring us to today? We’ve been in our new location for about 4 ½ years. In our first full year with Bernina we were nominated as one of the top 3 Rookies of the Year. The next year we were District Dealer of the Year with Bernina, which covers most of the West Coast. I started travelling more to help teach new dealers for Bernina in Chicago. Things were getting crazy busy.
In the meantime, my 3 boys were growing up. When we moved to this new location they were 14, 11, and 6. Now they’re 18, 15, and 11. Our oldest boy was having emotional problems and needed to live in a group home. Our other two boys were growing up fast, and I was missing out on much of this. Neff and I, on a much needed vacation, talked about it and figured we were each working over 100 hours a week. The boys were helping out at the shop, so at least we were together, but we knew a change was needed. I knew I needed a change, not just for the family, but for me.
Keegan was at a private school here locally, found that he loved theater, but not the drama. As a Mom, I hate to see my kids unhappy and struggling! I would do anything to avoid that for them. After a particularly rough week of giving out what seemed like non-stop advice, counseling, and strategy sessions I finally just asked him, “What do YOU want”. I was shocked that he had such clarity! He knows who he is, what kind of environment he thrives the best in, what he would like to do to help others, where he wants to go to college….and the thing that impressed me the most was how simple a choice it was for him to make major changes in his life to make those things happen and be HAPPY! I learned from him that day that just because you are doing what you have done for awhile or thought you would do forever it doesn’t mean you can’t decide to do something else if you are not completely fulfilled. We only have one life…in the end will we be happy with how we lived it? If not, I encourage you to be brave and make a change. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith…
Sometimes doing the “impossible” leads to better things…
The suite we bought was what they call a “vanilla shell”, meaning it had nothing but walls and a floor. The floor was plain concrete and the walls were just primer white. But it did have 25 foot ceilings and over 5000 sq. ft. We had to install electricity and lighting and more electricity and more lighting, just to open. Oh, and we only had 30 days to do it all and move! I had a great Staff, friends, and Family! We packed up after we closed one evening and set-up in the new location the next day! We were only closed for the one day and then we were back open! Looking back, I don’t know how that is even possible but we did it! We added flooring later, and finally painted and added a wall to divide off the classroom. We have even more planned that we’ll share with you later.
When we made the move to the new place, the owner of Sew and Such was retiring (but later sold the business instead) I had been wanted to have machines in the Shop so we could have them available for classes. We applied to start a NEW Bernina dealership and the rest you can say is history. That was one of the most wonderful things that happened. Bernina is such a fabulous company to represent and they make the world’s best sewing machines. The company is very family oriented and the ownership in Switzerland has been in the same family for over 100 years. We are also a very family-oriented company, if you’ve been with us for awhile you’ve seen my husband and boys working in the shop over the years as well. Bernina was a great fit for us.
Turning My Hobby Into A Business
I got so involved with long arm quilting (even winning some awards) that my friends were complaining that they never saw me anymore! When I told them I was quilting they couldn’t believe it! After all, that was not the “norm” for someone my age. But, once I showed them some of my work they were begging me to teach them. So, I started teaching classes at my home once a month. We had so many people that wanted to learn that I decided it was time to open my own shop.
On May 30, 2003, I opened Going Batty Quilt Shop in Sparks, Nevada. How many of you remember that cute shop? We had 3000 square feet of an old clothing store, the carpet was from remnants of a theater (remember the funky purple colors?) and we had the theme of an old farm yard. We were right in between a couple of bars and when there were events on Victorian Avenue it practically shut us down. But I loved our display window, it was always so cute! So after our lease ran out in 2 years, the building owner wanted to rent the space to a cigar shop and we had to find a new home. We looked high and low for some place in Sparks where we could have at least 5000 square feet of space and have high ceilings to display our quilts. But we could not find anything. So we started looking in Reno and found our current location. By the way, just for fun try clicking on the photos in this post…they will get larger so you can see more details! The photos for classes work the same way! COOL!!!
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