My Sewing Space

In the last two months, I have spent a lot of my sewing time making things for other people. Some of the items were for the two stores in town that I supply and others were just for individuals that wanted something specific. My natural tendency is to be selfish with my sewing time, but it's good to have a bit of money coming in to keep the sewing room stocked. Not much to say about all the things, but I did want to record them here... Bibs: Pillows: Angels: Pillows for charity auction: Vogue 8828 for a client (Really? Can I have a "client?" It sounds a bit more pretentious than I'm comfortable with, but I should probably own it and add a bit of professionalism to my work. And it's much more succinct than "a nice woman I know that wants me to sew things for her." I like succinct. But you'd never guess that from this long, rambling parenthetical comment). It's a very poor fit on my dress form, but was...

It's hard for me to believe, but it looks like I still have followers! Thanks for hanging with me through my very sporadic posting. It's been mostly "work" sewing happening around here lately. Some alteration items and then a few pillows and angels for the shops: Whoops.  Try to look past the camera lens smudge that shows up on every picture.  Prior to these things, I made a dress for one daughter and a jumper for the other, but haven't been able to get pictures yet. Now I'm really looking forward to some sewing for ME! My want-to-sew list is much too long, but plotting and planning is part of the fun, right? Right.

The beginning of August saw me doing lots of sewing at the request of others. Some of it was alteration work. Most of it was for S's shop here in town. Have a peek at the goods... One pillow with cat appliques requested by a customer: (The cat on the right is supposed to be sitting with his back toward us. Not sure if I made that obvious or not, but those were the instructions). Two fall-ish novelty baby bibs: Three tote bags: Four Christmas baby bibs: It's always a good exercise to stretch some of my creative muscles with these projects, but I'm also always happy to spend my sewing time on "me" projects when they're finished.

More pillows  for S's shop... Cupcakes: Flowers: Ruched rose pattern here . The velveteen one is basically two yo-yo's. The larger one has some gathering stitches sewn in the center. (prestuffed) Instructions for this type of flower are all over the internet, so it's hard to know who to credit. This one is the most thorough. I didn't use any glue on mine and the backing is entirely different. And more owls (the first order sold out very quickly): If you are interested, more pictures can be found here .

The annual silent auction fundraiser for the school my children attend is coming up. This year my contribution is a couple of pillows. The first one has patchwork on one side and a floral pattern on the other: The other has roses and background stitching on one side and plaid on the other: I prepped these fronts and backs and then decided that I really wanted them to have invisible zipper closures, but I had not done that for a pillow before. To practice the technique, I made these pillows for our living room couch. Putting in the invisible zip is pretty simple, especially if you've done it in a garment. Since I was in pillow-making mode, I also made three pillows for my bedroom to coordinate with this quilt . The first - tucks sewn down in alternating directions: The second - textural interest created by partially sewing tucks in a grid (seen in a Threads article): The kids like to poke fingers in the grid intersections and manipulate th...

S asked me to make some pillows with owls on them. I also did these owl pillows for her (and they all sold), but she was looking for something different this time. She gave me some sketches with her ideas and asked me specifically to use materials with texture. I was inspired by the pillows in this shop which were remarkably similar to S's sketches. The pillows are 11" x 18" finished. There are a few more photos here .

S asked me to make some owl pillows for her shop. She gave me some suggestion pictures and I did a bit of looking online, but didn't feel very inspired until I saw this scrap of fabric in my stash. The larger owl is about 1" tall and I basically just enlarged it, keeping the proportions the same, up to 12" for the pillows. I like how the feet are perched on a branch in the printed fabric, and I really wanted to make some sort of feet that dangled from the bottom of the owl. But, after three different attempts, I was still unsatisfied with how they looked and I didn't have any more ideas. Instead, the feet look like this: The wings have a pleat in the middle so that they sit away from the owl body a bit. The underside of the wing matches the owl belly. I was quite determined to make these using only materials that I already had and I was successful. I think I would prefer the look of regular button (as opposed to these covered button) eyes, but I didn...