Cleaning Your Sewing Machine

Well along with spring cleaning the house (ya right...and how many of you are going to do this....I might think about it. LOL!) we need to spring clean our sewing machine. Now....if you are like me this is something I continually think about, but do not get to it very often. With that said, I had this posted on my FB page the other day from TheSewingLoftBlog and thought that I would share it with you. Mine can get pretty bad with all the lint and this tutorial showed me that I am not the only one! HA!HA! How bad does yours get? So get those machines torn down and get to cleaning them. :)

Have a great day!

Colleen :)

Let's Make Carrots!

Ok...Easter is coming soon and I just can't handle it when it is in March! LOL! Just messes up my internal calendar something terrible. :)  I like to visit Pinterest for ideas and recipes and all the good stuff that is on there and I found this video the other day from Missouri Star Quilt Company on how to make carrots for your Easter baskets out of your fabric scraps! Now I know we all have lotsssssssssssssssssssssss of fabric all over the place so this is a way to use up some of them. They looks very easy to make and what a great idea for a project with the kids and grandkids!

Happy Sewing!

Colleen :)

No More Marking

I am always looking for different and easier ways to do things in my sewing and quilting methods and I found this technique from The Studio Blog on how to sew and cut half quarters without marking every square. Looks like a good idea and I thought I would share it with you! Hope you like it. :)

Happy sewing!

Colleen :)

Now We Know What The Red Ball On A Seem Ripper Is For

I know all you sewers out there have your favorite seem ripper, but did you know what the red ball on the short end is for? Well if not, Pam Demour shows us what it is for on her YouTube posting. Thought I would share it with all of you. :)





Happy sewing!
Colleen :)

New Year Is Here

Whew......finally got through all the holiday festivities. Hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season. So I am starting on my to-do list of things I want to get done this winter. We got one done yesterday. My poor sewing room had about 8 years of fiber dust all over the walls and it was just terrible in there so my hubby helped me by getting his compressor out and blew the walls all down and then put his big shop air filter in there and sucked all the dust up. Now it is just soooooo clean! :)

I took a look at my ironing board and the cover is really bad so I thought I really need to do something with it. Now the other day on my Facebook there was this posting about making a new iron board cover. I wonder how I get some of these postings??? Anyway I thought you might like to see it also. I may give it a try. SaraphymHandmade has the tutorial. Looks like you can get it as a PDF or on Craftsy. I did the PDF and it was fine. Now...off to do some more of my to-do list. :)

Happy sewing!

Colleen :)

Thanksgiving Placemats

I was looking the other day for patterns for Thanksgiving placemats and I came across these really cute turkey placemats from U Create with a great tutorial for making them. I thought you guys might like to see it and maybe some of you might want to make them. I think they are so cute. You still have time to make them. :)

Happy Sewing!

Colleen :)

Removing Those Darn Stitch Marks

I was doing my normal first thing in the morning reading on Facebook and came across this posting. It is about removing those pesty stitch marks that you get when you have to take stitches out of your fabric. I run into this mostly when I do my embroidery stitching, but have had this problem doing my quilting also. Yes...I do have to take out stitches quite often! :)

I thought I would share this blog posting from Seamsandscissors. 

Nice to see I am doing this right....I use my fingernail and it works just fine. :)

Happy Stitching. :)

Bias Tape Tutorial

I know there are a lot of different ways to make your own bias tape and I for one do make my own bias tape. I make a lot of pot holders for my summer markets and I like to use colors that compliment the front fabric so I make my own binding. 


I know there are fancy machines that will do this, but over at Seamsandscissors there is this little gizmo that I am sure many of you have seen and Portia shows you how to make your own bias tape. Take a look at it and maybe someday I will get one of those gizmos and try it. LOL! :)

Happy Sewing! :)