Remember the material I bought in Richmond? Today Captain Kitty and I were out shopping and I found these two shirts on sale. I thought they looked like they may go with the material so I took a chance and purchased them. Ah! I was so excited when I layed them with the material. They are perfect matches! I must get busy on these two skirts.
This morning while working in my gardens I found this peaking out at me. I can't wait until the tomatoes are ripe. I love home grown tomatoes!
Yesterday I spent several hours working on the formal. Everything was moving along. I started to put the zipper in and found things were not lining up. Today I will have to take the zipper out and do a few more alterations. I really wanted this finished by tomorrow, but it might not work. I need to finish up the bibs today. This afternoon I pray to be productive and that things will go smoothly.
Sew Long for Now!
Yesterday I took Lt. Col. Cool to Iron Bridge, Va. (outside Richmond) to take his Spots test. I had some time to kill so I went looking for fabric stores. I found a cute little quilt shop called JoJo's. I also bought this material at another store. I love the green on left. Capt. Kitty and I need some skirts so I hope to get some made...someday. I am still working on the formal dress. I also just realized I need to get some bibs done this week! On Saturday we went to Waynesboro's Cracker Barrel and met two of my sisters, their families, and my parents for breakfast. That was for Father's Day. We decided since we were up there to spend the day at the lake. It was overcast and I was chilly. The children have no nerve endings in their bodies and they swam happily all afternoon. A picture of my favorite view.
Sew Long for Now!
I did no sewing yesterday. It was an overcast, drizzly day, perfect for weeding our gardens. I haven't been good about keeping up with the weeding. We spent the morning weeding the upper and lower gardens. In the afternoon we did our lessons.
I am hoping that today I will finish up the formal dress. I have some errands to run this morning, but hopefully this afternoon I will work on it.
Sew Long for Now!
Poster found at Allposters.com
Yesterday we went to the zoo for science class. That and it was wild Wednesday. Parents got in for $1 with a paying child. There was also face painting and free ice cream. Our city has a small, but very nice zoo on top of Mill Mountain. This is one of the newest animals, a red panda. We used to have a tiger named Ruby that was the symbol of the zoo. Ruby passed away this past year. We spent a lovely afternoon admiring the animals and even got to pet a Russian turtle and a corn snake. 
Yesterday in the afternoon I was putting together the formal dress. I was restless. Maybe because all we have been doing is working around here. When the General came home from work I ask him to take us for a ride. He was shocked. With the price of gas almost $3 per gallon, he knew I was trying to keep our gas spending down. We went to one of my favorite places, the Blue Ridge Parkway. I grew up going for a ride every Sunday afternoon on the Parkway. It usually culminated with ice cream from the Dairy Queen. That was up in the Shenandoah Valley. Now we live in the Roanoke Valley. We drove to Buchanan and went up on the parkway. It was a lovely afternoon for a drive. We saw two does. The second one we saw was when stopped at the Roanoke Mountain Camp Ground. It just stood there and stared at us, not 50 feet away. We ended our ride by taking the children to the Roanoke Star and looking over our city. It was a nice change, very relaxing.
Sew Long for Now!
Last night I was so tired. After I got the kitchen cleaned up and set up for today, I settled the youngest two in bed and went to bed. The General was waiting up for Lt. Col. Cool. I was so tired, but I couldn't fall asleep when I lay down! Finally, I fell asleep. One half an hour later I awoke. I was wide awake. I tried changing positions. I tried praying. Nothing, I was definitely awake and I wasn't going back to sleep soon. I got up and met the General as he was headed to bed. He is getting used to me having these nights when I don't sleep. So, we switched places. I went up and began sewing and he went to bed. I hemmed a pair of pants and repaired a sweater torn in several places. Then I read for awhile. Finally, about 1:30 I decided I needed to get some sleep before I left at 3:30 a.m. I got another nap. Today I was trying so hard not to fall asleep this afternoon. I almost gave in and took a nap, but backed out at the last minute. I decided to work on more sewing. I repaired a torn toddler shirt and shorts. Then I serged all the edges of the formal dress. I am going to put it together on the reg. sewing machine and leave a 5/8 seam allowance in case it needs adjusting when I take it for the fitting.
The last two days I have felt so extremely tired by evening. We have gone back to school full-time. Even though I only have two left here, they are apart just enough to cause me to have to do their work seperate. Where I used to combine some things, now I have to do them twice each day. Of course there is still the paper route every morning at 3:30. My sewing business has been brisk lately, leaving little time for my personal sewing. The garden is begininning to take off. We staked part of the tomatoes today. Over the weekend we had to replant the cucumber and squash due to rabbits. Add in laundry, housekeeping, cooking, and general duties around the home and you have one tired Momma. This to shall pass. Above is material and a pattern I am using to make a formal dress for a young lady. She needs the middle view. It looks like a fairly easy pattern. The biggest problem I found is finding a zipper in the right shade to match the material. It says the material is lavendar, but the thread that matches best is light Cielo. That's a shade of blue. Both the lavendar and Cielo zippers did not look good against the material. The shades were all wrong. I am putting an off white hidden zipper in it. If we could find some fingernail polish or acrylic paint in the right shade we could paint the zipper pull to match. I have more towels coming tonight to embroidery. I have another order for a black bag. Then there's hemming and mending, mending and hemming!
It's been busy this week. So busy I forgot to take pictures of some of my sewing projects before they left. I embroidered a bag with initials for a graduation present. I also embroidered 5 beach towels for graduation presents. I hemmed some pants. Today I finished this cute little bag for a friend. She wanted it to put her Bible in. I have more projects to work on, but since the rabbits ate my cucumber and squash plants I went back to the nursery today and got more to plant. I also got some type of organic stuff that is suppose to deter the bunnies. Something about the smell keeps them away. I really don't like to say this, but bunnies are rodents and I look at them as not cute, but in the same class as rats. One year on Easter we were coming home from church and a bunny ran out and ran smack into the side of our car. It died. My children forever tell people how we killed the Easter bunny. They found it exceedingly funny. Don't worry we have never celebrated the Easter bunny so there is no psychological damage.
The 2007 Graduation Class of GRHE
FriendsIt has been another big weekend here. I did get some sewing in though. I have almost completed a black toile and solid black bag for a lady. I just have to put on the handles and some buttons. I altered 7 pair of pants for the minor league baseball team. Friday was Lt. Col. Cool's graduation. We spent the afternoon seeing the new Pirates movie. Graduation that evening was a very nice event. There was 13 graduates. We had family come down from Northern VA, the Shenadoah Valley, and Stuart. It was a wonderful ceremony. Afterwards we went to Cracker Barrel for a late supper. Saturday we went to a friends farm for a cookout. Sunday was church and we still have family here. Today I have to get caught up on laundry and some paper work. The guys are working and will be home this evening for a cookout. Just a few more weeks and Lt. Col. Cool will be headed off for the Summer Transition at VMI.
Sew Long for Now!
With the help of my three great children I got the garden in today. We planted 36 tomato plants. We also planted 12 Habeneros, 4 crook neck squash, 4 green bell peppers, 4 red bell peppers, 4 eggplant, 8 cucumber mounds, and three rows of green lake beans. It doesn't sound like much because I live in the city and that is all the room we have.
Here is a cute yellow moth who came to sample the water we used after putting in the plants. I don't know if I will get any sewing done today. I will try to mend two pieces I have for a lady and maybe put together a bag I am making for another lady.
This is a picture of some of Capt. Kitty and my aprons hanging up in the kitchen. I attached four hooks on the side of the cabinet to hold just them. I wear aprons almost all the time.
This is my clothespin apron. It has three big pockets stuffed full of clothespins. I put it on when I am hanging out the clothes and bringing them in. It is such a wonderful way to keep up with the pins.
Just for fun, the General's BBQ apron I made him. Here even the men wear aprons, manly type of course!
Sew Long for Now!
America has become a throw away society. We have let our lives become so busy that we don't know how to make things last any more. We have also accepted cheap consumer items in the market place so they don't last. I started realizing my part in this a few years ago. My first endeavor in mending items was socks. I still haven't learned a good way to mend socks. I ask an elderly lady who grew up in Switzerland some ideas in mending. She is great at it. When she was younger they learned how to mend. She gave me some ideas and I need to learn more. My next foray into mending was t-shirts. The General wears t-shirts working at his maintanence job and doing odd jobs around here. He gets lots of holes in them. T-shirts can be purchased inexpensively, but why throw a good shirt just because it has a hole near the bottom. The lady I ask gave me great advice and I am getting better at mending t-shirts. You almost can't tell I fixed them. Over the years I have tried to mend jeans. Jeans are not so easy. Especially since my guys seem to rip them at the belt loop or corner of the back pocket. This pair pictured has a hole where the belt loop was caught on something and it ripped. I will remove the bottom of the belt loop. Then stabilizer is important. You can get iron on patches, but they don't stay. If I have some denim around I use it as stabilizer, if not I use a blue or gray material. They key to mending or even hemming jeans is the right color thread. Blue thread doesn't work. Grey works best. Sometimes if the denim has more blue in it I will use a blue in the bobbin and grey on the top. If you look at jeans you will notice they are a blend of colors. With a hole, I stitch around the outside first to secure the hole from distorting. Next I sew back and forth across the hole from side to side and then do the same from top to bottom. On this pair I will then change to a dark gold thread and reattach the belt loop with a tight zig zag. Mending takes a little time and it would be easier to chuck the jeans and go to Walmart and get a new pair for $10, but is it really better? I keep thinking about the old saying, "Waste not, want not." 
Zippers, most people are afraid of them or hate them. I have a beautiful friend who showed me years ago how to put them in and I am no longer afraid. In our fast paced world zippers are one thing that you just can't hurry through putting in. I have found a zipper foot essential. I have also found basting a HUGE time saver. You can manipulate hard places easier with a hand needle and have the zipper ready to sew in. Another wonderful mentor to me once said that when zippers are on sale she buys them in the longest length she can get. That way in future you don't have to worry about have the exact length. You can cut off a zipper at the bottom after making a bar tack across to keep the pull from coming off.
I learned some new things about zippers this weekend. I have put zippers in coats and jackets before, but never a reversable jacket. The lady who ask me to do this didn't tell me it was reversable. She told me she purchased the zipper already and it was in the bag. It was a normal 22 inch zipper. A jacket needs a seperating zipper to open up on the front. I spotted that right away and told her I was going to purchase a seperating zipper and I would add it to my fee. I measured the coat and the original zipper that was in it. It was 24 inch. I spent one week going to several different stores trying to find a light pink 24 inch seperating zipper. Impossible. I couldn't even find seperating zippers in some stores. I finally found a brown one, thankfully her jacket was pink and brown. Oh, and I never found a seperating zipper with the double sided pull for the reversable part. Thankfully, she was ok with that.
You know I try to patronize my local shops. It makes me sad because we are loosing our local Hancocks. That's where I found the zipper. I see why a lot of people are going to internet buying for their sewing needs. I just can't buy material this way yet. I need and love to feel it.
Sew Long for Now.
Can you tell it's the end of the school year where you are? We don't actually follow the public school calendar here. We continue in the summer. What else is there to do on a sweltering summer afternoon if you can't go to the pool or lake? With a child graduating this year, it has thrown more to be done on our plate. I have sewn this week, but, I have also bought paper and envelopes and printed graduation announcements. I am in the process of addresses these now. We also have taken a paper route. The children and I are delivering the paper in the mornings. It's amazing how cool it is to work with your children, even if I do have to get up at 3:45 a.m. to do it. We laugh and cut up and get really silly. Then we come home to eat breakfast and read our favorite comics outloud. I finished five capes and put a zipper in a pair of pants for one lady. I altered and repaired four pair of pants for our local minor league baseball team. I hear they have a few more pants to do before Monday morning when they leave for an away game. I ripped a zipper out of a jacket and was going to put another one in, but she sent the zipper and it is not a seperating zipper. I think she would have a hard time putting that jacket on!
This coming week may be worse than last. We have our spring concert for singing school and some more things to do that I know of, but can't remember just what. Hmmm, I am glad I have a big wall calendar in the kitchen!
Sew Long for Now!
Has it been that long since I visited here? Life just sort of catches up with you doesn't it. I have been sewing. Not as much as I would like, but some. I have finished 3 1/2 capes now. I love this pink one. The fabrics are so luxurious. I made a cute apron for a birthday present and forgot to take a picture of it! It was blue with little white and red flowers on it. I put large red rick rack on it. Lt. Col. Cool is going to go to VMI after all and so we have been sending in financial aid forms. We also spent a lot of time last week getting photos together for the yearbook and a power point presentation they will do at the graduation ceremony. It's cold and windy here today. It seems strange to watch snow flurries fly in the middle of April.
Sew Long for Now!
I have been quiet this week. I had some housework to get caught up on from my marathon sewing. I am working on the capes again. I completed this red one yesterday. Oops, I see a thread that needs clipping! The wind has been gusting around here some this week. 40 mph. It ripped two of the flags. They took them down and I repaired them. I also sewed button holes in these two to give them vents so the air could blow through them and hopefully not rip them again. These two are in front of a building and they get air flow from two directions which cause them to get battered. I have quite a few more capes to do. I need to delay them today. I have an apron cut out that I want to sew up to give to a friend for her birthday. I also have two jackets that need zippers put in. I think I will do that first since it has gotten a bit chilly again around here.
Sew Long for Now!
This is not exactly how Schoolhouse Fabrics looked yesterday. It was cold and windy with flurries. We went there to pick up the flag bunting to make the 12 flags for the church. It has been a busy week of running around. Monday night we went to the nursing home to help. Then again on Tuesday morning we went to another section to help. Tuesday night was my stay at home wife/mother meeting. Wednesday I went to Augusta Hospital where my Daddy had surgery. Thursday morning was Bernina Club meeting. On Friday I cut out 7 dresses for the statue that I made outfits for last year. I also cut out and began making myself a new bag. Saturday we went to Floyd and then came back to town where Captain Kitty and I went shopping for her. Next week I need to work on the flags, work on the statue outfits, and finish my new bag.
Here is the latest digitize I did and sewed out. It's a quilt square for a man who had a triple heart bypass. At the bottom it has the day he was mended and his name. More sewing came in today. I would like to make my Easter dress and help Captain Kitty make hers. I wonder if I will have enough time. If the church goes with the flag I made they want the burgundy with white cross. I am going to use the sample on my flag pole out front. I was thinking of making another with flowers blooming around the cross to put up on Easter morning.
This is a sample I've been working on of a flag. I haven't finished it. This is the first flag I've ever done. It has some flaws, but it's been fun to work on. If the lady likes it I will be making 12 more. I have been working on a digitizing for a woman. It's been a bear! I keep having to tweek it. It takes over 1 1/2 hours to sew out!
Besides this the General and went to Floyd Friday to Schoolhouse Fabrics where I bought some flag bunting and some material. I have also been busy planning for graduation of our oldest son. Things seem to be busy around here lately.
Sew Long for Now!
We've added to our family again! Monday I went up to the Shenandoah Valley with my youngest sister to help our Mom take our Dad in for surgery. We took him in, but they canceled the surgery because Dad was too sick with a virus. Next we took him to the E.R. Later when we got him home I went to visit a friend of his who had adopted this dog. Dad's friend raises Mastiffs and his female didn't get along with this miniature pincher. Let's just say the Mastiff bit into this little lady and threw her. Dad had been asking me for weeks to adopt this dog. He even wanted to ride with me over the man's house on the way home from the hospital. We took Dad home first and went and picked up Butter. She is a nice dog, a little hyper, but no worse than our youngest son. I think she will fit in well here after she gets used to our other dog. We haven't introduced the cat to her yet. One new experience at a time!
I finished a new black skirt for myself. It is made out of a wool tweed and I lined it with black lining material. I have been working on digitizing a design for a lady for the past two days. I need to sew it out and tweek it, but it is mostly finished. 
I have added another sewing machine to my collection. My friend's mother passed away this past year. She wanted to find a good home for her sewing machine. How could I say no. They have the original receipt where her parents bought this machine. It has been neglected during these past years with her mother's illness. I think with a little loving care it can be cleaned up and made new again. Now I have a 1923 treadle, this machine (1940's I thought she said), 3 newer machines and a serger.
This is a cosmetic bag I made for the lady I recently made the bag for. I have noticed a lot of people starting to make little change purses on the web.
I took a picture of the zipper to show another way to do a zipper that may help. If you attach a piece of material 3 inches long and the same width of the zipper to each end of the zipper it really helps make better corners when you flip.
At Christmas I bought fleece to make all the children new blankets. I never got to it. Valentine's Day is Captain Kitty's birthday, but, I still like to make it special for the other children. The General and I thought it would be a good time to finish the blankets and give them to the children. This is Captain Kitty's. I am working on Captain Cool's and Captain Chaos'. They are just two pieces of fleece layed together and the edges have 4 inch slits cut all the way around then the two pieces are tied together to hold them together. The children love this type of blanket.
I finished the robe embroidery yesterday. I am still battling a nasty cold so I get tired real easy. Hopefully, I will get over it soon!
Sew Long for Now!
Even though Captain Chaos has strep I let him go out and play in the snow. We don't get that much snow here so I just couldn't say no. He is doing better today. Isn't it cute he made a snow bed for Captain Kitty?
I worked on the alterations yesterday. I ended up with 1 3/4 inches added to the black dress by letting out all the seams. It has a coordinating jacket and I got 2 inches extra by letting out all it's seams. The third piece she wanted me to let out was a wine colored jacket. I got 1 3/4 inches extra for it by letting the seams out. I steamed the seams and now I just have to put the hems back in the pieces.
Sew Long for Now!
This is the design I have been working on for the birthday present. I hope she likes it. Captain Chaos was feeling better today. They got their school work done. Captain Kitty has been doing hers, but CC hasn't felt up to it. I have been sick for the last two days. I haven't kept up with things. I haven't been as ill as the General or CC, but I have a bad cold. I hope to get some more things done this weekend.
Sew Long for Now!
