I recently came upon a a site called Burda Style that has free patterns. These are not Burda pattern company patterns, but they do seem simple and look interesting to try. Take a look and see what you think.

Sew long for Now!

An altar cloth I embroidered for an upcoming wedding. Such a delicate piece of linen.

Sew long for Now!

The curtains, the curtains. All I had to do was line the curtains. Sigh...it has ended up to be this challenging task. The curtains stretch as you sew them, must be some spandex in the material. The lining has black marks on it, the customer nor I saw until cut out. Now after all that, I am 1 1/2 yards short. I will be making a trip to JoAnn's soon. I did replace a zipper for a friend this weekend.

Lt. Col. Cool is home from the summer transition program at VMI. In a few short weeks he will be going back for matriculation. Capt. Kitty is writing for a homeschool newsletter. A conversation between myself and Capt. Chaos: Capt. Chaos "I teached myself to do that." Me "Taught, you need to used the correct past tense." Capt. Chaos "I am trying to learn your English." Me "English is not a second language for you, it's your English also." What is Wookie his first language?!

Sew Long for Now!

This is my close personal friend these days. I am ripping all the seams out of six panels of curtains. I have cut the curtain lining out and when I finish ripping I will sew the seams back with lining under them to back the curtains. Ripit, ripit.

Sew Long for Now!

Today I finished these five lap quilts for our ASG community service projects. They have flannel on one side and a cotton fashion fabric on the other. I like them so much I may have to make me one to use while on the computer!

Sew Long for Now!

Sewing is happening, but nothing fun. I have been working on altering pants for the minor league baseball team. How many pants does that team have. I know I have done home and away pants, but it seems like I have done so many for them. Oh, well it's good money. Off to find something fun to sew!

Sew Long for Now!

I am still here and still sewing. I took the purple dress and they wanted adjustments in the sleeve. I just cut them out and remade the sleeves. I delivered it again on Friday. I got another emergency dress alteration for a wedding last Saturday. That one was fun. It was a size 2 dress and it was too big! I did some pants for the baseball team and have 7 more pairs here to get done by tomorrow. I have lots of projects due for Thursday's ASG meeting and I have a couple of sets of curtains to line for a customer. It's been terribly hot here. Not much rain. We have had to water to upper garden in the evenings. We have been getting cherry tomatoes and last night I got some zucchini. Today is our day to volunteer at the nursing home so I must run.

Sew Long for Now!

I have completed the purple formal dress. I will be delivering it today. It took a lot longer than I expected. The adjustments I made to the shoulder and back seem to affect every other area of the dress. I have ripped many seams out and redid them in this dress. I also finished both my skirts that I found the tops to match. The material was a little thin for my taste so I lined both the skirts. I choose to line them with bleached muslin. My reasoning was that I wanted to wear them mostly this summer and the muslin would not be as hot or stick to me as much as the silky lining material. I wore the green outfit yesterday when we took Lt. Col. Cool to VMI for the STP program. We did a lot of walking and it was warm (not as hot as usual) and it was very comfortable and worked well. Over the weekend I got a call of a desperate lady whose daughter was singing at Niagra Falls, N.Y. over the holidays with a local college children's choir. Her daughter had grown and her dress was too tight in the bust. They could not order new dresses until September so she wanted to know if there was anything I could do. The dress was made almost identical to the purple one pictured. The only problem was it was made out of velvet in the bodice. Since it was going to leave a mark from letting out the seams I let it out in the back and side seams. I tried to search the internet and see if there was a way to got the mark out of velvet, but I had no luck. It gave it enough to hopefully get her through the next three concerts before she could order a new dress. I am off to more sewing.

Sew Long for Now!

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.

Sew Long for Now!

This is the formal dresses zipper. I had a fitting with the young lady and had to make some adjustments to the arm holes and neck. This affected the zipper. It took me three times of removing the zipper and adjusting the waist seam to finally get everything to line up. Thankfully, I had basted the zipper in place. I ended up not putting the invisible zipper in because one of the times I did try it, but because of the adjustments it did not look very good. I found a lilac zipper that matched perfect.

Sew Long for Now!

I took 9 bibs to the ASG sew in today. I forgot to take a picture of them because I was rushing around. I am sad because they were so cute! I picked up some fleece socks, lap quilts, and walker caddy kits to put together. I have a lot of sewing to do and am starting to feel a bit stressed again. I need some serious help in time management and scheduling! Nah, I just need a maid, chauffer, gardener, cook, and tutor! TeeHee.

Sew Long for Now!

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.

I did the dress fitting yesterday, but I didn't do any actual sewing. Today I want to finish up the dress.

Sew Long for Now!

Yesterday was especially productive. I embroidered 6 of these blankets for a high school soccer teams seniors. I don't know what type of polar fleece this was, but it was not a type I would care to have. It attracted every piece of lint and hair it could find. With the dark color it is going to be hard to keep these clean. This is a girl's soccer team. I can just see their strands of hair adorning these!

I have the formal basted together and today I go over for a fitting. I also cut out 9 bibs for a St. Jude's community service project our sewing guild is participating in. I sewed up one and it is going to go fairly quickly so I will see about cutting out more.

Sew Long for Now!

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.

Sew Long for Now!

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!

Sew Long for Now!

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.

Sew long for now!