Who’s ready for holiday sewing??!!! Anyone have big plans for handmade gifts this year? I currently have a quilt jacket 1/3 of the way finished for one of my daughters this Christmas. It’s a fun technique where you take a sweatshirt and cut it apart to use as the base for the jacket. I’m using a jelly roll from Moda fabrics and a basic log cabin pattern. I will try to post the inspiration link video here. I will share some photos on Saturday for show and tell. Which reminds me; I hope you all will also share on Saturday what’s on your sewing table or the projects you’ve finished lately. Let’s motivate each other to get those holiday projects DONE!!! https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EKJLz2P8Y/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Hi everyone, Since I joined The Sewing Academy I’ve been having so much fun sewing. I’ve made 6 pillow covers, 75 coasters, 4 wheelchair/walker totes, a blanket, and 4 heat bags that I’m donating for people dealing with aches and pains. It’s been a busy stretch, and I’ve learned a few things along the way. Velcro has been my absolute worst sewing challenge of all of it. Rebecca recommended using a nonstick/vinyl needle for sewing on Velcro, and that made all the difference. I also used a walking foot and glued the Velcro in place first with an Elmer’s glue stick. That combination worked great. I did my best to stay right on that little bitty edge of the Velcro where there are no hooks or loops. Once I figured that out, sewing the Velcro got so much easier. I also had a nightmare experience with some cheap batting. I’m still finding little bits of cotton fluff in the studio where I sew. Never again. After that I tried needle-punched cotton batting (Warm & Natural). What a difference! I had read that needle-punched batting is supposed to make a stiffer finished product, but I didn’t notice any difference in the drape of the fabric. The needle-punched batting, even though it is mostly cotton, has a thin polypropylene scrim that holds everything together. From what I’ve read, once the item is quilted or sewn, the needle-punched batting doesn’t fall apart and bunch up into lumpy wads when it gets washed. I haven’t tested that fully myself yet—I’m just repeating what I learned while solving my own batting troubles—but so far I’m much happier with it. I also tried heat-erasable pens on fabric for the first time. They worked well for marking. For my next adventure I’m going to try making the toddler shorts/pants from the pattern Rebecca uses in her “How to Read a Pattern” videos. I want to follow along and see if I can make them. Happy sewing! Debra

Ha! I finished my first ever walker tote! I'm amazed at how many of the same skills from Beginning Sewing were used in this project, too. I don't have a walker around here, so I modeled it off of a weaving loom. 🤣 To keep the tote from slipping off of a walker, there are Velcro strips sewn into the back. Sewing on Velcro was one of the last steps, and that's where it all went wrong. On the first (of 4 pieces) Velcro strip, the bobbin ran out. 🥴 I stopped. Wound a new bobbin. Put the thread on the knobashuski wrong, so the bobbin had all these loose places. Unwound all that thread. Re-wound the bobbin again correctly. Threaded the machine, a Singer Heavy Duty 4452. I think it is Sewing Mastery on YouTube that says this model of machine has something-something with the tension discs, so on threading step #3, floss the thread so it gets in there between the tension discs well. That made the thread super tight in there, and it was difficult to pull through. No. Redid that. Got the machine all working again. Back to the Velcro. Started sewing, and then the thread broke. O_O I think it was the Velcro, and not my threading. ???? Because I tried sewing on a scrap, and everything went fine. In the picture, you can see where the thread broke, and I started over again. But then, once I started sewing on the Velcro, look at the stitching! I'm almost embarrassed to donate this walker tote. The Velcro looks so horrible. Besides that, the thread on the back side was bird nesting. I redid the bobbin and the threading yet again !!!!! to see if that stopped the bird nesting, but no. It was a disaster. There has to be some technique that I don't know for sewing on Velcro. Eventually I got all 4 Velcro strips on. In hindsight, it might not have been the bobbin that sent a successful project into the 'sewist wears the dunce cap' realm. I was blasting Beethoven's 5th symphony while sewing. That might be the problem. 🤣 Hopefully, nobody will see the Velcro because it is on the back, and the rest of the walker tote turned out cute. Except for the Velcro, it went easily, and I recommend the project. Velcro and I are no longer on speaking terms.

I did it! 😃 I made the pillow assignment. Actually, I made 3. The first one I got all done with and then realized the kittens were wrong side out. So I bought more fabric and made two 18" x 18" pillows. The back sides are cat paws. My sewing experience is odd, maybe. My mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and probably beyond that were all excellent seamstresses. I grew up at their knees learning to sew. But instead of becoming an excellent seamstress, I became an intimidated woman, afraid of sewing. Besides that, I always got their hand-me-down sewing machines which always needed to go to the repair shop and get a tune-up, so all my attempts to sew on my own were fights with the sewing machines. Now I own a new Singer Heavy Duty 4452. (I have other hand-me-downs, though.) I am Gen X and old enough that in school, I had to take Home Economics. So I also had sewing training in school. Even learned to iron! Ha Ha! I enjoyed taking this beginning sewing class because it made me sew. I could follow along each step of the way and build my confidence. Which I did! I am really excited to dive into the next Intermediate class. And Rebecca, you just showed a zipper pouch (I actually saw it on YouTube). Can you do a tutorial here on making that. I'd like to have the handholding with them.