About Me

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I'm an artist who can't choose a medium. My current weapon of choice is a black fine line art marker, which I use to doodle pretty little illustrations. I turn them into clip art that you can purchase in my Etsy shop for use in projects like web design and scrapbooking. I live with my husband and evil black cat in Chicago.

Friday, June 3, 2011

The sewing odyssey continues...

Tula Pink's Prince Charming fabric in olive
Last year I bought a sewing machine.  It was a tiny thing, with pink knobs and probably small enough to fit into a backpack.  I made two purses on it - each hideous with messy seams and showcasing my inability to sew a straight line.  The foot pedal quit working halfway through the second bag, and I went on to attempt a third using the on/off switch.  During bag #3 I realized that my tiny, adorable, pink sewing machine wasn't going to be able to keep up with me.  I was going to have to get a better machine.  I considered giving up sewing entirely.  But in the end, after researching grown up sewing machines, I bought another.  This one is larger, has all kinds of settings, can sew through heavy fabrics, and has green knobs. 

I've made more purses on my Green Machine, and I'm getting better at sewing.  One of the purses I even liked enough to take out in public!  (Pictures and instructions to come.)  But I've decided to move on.  I like making bags, but I want to try something new.

I've decided to make a quilt.  I've attempted this once before (on the pink machine), but it was a shocking failure.  Turns out one needs more than a sewing machine and some fabric to make a quilt.  One also needs an iron, and to make precise measurements before uses scissors.  I've purchased an iron, and a rotary cutting set made especially for quilting (it was cheaper than buying it all separately), and some different presser feet for the Green Machine (I only hope they work, because the Singer website is obnoxiously vague, and needs to standardize the way they number their parts). 

Then I got to buy pretty fabric, which was an adventure.  Many of the websites that sell the pretty designer fabrics either didn't have what I was looking for, or they looked like the sites were designed in 1992, and too shady to give my credit card information to.  So I gave up on these places and went to Etsy, where I found the fabric I wanted at a price that I felt was fair.  (The customer service was great, and I got my fabric really quickly.)  Plus, I got my fabric all from the same seller as a set.  I got a half yard of each fabric in Tula Pink's Prince Charming line.  I'm so excited to make a quilt from it!  It's lovely fabric, and so much nicer than the quilting fabrics I've bought in the past.

I'm hoping that the presser feet I ordered get here quicker than the USPS website thinks they will so I can get started.  As it stands now, I may be waiting a whole week.  I will keep you all informed as to my progress.  I have a feeling there's a lot of cursing at the Green Machine in my future.

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