Random Stitches

And now for something completely different...

Sewing!

I've been a little blue as of late because I've wanted to sew. Only sewing would make me happy. Sew sew sew sew. But my little $54 brother sewing machine was having NONE of this sewing thing. I'd bought it a few years ago at Walmark on the Black Friday crazy sale. I sewed it to death. Made all sorts of crazy things on it and never paid much attention to it. I blew out the fuzz balls every now and then that lived in the bobbin case, but nothing serious. Well, it's always had personality issues. It'll work for a little while and then snap every thread I put in it. I had enough of it and called to see about getting the stupid thing serviced. It would have cost $69.99, and it wouldn't be ready until after the new year. UM NO. I want to sew RIGHTTHISFRIGGINMINUTE!

Enter Saint D. He got to thinking in the car that the stipid little $54 machine wasn't really worth the $69 it was going to cost. And I wanted to sew RIGHTTHISMINUTE! So he asks, "why don't we just buy you a new one? There's one on sale at the store for cheap."

I'm sorry, was there a question?

YES! Due to some packaging error at Joann's, we got the nicer of the machines I'd wanted for the price of the baseline machine. Someone at the factory was sticking the wrong machine in the wrong box. SCORE for me. The machine was marked at $128, and I purchased a few half yards of fabric (like 8) plus a by the bolt package of fusiable web interfacing. Our final total was only $111. Granted, we used some coupons and my teacher's discount, but DANG. That was a steal. I kinda felt guilty that I snatched it at such a fabu price.

Enter J and today. She is a friend who works with D, and she's a sewer. We like to get together and make these cute, simple bags. It's her pattern, and she's planning to make up a billion of them to sell at craft fairs. We work as a team. She does all the PITA parts like cutting and ironing, and I do all the sewing. She HATES to sew in the bottoms of the bags, so that is all me. She brought over a stack of them that only needed the bottoms sewn in, and that's what I set myself to doing. Then she had another stack that had already been cut and only lacked the iron-on interfacing. She ironed them on, and I stiched them up. We were our own little sweat shop. I only poked/tore my fingers up once that required a bandaid out of all 22 bags we made today. 4 of them were mine to keep. It was a good day.


If you look at that pic, the top four are mine. You can only really see the top 3 because my Geisha one is squished under the vintage santa print.

And that brings up another issue. I found a new quilt shop in town. Well, new to me. It's right behind my house!!!! Like if I weren't a giant fat kid and a scardy cat, I could walk to it! I'd have to cross like 8 lanes of traffic to get there at one point, but I could technically walk there. That's the place that we found the vintage santa print and the skunk print. J is a HUGE fan of skunks (no idea why...), and she had a duck when she saw it. It's really quite cute. I liked it. We made her a bag straight away when we got home.

So, that's what I spend this fine Friday night doing. A nice cozy night by the Singer and good company. OH, and pizza. And a great torte that didn't look 'sactly like the photo because I can't follow simple directions. It still tasted mi-t-fine though.