I love it when students come over and tell me what they are going to be doing in the lesson.I have a lesson plan in place before they come but some of them have their own very definite ideas. We discuss lesson plans for the following lessons but they go home and get other ideas. That tailored jacket that she had made a few weeks ago has been used a lot and she finds it very comfortable and versatile so she decided to create another. This time the base jacket was a linen that

I have been working on a new tutorial for a while. I call it An Interchangeable Landscape and different from my other tutorials I will be including some pattern pieces as well. Why do I call it interchangeable? By changing the pattern pieces and colors you can switch around landscapes in seconds from a seascape to a landscape to a snowscape or even to a desertscape. It can be rawed edged or seamed edge. The possibilites are endless. You create a selection of elements and can

I will be running a class teaching crumb quilting and chose to make my sample pieces using summer fabrics. The first step is to create many elements in a varied color mix. I love working with summer fabrics, always cheering and refreshing. I randomly join pieces from the huge pile. And then I prepare boxes of fabric panels using the crumb quilting technique so that I have patchwork fabric at the ready for a project. My first sample piece. I will be creating 2 sample pieces

I received a special request this week. Please make me a blue shaded, soft, warm scarf for this winter. In my winter box of fabrics I found some shirt corduroy in teal and blue as well as 2 shades of teal and blue flannel remnants. After cutting strips and rectangles I joined them together till I got a length of 170 cm x 35 cm. A single layered scarf. The finished scarf before ragging all the seams. After ragging and washing once. The scarf will become more ragged and softer

This week when she came over the original plan was to complete her wave landscape piece with the floral fabrics that she had chosen last time. She had already created one landscape piece with some of the florals adding orange and a rose pink to them I saw that she didn't really want to make another landscape, so after giving it some thought she decided to make quilted wave fabric with the strips that she had chosen and then construct a zippered pouch from the fabric. She chos

I have spent the last 2 weeks going through boxes and mounds or rather hills of fabric that I have collected over the years. Why do I have so much fabric? Granted, none of it was new. It was either gifted or sourced at charity stores. I think all recyclers can be hoarders. It is very important to sort ones equipment and notions and fabrics according to subjects and see whether one is keeping stuff that one does not need. I teach sewing and one of the things that I do is prov

When sorting fabrics yesterday I found a packet of scraps that I had put away for future use. I found some coordinating berry threads. I decided to make a fabric scarf. If I don't keep it for myself it can be gifted. The colors are really luscious.