Tag: sewing machine


Oct
2011

Homemade Placemats

categories: Crafty, Sewing
Melin Tregwynt Placemats

Sewing on my MachineThis week I blogged about replacing some seat pads using fabric from the lovely Melin Tregwynt. While I was doing it, I had an idea about using some of the fabric as placemats. We didn’t have any spares when people came over to tea & I hadn’t found any in the shops that I liked, well, none that didn’t cost an arm & a leg!

So, with my new-found sewing machine confidence, I set to work. Now that I know what some of the buttons & wheels meant on the machine, I feel that I can pretty much sew anything! I realise that this may be a tad over opemistic, but I’m actually enjoying using the machine & happy that I don’t have to battle with it.

Melin Tregwynt PlacematsAnyway, the remnents that I’d bought were practically perfect for placemat size on our little kitchen table. So I just had to trim them to size & stitch the  edges to prevent them from fraying. While this was a simple task, & I even got to use the reverse key (yes, before I discovered this I was simply pulling the fabric!), I had to get some more bobbins. When I finally got the right size (!) I discovered that my Nana had wound a bobbin with black cotton. This made me smile, as does finding half used cotton reels from my Nana’s huge sewing box. My Nana also has a needle wallet with her name on it, ‘The Boss’, which is very fitting. It also has a patch from her time serving with the Royal Engineers during the Second World War! I love this sewing box & am happy to have the change to use it whenever I can. I will think of her every time I use the placemats, hemmed with her cotton. x


Sep
2011

Blackout Curtains

categories: Crafty, Sewing
Finished Blackout Curtains

Loose StitchingFor a while now, my OH has had issues with our bedroom curtains. We have a street light just outside our bedroom window & now that it’s on a lot more, he’s having issues with the bedroom being too light. So we needed blackout material on our curtains. In a bid to save some pennies, I decided to make them, never having made anything so big on my sewing machine! Easy, I thought. I bought the material from the lovely people at Masons, where the assistant gave me no end of advice. I love that place. She cut the material to size & I’d just need to hem the fabric, add some heading tape & attach the finished article to each curtain. So I got my sewing machine out & set to work.

Tidy Hem Work Right from the start I was having problems & my instruction manual was no real help but Twitter & my mum came to the rescue. The tension wasn’t right. After a bit of fiddling with a few of the different buttons & wheels on my machine, a lot of wated cotton & loads of frustration and untypable swear words, I finally got it. Having spent about two hours to get to this point, the rest of the hemming didn’t take too long. By this point I hadn’t really stabbed myself with too many pins & I was beginning to feel pretty confident with what I was doing.

Heading TapeThen it came time to add the heading tape. This was so easy to do, as the heading tape simply slotted over the top of the fabric. I pinned it into place & stiched it on. It was super easy to do. All I had to do then was attach them to the curtains. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do this. I knew that I could leave them hang  once I’d attached them using the curtain hooks. So I’ve decided to leave it like that for now. I know I can go back & stitch them onto the curtain if I want to. Plus I’d had enough by then and just wanted to get them up. So I put the curtain hooks through the heading tape on the blackout material & the curtains.

Finished Blackout CurtainsThey hang pretty well & you can’t see the blackout material when the curtains are open or when they’re drawn. I’m pretty impressed with how easy it was, once I got the tension on my machine sorted. Now all I have to decide is whether I make my own curtains next time. Not sure how much my sewing skills have developed! x