A Few Tips and Tricks !

I apologize to anyone who doesn't sew, but follows my blog. The last posts from me have been pretty boring if sewing's not your thing. If that's the case, just read up on Aj's post about his car. I liked it. He's a pretty neat guy. But it's march break, and if you want to know what I've been doing, I've been sewing. And reading. And homework. The most interesting of which is the former.
So, back to sewing stuff! 

Here are some things to know when sewing:


1.  Press. Iron things all the time, between everything you do. It will seriously help you out. And if things don't want to press the way you want them to, it's okay to snip the seam to make it work, just don't snip too far!

 

2. Start with the needle in the fabric. By hand, lower the needle into the fabric before you start stitching. My machine has the tendency to rip the thread out of the eye as I start sewing and I have to re-thread it each time. I find that starting with the needle in the fabric to start, reduces the issue. 

 

 3. When quilting it is not necessary to back stitch (to knot the threads), because you will end up stitching over everything again when finishing or quilting. However, I like to back stitch anyhow, because I rarely finish a project all in one go, and when left to fend for itself, the threads sometimes get tired of waiting, and leave. So a tip for back stitching- start again with the needle in, but start about an inch into the fabric. This way, you start by backing up an inch and continue to stitch straight afterwards. I used to start at the beginning of the fabric, go forwards, back and forwards again, but I found this way to do the same thing- with less bulk.

4. This little thing! It's found on the left side of the machine, and is a tricky thing ! It cuts your threads for you, most machines have this- newer ones cut the threads for you automatically. All you have to do to use it, take your project out as usual, and instead of grabbing some scissors, you just pull the threads up and around this little guy and he'll cut those threads for you! The only bummer about it is that you'll have to cut the threads again later, unless you want your quilt, or dress, or whatever to have strings all over it. Unless you're careful when you use it. I'm not. But you might be.

I have more tips and tricks up my sleeve, but those ones need a bit more planning. Things like mitering corners, binding, sewing on the bias and whatnot.

So for now, hopefully there was something on there you didn't know!
Happy sewing!
xx
Hayley

The Legend

Hello,

I'm the aforementioned boyfriend and I'm going to share with you the glory that is my ex-car.

I've always liked cars. I used to sleep with my toy cars in the place of stuffies. I bought my car a few months before I could legally drive it alone. 

I ended up failing the test twice. I was pretty pissed, and telling people that makes you look like a bad driver. Maybe I'm a bad driver.

I bought my first car in October 2011. She was a 1985 BMW 318i sedan, automatic. I called her Webasto.

My car was an E30, the name given to all 3-Series BMWs produced from 1982-1994.

Webasto represented the lowest common denominator of E30s. My 318i came with the smallest engine, she was automatic (making it slower), and she was a sedan (slower still).

She was slower than my grandmother paddling a tin canoe upstream with a limp noodle.

She wasn't even good on gas.

I loved Webasto, despite her lack of speediness. By the time the car had fallen into my hands, she had gone 439 000 kilometers. That's ten times around the equator. I admired her grim determination.

She had her quirks. Webasto was originally from San Fran. She was a dull grey colour with bits rubbing off.  Came with a loud muffler, which is always cool for some reason. It fell off once on Victoria Street. I ran over it. It had a crank operated sunroof, my friends broke the crank off, so I used vice-grips. One of the electric windows wouldn't go back up sometimes. For a while Webasto would do strange things if I didn't buy premium gas. The front brakes were wonky.
The clock was always wrong.

Don't let me fool you. Webasto was tuff. She started every time. I always reached my destination. A friend of a friend told me she could do sweet power slides and donuts. She saved my life once. 

I have always wanted to have a hand painted car. I have always wondered why it isn't more common. Every person in North America owns a car, and they're all a solid colour. Probably silver. So I painted Webasto. I started with yellow. I sanded it and and did a few coats of Home Hardware bought Tremclad Rust Paint. Not that she was rusty. Webasto wasn't like that.

I drove her yellow for a few days, then added the stripes. I had the hood planned out, but the rest was more or less improvised. The whole thing cost me about sixty bucks, I used masking tape and the foam rollers you paint interior walls with. I took two weeks working after school. I listened to Q107.1 with that British guy. I never decided if he was annoying or not.

I was proud of the job I did, I thought she looked pretty hawt. I think some people looked at her and thought I was deluded. That I was under the impression that a clearly unprofessional paint job turned my car into some souped street racing vehicle. Sometimes I think people saw the me and saw the classic "teenager-drives-a beater-with-a-loud-muffler-and-thinks-he's-all-that". I missed Webasto's original blotchy grey inconspicuous looks sometimes. Not often though.
I did it because I'm an artist and I like to paint things and I wanted a pretty car.

I was always told that Webasto would be a magnet for speeding tickets. I once was followed into a McDonald's drive thru by a cop. A friend of mind had given a moving rendition of Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer. He stuck his head out of the sunroof for better acoustics. We got a warning. No speeding tickets.

In February 2013 my dad wanted to have the car looked at, to ensure I wasn't going to die of reckless admiration. The mechanic reported the car was unsafe. But he said it was because the front wheels had gained sentience, and could decide to go wherever they pleased. And the front brakes were gone. So I sold Webasto a few days later, to a guy who promised to dismember her and sell her bits to unsavoury types.

I miss her. It was time though. Somewhere on a desert highway, her passenger side door still feels the breeze. Somewhere on cracked city blacktop, her left rear wheel rolls occupants towards adventure.

I kept the rear BMW emblem. I'm going to have it surgically inserted close to my heart.

When I get x-rays the radiologist will know I'm a performance machine.

Quilted Place Mats

Hi there. As you may have noticed, I'm actually posting things on here. It's MARCH BREAK! Which is fabulous. I have time to do things. So I've been sewing up a storm and I'll probably do this post (placemats!) in a few separate ones. And the first post will be the actual placemats.

This was my idea. Pretty rough. But it helped.

 

 I cut all of my triangles out first: 15 blue and 10 yellow.

Best tip I can ever give you: PRESS. Like crazy.

(quilter's term for iron, but it literally means press it, don't rub it around!)

 I use a starch alternative called Best Press, I love it. Mostly because it smells so good, but it does keep my fabric nice and flat!

 

Unfortunately, I didn't have my quilting mat, or my rotary cutter. But I made do with scissors, pins and a ruler.

 

 I used my ruler to make sure I had equilateral triangles, to a size I wanted. It's difficult without a rotary cutter and mat because with scissors, it's hard to keep each triangle accurate. So my placemats definitely look homemade, but I kind of like it! My next one I'll do with my mat (much faster too).

I stitched the three triangles of the first row together, and pressed the seams towards the blue fabric. I always try to press towards the darker fabric to avoid the seams showing through the lighter fabrics.

Then, I flipped it over and trimmed the little bits off.

 For the second row, pressing outwards didn't work, so I snipped up to the seam to separate the rebellious one. I pressed as much as I could towards the blue fabric. The most important thing is for it to be flat when it's finished. Don't want lumpy placemats after all!

The pattern is really simple. Continue sewing these strips, each one longer than the last and stitch the strips together. Match them face to face and stitch along the edges. It is important to pin the points of the triangles together and ensure that they are stitched together. In most small projects like this, I shamefully admit that I rarely pin. But because it's really obvious if the points aren't lined up, I did pin these. 

Make sure to keep pressing! Even if the edges of the strips are a bit different in length, still match the points up. Fabric has a bit of stretch remember, and it's easy to pull it around and make it work!

Once all the strips are sewn together, you have the top! I quilted mine- so used batting. I buy my batting from the local quilt store for $10.70 a wide metre. I avoid complete polyester even though it's cheaper, this batting is warmer, thinner and has a nicer consistency (right word?). Usually I cut my batting an inch smaller than the size of my quilt top, but this time I want my binding to be smaller than usual, so I cut it to the size of my placemat. 

Once the edges of the quilt, batting, and backing fabric are stitched together, I stitched along the seams (not on the seams), to quilt it.

 And that's it for now! I'm going to do another post about:

Tips and Tricks for quilting!
and
Binding a quilt! (or placemat!) to finish the edge

I hope y'all are enjoying your break as much as I am!
xx
Hayley

PS. Andrew is posting soon! How exciting. Stay tuned for his post about something super cool.

Pillow Shams Cont'd

Here's an example of one that's tighter.
So simple!

Back!

Front!

Pillow Shams

Start with: An ugly pillow!

Like so-

 

First I measured it out - 17X16". I added two inches to each side (which made it pretty loose- for a tighter fit, I would add 1 inch and use 1/4 or 1/2" seams.)

This is hard to explain, but I'll try my best.

I used a 19X18" square for the front. For the back (shown below), I used two 22X18" pieces. I folded them in half and stitched around the outer3 edges for each. Because the pieces are large, they overlap in the centre by a few inches to keep the pillow in.

Check out the overlap to keep it closed ^^

 Since my sham was a bit big, I stitched a button and a strip (with a button hole) on the other side to keep it shut.

And that's that! 

Happy sewing!