Merry Christmas To All and To All A Good Night!

Being as this is now the ......day after Christmas, I hope that that means everyone has had a wonderful day with family and friends and that now you are recuperating! I stayed up wayyyy to late on Christmas Eve. sewing and watching sweet Christmas shows and just enjoying. So having stayed up late the night before, last night also being a late night I was somewhat lagging b/4 bed last night! I tumbled into bed and slept and slept. Now that I'm refreshed.... I'm ready to go again! 

DH has off until next week sometime and we plan on playing a bit..... you know the drill, movies, puzzles, left overs... pie.... sewing, more pie, hmmmm playing with the grands... and did I say pie? I never made it to the cookie making... but I promised DH I would b/4 New Years... (although, he did say that he wasn't really worried at all about not having any cookies!.... Mostly, cause there is ..... hmmmm

pie! LoL...) I only made 2 pumpkin... but it's nice to have it around... although, he finished off the last piece of 1 pie just a bit ago! Lots of other fun treats... that I need to try to stay away from! 

We had a wonderful Christmas time, spent with family and visiting on the phone with the ones that are not close at hand. Sharing our evening meal with some family and a friend who had no where else to go.  Last night we went over to one of our DD's house all the intentions in the world to watch the new BatMan movie.... (I still haven't seen it, and don't feel like I missed anything.... sorry for you who love it!). DD and I played with her new Brother sewing/embroidery machine! What's not to like? We learned all sorts of fun things and she ended up making a cute Butterfly patch as her first testing of the machine. Things to learn and play with. 

While DH is off skiing I'm planning on my own "playing" down in the sewing room.... plans are the best when laid out to sew!!!! 

So, enjoy the time off that you may have... and for those of you who have to go back to work! Enjoy that too.... you have a job! Many do not. We must above all count our blessings! 

Actual Sewing Post Coming

Stay tuned, actual sewing related post..... soon! :)  Hard to believe... I know, but things just get complicated sometimes. I wanted to Sew Burda pattern 116  from 08/2011 which you can see here!
http://allisoncsewinggallery.blogspot.com  on her 2012 07 post.  But after borrowing it from a good neighbor.... reality came knocking at the door and I just couldn't even trace out the pattern! I'm spoiled, I've used the Big 4 patterns for sooo many years that actually tracing out from the ohhhh soo many lines from Burda's patterns.... it about made me dizzy! LoL... you win some you loose some I suppose. Now I guess I will just have to see if I can find something similar in either one of the Burda patterns (that are in envelopes) or some other company! I really did want to make it with a 3/4 length sleeve anyway!

I did find this pattern though, which I plan on making in from view A; with 3/4 length sleeves. Maybe a tad bit shorter also... I will need to make it shorter in the waist as I'm very short waisted. Such is life!


I will have to go back to the fabric store and see if I can find something similar as I mentioned above!
Back again... hopefully sooner rather than later!
Oh, and we cut our Christmas tree yesterday... it took us far shorter time wise than in years past.  Funny story, I will have to relate later when I have a bit more time. We were home and back to our left over's by.... 6:15 p.m. Friday evening!

Keep your scissors sharp!

Happy Thanks Giving Every One

 So many of the people in our Nation and around the world have had trials, disappointments, hardships of all sorts, some people have been morning losses of loved ones or even homes or jobs. Today is a day to reflect on the past and strive to move forward. As hard as these trials can be, we truly need to work hard to over come these things. And the way we can help is too look around us and see what we can do! You may know of someone who needs a helping hand, words of encouragement and love can do a lot for those who have suffered from any type of trial.... whether it be getting a bad grade on a mid term.... or losing a home. Everyone can use words of love! Maybe someone just cut you off on the road somewhere... try to put yourself into their shoes... they may not of even realized that they did this to you. Turn the other cheek, maybe shake your head... instead of your fist! Share a smile, a hand shake or even put what you can into a donation pot. I know a few of us.... (o.k., maybe just me) have a hard time trying to decide whether the person pan handling at the side of the road is doing it professionally or really needs help. (Can you tell I've seen way too many shows like 60 Minutes! LoL)  To be honest, I guess that's not for me to decide! If you don't want to feel like maybe that person is going to take advantage... maybe help out through a local Church, halfway house, non-profit organization etc. There are a lot of ways to help... United Way from what I understand is a great organization also.... the Red Cross does good work all over the place. Oh, and if you can't help out with a donation of money (let's be honest, this can be a very wallet stretching time of year) volunteer to help with your time. Granted this also is hard sometimes this time of year. But.... then again, what about helping kids read at school or some other volunteering during the rest of the year! It doesn't have to happen like.... TODAY! 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while your counting your blessings today... please make sure and see if you could maybe answer someone else's prayers! Be good to your self, your family, your friends and your neighbors... you never know when you may be the person who needs to be uplifted or helped; whether it be financially, mentally, physically or Spiritually. 

Take care and God Bless You and Your Family During This Wonderful Season of the Year And all the rest of the year too!

Oh, and don't get caught with an empty bobbin! :)

When Is It Going To End?????

You know, sometimes I wonder what I've gotten myself into as far as canning goes! LoL... it's my own fault... I got my family used to eating home canned stuff and now well... that's what we like!
Spaghetti sauce, veggie soup, green beans, thick chunky apple sauce (and at this point I say, yum!), various fruits... tomatoes, beets (well, most of the family doesn't like those... just me! I'm worth a little effort aren't I?) and dried or/fruit leather fruits. You get the idea... this all takes time... time, time, time!!! Late to bed, early to rise.... makes a person... CRANKY!
Sewing time has been sadly neglected!!!! What is that saying; if you want to make something a habit, do it for 2 weeks (or is it 3) and you will just keep doing it! Guess I had better work on that!
O.K. that's my rant! Now.... breakfast and off to see the grands play soccer!  O. K. so it's not sewing, but it is something very worthwhile! ;)
Grandkids.... doncha love em! :)

Hopefully I will have a sewing related post soon!

In the meantime, don't sew with your presser foot up! LoL...

A-l-l  A-b-o-a-r-d....................................................!

In August this little guy down below.... (ahem, the one on the left!) turned 4! And for birthdays, we have

decided that the grands don't really "need" another toy. So, we are taking them on dates! This little guy loves trains, although from looking at his concerned face you wouldn't really know it! We  DH/Dgrandpa and I went to this train park on a families private property where they have 4 trains. The other 3 are much smaller, where each person sits one behind another and hangs onto the sides of the train... we figured little guy would really love it.  He took one look at the smaller trains and pointed at it and said, "I don't think I want to go on one of those!"  There was no way we were going to get him onto the small train. So, we took him to see the larger train...(see above) and showed him how big it was and that we could sit inside (and that we would be with him) and he relaxed a little bit! 

After a few minutes, he relaxed and let go of the death grip he had on my arm. He was pointing out all sorts of things. Your supposed to keep hands/arms/feet inside the cars at all times (hmmm, sounds like a Disney ride doesn't it?) and next thing we know he is just about hanging outside the train! LoL... he had a great time.

We bought him a wooden train whistle that you really have to work hard to actually make much noise out of... (thinking we were safe w/DD #1, so he wouldn't drive her nuts with noise) to be given to him later.... didn't want him to drive us nuts in the Jeep! LoL... we weren't born yesterday you know! On the way to lunch after the train ride, he started making train horn sounds on his own.... (he didn't even know we had bought the whistle) and so DH and I looked at each other and then opened the whistle and handed it to DGS... it was cute. We ate lunch, with him bee-bopping to the music (right in sync to the music) put a french fry into his mouth and started using that for a whistle.... ( we didn't let him take said whistle into the eatery...).  At home while we were taking the booster seat out of the Jeep he ran into the house and almost hyperventilated telling the family how much fun he had! Cute cause we weren't all that sure he enjoyed it that much. He wasn't doing a lot of talking and all.  We had a great time. Next one will be in a few weeks.... DGS's birthday is coming soon... First DS's birthday and then FIL's 89th birthday and then DGS's #7 birthday. Hard to keep up! Another passenger took this of us all together... guess we should have squatted down...

Now, onto sewing...

Trying to Keep Up With Karma, Not Really

Funny how time just gets away from me sometimes. Here it is another Season of the
year already. Wasn't it just Summer?
Karma's daughter found something on Pinterest that was cool... but it did take a lot of
work to do.  I don't have any pictures of it... (note to self... take pictures of Karma's
files) yet! But I will! O.K. so let me explain; Karma is a quilter/seamstress emphasis
on the quilting! So of course that means she has a huge stash of fabric! It got to the
point that if she couldn't find what she needed (and this happened all the time) she
would go buy more! Makes sense right? Not really, because later she would find
out she already had some... and well this is a bit wasteful in a couple of ways, time
and money. So organization was what she wanted, but how was another matter.
Center stage Pinterest! Her daughter found a picture of this filing system (using
actual hanging files to support the fabric! What they did was this; take 1 hanging
file folder open out the folder so it's laying on the table flat... now cut it in half
at the fold. Easy enough! Next take your fabric piece and fold it so that it hangs
nicely over the top part of the file folder so that you can still hang it in the file
cabinet. You want to make sure that you fold it so that the fabric isn't hanging
past the folder or it will be harder to keep it neat and tidy. We did a lot of
pinning of extra pieces (as a quilter you get lots of smaller pieces that you don't
want to waste, so we pinned them onto the larger piece of fabric or hung them
separately over the same folder). And because Karma has lots of smaller pieces
i.e. fat quarters etc... we also hung similar colors on the same folder. Overlapping
them so each piece could be seen. I must say, her files are very colorful! It took
us around 3-4 weeks at 5-6 hour a day (mind you it wasn't every day of the week
and only several days in each week) to get all of her fabric done! Wheeeee,
we did get it all done though. It was funny, just when we thought it was all
done, and nice and tidy in her sewing room.... I turned and said what's in this
smaller closet... you should have seen her face; fabric she says to me! We got to
the point where we would laugh cause everywhere we looked (while we were
working on this system) there was fabric.... (thus the need for "a" system).
We found an old filing cabinet at the local D.I. (Deseret Industries) for all of
$15 that had 5 huge drawers. We not only filled them all up, but she bought
a bunch of plastic hanging file boxes to store in the now somewhat empty
closet. We took the sliding doors off of the closet in her sewing room and
placed them outside in the shed. Then because she has soo many nice deep
shelves, we used the new boxes to start sorting the fabrics into color groups.
Plus, she had a lot of fabric that for all practical purposes... was too much
yardage for this system. So that we stacked in flat-folds into some of the old
milk crates and bins that she had been using before. Although, instead of
placing them so they were just stacked one on top of each other so she can't
see what is where, we turned the crates/bins on their side facing out and the
fabric was layered so you can see the edge of each piece. Karma also does
lots of scrap booking so the under side of her cutting table was sorted out
so that now it holds nothing but scrap booking stuff. And yes, we of course
found  "more fabric"! LoL..... it got to be a bit of a joke cause it was every-
where! Stuffed in plastic bags... of all sorts/sizes... anyone need any bags ?
We also ended up with all sorts of containers... cloth type storage bins,
plastic bins (the non-hanging file sort with lids) all shapes and sizes. Karma
is a lot like me in that manner... I love containers... all sizes, shapes, materials.
So, we got her entire sewing room re-organized and now we just need to
get together to do some major sewing! Also, now that we've done her's,
mine is looking a bit outta sorts.... hmmmm, I wonder.....

Last month my DD Cindy and my friends daughter Jill and I went to a library
book sale. That's where the local library sells off old or duplicate or donated
books to raise money for newer books or items they need. It says having to
raise taxes for that sort of thing. And while there, I found a few books
(meaning of course there were tons... but I figured I will just borrow books
from my DD instead of buying more and then having to find places to
put them) I wanted; mostly I bought cook books; which I love. And then
while waiting for the girls to get thru the huge line (I'm talking I could have
read all the books I bought and maybe then they would be done) I found a
great 3 drawer solid wood lateral file cabinet for $30. Now looking at this
picture below; add another drawer taller to it and make it wider! I couldn't
find a picture of it... and I'm too lazy to go get my camera... hmmm well,
maybe later. Anyway it's 43 inches tall x 21 1/2 inches deep x 371/4 inches
wide. So really it's huge and heavy!!! My DH as he had to ask a neighbor
to help carry the unit down stairs to my sewing room (mind you that is with-
out drawers; cause it was wayyyy to heavy for me to help with) said, this
thing is solid wood... I'll bet it cost over $500 to buy new! Yep, and his
wifey got it for $30! And it's in great shape. I did have to wipe it down a bit
and vacuum out the spider webs and the spidey egg sac's.... aurgh. But now I
have the perfect spot to file all of my sewing patterns! Yes, I have a lot! It
practically filled the  entire thing! Although, there was room for all my lining
fabric's too.

  
So that means that of course I had to re-arrange once again! Plus, since I got a
new computer earlier in the Summer... I have a hard time using DH lap top. The
keyboard is way to narrow for me... hmmm, or my fingers are way to big? You
choose.... choose wisely! LoL.... It's a wireless so now I can use the keyboard
at sewing machine desk or anywhere else. Plus we got a wireless printer, that
we both can use wirelessly... go figure!
Still need to build myself or have DH build some shelves into the closet for
my fabric... as long as it took to sort out Karma's fabric... I'm thinking that it's
not what I want to do to organize mine! Life is too short! I would rather be
sewing!
I have all of my half square triangles all sewn/cut/pressed/tails trimmed for
the quilt for our bed. Just need to take the time to lay them out. Probably will
take them outside and lay them onto the grass to see what I can come up with.
Maybe pictures will help with the lay out too!
Also, I have cut out 12 sets of flannel pieces for receiving blankets. We have
so far had 11 babies born into our ward at Church this year! Have to get on
that project! They will be all grown up b/4 I'm done at this rate! LoL....

If your working on a project.... keep up the good work.
Remember, serving others is a blessing in it's self!

Sometimes Pattern Companies Just Goof

Sometimes when I go visit other people's blogs and comment, I think about something that might be of help to others in a post. I was visiting this post http://www.stitchesandseams.blogspot.com/2012/07/mccalls-6397-nearly-done-sneak-peak.html
and thought of a similar thing that happened to me.
Years ago, my DD #3 was in the process of getting ready for Girl's Camp (it's a camp for Young Women of our Church). They want the girls to be modest in their clothing so in stead of wearing a regular swimsuit, she decided that she was going to make some short pants out of swimsuit material... killing two birds with one stone so to speak.... (no, I don't encourage killing birds... just so you know!). But, as happens sometimes, time just got away from her and she didn't get them made b/4 she left. As she would be at camp all week and I was to go up there for some reason that I clearly don't recall now, I told her that I would sew the shorts for her. Famous last words..... o.k. so I have mentioned that I have sewn wedding dresses for lots of people, done lots of alterations etc... with out  as much headache as these shorts were to make!  They were a Simplicity pattern and honestly.... the name of the company does nothing for that pattern! They were the farthest thing from simple (as far as how the instructions were written) that I've ever seen in my life! Honestly, I was so thankful that my DD had not tried to make them... I'm afraid that she would have decided then and there that sewing was something she would never want to do again!  After getting totally frustrated with the instructions, the company and finally myself, I stopped and decided that I needed to step back and do it my own way. Once I did that it made sense to me and I was able to finish up the shorts. They ended up being cute once all the headache was over and done with. But, all I could think of was if someone who had never sewn b/4 got a hold of this pattern... that would be it for their sewing enjoyment. There was certainly nothing to enjoy about it and mind you the only enjoyable thing about that pattern was when I folded it up and put it into the garbage! Not to let something like this keep me down, I did what I typically would do. I complained, first to DH and then because he just looked at me like.... o.k. what would you like me to do about this, I emailed the Simplicity Company. I explained the in's and outs of all I went thru trying to figure it all out to no avail and finally just did my own thing. Believe me, when I was done, I felt much better! Nothing like a good rant (albeit the non-nasty sort) to blow off a little steam. I did explain that I knew that the person on the other end of the email I was sending had most probably nothing at all to do with how the instructions were not that instructing at all and I didn't hold them personally accountable for it... I just wanted them to know that it was frustrating to me and I'm sure to anyone else were they to pick up this same pattern. Believe it or not.... my email did not go right into the  "delete bin"..... (how do I know you ask?) because I got a reply!
The sweet person on the other end of the email address responded to me within a day or so. To which I was really surprised!
Basically, she told me how sorry the company was that I had had such a problem with one of their patterns. She went on to tell me that although they couldn't reimburse me for my fabric (which I neither asked for or wanted because I did make the shorts finally work) they wanted to make sure that I would return to be a customer again.... she asked for my snail mail addie and with that sent me a coupon for a free pattern. And on top of that she asked if I would be so kind as to maybe send any thoughts I had on how the company could improve the pattern. And that any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! To be honest.... I told her the best thing they could do for that pattern was to toss the instructions and start again! I can just see her laughing about that one!
The important thing that I wanted to pass on to any one who has a problem with pattern company instructions is... make sure read them thru 2-3-4 times.... and then if they still don't make sense to you...you can do another thing that I've done and that is to call someone else like say someone at the local fabric store. Ask them if they have  a minute or two to listen to the instructions and read them to them.... (it does help if they can pull a copy of the pattern... if it's a current one that's fine, of course, if it's not you need to either take it in so they can re-read it themselves or read it over the phone to them).  I found that if the person brought the pattern into the shop (when I was working) I could check it out and help them walk thru it.
Just know, that if in doubt check it out!!!! Don't forget to let the pattern companies know if there is a problem. Hey, they want you to buy their products, we keep them in business! If not for us... there go their jobs! So... proofread your patterns b/4 hand.... there is nothing like being up at 1 o'clock in the a.m. trying to figure out what in the world this pattern is saying and then.... you can't call anyone to ask questions. Well, I suppose you could call your mom or other bestest sewing friend, but I doubt if that person would truly appreciate it that much! Hang in there. Oh, and remember,  we sew so that we can do what we want, the way we want.... there are no sewing police out there  coming to knock on your door if you don't make something exactly like the pattern cover! If you make a mistake and it's something you can live with.... go with it! Sewing should be enjoyable! Granted, if someone is looking over your shoulder while your sewing, I get where that isn't all that enjoyable... but you probably wouldn't be doing it if you didn't like to sew. 
One more silly thing; while working at the fabric shop and dealing with customers that were having problems with pattern instructions.... I can't tell you how many times we wondered out loud, if the person who wrote the instructions actually ever sewed? Yep, sometimes.... I think not! Think about that the next time you look at a pattern and then say.......  they want me to do what? Believe me, it makes you feel a bit better!  

Hope your week is wonderful! Don't forget to contact the pattern company if you have a real problem with something they have done! Oh, and don't tell them I've sent you! LoL.....