Sewing Tutorials

Blogs and Flickr are great places to post tutorials on quick projects. Kerri has a great lined pouch with an easy exposed zipper up at Flickr. She has a contest going at her blog for anyone who completes one of these easy bags. I couldn't resist making one but I just had to try putting the zipper off to the side. I think this style would make a great pencil case with grommets so it could be inserted in a notebook. If you try one with grommets, be sure to use interfacing to reinforce the area where the grommets will be.

Sewing in the News

I like to see sewing in the news. It brings honor to our art and craft when some see little value with what can be accomplished with the most humble of sewing machines.

See what this young man does with a treadle sewing machine in a needy community:

ABC7 Salutes Michael Swaine

Great pictures here:

Michael and his machine at work

Sewing Machine Repair

I just had the opportunity to take one of Ray White's 3-day Sewing Machine Repair classes. We had a small class of extension volunteers and one costume maker (engineer?) from California. Ray is a fantastic teacher and the class was well worth the fee. We had the opportunity to learn basic cleaning and maintenance procedures such as timing and feed dog adjustments that will allow us to keep any mechanical or computerized machine in good running order. Some of our class members were able to complete some challenging repairs that would have given even experienced technicians a run for their money.