Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Hello to Pointy Kitties...

Pointy Kitties are finished! Albeit a bit lopsided, and perhaps there was an ear injury along the way, but they are standing and facing the future bravely! Reading Threads has to be fun for the little guys. I wanted to show the relative size of Pointies to give an idea of how teensie they really are. Sewing the section between the sides was a bit of a squeeze. My results aren't professional in the least, but they were a lot of fun! Maybe I'll make an Ugly Sock creature next...

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Pointy Kitties...the long road to finishing...

Pointy Kitty is a free pattern which has fascinated me for awhile since I downloaded it. As I have not the talent for assessing the finished product from a pattern, I hadn't realized how small, and for lack of a better word, delicate, the Point Kitty is! I cut two out of this cute fabric I got at Home Sew, and then I let it lay around the sewing cubbie awhile of course. By awhile I mean a few months. That's my pattern with projects, as a rule. When I began to sew them together I realized how tiny the pieces were. If I do this again I am going to enlarge the pattern on the copier and go for a larger Kitty! :) Originally they were bound for the children, but my daughter, collaborator on the project, and I decided to keep these due to the delicate nature of our little Pointy Kitties...heh.After much searching, we located eyes for the Kitties at our local independent fabric shop. She has an amazing array of lovely buttons, and she actually had three eyeball-like styles. Now the kitties looked like something! A heart button for each nose, and the eyeballs sewn on and somehow I felt more like sewing them together, disembodied as they are.The finished product will be seen here in the next installment of Pointy Kitty - Life at Last.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Reviews on PatternReview.com...

PR has a myriad of reviews of sewing machines, notions, patterns (of course), web sites, web merchants and brick and mortar stores, as well as forums, sewing tutorials and online classes. The site has brought a lot of fun into sewing for a lot of us. Since joining, I have written a number of reviews there myself, including numerous sewing machine reviews. I find I just love sewing machines. I have a weakness for any of them that you can define as real sewing machines. Old, new, mechanical or computerized. I don't collect them though.I sold one a few years ago. I loved that machine. It was (and still is) a New Home. One of the heavier, metal, solid machines from the 70s. It is still running in a friend's home. That machine has some really nice stitches. Even my Viking doesn't have one of the stitches I loved on that machine. The stitch looks like a line of stitching on one side with "Vs" climbing vertically up the line of stitching. Bad description I know, but the only one I have!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Purse modifying and other thoughts...

Not satisfied with the quilted bag in the last post, I have been making more pockets and installing them, as well as a redo on the strap and some squared bottom corners. All in all I am much happier now. It will be hard for me to pay money to buy a bag now that I have discovered how creative you can be making them yourself. I'm not sure you have to buy patterns for a lot of really nice bags. On the tote or hobo principle you should be able to make many different looks. I will spend some time doing this over the next month or so.

Meanwhile, Pointy Kitty and hemming and that sort of thing have taken up some sewing time, but it's both neccessary and rewarding to do. I finally located great buttons for the eyes on Pointy Kitty. They are buttons that look like eyes! Surprise! Clear with black centers. I can't wait to get that done and get pictures of Pointy up here!