New sewing space

Blogging finally. I am enjoying a week of vacation at home. This is day 4, wow, it really goes quick. I started my time off on Thursday. My husband, myself and a young helper began the process of moving my sewing area out of the basement and up into my new sewing studio. Getting everything together is a process that is going to take a little while to complete, but once it is finished it will be fantastic.

My husband purchased  cabinets at auction a year or so ago. They are from some kind of lab, so they are heavy duty metal with drawers. Right now they are an ugly grey, but eventually they will be a beautiful light blue with black countertops. We set up the cabinets in an "L" shape that is 9 feet by 14 feet with  four workstations, one of which is double wide. I will probably put the embroidery machine in the double wide space. On the back wall, I have the Neechi (in cabinet) that I purchased last year and I have my mother's old Kenmore (in cabinet) that I brought to my house after my father passed away last year. I need to take it in to the shop for service, but I sewed quite a bit on that machine when I was in high school and my mother made a lot of clothes for us on it.

Our home is an old warehouse that we are almost finished converting into a home. It has been a couple long years of lots of construction, but in the end it will be worth it. There are old wooden beams that we left in place. (Actually Thursday started out with my husband giving the wooden beams one last sanding because they had some sheet rock mud on them.)

This is my attempt at taking a panoramic photo with my I-phone. The room is straight in reality, but I had a difficult time keeping the camera level as I moved. But you can get the idea of what it looks like.

Here is a straight shot into the room. You can see the wooden beams. I really like them. All of the little dark spots along the wall are for electrical outlets. The boxes are the blinds waiting to be hung.

These are my cabinets before we put them together. They now have the wood on top of them and the drawers are not standing or laying down on the floor, but are bolted into place. I lined all of the drawers with cork. I have to work on getting the tags off of them tomorrow and putting more things away.

Tomorrow after I do some more straightening up and finish a sewing project, I will take some more photos to post.

I have been away from the blog for so long...I have done some sewing, but no blogging. With the house under construction, it seems hard to stay organized or on some kind of schedule. I keep trying, but it doesn't seem to work. I must admit I am tired of the construction and want to be in my new sewing studio. It will be nice not to be in the basement anymore.

I can hardly believe that I haven't posted anything in a month. I will try to get some things posted this weekend. Sunday I have my last Jeans class with Jennifer Stern. This means that my jeans should be finished Sunday. I will post some photos. I went away to the sewing expo in Worcester, MA the middle of April. I took several classes with Cynthia Guffey, she is an excellent seamstress and she is entertaining on top of it. I bought some new fabric from the Vogue store at the expo. I have a dress cut out from some of it and hope to put it together tomorrow. It is a very simple Vogue pattern. I also went away this month because I won an award with my TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) group and they were having a State recognition event. Over the past year + I have lost about 100 pounds.

My dress is finished and I will post a photo tomorrow. Yippee. Tomorrow is also working on jeans for class.

I have a dress started and I put together another muslin of my jeans for class this Saturday. We made lots of fitting changes at the last class so I wanted to be sure I transferred all of the changes to the pattern from the muslin. The new muslin fitspretty well except for right around the waist. I am pretty sure I know what I did wrong, which is always a step in the right direction. :) The dress is coming together nicely, but it is a very simple pattern. I wanted to try out using my dress form for pattern fitting and altering. I have posted a photo of it with some progress. I hope tomorrow evening to be able to finish fixing the back darts and sew up the side seams.  Yesterday, I needed a project I could complete, so I made a Barbie doll dress. It looks lovely, as you can see.....although I still have to sew on the snap for the back of it. Oh well, just a little thing.

I forgot to get a photo of my son and his girlfriend with the sewing machine. It is now back in West Virginia with them. I asked him to send a photo when he gets a chance, but only time will tell with that request. I also realized that I forgot to take any photos of my son or Jackie while they were visiting, but I did take some photos of their dogs. Here are Manny and Jerome. Manny is a Toy Poodle and Jerome is a Goldendoodle. 

No sewing today or tomorrow. My son is visiting from West Virginia and we are having a family gathering for dinner tomorrow night. Tonight was prep night.

Wednesday night I hope to have a little time with him and his girlfriend to show them the sewing machine I found for them on Craig's list. It was an excellent buy and I think it will be a great machine for them. (I almost hate to give it away, it is so nice.) I also found a basic "how to begin sewing" book for them. Neither one of them have ever used a machine so it will be an adventure. I will try to take some photos of them and the machine for posting later.

Self Drafted Skirt

Finally I am getting the photo of my skirt up here. I wore it to class yesterday and everyone liked it.

Photo by Clifford P.

I put together my skirt that I draped the pattern for and when I tried it on, I realized it was too big. So I needed to figure out what went wrong since SueEllen is supposed to be the same size as me. When I went back to the drawing board, I discovered that I had put the waistline tape too low. The clue was that the skirt fit if I wanted to wear it as a hip hugger skirt. That is not what I wanted to do. I moved the waistline tape up to where it should be and took the skirt apart and made the necessary alterations. I got up this morning and finished putting it back together and it fits. I have one little thing left to do and it will be completely done. I am planning to wear it to Form Draping class tomorrow morning.Yeah!! After I finish it, I will take a photo and post it on here.

I made my jeans muslin for Jeans class with Jennifer Stern. They will need adjustments, they gap at the back waist, sag some under my rear end, puff out on the sides and the knees are a little snug. I am posting a couple photos.  I also felted a wool sweater yesterday to make a pair of mittens for myself. I made the mittens from a pattern I found on Burda Style. They turned out nice.



















I'm surprised I was able to sew this evening. My skin is very dry and four of my fingers are cracked at the corners of my nails. It is very painful. So painful that I am trying my husband's unique cure that he swears by. It is certainly unorthodox, as you can see from the photo.....

I'm hoping the wool mittens will help my hands so I don't have to do this again. :)

Our construction project here at home took the lead tonight, but I managed to get a little bit of sewing in. I put the invisible zipper in my skirt and got the facing ready to sew on. I didn't manage to get a photo taken, there were just too many things happening here at our house. During one part of our construction we had to move our bedroom downstairs to the basement and tonight we moved back upstairs. Our room is not totally finished, but it feels good to be back on the main floor.

I doubt I will get any sewing done tomorrow evening, since my wonderful husband is taking me out to dinner for my birthday. We have had some snowy weather this evening, but I think it will be fine for going out tomorrow evening. I'm looking forward to the evening.

Too busy

I really wanted to sew tonight, but I was busy with other things. So as to not be too disappointed in myself and my evening, I managed to sew up two seams on a skirt that I am drafting. I tried it on Sue Ellen (my body double) and I will have to take the back seam in. The front fits fine and the side seams line up with the sides of Sue Ellen. I think I must have cut something incorrectly or else my muslin is wrong. Hopefully tomorrow I can figure that out. I will also try to post a picture of what I have done so far. I really want to have it finished before Friday, so I can wear it to Form Draping class!

Classes with Jennifer Stern

Today we had our first Jeans class with Jennifer Stern from J Stern Designs and it was great. Jennifer is a wonderful teacher and lots of fun. We tried on muslins today to figure out which size to make in the jeans pattern. Then we traced our patterns, made alterations as necessary (Jennifer did the fittings for all of us) and then cut out our own muslins. It is two weeks before the next class, so we will sew our muslins before then and take them into class for a fitting and continue working on them in class. I am really looking forward to our next class.

Welcome to my blog. My name is Sueann Walter and I am the wife to a wonderful husband (everyone should have one like mine) and a mother to two grown children. This blog is about sewing (mostly.) I grew up around sewing and other needle arts. My mother made many of the clothes that my two older sisters and I wore when we lived at home. I remember fondly the prom dresses that she made for me and they were among the prettiest dresses at the event. After we all left home, my mother took up crocheting and quilting. My grandmother (my mother's mother) crocheted and made quilts. I think my grandmother must have made several hundred quilts in her lifetime along with many, many afghans and doilies. I still have some of the quilts my mother and grandmother made. I also have one quilt that was made by my great grandmother. Alas I have never made a quilt and I have only made one afghan in my life and it took me years to complete - I decided it is not a good activity for me.

I learned to sew in high school and excelled at it. I sewed regularly for several years after school and then just on and off while raising my children. Then about 4 years ago I discovered a certification program through the University of Rhode Island called the Master Seamstress program. It was just what I wanted to bring me back up to speed and get me back into apparel sewing. I took the year long course and have taken many additional courses after that. Now all I need is more time to sew! I'm working on that though.

I am currently taking a course called Draping and the really cool thing about it is that you make a duplicate of yourself for a body form. The first class you have an assigned time and you go and get wrapped in plaster cast from neck to the top of your legs. The instructor and an assistant are wrapping you and it takes about 20-25 minutes. Once they finish, they cut the cast down the front and back and slip you out of it. The next step is to plaster it back together using the marking they made to match it up straight. We then took the cast home to dry. Before returning to class, we plastered up the neck and arm holes, leaving the bottom open. We coat the entire inside of the cast with a good layer of Vaseline. Next we go back to the second class with our body cast, dressed in old clothes and pour a polyurethane two part foam into the cavity and watch as it bubbles up and fills the cast. We take our foam filled cast home with instructions on the finishing prep for her. (The gritty, dirty work of getting the cast loose from the foam!) It was a thrilling thing to see her come to life (so to speak.) Sometimes the foam gets an air bubble and you have a hole that needs to be filled in. I had holes in the tops of both of my breasts. My darling husband fixed her up and has now decided he is somewhat of a sculptor (which I have to agree with since he did such a lovely job.) After getting her cleaned up, you hook her to her stand and cover her with a knit fabric and put twill tape on all of the important measurement lines.  Here she is:

I'm just starting out and I hope to have this up and running very soon. Check back again.