Sewing Projects

For my birthday, I posted that my lovely husband got me a sewing machine! I do did not know how to sew when this machine was acquired. Luckily, there were great instructions with my machine that taught me how to thread the machine and prep the bobbin. Shortly after my birthday, Mitchell's parents came to visit and Mitchell's mom taught me some basics about using a pattern. So I went to JoAnn's and bought a "Sewing for Dummies" pattern for purses and set out to make my sister one. It went pretty well...

After that I decided I would attempt to make myself a purse. There are things I do wrong with each project but with each project I also learn, so I guess that makes this whole process beneficial.

I love the lining fabric but if you notice, all the birds are upside down :-/

Ok, after making two of the purses and not really caring for the other two options in the pattern, I decided I was ready to graduate onto something else. While looking through the McCall's catalog, I saw a pattern for making eReader cases. My sister has a Kindle Fire so I thought she needed a cute cover for that. Making this went really well until I had to attach the front and back together and then it got a little wonky. But she was able to fit her Kindle in it and I promised to try again soon.

If you can't tell, I don't get normal pictures from Liddy :)

Now that I have made 3 things out of patterns, I thought I was ready to move on to a project from Pinterest that did not have a pattern... a maxi skirt. Back at JoAnn's I found really cute kelly green knit (jersey) fabric. I have never sewn on a knit fabric before and was about to pull my hair out trying to get a flat seam until I found this blog and switched to a walking foot and twin needle. Sweet! After that, it was pretty easy except for the step that you attach the skirt to the elastic. That was hard and I didn't do a great job with that. But all in all, a cute skirt was made.

Sewing with some of the ladies!

And most recently, the project I am most proud of. In my last post, I mentioned that we bought some outdoor furniture and a seat cushion that was 40% off. Well if you looked closely you noticed that the cushion was about three inches too deep and hung out over the edge of the loveseat. Mitchell asked me to fix that problem or return the cushion... ok, point made. So I pulled the cushion inside, took out the stuffing and flipped the cover inside out. After almost attempting this on the wrong side of the cover, I got smart and figured out the easiest way to fix the problem. I ripped seams, cut off fabric, cut three inches off the inside pads, pinned it, sewed it, restuffed it and wa-la! Problem solved. Check out the before and after:

See the cushion hanging over the edge?

Now it does not!

I know none of this stuff is amazing but I enjoy learning on simple, unimportant projects so that my skillz will be beneficial one day. I want to be decent at sewing because I figure it's just a useful skill to have with many applications when raising a family/decorating a house. McCall's had their patterns on sale at Hobby Lobby one week for only 99 cents! I stocked up! You can look forward to seeing these items in the future. ;)

Some fancy bedding

Custom window treatments

Some cool dude trying to rock a diaper bag.
People are having babies left and right out here so
I figure it could be fun to make one for them.

And this pattern I am most excited about. I wanted to make Mitchell and I some comfy pajama pants for the winter so in my search I found this pattern and thought those pants on the left looked just right. And then I noticed what the people on the right are wearing... adult onesies! OMG, the potential for awesomeness of us having matching onesies, hahaha! Stay tuned...