Postcards from Kyoto - Misuyabari and Hakotou, for lovers of sewing and handcrafts

Used with permission of Just Hungry

Two blogs I read all the time are Just Bento (about that very subject) and her sister blog Just Hungry (about Japanese food and culture generally.)  Both are written by Maki, Japanese woman with a finely tuned palate and a deep love of food and culture. If [...]

A Great Beauty Tool

I have to say my hair is something I really can’t complain about, it’s always been easy to care for and looks pretty good 90% of time. Still, I was unhappy with every blow-dryer I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned at lot of them; they just seem to have a limited life span [...]

Gravity Feed Gymnastics

I love my gravity feed iron but I had to figure out a way to keep the cord and tubing out of the way when I use it.   The problem is the tubing goes up to the water jug suspended from the ceiling and the cord goes down to the wall outlet.   My Silver Star came [...]

M’am, Step Away From the Serger and No One Will Get Hurt

What is it about the zeitgeist of the 70′s ?  Was the entire decade was due to the failure of radical politics combined with cheap recreational drugs?  If I hadn’t lived through it to prove it really happened  I could totally see how a person could be come a 1970′s denier.  Some of you have seen this in email, but  – well – it’s [...]

A Great Sewing Tool – Yardage Calc for iPhone/iTouch

Click for a Closer View

Click for a Closer View

A few months ago I was on Pattern Review and  noted on an iPhone/iTouch thread that  the available sewing related apps applied only to quilting.  I was surprised that someone hadn’t written an app that recalculates yardages for garment patterns.  Well, this morning I got [...]

Okay Back to Sewing

This little PC desk came from IKEA and it was easy to put together; the size is perfect as a base for my Touch n’ Sew buttonhole station.  The white bins are IKEA as well; I have eight of them in various sizes.  One interesting thing about their stuff is that its all designed to fit together, the space on the [...]

Singer Professional Buttonholer Or How I Found Religion

regular, keyhole and bound buttonhole

For a few weeks now there has been a discussion on Pattern Review about  Greist and Singer buttonhole attachments, and I’ve had a Singer for a long time.  I never used it because it never dawned on me to see if it fits a vintage Singer Touch n’ Sew 648 [...]

Pantone Shopping Guide: Check to make sure you have all the pages

A few weeks go I was on Gorgeous Fabrics comparing fabric and looking up color numbers in my Pantone Shopping Color Guide fanbook, and much to my surprise it turns out a page is missing.  The color and its page number was listed in the index; however I had page 127 and 129 but no 128.  [...]

McCall’s 5525 – Solved Technical Difficulties of a Different Sort

Left: Bernina foot, 20mm wide. Right: Willcox & Gibbs foot, 8mm wide

When Ann gave me this Willcox & Gibbs industrial it came with some good stuff; there were several needles (industrial machine needles are different from home machine needles) a spare belt (no servos here its belt driven), a few rather scary looking watch-those-fingers feet (see right, [...]

True Colors: Don’t Trust That Monitor

Last week I bought a Pantone Color Guide and it’s amazing how useful it is. Savvy fabric websites like Emma One Sock and Gorgeous Fabrics already use Pantone color numbers in their fabric descriptions, and I hope this becomes a standard for all fabric and sewing trim websites (are you listening, M&J Trim and [...]