Another Embroidery Design Link

Here is another great design link for machine embroidery designs .Gosia Designs. Besides having a large variety of design styles, they frequently have several FREE embroidery designs for you to download. You can download around 1000 different designs from their site for $25 which is obviously a great bargain. They also have dollar packs for downloading. Their designs come come in most home embroidery machine formats also. Stop in and visit and try out one of their designs.

The Accidental Quilter

Just had a visit from another blogger called The Accidental Quilter. Drop in and visit and find out how to make blocks that just won't come together correctly behave. I'm sure you will enjoy her posts!

I'm waiting for the month of July to be over with and hopefully with it all the sickness, accidents, and nasty hot weather that seem to be holding me up from getting back into my sewing room. I have lots of ideas, but hard to accomplish when sweat is dripping off your nose!

Sewing Along

What a week last week was! First the washing machine up and died and in the process flooded the house and we got to meet the nice guys from Bonded Services who cheerfully sucked up gallons on water after the washer fiasco. Then the computer broke down and we ended up having to call the Geek Squad. "Special Agent" Adam came and figured out what was wrong with the computer (new last November) and now we are back on line. Due to all the problems we had last week, we also got to see some real live, wonderful customer service from both of these services.

I did manage in all the chaos to sneak back into my sewing room for several sessions with my new Janome 6500 and made a new summer top. This machine is a dream to sew on. One of the huge pluses for me is the extension table that comes standard with the machine for doing quilting. I have it in place all the time and it has been great to be able to rest my arms and wrists on while feeding fabric. My arthritis is so bad, I need to prop my arms all the time to prevent pain, so with the extension table I can sew for longer periods of time. I took the time to really follow the instructions, such as measuring accurately the 3/8" hem instead of eyeballing it. Sounds crazy I'm sure, but between the excellent stitching of the machine and my being more careful, this top turned out better and more comfortable than the one just like it I made three weeks ago! There's something to be said for following the rules. Over the years I got so used to whipping through projects just to get them done, that I had been forgetting that the process to getting to the end, can and should be enjoyable.

Another great feature on this machine is the automatic thread snipper. At the end of a seam, just press the button and the threads are clipped and you are ready to go on to your next seam. No need to find the ends of the thread and get them in position before sewing. I am planning on having a lot of fun sewing on this machine.

At a yard sale the other day, we found an old 1950's Singer 306 sewing machine in its own sewing table. As we explored the drawers of the cabinet, we found that it contained 'fashion disks' to make different decorative stitches. Up to this point, I had always thought that decorative stitches hadn't come out until the 60's or 70's. Well, we bought this baby and brought it home (I think my hubby wanted it more than me). Once we got it home, I had a chance to go through the accessories better. It has a tremendous amount of pressor feet, plus the original fashion disks that came with the machine and the prior owner had bought a lot more of them. It also has the original instruction booklet. I sat down and read through the instruction manual and it was a real learning experience. I think as this was a very new style of machine, they took a lot of time in writing the manual so that women would understand what each pressor foot was for and when to use the different stitches. I have a lot of utility stitches on my new 6500 but not a lot of knowledge for what they are all for. I got a better understanding of using my speciality pressor feet and utility stitches for using my sewing machine built in 2005 from reading a manual written in 1955! We are planning on getting the old machine cleaned and in working order and then I would like to find some vintage fabric, with a vintage pattern and sew it up on my vintage machine. What fun!

Christmas in July at Embroidery Library

So many designs, so little time to sew! Embroidery Library has just come out with a huge batch of Christmas designs including patchwork reindeer to make a Christmas quilt. Each of Santa's reindeer are represented in different blocks, plus additional designs are available to have a complete co-ordinating quilt or other project. In the hoop Christmas stocking designs are now out with all sorts of styles of stockings that can be made in your hoop and then hung on the tree with small gifts or gift cards. Another large selection of outline quilting designs are also now available. Now ready for download are their two FREE July designs.

Embroidery Library has also changed their main URL to http://www.emblibrary.com/EL/Default.aspx so if you have Embroidery Library bookmarked, you will need to change it.

Prepare to spend some time at the site when you go as there are so many new embroidery designs to look at, and all at great low pricing!

New Sewing Machine

Well, I took my sick, old sewing machine to the fix-it man yesterday. While there I just had to sit down and play with the Janome Professional 6500. Turns out it was on sale! Certainly was a sign for me that I needed to buy now. After all my, husbands jeans still needed hemmed up. Five minutes later I was walking out of Super Stitch with the last 6500 that he had.

When I got home I casually told my hubby to bring the sewing machine back in the house. He wanted to know if the old one had been pronounced DOA. Nope I said with a twinkle in my eye. He jumped right up and brought my new baby in the house. What a great husband I've got. He helped me get it out of the box and set up on the kitchen table. Then he sat and discussed the fine points of what makes this a great machine. And just to show what it could do, I followed the threading diagram, changed the needle to a jeans needle, figured out what stitch I wanted to use and went to work on those cut-off jeans. This machine went through that heavy denim like butter. Even with going over doubled seams, by slowing down and carefully sewing coaxing the seam under the foot, it sewed through eight layers of HEAVY denim with no problem.

Depending on the stitch, this machine can sew 1000 stitches per minute. I spent a lot of time playing with the machine yesterday and seeing all the decorative stitches it can do. It wasn't until I went to bed that I realized the one thing I hadn't checked out was the straight stitch going at 1000 stitches per minute! Guess that means I get to do it today.

I'm going to try to find the time in the near future to do reviews on both my new 6500 and my Janome 300E embroidery machine. These two machines do just about everything you could ask a machine to do except cut out the fabric or fit the pattern to your body!