My latest sewing project - Savannah's Apron

I'm about to have a new daughter and imagine my pleasure when she asked for an apron for her birthday. I wanted to make her more and matching potholders, but my arthritis and other sewing projects got in the way. But her she is modeling it for me so I can see how it fits. Pattern from an out of print McCall's pattern but we have plenty of apron patterns in our store. Looking so forward to her marrying my son!

I Scream for Ice Cream Embroidery Designs

I just love Embroidery Library! They are the most generous company with giving freebie designs that show how great their designs are. I have quite a collection of designs from them. This weekend, they are offering Free ice cream designs here. If you count all the different sizes of the designs, you will be able to pick up 6 new designs. Even though my embroidery machine can't do the extra large designs, when they are free I always pick them up as you never know when you might get to upgrade your machine to one that can take the big designs. These ice cream designs are perfect for hot summer days which we are having here.

I'm having such a nice day and even got to go to my first yard sales of the summer and picked up some sewing things. My dream yard sale is one that is all sewing stuff that no one wanted including a top of the line machine, stacks of sewing books and magazines, fabric, embroidery floss, etc. and they let me have it all for $50. I told you it was a dream. I found some donated needlecraft magazines at our local library this week for a quarter a piece. So much fun to look at and think up new projects for when the current ones are finished. I am making progress on the wedding quilt and finished the ring bearer pillow.

Sewing Ideas and Information

I happened to be at our library at the right time the other day and was able to pick up some sewing magazines for 25 cents a piece. One of the magazines was through the Eye of the Needle a project magazine published by Bernina. I had seen this magazine before and was happy to get it and then looked up Bernina's on line site www.berninausa.com.  I was happy to see that they are now publishing the magazine on line and I was able to download in PDF file the first six issues of the on line magazine and was also able to sign up to receive the magazine via my email.

On the site I also found 'stitch recipes'. Ways of combining decorative stitches to make a larger and more complex design. Since the sewing machine that I got last year, a Janome Horizon 7700, came with a Border foot that helps you combine designs, I'm always on the look out for ways to use the foot. Even if you don't have all the decorative stitches that Bernina used, you might possibly be able to find a substitute stitch on your sewing machine. I was able to download both stitch recipes and sewing projects all in PDF format and can read and study them at my convenience.

Don't be afraid to visit other sewing machine websites to see what information they might have that you can use! I really enjoyed my visit in Bernina land as I learned a few things and I also was able to temporarily forget some of the pain I'm in today.

Moonwishes Sewing Crafts Store Update

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen from Moonwishes Sewing and Crafts. I just wanted to update you what is happening at our store. This past month we had a major computer failure which meant a new computer purchase and since the driver had disappeared a new scanner purchase as well, even though the old scanner was working perfectly well. This has meant that we got way behind on listing new patterns. We are all back up and running as of last night and one of my major goals is to get a bunch of maternity patterns listed from a variety of all decades. For those of you that sew you may not realize that maternity patterns are rarely being published now and so are extremely hard to find. Well, you will find a good selection at our store both now and even more in a few days at this link : Maternity Patterns.

For those of you that have top of the line computer embroidery/sewing machines I wanted to bring something to your attention that I learned in the midst of our computer meltdown. Some of our machines can only have info uploaded to our embroidery machines via a flash card in combination with a card that goes into the machine like a memory card such as the Janome 300E. Well my last computer came with a slot that held the flash card so I had no trouble downloading from my computer all the thousands of designs that I had. This new computer didn't come with that slot, only USB ports. Let me tell you I was in a bit of a panic mode! My husband had asked about getting a port for the new computer that could do this and was told it wasn't available. Yesterday while getting the new scanner I looked through the electronics department I found a gadget that takes up to 33 different flash cards and lets you connect to your computer with the USB port but still gives you the ability to use your flash cards in your embroidery machine. It's brand name is Targus and cost $13 at Wal-mart. They had another one by a different manufacturer that takes up to 70+ cards and cost $17. These were hanging in the photography department. I'm not recommending either but wanted to let you know that these are available and if you think you may need one of these now or in the future it might be good to pick up. I would have hated to have lost virtually the use of my 300E just because I couldn't transfer designs as I certainly can't afford a new machine.