Whew - It's finished!

Let me take you on a tour of the finished room!

 

Here's where I store all of my bolts of fabric.

 

I'll use the drafting table when I start working on the new quilt that is running around in my head. The black table is my die cutting station. The contraption on the wall between the quilt and the art shelf is my AC/heating unit.

 

Moving on down the wall, you can see more fabric on these shelving units. The "full" unit is all of my personal stuff. Believe it or not, I donated about a third of my personal fabrics when I was cleaning out the original sewing room!

 

Here's a picture that shows my awesome cutting table! 





 

Moving to the other side of the room, we have my trunk show on display. I ordered two stadium lockers and my contractor attached them to the wall and added the extra rods in between the two units.

 

The only request that Allen had for the new room was that he wanted a sitting area so that he can come out here and read. Right now we are using the rocking chairs that came from our grandparents. Our cat, Creamsicle, LOVES this rug!

 

 

You can see where I put the toybox that my sister and I recovered last summer. I'm using it to store my personal patterns. Our other cat, Ella, likes to sleep up on top of it with the bunny rabbit.

Almost done!

We are down to the last little details. We've had a few hiccups along the way - the wrong sized door and the air conditioner had to be swapped out, but we are almost finished. The walls have been painted a very happy shade of blue.

We need a few sunny days to finish up the outside painting. However, they have been able to work under the covered patio when it is raining. I decided to have the covered patio's ceiling painted a bright blue to test out the theory that it keeps the birds and bugs away. Hopefully, it will work!

The flooring is going in today. But before it's all put down, I'm following a friend's advice. I've written my favorite scripture verse on the concrete.

As I was sitting here typing this, my IKEA furniture order arrived! I will be busily putting all of the furniture together for the new sewing room so that we can start moving in by the end of next week!

What a difference a few weeks make!

It's been 2 weeks since I last showed you the progress on my new sewing room - that's because the results of that first week weren't very obvious. That's not the case now! They are pretty much finished outside with the construction work. It only needs paint, electrical plugs, light fixtures and gutters.

 

The sheet rock was delivered Friday afternoon and the guys started installing it after lunch today. Since my husband is home today taking some of his Christmas leave, I was able to run an errand after lunch. I was gone for about an hour and this is how much they had done on the ceiling by the time I got back!

 

 

 

I don't know if you can tell from my pictures that my new sewing room is BIG! It has worked out to be slightly over 500 sq. ft. I will have enough room to accommodate 4 to 6 students for a class! If you are interested in a specific class, just let me know.

 

 

When we decided to go ahead with the addition, my husband Allen asked if there could be a spot for him to sit and enjoy the room also. Well, of course, I agreed to this! The sitting area will be in front of the double window that looks into our kitchen.

The "sticks" are up!

This is what my sister-in-law called it when the walls went up on her house! I've loved this expression every since!!

The walls and rafters are up and in place.  The roof decking is on and the roofers started work this past Saturday. They should finish the roof today.

 

A long-awaited present!

Once again, I must apologize for my tardiness in keeping up my blog. But I think most of you will understand once you know what has been going on at my house. My husband and I have always loved our home and the area that we live in. The biggest complaint that I've had is that I wish I had more storage and a larger sewing room. Well - we are in the process of fixing that! Earlier this month, we started the construction of my new sewing room!

 

To prepare for this addition, I've had to dig up and/or transplant all of my flowers and plants around the back side of our house. Since our initial starting date was the last two weeks of September, I chose to do this during the "coolest" days I could find in July & August.

 

I've spent many hours watching and learning from the men working on our new room. I did warn them up front that I'm curious and ask lots of questions! We have a great contractor and crew foreman because they make sure that I understand the answers to my questions. Since we have narrow side yards on both sides of our house, I wondered how they were going to get the concrete to the back yard. The answer? A "Georgia Buggy"!

 

More pictures and details to come soon!

My husband's toy box!

Several years ago when my in-laws were down-sizing, my mother-in-law JoAnn gave me the toybox that my husband used as a child.  It wasn't anything to look at, but I'm a sucker for sentimental value! It was his and that made it special! It was covered in a white plastic that reminded me of the plastic diaper covers from when I was a baby.  It also had fake plastic/rubber piping around the rim of the lid.  To say the least, it was nothing to look at, but it had great bones.

For along time, it was stored in our attic, but for the past several years it has been used for storage in my very cramped sewing room.  I have always wanted to recover it, but it just hasn't been high up on my list of things to do. However, I found the fabric that I wanted to recover it in and I have been itching to get it done. So this week, my partner-in-crime (my sister Mary Jo) and I got it done! It still has a home in my sewing room since it stores my personal sewing patterns and books.  It is just so much prettier to look at now!

Patriotic Kitty!

As a lot of you know, I run my business from my home.  With as much fabric and merchandise as I have, I have had to be VERY creative at finding storage locations for it all - while still retaining the look of a home! I am in the process of sorting, clearing out, and making more space and I ran across an "unfinished object" (UFO).  I don't have many UFOs and I decided it was time to finish this one.

Several years ago, I had created a patriotic quilt top using a variation of the Yellow Brick Road pattern; I even had it quilted! But back when I made this, I had NOT WISED UP and learned to pay my quilters to put the binding on for me! All this UFO lacks is its binding!  This morning, I laid it out in the middle of my great room floor to measure for binding. By the time I went to my sewing room to get my tape measure and got back to the great room, this is what I found!  Any time I put something in the middle of the floor to look at it, Ella thinks that it is hers and gets in the middle of it!

Have a happy and safe 4th of July!

Suzanne

Sale!

I had a question from a customer this week that got me to thinking!  She asked me why I never "ran a sale" even though she has purchased sale items from me at the Martha Pullen School.  It's because behind-the-scenes software changes are required for this to happen.  I can change a price on an item, but it will not be flagged as "on sale".

So here's what I've done.  For a limited time, I have changed the price on several of my appliques from $12 to $6.  I hope you enjoy the treat! Happy Shopping!

Looking Forward to Sunny Days!

I can't wait for Spring to arrive so that we can have more sun-filled days! I am definitely a "solar-powered person"! Last week during our 4+ days of gray sky and rain, I brought the sunshine and Springtime inside by working on this fun little dress for a class I'm teaching at Thimbles in Hoover, AL. I started with the Jacqueline pattern by The Children's Corner; I modified it to have a 3" wide band at the bottom of the skirt. I chose to use a combination of Lilac and Apple Green Pique from Fabric Finders and made my piping from Fabric Finder's Black and White Striped Pique.  I attached a Black and White checked ribbon directly above the hemband seam.  I then appliqued a set of my Bright Lime Green Gingham Delilah the Daisy flowers on the front of the dress.  To continue with the Black and White accents, I stacked Black buttons on top of White buttons and used them on the center of the yoke and down the dress back.

Upcoming Classes at Martha Pullen School of Art Fashion

During the February 2012 Martha Pullen School, I will be teaching two pre-day classes.  On Monday, I will be teaching "Fitzgerald the Food-Fighter" bib class.  As with all of my applique classes, I teach the applique techniques in the first part of the class and then we work on a "real" project.  In the techniques portion of the class, I have a practice kit that the students will work with to help them learn how to turn corners and go around curves. During the afternoon session, the students will applique "Fitzgerald the Puppy" to the bib.  They should be ready to attach the bias binding by the end of class.  If you've ever been to a Martha Pullen School, you know that in most classes you leave with an unfinished object.  In my classes, my goal is for you to finish or be almost finished when you leave!

My second class is a two-day class in which we will be making this "Red-Hot Roosters" outfit.  I am very excited because this is the first time that I have gotten to teach garment construction as part of my project!  On Tuesday morning, I will once again teach my appplique techniques to the students.  If I have any repeating students from previous classes, it allows them to have a refresher course!

Tuesday afternoon, the students will cut out their pants and applique "Bernard the Rooster" to the left pants leg.  On Wednesday, we will start out the morning altering the Sew Beautiful Wrap Dress pattern to eliminate the button closure and add the drawstring waistband.  By the end of Wednesday's class, the students should be complete with both the pants and top!

  

Ollie the Ornament Dress - Part 2

In my last blog, I covered how I did the front of my Ollie the Ornament dress.  Today, I’m going to show you how I did the back of the dress.  Remember, I chose a pattern that buttoned down the back.

• On a large piece of paper, draw a left back and a right back using the original pattern piece.  I used my ruler to draw the straight edges and short dashed lines to draw the curves.
• Draw the seam allowances (long, black dashed lines) and the center back (solid, blue lines) lines on both pattern pieces.

I wanted the curve on the front of the dress to be the same curve I used on the back of the dress.  The back curve goes in the opposite direction so that it is a mirror image on the backside and matches at the right side seam.

• On each of the back pattern pieces, match the front pattern piece’s center front line to the center back line and transfer the curve to each of the halves.  This is the dashed red line shown in the pictures.

At this point, I always debate with myself which side are the buttonholes supposed to be on?  I remember hearing “Girls are right, boys are wrong”, but I’ve seen it both ways! I put my buttonholes on the right half of the back jumper. 

• To make them easier to work with, cut the paper in half so that each pattern piece is on a separate sheet of paper. 
• Overlap the two back pattern pieces with the right pattern piece on top of the left pattern piece.  Match up the center back lines, bottom, and neck edges.  Temporarily tape the two halves together.
• When you do this, you will notice that the two curves do NOT match at the center back.  Tweak the overlapping curve on the right pattern piece so that it will match the left side’s curve.  This is the dashed green line shown in the pictures.

I used this same technique for the right side seam.  As you can see in the picture, it took me three tries before I got a curve that I liked.  The upper red curve would have worked, but I wanted to make it easier to add piping between the layers.  The blue curve is the one that I will use.

• Once satisfied with all of the curved lines, cut the upper half of each of the pattern pieces away from the bottom half. To make sure that I laid out/cut out the pattern correctly, I labeled both the upper and lower halves of both of the pattern pieces to indicate the right side of the fabric.
• Along the curved edge of all four pattern pieces, I made a note to add the seam allowance when cutting out the fabric. Please, don't forget to do this - otherwise, your halves won't fit together properly.

Remember that you can click on each picture to see a larger image!  I hope that you have found this helpful.  If you have any questions, please send me an email!

Ollie the Ornament Dress

Whenever I make new sample garments, I always try to do something new and/or different.  I don't like doing the same ol' thing!  Because of this, I usually have requests for me to explain what I did. That's the purpose of today's blog.  For the Ollie dress, I started with a basic jumper pattern.  I chose one that buttoned down the back (e.g., Children's Corner Charlotte, Bonnie Blue Designs' Madison); however, you could use one that buttons on the shoulder (e.g., Children's Corner Lucy, Bonnie Blue Designs' Holly & Hunter).  Here's how I modified the pattern.

• On a large piece of paper, draw a center front line.
• Tape the original pattern's center front line to this line on the paper.
• Draw one half of the pattern onto the large piece of paper.  I use my ruler to draw the straight edges and short dashed lines to draw the curves.

• When finished drawing the first half of the pattern, flip the original pattern to the other side of the line.  Repeat the process of drawing the other side of the pattern.
• Remove the original pattern when finished.  Draw the seam allowances.

• To shape the curves, I used starch cans because they were handy. They happened to be 3" circles.  Place the cans in the desired pattern. 

• Draw around the edge of the cans to form the basic curve pattern.

• Connect the curves either by drawing freehand or using a straight edge.

• Once satisfied with the curved line, cut the upper half of the pattern away from the bottom half.  To make sure that I laid out/cut out the pattern correctly, I labeled both the upper and lower halves of the pattern to indicate the right side of the fabric.
• Along the curved edge of both pattern halves, I made a note to add the seam allowance when cutting out the fabric.  Please, don't forget to do this - otherwise, your halves won't fit together properly.

You can have the curves on the front of the jumper only, or have them on the back side too, like I did. I will cover how I did the back of the jumper in the next blog.

I know that it isn't alway easy to see lines drawn on white paper in these pictures, but you can click on each picture to see a larger image.

Announcing the Arrival of ...

Martha Pullen School of Art Fashion is over, and I am back in full swing designing and producing new Ready-Set-Appliqués.  I have five new appliqués that I want to introduce to you.  Peter the Peapod is perfect for a newborn “Welcome to Our World” gift.  Delilah the Daisy is a seven petal white flower with your choice of a pink, green, blue, or orange gingham center.  You could use Delilah as an embellishment somewhere on your outfit or buy several and use them along the hemline of your garment.

Humphrey the Bulldog is available in maroon for those Mississippi State University fans or in red and black for those University of Georgia fans.  Humphrey would be a great addition to your game day attire to show your school spirit!

Rigsby the Robot is a whimsical appliqué with lots of buttons and beads.  He is available in green, purple, blue, or pink.  Finally, Betsy Bug the Baby Ladybug is out.  She is the smaller version of Ladye Lucinda.  Betsy comes in red with either teal, black, orange, or yellow.  As you can see, there are lots of new choices for you.  Happy appliquéing!!  

Bulldog Show 'n Tell

I have finally finished my sample garments for the bulldogs!  When I was picking out fabrics for my samples, I intended to put the Miss. State bulldog on Maroon twill, but it didn't have enough contrast.  I ended up putting it on black, but black doesn't always allow you to see all of the details in a picture.  So, I made two different jackets - one for Miss. State and one for Georgia.  Hopefully both school fans will approve of my color choices for their alma mater.  These are on my website along with all of the other new characters that I've added this month.  Take a look and let me know what you think!

 

Bulldogs are coming!

Many of you know that I am originally from Mississippi and went to Mississippi State.  Because of this, I have had many requests for me to add a bulldog to my collection - especially since I have had both Alabama's and Auburn's mascots in my collection for several years!  Well, I am pleased to annouce that "Humphrey the Bulldog" will be available in July!  I am in the process of making my sample garments as we speak.  When I have them finished, I will do a "show 'n tell".  Thanks for being so patient!

Tissue Cover Instructions

Those of you who have been in my classes know that I give out "goody bags" to all of my students.  Ususally these bags contain purse-sized tissue covers and tissues.  I thought that you might enjoy having the directions for the tissue covers. They really do make excellent gifts for your special friends. They are quick to make and so easy. So, here are the directions:

1. Cut a rectangle 5 ½” by 13 ½”.

2. With wrong sides together, pin the short edges together.

3. Stitch in a ¼” seam backstitching at both ends.

4. Press seam open. Turn the fabric sleeve with the seam to the inside and the right sides outward. Center the seam and press.

5. With the seam facing away from you, fold each side to the middle. Pin across the raw edges.

6. Stitch in a ¼” seam backstitching at both ends. Trim the loose threads and clip each corner.

7. Turn right sides out. Use a point turner to ensure sharp corners. Press flat.

  

8. Stuff with an individual tissue pack.