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Month: September 2015

Bloopers: Ironing Lace

Posted in Peeking Behind the Seam

As hard as I try, there are going to be bloopers when creating. When painting, I can often just repaint and move on. When sewing, I look for my seam ripper and start taking it apart to redo.  Once in a while, there is nothing that can be done to save it ….. groan.

A too hot iron wrecks havoc on lace

I had just finished sewing this beautiful antique lace and champagne colored satin lingerie bag. I was giving it the final pressing before photographing it for my shop. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn the iron temperature down …..

melted-lace-1191The hot iron literally melted the lace on to the iron. It is not repairable on this bag.

These bloopers happen to all of us. It’s part of the process and some lessons are learned the hard way. Now I am very careful when pressing lace. – always use a cool iron when pressing lace!!  🙂

Sneak Peek: New Stethoscope Bags Coming This Week

Posted in Sewing: Finished Bags & Pouches

If you are looking for new stethoscope bags – here’s a sneak peek of what will be listed this week:

Stethoscope bags getting a trim before sewing
Stethoscope bags getting a trim before sewing

These bags are large enough to fit your stethoscope – 10.5 x 6.5 x 2 inches. They are vinyl lined for easy clean up. Extra padding helps protect your stethoscope and anything else placed in the bagstethoscope-bags--blue-and-greenTwo new ones – green and light blue will be listed by this afternoon. stethoscope-bags-

These two pretty bags will be listed tomorrow. A teal blue bag will be listed the following day.  These bags can be used as cosmetic bags for your favorite health professional as well.

How Textiles Repeatedly Revolutionized Technology.

Posted in Sewing: Finished Bags & Pouches

Virginia Postrel wrote a truly fascinating history of textiles and their influence on on technology and our language.

“…Textiles are technology, more ancient than bronze and as contemporary as nanowires. We hairless apes co-evolved with our apparel. But, to reverse Arthur C Clarke’s adage, any sufficiently familiar technology is indistinguishable from nature. It seems intuitive, obvious – so woven into the fabric of our lives that we take it for granted.

fabric

We drag out heirloom metaphors – ‘on tenterhooks’, ‘tow-headed’, ‘frazzled’ – with no idea that we’re talking about fabric and fibres. We repeat threadbare clichés: ‘whole cloth’, ‘hanging by a thread’, ‘dyed in the wool’. We catch airline shuttles, weave through traffic, follow comment threads. We talk of lifespans and spin‑offs and never wonder why drawing out fibres and twirling them into thread looms so large in our language.

twisted-

 

The story of technology is in fact the story of textiles. From the most ancient times to the present, so too is the story of economic development and global trade. The origins of chemistry lie in the colouring and finishing of cloth. The textile business funded the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; it left us double-entry bookkeeping and letters of credit, Michelangelo’s David and the Taj Mahal. As much as spices or gold, the quest for fabrics and dyestuffs drew sailors across strange seas. In ways both subtle and obvious, textiles made our world.

Photo credits: http://www.topnews.in/files/Textile-stocks.jpg
Photo credits: http://www.topnews.in/files/Textile-stocks.jpg

Most conspicuously, the Industrial Revolution started with the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the thread-producing mills in northern England that installed them. Before railroads or automobiles or steel mills, fortunes were made in textile technology. The new mills altered where people lived and how they worked. And the inexpensive fabrics they produced changed the way ordinary people looked.  ….”

Read the rest of Virginia Postrel’s fascinating article here :

http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-technology/

 

 

Fall iPhone 6 Plus Clutches

Posted in Sewing: Finished Bags & Pouches

I will be listing new iPhone 6 Plus clutches this afternoon and tomorrow.

Autumn iPhone 6 plus Clutches
Autumn iPhone 6 plus Clutches

These clutches are perfect for the larger smartphones and will fit the iPhone 6 Plus. They have a removable wristlet strap. Each is fully lined and has interior pockets, perfect for id and credit cards. There is a light padding to give a little cushioning to your items, and a zipper closure to keep everything safely inside.

Sitting next to my sewing machine, ready to be sewn, are the Fall iPhone 6 sized wristlets. I will be listing those shortly as well, Stay tuned!