Every year I decide that I'm going to start Christmas earlier and earlier to meet the demands of my family, despite my views on the whole thing. Well this year I started two weeks ago. Ornaments are well underway on my embroidery machine, embroidered gift bags are being sewn together, and garlands and lace are tossed out on the floor. It’s a bit of a mess down here; I've been forced to keep most of the mess contained to my bedroom due to the bathroom being gutted. I probably have close to 100 meters of organza in a laundry basket for these ornaments, it squishes nice and you really wouldn’t' believe its 100 meters. Its enough to do 1000 big ornaments, I'm giving sets of 15 to friends, family and co-workers, and there’s enough left over afterwards to sell. Things will slow down this week as I figure out my agenda and how long certain things take to make, and I'm running out of WSS.
For Christmas, for the bulk of the gifts they're getting, 15 ornaments, a jar of home made vanilla (to be started in mid august), and some folding reusable shopping bags; most places here are charging for bags.
On top of this are the gifts for my immediate family and friends. My sister is getting her wolf quilt, my boyfriend is getting some dress shirts, and my best friend, hopefully is getting her NBC quilt. I'm not to sure on what to do for my parents yet.
I'm glad I'm starting now as I’ve also got two small crib quilts for my cousin’s baby and a bunch of receiving blankets for her. It gets rid of a bunch of flannel just hanging around from years ago that I bought just because they were cute.
I'm trying to sew/paint for 5-8 hours a day where permitted (work has some funny shifts), as it’s the only way to get stuff done, and with deadlines approaching, I have to get more motivated than I have been. I've brought home over 200 meters of bargain centre fabric from work in the past two weeks, most of it organza’s for my ornaments (organza is so useless to me during the rest of the year I never keep it around), a bunch of brushed twill for winter pants, tonnes of taffeta for bag linings, some cotton voiles for dresses, nice stripped shirting for boyfriend’s shirts, wool coatings, and a bunch of drapey materials for skirts. All of it just being tossed into the bargain centre because of inventory. I love it, great materials at an insane price.
I'm STILL working on my portfolio, I have about 6 weeks-8 weeks to get it finished, then physically drive it in to Calgary for review. Deadline is October 1st. My goal is to get a bunch of this Christmas stuff done this week, cleaned up enough or organized to be pulled back out at a later date, and then pull out all my paints once again. I can paint in my room while my embroidery machine is running; acrylics are less messy than pastels so it should all work out in the end.
Today I'm planning on finishing some quick skirts up from fabric I bought in the bargain centre this weekend. McCall’s patterns: 5431, 5056, 4783. I've made all of these patterns many times and they take about 1 to1.5 hours each. I'm also going to cut out McCall’s 6084, its a fast cardigan pattern, I might not get to it today, but Thursday for sure and Butterick4520, again its a fast pattern, but I’m opting for a satin type material so it will take about 2-2.5 hours. I'm also itching to cut out Simplicity 2774 in view E. I'm more confident with knits know and I think i can tackle this one. I won’t be able to touch this one until Friday morning however, but if it’s cut out I can just hit the machine first thing. I also cut out a vintage (early 70's) Simplicity knit dress. Next week my hours at work go back to normal and sewing up some very quick knit tops will be added to the list.
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Friday, November 27, 2009
Christmas Ornaments and other Mishaps
It’s been a while since I’ve updated, too long really, I have been far too busy getting sick this month to get much done. I have however begun work on a pile of Christmas ornaments that I need to make for the 19th of December and beyond. I worked out that I need about 60+ of these little ornaments which at a running time of 25 minutes each a few days of nonstop work. I try to set the embroidery machine up on weekends when my boyfriend is over playing video games, but lately that not been the case, I’ve spent my nights and weekends sleeping to fight off the flu. I do however have a decent pile started, but 50 or more to finish. I bought 4 large King cones of Robison-Anton rayon embroidery thread for this project in evergreen, gold, red and white, the king cones last longer and are more economical than the mini-kings.
Designs shown are from embroidery library as well, they’re the set of Symbol Snowflakes.
I also tried another embroidery design, this time on sweatshirt fleece. I’d like to put this one on some hoodies for my sister and I. We both love playing Dungeons and Dragons so this design speaks greatly to us. I think it’s a lot smarter and intelligent than some of the other d20 designs and slogans out there. Unfortunately the tension on my machine was to high when testing this out, but it’s a good thing I stitched the full design out or I would not have seen how much It needed adjusting, the larger “mistakes” are further in the design. It’s a good test; I love how it looks stitched out and how it will once the tension mistake has been corrected. This design is from Urban Threads.
The project idea was borrowed from Embroidery Library. Its two layers of organza and one layer of water soluble stabilizer with a design embroidered onto the organza. This was sort of the first time I did a large scale project with my embroidery machine in its new home, so it was quite exciting. My mother even came down to see it up and running permanently.
Designs shown are from embroidery library as well, they’re the set of Symbol Snowflakes.I also tried another embroidery design, this time on sweatshirt fleece. I’d like to put this one on some hoodies for my sister and I. We both love playing Dungeons and Dragons so this design speaks greatly to us. I think it’s a lot smarter and intelligent than some of the other d20 designs and slogans out there. Unfortunately the tension on my machine was to high when testing this out, but it’s a good thing I stitched the full design out or I would not have seen how much It needed adjusting, the larger “mistakes” are further in the design. It’s a good test; I love how it looks stitched out and how it will once the tension mistake has been corrected. This design is from Urban Threads.
The other project I have been working on is Burda 108-7-07, which are skinny jeans, in a dark navy blue. I actually discovered while trying them on that the denim is very slightly elastine, maybe 2% at the most, it’s slight, but they’re going to fit very well. There has been a few mishaps as these are my first pair of jeans but, I’m pleased with how they’re turning out even if has meant getting creative with my sewing skills. They’re about half done and I expect that I shall be finishing them up right away before I tackle my boyfriends western style shirt for the holidays.
Tonight is cutting out squares for a quilt or working on the jeans. I ran out of embroidery needles and need to pick some up before I can continue with the ornaments.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Christmas before Halloween
I’ve been taking my time and putting a list of what to make for friends and family for the Christmas holidays. There’s only about two full months until it arrives and even less time for some friends and family we see before the holidays really begin. If I want to make anything it means starting well in advance and actually sticking to it and not playing video games. So Christmas has to start now, I can’t waste any more time. I might be picking up more hours if my job does cut my hours down. I can handle it for a little bit, but not for too long. I do have debts to pay off just like everyone else and with the prospect of school money and working as much as possible does weigh heavy on my mind.
As a result of this shock from work I’m trying to be as economical as possible, small gifts, with the exception of my sister who I purchased her gift well before I found out my hours are going to get hacked if it continues to be this slow.
Several months ago I purchased a new Jenome 200e embroidery machine on sale; it’s a basic machine with a hoop size of 140mm x 140mm (5.5” x 5.5”). I’ve tested it out only a few times for tiny little designs to get a feel for it but until now haven’t had a permanent location for it. It’s now sitting on a trunk in my room. It’s a semi-out-of-the way location behind my desk which makes for sitting in my room painting and working on a design more manageable.
For the vast majority of my family they will be getting bottles of homemade vanilla and some fabric ornaments. Pretty simple I think. As for the rest of the family, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. But the list appears as follows.
Mom: Embroidered tree skirt
Sister and Brother in law: Queen sized flannel quilt
Boyfriend: “Cowboy” shirts
Little cousins: Jumpers and jackets
That’s what I have planned so far. I doubt it will get more complicated than that or I would never finish on time. I have also ordered a ‘free’ embroidery program Stitch Era Universal. I say ‘free’ as I have to pay for shipping which is fine it’s much more affordable than many of the programs available for digitizing. I create vectors on a regular basis and this program should, as it is advertized to, convert vectors into an embroidery design with almost no hassle. The benefit to this is that my boyfriend would like some Calavera skulls for ‘cowboy’ shirts, but he’s very picky about the design meaning I have to create them myself. After creating in Corel Draw I really don’t have the patience to waste another million ours digitizing it in the same way I created it. It’s a personal frustration as I put hours of work into my vectors, I am hoping this will be an easy remedy to the problem and I can spend more time sewing than tinkering on the computer.
As a result of this shock from work I’m trying to be as economical as possible, small gifts, with the exception of my sister who I purchased her gift well before I found out my hours are going to get hacked if it continues to be this slow.
Several months ago I purchased a new Jenome 200e embroidery machine on sale; it’s a basic machine with a hoop size of 140mm x 140mm (5.5” x 5.5”). I’ve tested it out only a few times for tiny little designs to get a feel for it but until now haven’t had a permanent location for it. It’s now sitting on a trunk in my room. It’s a semi-out-of-the way location behind my desk which makes for sitting in my room painting and working on a design more manageable.
For the vast majority of my family they will be getting bottles of homemade vanilla and some fabric ornaments. Pretty simple I think. As for the rest of the family, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. But the list appears as follows.
Mom: Embroidered tree skirt
Sister and Brother in law: Queen sized flannel quilt
Boyfriend: “Cowboy” shirts
Little cousins: Jumpers and jackets
That’s what I have planned so far. I doubt it will get more complicated than that or I would never finish on time. I have also ordered a ‘free’ embroidery program Stitch Era Universal. I say ‘free’ as I have to pay for shipping which is fine it’s much more affordable than many of the programs available for digitizing. I create vectors on a regular basis and this program should, as it is advertized to, convert vectors into an embroidery design with almost no hassle. The benefit to this is that my boyfriend would like some Calavera skulls for ‘cowboy’ shirts, but he’s very picky about the design meaning I have to create them myself. After creating in Corel Draw I really don’t have the patience to waste another million ours digitizing it in the same way I created it. It’s a personal frustration as I put hours of work into my vectors, I am hoping this will be an easy remedy to the problem and I can spend more time sewing than tinkering on the computer.
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