Iron Cleaning Tip

I struggle to clean my iron.  I have tried every product on the market for this and nothing has thoroughly done the job.  I am always left with some spots that refuse to come clean.  Well, not any more.

A while back I read a tip in Threads magazine about iron cleaning which suggested using ceramic cook top cleaner.  I bought a bottle and tried it and, once again, could not get the iron completely clean.  So this week I tried a different approach.  I made a large puddle of the cleaner on my teflon pressing sheet, warmed up the iron for just a minute at the lowest temperature and then turned off the iron.  I smeared the sole plate into the puddle of cleaner and made sure the entire surface of the plate was covered.  I then left the iron with the sole plate down on the pressing sheet in the cleaner for several hours.  I re-warmed the plate of the iron briefly, turned off the heat and wiped away the cleaner.  Every last spot came off this time.  As always I had to deal with the cleaner getting into the steam holes but found a pipe cleaner a handy tool to remove the residue.  So if you have trouble getting your iron completely clean give this method a shot.

Bag of the Week 44

Knitting Needle Case

I’m taking a little liberty this week with my definition of “bag”.  This is a knitting needle case that I made several years ago featuring the lovely embroidery of Evy Hawkins from A Bit of Stitch. 

I found directions on the internet and adapted them for my own use.  Here are two links that show you how to make a rolled up case that will hold knitting needles or paint brushes/tools.

Roll-up Knitting Needle Case

Paint Brush Holder

Halloween Around My House

Here’s what has been keeping me busy in my sewing studio recently.  With two little kids in the house Halloween is becoming a bigger deal each year.  My four-year-old is finally old enough to remember that he got candy last year when trick-or-treating but my two-year-old is still just along for the ride.  I do like making costumes each year (my mom made mine for many years when I was growing up – thanks, Mom!)  This year I saw a pattern for a cute ladybug costume and thought it would be great for my youngest.  When I told older son about this he immediately said he wanted to be a spider which was convenient since that was another design in the same pattern. 

For the spider costume I purchased a black waffle-weave shirt and paired it with some already-owned black pants.  All of the costume details were added to the shirt.  The front features a rick-rack spiderweb.  I tried desperately to get glow-in-the-dark rick rack but evidently Wright’s has stopped making it.  I bid on numerous Ebay auctions for some of this stuff and was consistently outbid.  In the end I used some iridescent rick rack and stitched it down with glow-in-the-dark thread.  I made the spider legs from black fleece, stuffed them and stitched them to the shirt.  The pattern called for six legs but I reasoned that with my son’s own two arms and two legs he only needed an additional four.  The final element was a hat with little antenna (not sure what the pattern company was thinking here – I’ve never seen a spider with antenna but I went with the flow).

For the ladybug costume I used the pattern to create a little jumpsuit from red fleece.  The black dots are also fleece and stitched on.  The wings are made from black netting.  The hat with antenna is the same as the spider’s hat.  I had to have red shoes to complete the outfit but these proved hard to find (good thing I started looking back in September).  I was unwilling to pay $35 for a pair of shoes that would fit for only a few months but I eventually found a pair of Converse sneakers on craigslist for about $8 which turned out to be just right.

I think my little insect farm is just adorable.

The picture in the center is a treat my oldest son and I made for his friends at school.  We called them magic wands but they are simply a pretzel rod dipped in Candy Melts with sprinkles added.  We packaged them in pretzel bags and I created a simple tag that I stapled to the top.

You can read about the treat bags I made here.

Lastly, I just want to mention the great team at Blue Daisy Designs who created the photo template I used to showcase my pictures.  I love the work that these ladies put out and their reasonable prices.  They make putting together pictures for my blog super easy.  They are so generous, too – each Friday they post a freebie on their Blue Daisy blog so you can try out their products before visiting their Etsy shop.

Now on to some new sewing projects!  Stay tuned!

Bag of the Week 43

Trick or Treat?

This past week has been Halloween central in my sewing studio.  Halloween is not a holiday I get into in a big way (no elaborate decorations, etc.) but I am enjoying making my kids’ costumes.  My oldest son is 4, just old enough to understand that Halloween means candy.  My youngest (2) just thinks the costumes are fun.  The great thing about kids this age is that two pieces of candy from six houses seems like a treasure trove. 

Last year my good friend Joyce brought my oldest a little fabric treat bag (she makes dozens of these each year, fills them with goodies and hands them out on Halloween night – lucky kids!)  We keep this bag on the top of the fridge with a few pieces of candy in it for special treats.  Since Son #2 needs his own treat bag this year I decided to make both boys new bags to use for our trick or treating on Sunday.  If you wait until right before Halloween you can get great deals on cotton Halloween fabric.   I used the same stripe for the lining of both bags and varied the outer fabric and trim.  I keep a roll of black webbing on hand and used that for the handles.

Come back on Sunday for a peak at the costumes I made.

Bag of the Week 42

Wash and Wear

Today’s post is actually last week’s bag.  I wrote about this project here, about the frustrations I was having.  Sigh.  I was so enjoying making this bag until I hit a snag.  It is now finished but so are some of the grand plans I had for this bag, too.

I fell in love with this little travel lingerie bag the first time I saw it in Stitch magazine (Spring 2010).  It is designed as a flat pouch with zippers at either end, divided in the middle to form two separate areas, one for clean items and one for dirty.  I used the template provided on the Stitch website and followed the author’s instructions for appliquéing the garments onto the light aqua linen I picked for the body of the bag.  The fabrics and laces are fused onto the bag before they are stitched down.  The instructions call for hand stitching with a running stitch but I used a small zigzag (1.5 mm x 1.5 mm) and monofilament thread.  The clothesline is pearl cotton couched on with more of the monofilament.  I chose to machine embroider the words instead of hand stitching them.  I found a great floss-stitched font at Jolson’s Designs (for a mere $3 – quite a bargain).  I even stitched a little monogram on the purple shirt.

I really enjoyed the project to this point.  When it came time to put the bag together I ran into trouble.  There is nothing wrong with the written instructions; I just couldn’t make my chosen supplies come together.  First, the linen I was using is fairly bulky.  I tried an old trick of using a longer zipper than necessary, planning to cut off the extra.  The bulk of the zipper coil added to the linen made it impossible to get a cleanly turned corner.  I also realized I was going to have trouble hand sewing in the lining and making it fit correctly with the awkwardly turned corner.  I unstitched the entire thing and started over.

After much trial and error what finally worked for me was to sew the lining pieces together into a tube and the outer fabric into another.  I placed the lining inside the outer sleeve, serged the raw edges together and treated it as one.  I sewed in about 1.5” on each end of the top opening and set a smaller zipper into the remaining opening.  The zipper is stretched out flat and is merely topstitched into place.  The zipper tape hides the serged fabric edges.

I thought perhaps I could sell bags like this in my (coming soon) Etsy store.  I imagined they might make great gifts for bridal attendants.  But I will have to come up with a much more streamlined design for the bag if that is going to work, as the amount of time I spent just constructing this bag makes it impractical as a commercial item.  This was a good lesson that dreams need to be tested out in reality to make sure they will work.

I'm sharing this post today with the folks over at Today's Creative Blog on their Get Your Craft On feature.  Check them out.