Simple Classroom Sewing

Now that I am teaching French, I needed to organize and decorate the room a bit. When I taught world history, my whole room was decorated in neon pink and neon green, which was very cheerful and bright. Since I am starting to teach, my room is not quite as cute as my last one, when Stephaie and I spent days decorating before school started. :)

 I bought 3 yards of felt in the colors of the French flag (bleu, blanc, rouge), which cost about 15 bucks. As the flag is simple stripes, I slapped it together in about ten minutes. Then I got a very tall boy to stand on desk and hang it up :)

The white boards have lost their finish and always look like that!

 The cabinets have little bulletin boards on them, so I covered them with the left over felt. It looked kind of unfinished, so I bought some tri-color ribbon on amazon and fixed it right up. Now they look very cute!

These don't count toward my January goal of three items because I made it in November...

New Patterns for the New Year!

Thanks for all the feedback on my coat cuffs! I am still not sure what I am going to do, but I do have extra fabric in both colors if I want to cut new ones. I need to do the collar and lining and the make some actual decisions.

 My mommy gave me some patterns for Xmas. The new ones are ones that I asked for and the vintage ones are from a recent estate sale in Oregon that she went to. 

New patterns: Cooper bag, Albion coat (first made up for Andrew), the Mission Maxi and the Cascade skirt. 

 The vintage patterns are a mish-mash of kids ones and a few ladies patterns.

 She will haunt your dreams tonight....

 More kids patterns:

 Look at this sassy little mofo!

 Some women's patterns:

 T-Rex says Happy New Year by showing you a pretty sit.

Work those abs!

I am going to set sewing goals for each month to encourage some progress! More on that later!

Giveaway winner and a coat dilemma

The winner of December's giveaway is Nina A! Congrats and please email me your mailing address to Mollysewsblog/at/gmail/com

On to my coat question: should I sew on the cuffs or not? They are just pinned on for the pictures.

The wool is thick and therefore the cuffs are really thick. I think they look space age and costume-y. The main detail of the coat is the inverted v of the buttons and I don't want the cuffs to detract from that. 

Sans cuffs...

What do you think? Should I add them or just leave it simple?

Happy New Year! 

Late December Giveaway

December's giveaway is four vintage aprons!

Anyone anywhere is eligible and the winner will receive all four of them. Leave a comment to enter by midnight on 12/31.

The green apron is gingham with white rickrack trim. The orange gingham one has hand embroidered roosters on it. The blue gingham has small Xmas trees embroidery and bells that pin on, which you can take off to wash it. The sheer pink hostess apron has a little pocket with flowers on it. It has some tears and some of them have stains, but they are cute and functional! 

Thanks for entering!

More Wedgwood

These are pieces I received as gifts from my mom and my aunt Sherry in past Christmases. Typically, I overfill my suitcase with clothes I don't wear and them can't bring everything home. This time, we flew Southwest so I had two free checked bags to fill with junk!

The pattern is Florentine in turquoise. I decided to try to collect it years ago in college, maybe 9-10 years ago and luckily I still like it. It is certainly unique for fine china with the griffins.

This is my full collection now and I think I might start watching eBay to add to it now that I have a real job again!

2 dinner plates

4 salad plates

5 bread plates

8 berry dishes

4 teacups and saucers

4 soup cups and saucers

2 espresso cups and saucers

Sugar bowl and creamer

Not exactly a complete set yet and most of this was that one lucky estate sale in New Orleans.

I have the next week off so I am going to sew and post! Yay! Happy New Year!

Singer 66: Cleaning and Sanding

We made some progress cleaning up the Singer 66 the weekend before Thanksgiving. Andrew sanded down all of the wood surfaces, while I began cleaning the machine head. It was somewhat cold then, but not nearly as cold as it is now. The back porch is not insulated, but is warmer than just being outside. Plus, the table weighs about one billion pounds; no one was volunteering to carry it downstairs and then up again! :)

Sanding

 The finish came off pretty easily since the table is so old and had been sitting in a basement for so long.

 Andrew did a great job evening out the finish. He was able to put on two coats of stain, but we haven't finished that part up yet, so no pictures.

 Meanwhile, I was sitting at the dining room table cleaning the machine with sewing machine oil. I decided to start with the bottom and work my way up. It was pretty grimy, but the machine moves and the parts turn. I just removed screws and cleaned it up with my toothbrush, some cheesecloth and the oil.

Before the scrubbin'

After the scrubbin'

Though it may not look monumentally different, I took off a LOT of black gunk and goop. 

Then, Thanksgiving and being super tired last weekend got in the way, but I hope this weekend we can maybe finish this up! Next Friday we will be in Oregon to visit my parents for Xmas! Yay!

The Vogue Coat- Actual Progress?!?

Here is a post where I lamented my lack of progress on my vintage Vogue 775. It chronicles the years that have passed since I bought that beautiful pattern at an estate sale in Oregon. The wool came from Mood in New York later and I managed to do a muslin and cut and underline all of the pieces before we moved to Chicago, ahem, two and a half years ago. 

Finally, a week or so before Thanksgiving, I finally started sewing the coat together. Having made a muslin, it came together quickly and easily. 

 Sorry for the mediocre phone pictures, but I was just taking them to show my mom my progress. I have the shell completed, but I am currently debating the addition of the cuffs and the double collar. I think they may look a tad costumey. That will be for a later post.

 It has that cool button detail where the buttons make an inverted V, but I still need to find 15 buttons to do that. I saw these as Jo-Ann and I might consider them. They are made to look like vintage brass buttons and are metal. I think they would maybe look nice with the blue.

Hopefully I will find some buttons and a lining that I like and maybe finish this coat THIS WINTER!

 Whoo hoo!