by Sherri Sylvester | Jul 14, 2016
I usually bring my sewing machine and a project or two on a family vacation – and this one is no exception. We’ve been enjoying Minneapolis for the past week and I am finding that I don’t need such a large project, since we are visiting with family – not as many free evenings as when we vacation alone!
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. Bluefig sent me the DS23 Wheeled Bag in Butterfly and the Dottie Notions Bag to review for this post and this is my honest opinion about them.
I’ve collected my best tips on how to pack up your sewing project – and how not to forget anything when you do!
Bluefig contacted me a few months ago to talk about a possible post to highlight their new Canadian website. Hooray for us! This company is well known in the US, and are now bringing their product to Canada – with free shipping even. (Yay!) Now that I’ve seen and used their bags I am even more happy to highlight them here for you today.
Let’s get started! Grab a spare basket or box to temporarily collect everything you want to pack. (I would collect it in a pile on my sewing table – but let’s be honest – it’s generally covered in piles of other projects!)
Tip #1: Pattern & Fabric First!
The most important part of any sewing project! Make sure you have a copy of the pattern and enough fabric to make your project. No brainer, right? Print out/grab your pattern and double-check your yardage. I find it useful to use a highlighter to mark off items as I collect them.
I’m using this super cute Tree Party fabric from Riley Blake Fabrics that Canadian designer Kelly Paccini sent to me to make my girls each a Cargo Duffle. I fit the pattern, printouts and machine instruction book into the zippered front pocket of the wheeled bag – so handy!
Tip #2: Collect Other Materials
Make sure you have the rest of your materials according to the pattern listing. Read the pattern over, sometimes the designer will mention recommended items along with things listed in the materials. Matching thread, zippers, bag hardware, interfacing and stabilizers are some things you might need to find.
Tip #3: Don’t forget your Notions
Gather up all of the notions and sewing supplies you need. This tip is likely the most involved and requires the most thought. I like to read through the pattern, thinking about what I will need to complete each step, and write down a list or gather items as I come to them. Most supplies are obvious – sewing scissors, rotary cutter, bobbins and needles.
If you read carefully you might come up with something you didn’t think of – for example, this pattern calls for a double zipper that closes in the middle. Since I am making my own, I brought along wire cutters and pliers.
I loved having the Bluefig Dottie Notions Bag to pack everything into. It is divided up with enough clear zippered pockets to make my organizer’s heart super happy! The bag has 1 large pocket, 2 1/2 pockets and 8 smaller ones, plus an outside pocket for your pattern or quilting ruler. (The notions bag comes as part of a 3 Bag Combo with the Wheeled Bag and Project Bag.)
Here are photos of my packed bag to give you ideas of items you might need to bring along:
Tip #4: Safely Pack your Sewing Machine
It’s your baby, and it allows you to create – you love your sewing machine and it’s important to pack it safely for your trip. (Side note: I had a machine that tipped over in my car once, and it was never the same after that – in fact I ended up having to replace it soon after, so I know the importance of this tip first hand.)
Bluefig bags are made especially with your sewing machine in mind. They come in various sizes, and lots of great colours. Of course I picked the red one in keeping with the Thread Riding Hood theme! It’s made from a brushed Chenille fabric with an appliqued felt butterfly on the front.
I packed and photographed two machines into this bag to give you an idea of size. This 23″ bag is made for larger machines like the Skyline S7 that I have on-loan from Janome Canada. The mesh pockets inside this bag fit my shorter quilting ruler and rotating cutting mat too, which is nice. I also like that the soft sides zip all the way down – making it easy to get your machine in and out of the bag! Bluefig has also provided lists on their website to tell you which machines fit into the Bluefig 19″ or 23″ wide bags.
I actually brought my smaller Janome 2030QDC on vacation with me. I didn’t think it was good to travel with an on-loan machine! Plus, I was glad for the extra space allowed in the DS23 bag from packing a smaller machine than it was meant for. You can see in the photos below that I strapped it in and then placed the hard case on it so I could pack around it. The notions bag on one side and the foot pedal on the other.
If you don’t have a Bluefig bag yet, you could also use a large plastic tub – one that holds your machine upright. I’ve done this in the past, and the machine was squished held in place securely with all the supplies I was bringing!
Tip #5: The What If’s & Expendables
Of course you know by now that I am one of those people that over-prepare for absolutely everything! So I’m recommending you don’t forget a few more things that you might possibly need – you can never be too careful right?!
Consider bringing anything else you might use on a regular basis. Space permitting of course – and I had room in the large 23″ bag for some extras. Things like embroidery scissors, fabric glue, an extra rotary blade, hot iron cleaner, washi tape (marking lines/labeling fabric pieces), safety pins, hand sewing needles, regular pins, a pressing cloth and an iron might come in handy.
Now that you are packed, enjoy your trip!
I’m really impressed with this bag and how convenient it was to carry my things safely. Plus the materials used in the bag are really good quality and substantial. When I get it home and unpack, it’s good to know that it will fully collapse so I can store it in my small space until I need it again!
Do you take your sewing machine on vacation?
by Sherri Sylvester | Jun 30, 2016
Wow – time flies! Says everyone every year, right?! It’s the kids’ last day of school today, and we are so ready for some down-time this summer.
As is the custom, here are the comparison shots – first day of school, last day of school. I’ve officially got two kids in “real school” now – meaning they are both in a grade level. Wow, a first grader and a 4th grader in September – yikes! (BTW, Did you see their pink hair?! They’ve been patiently waiting for their promised “summer hair” for months and they are SO excited about it!)
Our back to school gifts have been sent to school with hand written notes and will hopefully be happily received. A one-hour baby blanket for my youngest’s pregnant teacher. It’s made from the cutest fabric I got from the now-closed Double Decker Fabrics last year. The characters actually shape the letters of the alphabet. I’m so excited to finally use this one. (and excited that I have a meter or so left in my stash!) I shared a photo on Facebook and Instagram this week.
I totally forgot to take photos of my oldest’s gifts. #bloggerfail She chose fabrics so I could make some Sunny Glasses Cases for her teachers. These are my go-to teacher’s gift since they are (hopefully) universally useful and can be made in about 1/2 an hour. Blue and cameras for the French teacher and Reds for the English teacher – apparently their favorites. I hope at least! It’s always a guessing game with end-of-year gifts. I’d love to know what your favorite teacher gift is. Or, if you are a teacher – what would you like to receive?
On a fabric-lover note, I’m so excited for my latest happy mail that came in earlier this week! Fabric Spark has asked me to curate a fat quarter bundle for their Monthly Sparks fabric subscription. As always I am humbled to be included in such an amazing list of bloggers that curate these bundles. Wow! It’s been sent out early to avoid our possibly impending postal strike… argh. So I get to share it with you today!
This bundle started when I noticed a lack of yellows in my fat quarter stash. Seeing as how my oldest has decided her bedroom redo will be a mix of turquoise, yellow and pink – I thought maybe it was a good time to replenish the stock – plus, isn’t yellow a nice fun summery colour? Mixed with the pinks I think it’s my favorite of the bundles I’ve put together so far. #funinthesun
I built the bundle off of the multi-colourful Andover Hothouse Flowers from Mo Bedell. The small splashes of greens in the pinks and yellows make me happy! Plus, who could be sad when there are cats and yarn involved. It’s my current favorite Cotton & Steel print. 🙂 Fabric Spark has a waiting list for the Monthly Sparks subscription bundle, and if you can’t wait, there are 4 other amazing monthly subscription bundles you can sign up for! And, have you heard of their fun Summer of Fabric Love? They have a new giveaway, deal, promotion or surprise every week, all summer!
I’m off to finish up some deadlines and plan the last details for our Canada Day/End of School pool party tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend, Canada Day and/or Fourth of July!
by Sherri Sylvester | Jun 17, 2016
It’s taken 3 years and 341 days, but we got here and this is the 500th post I’ve written for Thread Riding Hood! I figured I should make a big deal about it since I’m feeling like it’s kind of a big milestone. Crazy things have happened over the past almost-four years. I started this blog as a place to write about my sewing and it has turned into a real job. I’ve met amazing people, made great friends and worked with people I never thought I’d meet!
It’s been an amazing ride, thank you so much for coming along with me! #alongforthreadride
Just in case you are curious (like me!) here are the Top 5 Most Popular Posts EVER on Thread Riding Hood. After you peruse the list (hee hee) you can enter for your chance to win my celebration giveaway!
I’m giving away a scrappy fabric bundle of some of my favorite blues. The winner will also receive a copy of each of my PDF patterns! That includes the Forest Glen Satchel, Reusable Lunch Bag, Fabric Gift Bag patterns, Super Hero Cape and Cat-Eye Zipper Pouch pdf’s. Whew!
It was so hard to choose the bundle! I wanted to share some of my favorite fabrics, but didn’t have full fat quarters of all of them. Plus they didn’t all make a nice matchy bundle! So I started with a scrappy cut of my long-hoarded Tula Pink Octo Garden and chose some other favorite blues from there. Lots of them are fat quarter or 1/4 yard cuts. Also, being truly scrappy, some are pre-washed – but wanting to share my favorites, that’s the way they come! I also added a set of fabric quilt labels for good measure. I hope you like it!
This giveaway is open to everyone world-wide, from today (June 16th) until midnight June 23, 2016. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter – and if you don’t have Facebook to sign in with, just use your name and email address. There’s a “click to enter”, no social media login entry too!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
by Sherri Sylvester | May 27, 2016
I’ve got a few exciting catch-up newsy things to share with you today!
I am thrilled to let you know that I will be speaking at Quilts at the Creek in Toronto this summer. I was fortunate to talk to a few members of the York Heritage Quilters Guild while at the spring Creativ Festival and they have asked if I would present a trunk show once each day. (Yay!) I’ll be showing fun inspiring projects, talking about the background of Thread Riding Hood and how it (and I) have grown over the past 4 years. This huge quilt display happens at Black Creek Pioneer Village once a year. Quilts of all types are displayed around the village, perfect for a fun summer event. (I’m bringing my kids!)
They are accepting applications for quilt submissions until June 15th if you are interested in displaying some of your hard work. They also feature workshops and vendors – some of my lovely sponsors and many more! My trunk show will be at 1:30 each day, July 23rd and 24th. For more details you can find more trunk shows and workshop information on their website. I would love to meet you there!
On to more exciting news! The winner of the above Ellipse Tote from Among Brenda’s Quilts and Bags is Joanne S! I will be putting her bag in the mail today or Monday. SO thrilled! This bag is super fun and I love the colours. Don’t forget that you can find more pre-sewn purses + patterns to make your own Ellipse bag and others on Brenda’s website.
And a little announcement: The above photos are a re-cap of what’s been happening lately on my Instagram feed. Lots of new fabric and projects, with more on the way! Despite the crazy amounts of new things going on around me, I’ve been told (by a reliable source!) that I should take some time off and rest. Unfortunately, I’ve had difficulty doing simple tasks lately, along with exhaustion and new-to-me feelings of anxiety.
I think that I have pushed too hard with too many things on my to-do list for so long that my body has decided it’s time to get me to take a small break. I tend to put “me” on the back burner and I am (so excited) to be taking a tiny bloggy vacation. One week (or so) to just have fun with my kids, sew projects I’ve been wanting to work on, and not “feel bad” for stopping to read a book. Remembering to take it easy is going to be so hard for my go-go-go brain to do! But, as someone reminded me recently – If I don’t take care of me I will be of no use to myself, let alone anyone else!
I’m hoping to share more about my journey to “calm” as I learn how to re-work my life and deal with stress in a more manageable fashion. If you have any tips they would be most appreciated! See you again soon!
by Sherri Sylvester | May 6, 2016
This post was going to be a re-cap of the Spring Creativ Festival (which was amazing!) but instead I’m feeling inclined to talk about why the blog has been so quiet for the past few weeks. I’ve included a few photos of things I got at the show, because this is a sewing blog after all! Aren’t they pretty? I’ll do a proper re-cap (with a fun giveaway!) early next week.
Love these Japanese fabrics from Kallisti Quilts! I’m going to make something for me with them 🙂
Going backwards first, a few months before the Creativ Festival Janome emailed and asked me if I would like to do a trunk show. I was super excited and honoured that they asked, but also super (super) afraid! I had never talked anywhere before – much less on a stage, with a microphone, for 45 minutes – yikes! It took everything in me to say “Yes” and take the amazing opportunity. All the while trying I was trying to believe that you should do things out of your comfort zone to grow as a person.
In short…. I got the chance to find my passion and prove to myself that I am stronger than I thought!
Long story?
The whole thing began with the idea to name the talk “Be Brave and Sew”. This topic provided an amazing basis for me to discover what I really love to do. I am so grateful to Debbie from Janome for suggesting it. As I thought about what to say about my sample projects I found that a lot of them were beginner-based free tutorials I’d posted. Simple projects – the Fat Quarter Skirt, World’s Fasted Pencil Case, the Super Hero Cape. I wrote my talk around hopefully inspiring everyone to begin with simple things and move on to more complicated projects as they felt ready.
My youngest chose Wrap It Up from Fabric Spark for a new dress that goes “to the floor”!
I don’t have an easy going personality and push myself way too hard to be “perfect” in absolutely everything blog-related that I do. Of course as a result, I pushed too hard on this and spent so much time worrying about the unknown that I am still recovering 2 weeks later! (Hence the quiet blog.) I was absolutely exhausted – emotionally and physically – afterwards.
On the day of I was (quite literally) feeling sick. Thankfully I didn’t actually lose my lunch – but I was pretty much a wreck. I knew I was going to be “ok” once I got up on stage because I needed to be, but before-hand? Yikes… I was so grateful that my husband was there to help, he was able to talk me through my tears and nerves – love him so much for being amazing and supportive.
I got miked up (is that a thing?!) a few minutes early and was so excited to see my friend Lisa in the audience. It helped a ton to have a face I recognized in the audience. When I actually walked up on stage and started talking, I realized the mic wasn’t on, and it took a few seconds of inward-panic until I got it working. Despite the crazy start, the time flew by and amazingly ended on-time, even though I could have easily talked for a couple more hours.
After a rush of meeting so many great people that came up to say “Hi” (my favorite!), I got a few minutes to think and realized that I really actually liked speaking. This new revelation was so surprising to me! I started this blog thinking it would be “safe”. Somewhere I could express my introverted self’s love of sewing to the world without fear of interacting and actually talking to other humans. Through the past almost-four years I’ve found that humans are what I really actually want. Looking back I think I’ve become a lot less introverted as a result.
Saturday’s talk was so much easier in comparison. I got to meet a few more online friends in person (Yay!) and felt much more comfortable. I was able to relax a bit, hang out and talk to everyone and my kids even got to come visit as well! It just reinforced what I had learned the day before.
The passion part? The need to share what I love with others runs so deep. I fount out I am most passionate about doing my best to inspire sewers to sew more, and beginners to start. I want to help others understand that sewing is not scary or hard. That there is a solution to everything, it’s called practice (and a seam ripper!). I want everyone to sew with the next seam (or step) in mind – not the finished project that looks “too hard” – because with enough desire to learn, you can sew anything!
I am so grateful that I have been allowed to realize all of these things. I am already doing something I love to do by writing here, and now I can go farther with it. This blog is so much fun, but I would love to do more – and I’m realizing that I am ok at being a people-person too! I’m hoping a day comes when I’m able to do multiple sewing-related things – talks, workshops, writing here… and whatever else comes my way.
Last but not least…. I am so glad that I have been allowed to share space with this amazing creative community. I am so grateful that I’m literally in tears while writing this. You are all so kind to come back post after post. I have so many positive experiences to look back on and I’m so excited for where this is taking me.
I would be remiss not to especially thank Janome for taking a chance on inviting a newbie to speak. They truly have been so supportive, amazing and so nice to work with. Without them I would not have learned all of these things and I will carry that through the rest of my life for sure.
I wanted to write about my experience to hopefully inspire you to go farther in whatever it is that you love – it is never too late or too scary. And I hope all of you are granted the amazing gift I’ve gotten to find your passion in life. I hope I don’t sound high on myself, or sound like I think I’m the best at everything, because I’m not – I have just been allowed to learn about this part of me and I’m excited to see where it goes. Here’s to the future!
What do you think? What is your passion?
My youngest sewist was gifted this super cute fat quarter bundle from Fabric Please! She said Rita wanted to see a picture of her blue sewing machine, so here it is! I’ve got a mommy-daughter project all picked out for it 🙂
As a little P.S. for you since you are still reading! (Thank you!) I’ve gotten feedback that I am likely speaking once or twice more this year in the Toronto area. Yay! I’m so excited and hope that if you live in the area that you might be able to come out so I can meet you. 🙂
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 3, 2016
Today I’m posting a free school-approved non-food/candy Valentine printable! (Spoiler alert for all of our neighbors!)
These supplies are easy to find, so this project comes together super-fast! The erasers were 60 pcs for $1 from Target, the clear bags were 72 for $1 from my local Dollar Store. Sewing (or stapling) them on was simple, since I needed to make more than 70 of them. And I decided to use up my almost-empty thread spools and the fancy stitches on my Janome Skyline S5. My kids happened to like the heart stitch best, so we used it a lot.
The cards are designed in 7 colour-ways. A rainbow of colours, because I have girls – and rainbows always make things amazing. #rainbowtizeeverything Plus I wasn’t sure what to do about the boys in their classes. I suppose they will live with the frilly border and girl-centered eraser choices in blue or teal green!
Make sure, when sewing paper with your sewing machine, to use an old needle and replace it right after sewing these. (You might also want to clean the inside of your machine too!)
Supplies: Small clear bags, Sewing Machine or Stapler, Thread, Small Erasers, 4×6 Photo Paper or Cardstock
Instructions: Print as many cards as you need, cut them if necessary. Place the erasers in clear bags and attach them to the cards. Write names on them and DONE!
More Valentine Tutorials, Printables & Inspiration
