Becky and the Beanstalk: January 2012

January 30, 2012

Sewing Class

I went to a sewing class this past weekend! The amazing Meg over at Meg The Grand taught a bunch of Chicagoans how to sew buttons!

It reminded me of working in the costume shop in college when we had to teach all of the newcomers in the shop how to sew buttons, snaps, hooks and eyes, and basic hem stitches. Luckily they found out pretty quickly in the shop that I already knew how to sew, so instead of having to teach the newbies the basics, I was stuck in a corner and given period dresses to build.

Meg did the best thing possible and combined sewing and champagne. I might need to make that a recurring way of sewing! She patiently taught everyone how to sew on two hole, four hole, and shank buttons. Then added in making covered buttons! I hadn't made my own covered buttons before. The next class will be on hems.

PS- The best sewing of the day went to Rob for finding a way to sew a two hole potato chip to his sampler.

January 16, 2012

SW Challenge- Buttonholes

This year I am going to try to sew as much as possible along with the Sew Weekly challenges. This week’s challenge is to use buttonholes in your project. I ended up having two projects this week that used buttonholes, but here is the one for me.

I got a bunch of this plaid fabric from Meg and wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. I had separately wanted to make a circle skirt since I hadn’t made one in years. Then it hit me! I have a bunch of plaid fabric that I could make a big comfy skirt with!

I didn’t measure how much fabric I had originally, but I drafted up a pattern for a circle skirt with 8 panels. The fabric was 22 inches wide so I had to make thinner panels instead of a couple big ones. I lined it with its own fabric also. To close it, I used some leather buttons I had sitting around. So no zipper! And buttonholes are really easy on my machine. All you have to do is set it up and it does it all automatically.

We went into the park to take some photos on the last nice day before we got a bunch of snow. PS- I’m really excited for all this snow! Chicago usually just gets dusts that don’t last more than a day. But this one is sticking around! Zoey and I got to play in the snow a bunch too!