Sewing With the Stars '08

This last week has been a busy one. I left early last Wed and spent the day in Lacy at the Pfaff Creative Center. I helped put the finishing touches on a 12 foot banner that a friend had made- it took 5 large spools of thread to embroider. It looked big until it was hung on the wall in the room where we were sewing! Then after the store closed, we were off to the Little Creek Casino where the retreat was being held.

Thurs morning I met my "roomie", a wonderful 70 yr old lady who is originally from Holland and has been all over the world. It was fun talking to her. We then spent the day working on a pillow and learning new techniques. We embroidered the first part of the design, then felted the center and then went back and finished stitching it out. Then it was on to playing with our decorative stitches, adding cording to the outside and then adding trim and the flaps in the back to insert a pillow form.

The felting machine was lots of fun - we used it to add the color to the center of the rose and to the leaves. Great way to add shading as well. I can see the potential for many things! I just had to get one.

Then on Friday we first embroidered the stippling on the cream part of the bag and then learned how to use the new yarn couching foot for both embroidery and free motion stippling. This was lots of fun! All of the bags turned out really nice. That night "Mr Pfaff" came to talk to us on the history of sewing machines and Pfaff in particular. It was a wonderful presentation and I learned a lot. He has been with the company for 53 years and now lectures to various groups.

Sat had us up and ready to sew- but we were tired. We did a small sachet. The sachet parts were all pre-done linen. What we did was to learn how to do sequencing in our machines with scallops. We stitched them out on a length of linen, added fray check to the outside and then cut away the fabric. Then sewed it into a circle and gathered it to look like a flower. Sewed it to the center of the sachet and machine stitched a button on to the top of that. Added a lavendar sachet to it to finish. It came home and immediately went into my new dresser. (it still has that new dresser smell-more chemical than wood).

By then it was lunch and time for our Pfaff Educator- Sara, who had so patiently been teaching us, to show us her goodies. Show & Tell time brought lots of ideas as well. That's always a fun part to look forward to. I realized as I was packing that as busy as I had been this last year, I had either given or sold everything I had made, leaving nothing to take. So I just did the "Tell" part. It was lots of fun.

Now to get busy. I came home with so many new ideas. Molly was really happy to see me- the puppy kisses lasted about an hour. I have only a couple of weeks or so before I take off again and so much to do.

Will share more with you later,

Cheryl