Recently on Sewing With Nancy she featured two very worthwhile charities that provide needed items for two worthwhile purposes.

The first is Little Dresses for Africa which is a group that create dresses from pillowcases and then distribute them orphanages in Central Africa. They are a Christian-based, non-profit group that was started by a small group of women who had gone on a short-term mission trip. After returning home they looked for a way to help those in need. One of their group came up with a simple sewing design she had found on the net. Now with over 30,000 dresses made and delivered they are planting seeds of hope.

I plan to start shopping this month’s linen sales to gather together a dozen or so pillowcases, along with ribbon and trim. I’ll post pictures of the finished dresses before I send them off to the group. Then I’ll go out and shop for some more pillowcases.

The other group that has been featured on Sewing with Nancy was the Project Linus another non-profit group. They have many chapters across the country and provide blankets to various organizations. There are nearly 380 chapters and they have provided over 3,000,000 blankets! Each chapter knows what is needed in their area and makes sure the blankets go to the correct place. They make their way to sick children, those that have been traumitized, etc. The best thing is to go the site, find a chapter close to you, and see what their needs are.

Along with pillowcases I’ll be looking for fleece to embroider – a great project for my embroidery machine and lots of the “cute” designs I have.

With the New Year just beginning it’s a good time to start on projects. Will post updates on how I’m doing with the dresses and blankets.

The other day when my studio was in what might be called its most organized state I thought I’d take some pictures. Just ignore the bookcase. lol I never do seem to be able to keep my magazines and books in order.

After seeing pictures of Bev’s gorgeous office/studio over at How Sweet The Sound – look for the link to it along the right column – I’m going to see about doing something similar to my studio with stock cabinets. My son had a desk built into one of the closets in his condo using two stock cabinets and a stock counter top. And I would really like to build shelves into the closet. So many plans.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like now:

The above pictures show one corner of the studio. The door is on the wall opposite the window. On the table on the right I have my main working area where I do jewelry design, work on my original dolls, and eventually I plan to get into doing more polymer clay work. On the table on the left is one of my pretty Tiffany-like lamps, a radio/CD player, and a table top oven for the polymer clay. I think it’s important not to use your kitchen oven when working with polymer clays. Eventually that oven will most likely be moved to a small nightstand so I don’t cover up so much of my window with it. The curtains come from Country Curtains and are called Kitchen Garden Tiers.

It took forever to come up with the right color for the walls. I wanted a very nice and sunny yellow since this is a north facing window and never gets any sun at all. So I thought I’d provide my own. Course, the true color doesn’t show up in any of the pictures. But you get the idea.

The lamp on the table on the right side is an Ott light. I’ve now got three of them in that room that I got from Joann’s. I got them all for 50% off by watching their sales and also getting their weekly flyer. I have an Ott floor lamp in my “Day Room.” I love the light they produce.

As you can see I’ve got a tv and a DVD player. I wanted this so I could watch my craft CD collections while at a place where I can work. This way I can watch the video, pause it when I need to, and then start it up to continue. I’ve also got a way to hook up my laptop in the studio so I can watch You Tube video tutorials.

The above pictures are of the area where I do my machine embroidery. It’s directly accross from the area where I do my main work as shown in one of the first pictures.

Eventually shelves will go up over the table – unless I do put in stock cabinets which would be nice so all the thread, stabilizer, etc. would have a nice place to live. Though it is nice to have everything I need right there on the table. My embroidery machine is a Deco 600 that I purchased about 10 or so years ago. Now that I’ve finally figured out how to do simple things I’m going to start working on sections to be placed into a quilt. Will keep track of my progress on the blog once I start.

This is the area next to the door and opposite the window. The table is a harvest table, unlike the others that are folding tables. I’ve had this table for over 30 years and just love it for sewing since it’s very deep. My sewing machine is also about 30 years old, but it’s a Viking and still sews pretty darn well. I may think about getting a new machine, but for now this one works just great after getting a good cleaning and tune up.

I got all the baskets (on sale) at Michaels. They hold patterns, fabric, CDs, and misc. The boxes on the shelves are photo boxes that contain paint, embroidery thread, etc.

I really love this room. It’s only 10′ x 10′ so is a pretty tiny room but has lots crammed into it. I still have what used to be the Master bedroom to finish up as my “Day room” and may move my jewelry making into there since it seems to want to take over all the studio with box after box to keep the parts seperate. Then the area over by the tv can be completely devoted to dollmaking and clay work.

Oh, and one last picture. The rocker sits in the corner with a Vermont Teddy Bear I got from son a few years ago for Mother’s Day. Quite fitting since this was the rocker I bought to go in his nursery when he was born over 30 years ago. The little basket on the rocker really belongs on the embroidery machine table. Guess it wanted to get in the picture since it would have been covered up by the embroidery machine in the other pictures.

Thank you for visiting!

It’s Pink Saturday again at Cottage Dreamer! Thanks to Beverly at How Sweet The Sound for once more hosting this fun day of sharing all things Pink!

For a long time I’ve had an embroidery machine and took it in some time ago to have it serviced so I could finally use it. After that it was a few months wait for a Magic Box to come in to the dealers – this is a small pieced of equipment that allows me to use digitized designs. I thought – at last – I can do some embroidery. No such luck. The machine had to be services once more. But now all appears to be well. Below are some pictures I took while doing a design from a fantastic set from Michelle’s Designs called Silk Ribbon Floral Fantasy.

I have a Deco 600 made by Bernina





This is the first of six thread changes that are needed.





Had to take the hoop off the machine because I was running out of bobbin thread. This is the embroidery after two colors have been stitched.





Finally, we get to the pink thread! There are three shades of pink used in the embroidery.





More Pink.





Here’s the finished embroidery. It takes about a half hour to complete which includes the thread changes that are needed.







I plan to use this and several other designs from this collection to make a quited wallhanging. Most likely I’ll also use the designs for some hand towels and I’m going to be looking at anything I buy in the way of clothing this fall to see if I can put some embroidery on it.

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful Pink Saturday!

Sandra