Sewing Machine Number 8!

Sewing machines now outnumber The Living in our house 2 to 1.

A few years ago when Mr. Smarmy and I first bought our house, my parents bought this sewing machine for me. It’s a vintage Singer Red Eye treadle (i.e. pre-electric) machine. Nicknamed Red Eye because it has really elaborate red and gold designs on it.

My dad wanted to refinish the walnut cabinet, so the cast iron treadle part and the sewing machine came home with me and waited for the rest of their parts to be finished. Yesterday was the day!

Here’s how the machine was brought to me:

Keep in mind I’ve never seen it put together… my dad bought it in pieces so HE’s never seen it put together. And there are NO INSTRUCTIONS.

Here’s the assembled cabinet with the machine tucked away underneath.

Partially unfolded… that grey/blue ugliness is a light someone attached. It’s also been converted to an electric machine, so I’m going to plug it in later and see how that goes, though I’m planning on getting a belt for the treadle and reconverting it back to it’s original unelectrifiedness. Fun for power outages! From the instructions I read online, it sounded like converting back and forth is fairly quick.

 

You can see in that last one that the finish is a little dull on the machine. I’m going to look into make it bright and shiny again. Or does it look cooler this way since you can tell it’s old?

It took me about 3 hours to put it together. And I won’t lie, I enjoyed it. I like assembling stuff. This cabinet is so well made, I didn’t really feel like I was at much of a disadvantage not having instructions… all the pieces fit together really nicely and just make sense. Anyway, if you ever buy a bunch of furniture from Ikea, I would be happy to put it together for you.

I’ll probably do some more internetting to find out about dates and such, but now that it’s all put together, I think it’s a pretty standard Singer 66. At least the picture I found of the manual looks exactly like mine when it’s all folded up!

Get a free custom fabric swatch!

I’ve been wanting to try Spoonflower’s custom fabric printing service forever, but I’ve never really had the balls to do it because it is a bit expensive. (Believe me, it’s the only real way for us small business folk to get our hands on custom fabric, short of printing/stamping/etc it ourselves. I’ve looked. In other words, the price is worth it.)

But HUZZAH! Today they’re giving away 1 free sample to anyone who wants one! You can custom design your own swatch or choose from the thousands of awesome designs submitted by customers! Free sample, free shipping! 100% free!

I got the WhatTheCraft intarsia sweater background as my free sample. If you try it out, I’d love to see what sample you designed or picked!

For more information about Spoonflower’s sample giveaway, check out their blog!

http://blog.spoonflower.com/2010/08/free-swatches-for-all.html

Radical Prints

Fabric.com has some awesome- and I do mean awesome, in the most 90′s sense of the word- prints up right now. Neon, leopard print, paint splatter… ahhh, it brings back memories of my youth. Tubular!

Before you go stockpiling this radness,  don’t forget your coupons!

20% off entire order – ANNV1 or THX104

15% off entire order – ABAND2010

$15 off purchase of $75 or more – PLTRY102

 

 

 

Don’t mind the mess…

I am in the midst of making the tutorial and supplies link databases more user friendly, so if you notice some wonkiness over the next few weeks, please ignore!

Buttondown to off-shoulder dress tutorial

Check out this cute dress made from a giant men’s button-down shirt by Impish DIY! Perfect for summer, since button-downs are usually nice and lightweight.

She even made a tutorial for it, so you can make your own!

Henley tee reconstruction – photo tutorial

This is a quick way to give a plain tee or tank a little upgrade! The best part is, you don’t have to screw around with buttonholes because that part has been done for you already!

If you’re looking at me funny and wondering WTF a henley shirt is, it’s a shirt with a partial button placket down the front. Like our finished project here:

Difficulty:

 

Things you’ll need for this tutorial:

• scissors
• sewing machine (or needle and thread, if you’re old school and mega patient like that)
• a t-shirt or tank (you can make your own, if you like)
• the button placket from another shirt

Step 1

Gather your materials. Here I’ve got my henley and my fabric, with which I will make a basic tee.

I happened to have a a henley shirt that I cut up a while ago to make a pattern. This is why I can never throw things away… I knew it would come in handy!

If you don’t have a henley style shirt, you can use a button placket from any shirt, really. A full buttondown will work just fine for this, you just need to trim it to the length you want. I think a plaid button placket would look super cute on a plain tee!

If you’ve searched your closets high and low and don’t have a button placket handy, there’s a really great tutorial for making a henley tee here.

The cute button print fabric I used in this tutorial is from Purple Seamstress Fabrics.

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Woven clothing labels + a cheap trick

When I got my bachelor’s degree (unrelated to sewing, ha), my mom bought me my first batch of woven labels for SmarmyClothes. They were quite spiffy, especially compared to the super simple iron-on labels I had made myself.

I ordered a second batch of the same labels from the same company a few years ago. Last month I noticed I was down to my last 17 labels! I’d been half-looking at replacement labels for a while, having decided that the woven labels were perhaps a little too expensive for something someone might just cut out of the garment once they got it. It got kind of dire when I realized I had less than twenty left.

I decided on making my own with some printable fabric. I bought the printable fabric. Then I realized I need new cartridges for my color printer (I generally use my b+w laser printer for everything) and it’s going to cost me SIXTY BUCKS for new cartridges.

$60 + $19 for the fabric sheets (this doesn’t include shipping, mind you) = $79

I figured I could get about 420 labels out of this package of 6 fabric sheets. That works out to about 19 cents a piece. Not too shabby compared to the woven labels I bought before, which worked out to 33 cents a piece.

Then I found Fancy Weaver on Etsy. 600 woven labels, huge range of sizes, 8 colors for the same price as what I was going to get for making them myself?!?!?!  I was sold.

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Smarmtastic Giveaway!

To celebrate my new line of necklaces, I’m giving away two samples in my blog!!
All you have to do to enter is comment with your favorite of the new necklaces.

Ends June 28th!

Enter here: http://smarmyclothes.com/blog/index.php/2010/06/smarmy-giveaway/

How to make a ruffled hem – photo tutorial

Making a ruffle (aka gathering) is a basic sewing technique that you can use a million different ways once you know how to do it.

There are a lot of ways to ruffle or gather. In this tutorial, I create the ruffle as I sew, instead of gathering the fabric ahead of time. It takes some practice to be able to create even gathers, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a quick way to do it.

Difficulty:

Step 1

I want to add a ruffled hem to the bottom of a dress. The first thing I need to do is determine how much fabric I need for my ruffle.

How much fabric I need for the ruffle depends on 1. the width of the bottom of the dress and 2. how full I want the ruffle.

Laying flat, the bottom is 20″ wide, which means it’s 40″ wide total.

Step 2

Now I need to choose and prepare the fabric for my ruffle. I’m using a contrasting fabric, but you can use something that matches the rest of your dress/skirt/etc. if you want.

For a hem like this, you need at least two times the width of the bottom of the dress for the ruffle. I have cut two 4″ long strips of the ruffle fabric. Each strip is 40″ wide, giving me a total of 80″ for the ruffle fabric. Which is… that’s right! Double the measurement of the hem.

40″ (width of the bottom of the dress) x 2 = 80″ (width of ruffle fabric needed)

Doubling the fabric for the ruffle works very well for ruffles like this that aren’t very long. If you were going to make a dress with a 15″ long ruffled hem, I would suggest tripling the bottom measurement instead of doubling.

Obviously, the more width you give the ruffle, the fuller the ruffle will be. It will also be heavier, so keep that in mind.

Now, sew together however many pieces of ruffle fabric required to get the width you need and hem it. Or serge it. Or trim it with lace. Whatever you prefer! I now have one 80″ long loop of ruffle fabric, hemmed and ready to ruffle!

Step 3

To get even gathering around the whole hem with the least amount of work, we need to divide the bottom into 8 equal sections.

Start at the sides, and mark each side with a pin.

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Make a pop-up book!

Fun fact: I graduated from the same high school as pop-up book king, Robert Sabuda! You may have seen some of his books before- he’s done tons of pop-up versions of famous fairytales and other children’s books like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, etc.

His website, robertsabuda.com, also has a whole bunch of awesome tutorials for making your own pop-ups, including a STAR WARS POP-UP BOOK!!!

The pop-ups make awesome cards for pretty much any occasion. I was in need of a Get Well card, so instead of buying a cheesy Hallmark card, I decided to make a pop-up card using the Bat tutorial here: http://www.robertsabuda.com/popmake/animals/bat/popmake_bat-step1.asp

Not only is it handmade (10 times cooler), but it’s THREE DEE (cool to the third power). So thats like Cool x 1000.

I’d suggest reading through the instructions before starting, and gathering all of the tools you’ll need!

Tools you’ll need:

paper – something heavy like cardstock works well for the base of the card. I used scrapbooking paper to “line” the base, though this step is totally optional. I used black construction paper for the bat.

sharp scissors

scoring/folding tool – I used a knitting needle. You could also use a chopstick, bamboo skewer, and old pen, etc.

glue – I used a quick dry craft glue that’s similar to rubber cement. Glue sticks or double sided tape will also work well. White glue will work if you have the time and patience to let it dry.

printer or markers

extra decorating doo-dads – like googly eyes!

Here’s my finished card!

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