Taming the terry fuzzies

I've been working on twirly towels (shampoo towels) and other terry items for gifts. I also cut a bath towel in fourths and made DH some hand towels for his utility sink. It's much cheaper than buying hand towels and larger, too. The terry really makes a mess in the sewing room but this little tool really gets the terry loops and fuzz up from the cutting mat. I don't know where I got this little jewel because I've had it so long. I did find one on Ebay if you're interested by searching for "crumb brush" which is it's original intent. It works so well for clearing the mat and even the fibers that have been pushed into the mat with the rotary cutter. It snaps open so that you can dump the contents and a quick shake or swipe of the hand on the brush over the trash can and it's ready to go again.

This is what my mat looked like after cutting the black terry towel into fourths. It's really tough to get the fuzzies up where the blade has pushed them into the mat.

But not with this little jewel. This is the crumb brush upside down.

Here I am using the brush on the cutting mat. I had just swiped the upper right corner.

The nice clean mat and dirty brush.

Inside of the brush with all the fuzzies that it picked up. The brush can be popped out to get the lint off it easily.

Hand Sewing Project

DGD's made notebook covers. We cut felt to fit the small notepads in the colors of their choice. Thread was embroidery floss. Skills worked on were threading needles, knotting thread, stitching nice even stitches. It was excellent work for a first time. The younger one, who was not as enthusiastic about the project before she began, said when she was well into it, "I didn't know it was going to be this much fun!"

T-shirt Shrug

Daughter and granddaughter saw similar shrugs from T-shirts on a Pinterest post. I made one for granddaughter for the November birthday and another just today for her sister for Christmas. This is the tutorial

that I modified slightly to make theirs. I used a girls long-sleeved T-shirt from Walmart for my base.

Twirly Skirts in action

I have not been good about posting to my blog. Here is one of the twirly skirts in action.

Twirly Skirts Pattern

Several people have asked me about my pattern for the twirly skirts. I usually direct them to Ruth's Blog @ http://sewchic.blogspot.com/ to take a look at her pattern but my pattern is for smaller girls in the 5-8 size range so it might be helpful to see this pattern, too.

This is a picture of the pattern. I placed it on my 1" gridded cutting board so you could get an idea of the measurements. You might be able to see where I shortened it by about 1" at the top. It seemed to be a little too long above the flare. The smaller one is for my 5 yo DGD and the larger one is for my 7 yo DGD. It's an evolving pattern! I serged the elastic on for the waistband then turned it over and top stitched it.

Oh and I cut the pattern out of the soil separator from Lowes/Home Depot.

DGD Made a Twirly Skirt

Last week 7 yo DGD came to sew. I had the fabric for her to make a twirly skirt. She is making herself a twirly skirt here. There are 8 gores/panels in the skirt and she did a great job stitching them together. I helped her finish it by serging on the elastic and using the hem foot to put a tiny shirt tail hem in it. She hasn't tried the serger yet but she can control the sewing machine quite well. She actually made two of these that day. She wore one of them home.

Blindstitch hemmer

My 110 volt foot control for my blind stitch machine finally came on Thursday. I tried it immediately just to see if it would run and it did. Today I tried it out for a hem. After two broken needles and a little of this #$%^ to try to get a new one in and get it threaded I achieved success!! Here is a close up of the hem. Not bad, huh?

I made DGD a dress from a cut out panel that a friend had given me and hemmed it with the new hemmer. It worked well. I did have to adjust the "bite" and the tension some. The thread kept breaking and the needled broke twice. It really is a bear to get rethreaded. The holes in those needles are very small and the angle at which you come at it is not direct. I makes for some tedious threading.

Also the dress was too short as printed on the panel so I separated the yellow from the checked and inserted the blue piece for more length. The one I made earlier for the younger DGD was long enough. It is pictured in an earlier post. This is the completed sundress.