Kaoru Marie

Another week, another round-up. 1. As if we sewists need another reason to sew and avoid fast fashion. { Medium } 2. Mise-en-place. A phrase associated with chefs and their insane organizational efficiency. Can sewists take a page out of that set-up to become more efficient with our practice? I know I definitely could ( *goes looking for those shears and chalk pen and ruler I was JUST using* ) { Organize Like a Chef//NPR } 3. Charlotte's post this week had me re-thinking the term "handmade" among a handful of other topics. The discussion in the comments is equally good (and I discovered more great sewing blogs!) { Seam Ripped } 4. My head was spinning while reading about all of Brooke's freelance gigs. Costume design sounds so exciting! She also linked to a video " what's in a ballet shoe ". I did pointe for one summer when I was 9 or 10 just to get a taste for it. I never would have been able to hack it as a pro ballet dancer, but I've a...

quilting, quilting, quilting......I don't know what to think about it anymore. I really enjoyed quilting when I first started (maybe because of the newness of it all), but now that I'm really into apparel sewing, quilting has kinda lost its luster. That's not to mean that I don't want to do it ever, but man oh man, there is so much repetition in quilting and it really takes A LOT of patience. Anyway, onto the quilt. You may not believe it after what I just said, but I really did want to make this quilt and I am so glad I did. This quilt is for a very good friend of mine from high school. High School! ....that was so long ago! When I found out earlier in the year she was expecting her first child, I immediately knew I wanted to make her a quilt. Then I found out she was having a boy and I was able to start shopping for fabric, probably THE BEST part of quilting! And seriously, there are some ridiculously cute fabrics out there. I subscribe to Sew Modern 's ...

Bias Binding and Piping from Momen+ I'm going to try something new here. A weekly round-up of sewing related blog posts, articles, and snippets from the internet. I know a lot of us subscribe to a ton (ok, hundreds....maybe thousands??) of blogs and we don't always have the chance to read through every single post. And some of us carefully curate our feed to a select few as not to be overwhelmed. I follow a bunch of blogs through Feedly and I like the "saved for later" feature because it allows me to easily select blog posts that I want to reference later. I know there are so many blogs out there that I haven't heard of so hopefully I link to something new that you may enjoy! 1. Ever seen Spool Blocks and thought, ' how the heck do you sew that ?' Well, check out Rita's tutorial on spool blocks and nine-patch blocks. Every single one of her posts, and especially her tutorials, always makes me want to dig into my stash and get quilting. { Rita//...

I could sense my iron was on the fritz when the digital temp guide wouldn't stop blinking, indicating that it was still heating up. Unfortunately, my cottons never got very crisp in the past month or two. Recently I noticed that whenever I pushed the button to select the next temp level the once loud 'BEEP' was now a feeble, barely noticeable 'beep'. At first I thought my hearing was going bad ('oh for the love of gawd!' I thought), but then I came to my senses and realized my iron was nearing its death. And at the worst possible moment. I was in the midst of making a quilt as a gift for my close friend's first born! A quilt requires many seams. A quilt requires much pressing. A quilt requires high temps to get those seams pressed open! I lugged out my vintage GE iron that I scored for $5 at an estate sale a year ago . I didn't know at that the time whether it worked, but for $5 I figured it would at the very least be an inexpensive decorati...