Holiday Sewing

One of the blogs that inspires me is the Renegade Seamstress. A few weeks ago I found her post on refashioning sweaters into cute Christmas Tree decorations and knew this was my next project. I thought these would be a good little decoration for the house, and also as a quick gift for friends.

I visited my local Goodwill store and found a bunch of sweaters that would have been perfect, and wound up with a sweater-set in some kind of synthetic, and a traditional crew neck pullover in a really nice wool. $9.21 total cost for the three pieces. I told one of the clerks what I was doing with the sweaters and she was horrified that I was destroying a perfectly good garment. In retrospect, one could make about 4 trees from one of these sweaters and sell them at a craft fair for probably $15 each. Now I’m thinking of next November’s craft fairs … hmmmmm 

The trees were really quick to cut, sew and stuff. My first three trees were made from the fuzzy orange and pink fabric, which dropped thread and fuzz everywhere. But that’s okay.

I think they look pretty cute. What do you think?

I seriously considered keeping the wool sweater intact however close inspection revealed that moths had gotten to the wool. So I don’t feel any guilt about hacking into the fabric. 

There are 8 projects on my little board, and I’d like to get to all of them before Christmas. So far I’ve gotten through 4 projects, and I have maybe 10 hours of sewing time left. I don’t think everything will get done! How fast can I sew?

I’ve had some sewing machine issues which have been frustrating  and time consuming. Last Sunday I spent over four full hours fussing with the threading of the serger, and then trying to solve an issue with my regular machine. Apparently I put a burr in the bobbin case, and I’m also using the wrong bobbins! I feel like a bit of a dolt now. But I did get the serger threaded, and feel very glad that I kept my old machine so I have something to work with until I have time to fix the other machine. 

Right now I’m taking a break to watch You Tube videos on how to do the burrito method for a little top in poplin fabric, then I’ll tackle the sewing in the morning. My inability to read instructions meant ripping out serged seams. Argh! The season of short deadlines.