When You Can't Sew...Spend Some Dough

It's been a busy week... although I can't really remember why but I'm sure it was really big AND important... so I didn't get to do much sewing until the last couple days.   But I was not idle.  I went back to Joann's for sheer fabric to go with the curtains.  I also got curtain rods.  So now the ball is in Mister's court.  He needs to put up the rods before I get started.  In the past I have had the curtains done before  the rods were hung, but something always went wrong and the rods couldn't go where I had envisioned, and I usually ended up with high-water drapes.  Not this time!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Then I decided my tatting bag really was too small and that I was going to go ahead and make a new one.  The final straw was when my crochet hooks poked through the side of the bag one day.  So I picked some fabric from my stash (sunk cost) and got some satin cord (nominal expense) and sulky thread (bam! there's the money).  Sulky thread is not cheap, but it will go a long way and I got ecru, a good basic color (back to frugality).  Here are the fabrics I picked.

I cut two large circles (22 inches in diameter) of the pink dotted and one smaller circle (16 inch diameter) each of the floral and the pink check.  I also cut a circle of  fusible fleece (8 inch diameter) which will give the bottom body and shape.  I had added about an inch to all the diameters, except the fleece, to account for the amount which the serger would cut off.

Then I serged the two pink dotted circles together and the floral and check together.  I used the rolled hem stitch with regular thread in the right needle and the lower looper and the sulky thread in the upper looper.  So I can remember, the tension on the lower looper was 7 and it was 4 on everything else.  I also slowed the feed to .7.  The edges look pretty nice.  I like the shine of the sulky thread.  I would have liked them to be fuller and tried to use woolly nylon in the upper looper but I couldn't get the tension set right and got frustrated from picking the thread out of the machine and starting over.  But next time...

 

I fused the fleece to the pink plaid which will be the floral's lining in the bag.  That's where I knocked it off for the day, so I'll just say: To Be Continued...hopefully soon!