I Heart Gadgets …

… especially gadgets that work! (Blogger's photo uploading over the last few days, on the other hand, not so much. Grrrr.)

This is one of Babylock's single downturn fellers. The 1/4" version, to be exact. I have all three — 1/4", 5/8", and 1". I bought these from my Babylock dealer before I ever stumbled on "the Ebay guy" and his industrial generics. (And those of you with coverstitch machines know what an enabler I've been for him ever since!)

Every so often I consider selling these fellers on Ebay or the PR Classifieds because I really don't use them. But I always stop myself and start thinking, "What if …?" Yesterday, I was very glad I've held onto them.

I was helping DS' girlfriend with some costume sewing (which explains the pink and the pacifier fabric you'll see below). We needed to make ruffles. Miles of ruffles. OK, not miles, but almost 10 yards and the thought of hemming nearly 10 yards of strips made it seem like miles. Usually I take the easy way out when making ruffles and just fold over the strip so it's doubled and no hemming is necessary. But GF had a limited amount of fabric and to get all the ruffles we needed meant we had to cut single layers of strips. And then finish the raw edge. Urgh.

Enter 1/4" downturn feller (with a chorus of Hallelujah in the background). Now I know some of you probably own and have tried various hemmer feet for your sewing machines. And most of you have cursed the day you ever bought it/them. They do work, but they are fiddly and then in the middle of a long hem, you blink, and it goes off track. I feel your pain. ;-) Not so with these fellers. They just plain work and you can blink all you want.

The feller is attached to the bed of the coverstitch machine (here, it's just laying on my sewing table, but you get the idea). The fabric is fed into the turning-under-thingie and the feed dogs move the folded edge under the needles where it gets stitched.



This is the back side, where you can see the turning under happening. (And if you look closely, you can also see the reflection of the vent on my sewing room ceiling!)



This is what the finished ruffle looks like from the top. Yes, there are two rows of stitching at the hem and it's probably not something you'd want on your finest silk blouse, but this is cheap cotton and a costume so I think it looks just fab! And really, it's not like the hem police will ever stop me to issue a citation.



And this is the underside. The raw edge is perfectly and evenly covered by the (ahem) coverstitch. 'Tis a thing o' beauty, ain't she?



After the long strip was hemmed, I ran it through my serger with its gathering foot (another gadget I love) and voila! Perfectly gathered and hemmed ruffles. Minimal effort. And one happy GF.

Sunday Errands

No sewing today, yet. After I'm done typing here, I'm going to head up to the sewing room to finally hem that last Ottobre tee I recently mostly finished, since there's no football game on tonight and I couldn't care less about the World Series. After the hem, I have to sew up yet another pillow that Dani nibbled. Well, same pillow but second nibbling. Sigh. She thinks the throw pillows are just big square doggie toys. Actually, she thinks just about anything is a doggie toy. ;-)

Today was errands and odd jobs day. I left the house early this morning for Costco and the grocery store. After coming home and putting away the haul, it was lunch and then off to the dog park with the whole family. That was nice. There were tons of dogs there today and of course I forgot the camera.

We got back from the dog park around 3 PM and the baking urge struck. I made blueberry muffins, banana nut mini muffins, and 2 batches of brownies. Most of these will be packed up for DH to take on the road this week, although you can see Quality Control has already been sampling the goods.



Speaking of DH … he's making progress on my sewing table. I don't think it will be done tonight, but maybe. He's out putting the final coat of paint on it right now. The photo below shows one coat of primer. After the paint, he'll put the shelves into the middle areas and then we've got to take the top off the current table and attach it to this one. Casters need to be attached to the legs too. If it gets too late, I'll wait until next weekend so I'm not out a cutting table completely. But those shelves are really calling to me. So close …



Keeping DH company in the garage today (and sweeping up the floor with his tail!) was Gizmo. He's doing great and it seems he's forgiven DH for the runover. You'd never know how traumatic his last two weeks were. Our neighbor who found him last week knocked on the door on Saturday to see how Gizmo was doing. She also brought us two mini loaves of pumpkin bread. What a sweet lady! I'm the one who should be bringing *her* the pumpkin bread.



My denims from Fashion Fabrics Club arrived yesterday. The brown is not as heavy as I was hoping, but it's still quite nice and will make pretty pants for the upcoming "winter." It has a subtle striping in the weave which I like. You'll probably need to click the pic to make it large enough to see the detail. The blue is a nice dark denim (but the flash is making it look lighter here), so all in all I think I fared well. It's hard buying denims from FFC since their descriptions are not always very enlightening. To say the least. ;-)



The last "errand" of the day was dinner. Blue cheese burgers requested by DH. These are waiting for the grill. Easy to make and very tasty. Mix the hamburger with ground chipotle pepper, worcestershire sauce, mustard powder, cilantro, black pepper, salt, and a bit of hot sauce. Then form into thin patties. Between pairs of patties, layer crumbled blue cheese and then squoosh the patties together. Yummm! I'm still stuffed and we ate almost 2 hours ago.



All in all a relaxing family weekend. I hope yours was good too!

Puppy Love

This was so cute that I just had to snap the pic and share it right away. All 3 pups snuggled around DS. It's a rainy day here, can you tell?

And looking at them from the other side of the sofa:

Ottobre for October

These Ottobre tees are so fast and easy to sew up that it almost feels like cheating. This one is done except for the bottom hem, which I'll do later tonight. The fabric is from Lucy's Fabrics, but months and months ago and it's been sold out for a long time. Sorry.

I bound the neckline using a 1/2" double-fold binder with my coverstitch machine. Because of the bumps and basting stitches of the center front gathering, this slightly bigger binder worked better than the 3/8" binder I used on the first version, I also used brown thread on top so I didn't get away from the brown completely. ;-)



For this one, I lengthened the short sleeve pattern to 3/4 length, curved the bottom edges and then bound the edge. The end result is a quasi vent and a tiny bit of a bell shape. I like it for something different. This is another tee I won't be able to wear for a while yet, as it's still hitting 90 degrees here during the day. Blech. Enough already.



And now for an abrupt change of topic …

Below is Gizmo, our cat. He's a tough cuss and has got to be on Life #10 by now. Whatever life he's on, he is 16+ human years old and we've had him since he was a kitten. When DS#1 was a toddler and still an only child, he and I picked him out at the horse stables just down the road, where cats run amok and the stable owners are more than happy to send them off to new homes. DS named him Gizmo, after the Gremlins movie character, because he thought our then-new kitten looked like Gizmo the Gremlin.



I didn't mention it earlier because we were all a bit depressed, but DH *very accidentally* ran over Gizmo in our driveway last Saturday (just before DS#2 needed to leave for his Homecoming activities). I took DS#2 in one direction and DH and DS#1 took Gizmo to the ER vet. They both left their cellphones behind so it was a long wait until I heard an update from them.

The vet examined Gizmo and didn't find anything right away. He didn't feel any broken bones or injured internal organs. But Gizmo was very obviously hurt and limping at his hind end quite badly, although he wasn't complaining a bit. Unfortunately, further testing and x-rays were going to cost over $800 and even then, we might not find out anything. So, we decided to bring him home with some pain meds and observe him before making any big decisions.

Gizmo has always been an outside cat. His choice, no matter how much we tried to make him an indoor cat. Probably something in his horse stable genes. He has a "home base" in our garage, where there are food and water dishes and litter box. We set him up in the garage on a blanket and there he stayed for 24 hours. Sometime Sunday night, he managed to limp outside without our knowing. I'm guessing when DH was taking out the trash. Poor DH already felt bad enough.

We looked all over for him on Monday. Our property, the neighbor's property where he would sometimes go for a sneaky bite of her kitties' food, and we walked the dog path a few times. Nothing. No Gizmo. Tuesday came and went and still no Gizmo. Even though he always stayed outside, he never really went too far and we always saw him every night and every morning, for greetings and feedings. Gizmo just never went away overnight. Ever. Until Sunday.

So, we figured he was bidding his final adieu to the world and we probably wouldn't find him. As Wednesday came and went with still no Gizmo, I just knew we wouldn't see him again. He was hurt and weak when he left — how would he ever be surviving these days without food or shelter?

Thursday afternoon, our neighbor knocked on the door. As soon as I saw her, my heart sank because I just knew she was coming to tell me she had found Gizmo's body. But no! Yes, she had found Gizmo but he was most certainly not in kitty heaven. She told us he had been laying next to her back porch all morning and hadn't moved for hours.

DS and I ran over to her yard with a basket and blanket, scooped up Gizmo and carried him back home in the basket. We still had his pain meds so we immediately gave him one pill and then some water and some cat food. He vacuumed up the food immediately and was looking for more. I knew that if he was eating and drinking, he wasn't planning to off himself. So we set him back up in the garage and checked on him every hour or so. He would be on the blanket one time and off another. So he was definitely moving around.

As of today, he's very much improved. He's still limping, but only slightly. He hasn't been back outside since Thursday but he hasn't acted like he's wanted to go either. He seems to know that he needs rest and TLC. The photo above was taken just before I started writing this.

This little old guy is 100% Tough As Nails.

Fully Cooked Onion

(I couldn't resist one more play on the pattern name.)

(Edited to include a new photo.)

I finished the top last night and sewed on the buttons this morning, after a 20-minute dig through my button stash to find suitable candidates. My review is here, and photos are below. I'll take a pic of me wearing the top soon. I snapped a pic of me wearing the top tonight, before I changed into my bake-blueberry-muffins clothes. I've added it below.

I really like this top and the Onion pattern. None of the other Onion patterns are calling to me yet and I have a lot of other garments in the queue, but based on my experience with this one, I definitely recommend Onion. I purchased mine at Shop Onion. The delivery from Denmark was very fast, the price and shipping reasonable, and a downloadable PDF English translation comes with the purchase. (If you're going to order, please note that Maria, the Shop Onion website owner, is on vacation until 29 October so shipping is delayed until her return.)