Getting a Handle on my Fabric Stash

Hi Y'all, Amylove here. I wish I would have taken a "before" of my fabric stash. It was completely out of hand and an eye sore. I grabbed this photo from one of my YouTube videos to give you an idea of how bad it was.

 Seeing this mess did not inspire me to be creative, it stressed me out. Since our youngest daughter graduated from college in December and moved out, I decided to move my craft room upstairs where her room used to be. She even left behind this chest of drawers!

Seemed like the perfect way to organize my fabrics!! There are still two baskets on top full of fabric scraps. This is how the drawers are arranged.

The top  houses those remnants that I cannot resist purchasing....lol

Next is my Shabby fabrics! These are the ones I use the most!!

                           Then we have the darker fabrics. Then I threw the flannel in the next one.

                      In the near future I will be moving the remnants to the bottom and storing my beautiful       Love my Fabrics in the top drawer. This looks so much nicer and peaceful. I love my new fabric storage, but I miss my daughter like crazy!! Looking forward to sharing my fabric creations with you soon!

Embroidery Floss Storage Tip

Hello! Tessa Buys here with a quick storage tip for embroidery floss.

When I sew, it's usually by hand and with embroidery floss. After putting up with floss that got tangled, slipped out of its wrapper, or turned into a knotted mess, I decided to wrap my floss around clothespins.

Simply pinch the end of your floss in the clothespin, then wind up and down the clothespin, securing the other end by pinching it. This method keeps all but the last few inches from getting kinked, tangled, or knotted. Plus, my sewing basket looks very pretty filled with the colorful clothespins.

I hope this tip helps you to keep your floss organized and ready for sewing! Thanks for visiting today. Tessa

Winter Fox Banner

Hi! My name is Candy Spiegel. I am a paper-craft instructor and designer in Michigan. When my friend showed me some of the new fabrics offered from Love My Fabrics, I fell in love -- literally. I told her I wished it was paper so I could play with it (I cannot sew). She assured me that I could do something with it -- even if that meant ironing it together. And, to prove her point, she sent me a square to play with and asked me to be a guest designer.

I loved this fabric even more in person. So much so that I bought an old sewing machine at Goodwill and asked another friend to teach me how to sew so I could make this banner.

I started by tracing a chipboard template with a Sharpie onto the fabric, some muslin and fusible interfacing. I then ironed the fabric onto the interfacing.

Then, I sewed the muslin on the back. It took me a few tries to get my lines straight and I need more practice to get the edges even, but for my first try, I was pretty impressed.

After the pieces were sewn together, I folded over the top and stitched it to create a pocket for the string to go through.

Finally, I frayed the edges. I was impressed that not one string came off of the fabric while cutting, ironing or sewing it, but I was easily able to use my finger to fray the edges when I was ready.

I did not want to cover the foxes, so I left my panels plain -- letting the foxes speak for themselves.

I taped the end of the twine to a skewer and used that to feed the twine through the little pockets I made. In between each panel, I placed a button or some dangling beads.

I love my little fox banner and am looking forward to purchasing more fabric from Love My Fabrics to continue to practice my new love of sewing!

Thank you for sharing my first attempt at sewing with me. Visit my blog at candyscraps.com to see what else I am learning.

Thread Storage

Hi everyone, Steph Ackerman here today with a quick post of my thread storage.

I picked up this beauty a long time ago, but I couldn't tell you where!!!

It holds 58 spools of thread, 59 if you count the one on top.

From here, I can find any color thread I need.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Steph

Organizing Trims on a Budget

Hi fellow crafters! I am on a mission to organize my craft room. I always seem to get this urge at the beginning of a new year. I thought I would share with you one of my biggest organizing issues and that is my ribbons and trims. They are out of control!!! I searched many different options on organizing this mess, and found some wonderful options. I don't know about you, but I am a crafter on a budget, so I had to keep that in mind when coming up with a plan. This was my basket O'trims…..lol. What a mess!

 This was so ridiculous, most of the time they would just get all tangled together and drive me crazy! Here is how I tackled this. I purchased these baskets at Walmart. I then purchased some wooden dowels. You can get them at Walmart, craft stores, or home improvement stores. Look at how organized and pretty they are now. I just love it!

Not all of my ribbon is on spools and I also have a lot of remnants. This how I stored those. I just literally had them crammed in a jar or two, or three. This made it very difficult to find what I needed.

I found this wonderful box filled with holes at the dollar tree! Now I can just spin the box around and see everything I have. This is an amazing improvement and makes crafting easier and more fun!

I love how these new systems are working out for me. Now on to the rest of the craft room!!

Please visit my blog to see my other creations.

Amylove's Crafty Kingdom

Keeping it Crafty,

Amylove

Love That Technique: French Seams

Greetings and Salutations, fabric lovers! Scraps, here, with one of my favorite sewing techniques: the French seam.

French seams are used most often to enclose raw edges of a fabric that is prone to fraying but they are also the perfect finish to something where the seams will be visible but where adding a lining is less than desirable, like a small pouch or bag or even a sheer skirt overlay.

It's a very simple technique, though you may want to allow a bit more seam allowance when you cut out your patterns to not come up short in the end. I'm prepared a little demo for you, making some small, drawstring gift bags out of organza.

1. Hem the tops of your bag with two straight lines of stitches to create a channel for the drawstring. (I've done this along the long edges of a strip of fabric because I want to make a lot of bags at once.)

2. Fold your fabric, wrong sides together, and sew a narrow seam up both sides--this is step one of a French seam.

3. Trim the excess to about 1/8" before turning the bags right sides together and turning all seams out as far as they'll go. Pressing can help, but on delicate fabrics, finger-pressing and pinning are best.

4. Sew along the previous seams, enclosing the trimmed edges in the process. That's your French seam! Once you return your bag to the right-side-out, you've got a nice, neat seam that you won't have to fear snagging on contents or fraying and making a mess.

5. To finish the bags, turn them right side out again and cut small slits on the outer layer of fabric at each corner to pass your ribbon or thread through. Using a tapestry needle, string your ribbon or thread through the channel, beginning and ending at the same side of the bag, and knot the ends. You can use a single ribbon and tie it to close, or overlap two strings going in opposite directions to make a bag that closes when you pull both sides.

Wishing you creative days,
Jennifer ~Scraps~ Vanderbeek

Tips for Die Cutting Fabric

Hey guys, Katie here! Today I wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite tips for die cutting fabric on electronic cutting machines as well as what settings I use.

I have 2 die cut machines, the Silhouette Portrait and the Brother Scan N Cut and it has taken a bit of practice to figure out what works and what doesn't when it comes to cutting fabric.

Here are the settings I use for the Silhouette:

Blade: 4, Speed: 5, Thickness: 33

Here are the settings I use for the Brother Scan N Cut:

Blade: 6, Speed: 3, Pressure: 0

I've found that I have to have either really stiff fabric or have something like heat n bond on the back of the fabric to cut it. I recently found a product called Terial Magic. It's a spray you can use to stiffen your fabric and it works wonderfully with die cutting.

Another tip I have is that you always have a separate cutting blade for fabric. Just like scissors, paper will dull your blade, so be sure to have 1 blade for paper and one blade for fabric.

What are your favorite tips? Have you cut fabric out on a diecut machine?