Summer Plans and Elsewhere

Thanks to all of you who stopped by to say Hi during the 35th Anniversary celebration. Today starts the Sew-op Summer Break. We've had a great year so far with Basic Sewing, Mending Monday, Basic Knitting and Rag Rugs. And there has been lots of activity in the Open Studio hours. We have great plans for when we reopen in the fall, but to keep you in the sewing/crafting frame of mind, Rachel and I are going to be posting here every Monday until September.

By way of introduction, I'm Jennifer. I've been with the sew-op since it began and in addition to keeping this blog running I teach the Mending Mondays and The Stretch classes. My mother taught me to sew when I was a girl and I've sewed off and on ever since. I've made dance formals and bridesmaid dresses, copied current fashion, sewed little girl dresses, extended my daughter's pants, and sewed on more buttons than I can count. I love refashioning: looking at something and seeing the possibilities. Someday I'd like to make a quilt and I have a bunch of my daughter's old clothes in a box waiting for that day. I also enjoy knitting and paper crafts. I am grateful to the scrapbooking craze for creating so many lovely papers, influencing fabric design and helping ordinary products be pretty as well as useful but I have no interest in actually scrapbooking.

For my starting post I'm just going to point you towards a few things elsewhere that have caught my eye:

A pillow case is an easy beginner project. All straight lines and no pattern needed but you create something beautiful and useful that will make you smile with pride every time you see it. There are plenty of tutorials on the web but I'll point you to this one with happy prints.

Betz White is one of my favorite sewists and pattern makers and I love these buckets. They're great for recycling old jeans and other fabrics.

And finally, take a peek into Sew Mama Sew's Summer Archives for some cute summer tutorials. The site is in the middle of a Summer Sewing theme with lots of great tutorials and prizes.

That's it for now. Rachel will be posting here next week and I hope you'll stop by.