All Ready to Make Vinyl Pouches

   I pulled out my zipper stash (15 of them ranging in size from 6" to 16") and some fabric choices to make vinyl pouches.  I probably won't use all of these right away, but I have a nice variety of colors and sizes.  These are my selections:

       Last Saturday I bought some 8 gauge vinyl to make my pouches.  I have never sewn vinyl before.  I know that you should use a teflon presser foot or a roller presser foot to sew vinyl and leather, but I don't have either one of those presser feet.  I did look for a snap on teflon presser foot in JoAnn's Fabrics while I was there, but they did not have any.  I'll be using this tutorial from the Make It and Love It blog that has a great tip about how to prepare your presser foot and needle plate to make sewing vinyl a little easier if you do not have a teflon or roller presser foot for your machine.  The simple instructions for making the pouches are also at this link.  I'll be changing my pouches up a little bit.  I will be attaching my zipper to a fabric top and the bottom half of my pouch will be vinyl.  I'm also thinking about making the pouch with a fabric top and bottom and the middle will be a cool vinyl window.  There are so many possibilities.  We'll see how these come out.

Inspiration Found. Thanks, Lucy.

    I was browsing the web yesterday and looked in at Lucy's Attic24 blog.  Lucy is a brilliant crocheter who loves color, takes beautiful photos, and is super nice about sharing ideas and patterns with her readers.  I had seen the sweet flower heart you see here before but yesterday I realized (light bulb turns on here) that those little flowers would look so cute in a petal pink yarn decorating my bedroom in some way.  With the picture and pattern right in front of me all I had to do was convert the UK crochet terms to US crochet terms (conversion chart on this page), grab my yarn and size G crochet hook and make some of these these little beauties.

  Here are the pink flowers I made using Lucy at Attic 24's pattern.  These were really fun to make.  I finished 16 of them while watching TV last night.  I just have to decide what to do with them.  Thanks, Lucy.

Notes on Purchasing Supplies for My Embroidery Machine

   I wanted to make some notes on my journey into the world of machine embroidery supplies.

   On New Year's Day it took me over two hours to decide what kind of thread I wanted to buy and where I wanted to buy it from.  There a lot of choices of thread and just as many vendors.  I bought an 80 spool variety of polyester thread from Threadart.com.  The price was reasonable and I've read decent reviews about the company's customer service and the products from the members on the Quilting Board.  (The Quilting Board is a free message board found right here).  I spend a lot of time on the Quilting Board learning about all things quilting, which includes embroidery.

   On New Year's Eve I took the time to read all the information in the posts on The Seasoned Homemaker Blog.  She created 30 days of posts to cover a wide range of machine embroidery topics and I learned a lot.

   The most important thing I learned from The Seasoned Homemaker's posts is that I need computer software to import designs from the computer onto my embroidery machine.  I did not know this.  I did some research and I purchased the basic Brother software here at sewingmachinesplus.com.  I did look at the on-line software available on embird and embrillance, but the cost of those was more than I wanted to spend at this time.  I'm trying to resist over spending on supplies before I figure out how much I like doing machine embroidery.

   I placed an order for extra Schmetz titanium needles for this machine with an ebay seller.  

   I will be placing my order on Amazon for pre-wound bobbins, extra empty bobbins, and medium weight tear away stabilizer on Sunday.  I understand that Walmart.com also carries stabilizers and thread.  The prices for both are supposed to be very good.  So I may be trying Walmart.com as a vendor for stabilizers and other supplies.

   That should take care of my machine embroidery supply needs for a while.  As soon as I get my stabilizer I will start to play with my new embroidery machine.

    I decided on a name for my Brother PE 770 embroidery machine.    She will be called Myrna.  I could say she was named after Myrna Loy (one of my favorite actresses), but she is actually named after the sheep that was on the birthday card my DD gave me when she presented me with the machine.  The sheep, Myrna, had her front half sheered and her bottom half wooly and the caption on the top of the card read:  On a dare, Myrna goes topless.  And inside the card it said:  Expose yourself to plenty of birthday fun!  You can see the card right here.  It is a really cute card.

    I haven't started quilting my Pretty in Pink quilt just yet.  I'll be working on that tomorrow and Sunday.   See you soon.