I am so excited that we are now carrying Colette Patterns! This amazing pattern line is designed by Sarai Mitnick in Portland, OR. Sarai has been sewing clothing for 12 years and she developed Colette Patterns to help others create their own signature clothing. Visit her personal blog, Sweet Sassafras, for amazing sewing tutorials and inspiration!

From their website comes this beautiful mission statement:
“Colette Patterns’ mission is to help you create clothing that feels both beautiful and personal. While it’s all too easy to find cheap, cute, disposable clothing meant to be worn for weeks or months and then discarded, making your own clothing is an entirely different experience. It’s something cherished, something chosen, something entirely you. These patterns are designed to be made into clothes that you will love forever. They are timeless, beautiful designs that can be made in a variety of fabrics to suit the season. They are wearable, practical, and pretty.”

Colette Patterns come with full instructions, and are available in sizes 0 to 18.

StitchCraft shop remodel!, originally uploaded by queen puff puff.

Well, it only took a year but I finally got the new shelving that I have been wanting for ages. And look at all the empty space there is that is just waiting to be filled up with new fabrics (which will be arriving in April).

Also, if you look closely you may notice some new patterns. More about those later!

Handbags 101 Class, originally uploaded by StitchCraft.

Coming up next Saturday is our popular Handbags 101! Ever wanted to make your own cute handbag? Then this is the class for you sugar! In this class you will make a pattern and sew a handbag of your own fabulous design! All sorts of little tricks and secrets to making a professional looking handbag will be covered. You will learn how to make and adjust handbag patterns, how to use fusibleinterfacing to make bags stiff, tips on choosing fabrics & trims, about different types of closures and handles plus sewing and pressing tips.

Saturday, March 20th
12pm to 4pm
$48

Only 2 spaces left!

Petaluma Downtown Craft Mart Vendors, originally uploaded by queen puff puff.

Check out all the amazing vendors we have lined up for the Petaluma Downtown Craft Mart!

One Hour Dress Tutorial, originally uploaded by queen puff puff.

You can make this dress in about an hour using elastic thread to create shirring (soft gathers) which will add shaping. Elastic thread is super easy to work with but does take a little practice to get right. Definitely practice on some scrap fabric to get the hang of it.

First, figure out how long you want the dress to be and cut 2 lengths of fabric that length. Stitch them together along one side to make one big wide piece of fabric that is your length and 88″ wide (for 45″ wide quilting cotton). Go ahead and finish this seam by either serging, pinking or zig zagging. Now hem the top and bottom edges. You can do a rolled hem on a regular sewing machine, a rolled hem on a serger or any sort of small hem you want. (You just don’t want lose very much length.)

Now on to the elastic thread! Elastic thread only comes in white or black but that’s OK because you only use it in the bobbin so you’ll never see it anyway. You have to hand wind the elastic thread onto your bobbin and you want to wind it with a bit of tension. How tight you wind it will determine how much it gathers your fabric. So if you wind it really tight you’ll have really gathered or shirred fabric.

Lengthen your stitch length to about 3mm and adjust your tension to 5 (but play around this a bit on your scrap). Load your bobbin and stitch some practice rows. The fabric should start gathering up as you stitch. If it’s not then the thread either got wound too loose, your top tension is too loose or your bobbin tension is too loose. If it gathers too much, then tension is too tight.

When everything looks good, you are ready to move on to your dress. You want to stitch 2 to 3 parallel rows of shirring stitches across the top edge of your dress. Make the rows about 1/2″ apart and start them a 1/2″ from the top edge. It’s helpful to mark your rows on the fabric with tailor’s chalk or an air soluble fabric marker.

Now hold the dress up to and figure out where your natural waist is. Now do 4-6 rows of gathered stitches at the waist that are each 1/2″ apart. Your dress should be fitted above and below the bust creating an hourglass shape.

Finally, you are going to stitch the other side seam and finish the seam the same way you finished the first side seam. Voila! You’re done!

Your serger is great for sewing seams on knits and stretch fabrics and also for finishing seam allowances neatly. But it can do other things too! One of my favorite uses for my serger is to do rolled hems. A rolled hem is were the machine folds the fabric under a tiny bit and then stitches it. You will frequently see this around the edges of napkins and tablecloths but also on a lot of knit clothing, You may have seen rolled hems done on a standard machine but this is MUCH faster and easier!

All sergers are different but the basics are the same. I’ll walk you through the steps.

Here’s a serger set up for standard serging. Do you see that stitch finger just above and right of the foot? You want to disengage that. On most sergers, you simply pull a switch forward to slide the finger forward and out of the way. For other sergers the stitch finger is attached to the needle plate and you switch to a rolled hem plate. Be sure to check your manual.

First thing, disengage or remove the upper knife. Usually this is as easy as turning a knob. Next, I pull the red switch forward to switch from S for standard to R for rolled.

Next, shorten your stitch length to R (again, for Rolled. Clever, huh?) which is basically 1 1/2.

With your fabric face up, slide it under the presser foot ad start stitching. You see how the fabric folds under the threads stitch over the edge. (FYI, I just use 3 threads for this, no need for the 2nd needle thread).

Here’s a view from the wrong side. The right side view is up top. That’s it! Very simple. You can try other variations likes shortening the stitch even more to create a marrow edge or stretch the fabric to create a lettuce edge.

The Titus Village Blouse, originally uploaded by queen puff puff.

We have another new class coming up in August. It’s the Village Blouse by the popular Titus Patterns from Berkeley. It’s a super cute peasant style blouse with raglan sleeves, a keyhole neckline and and elastic shirring on the sleeve hems. You’ll learn lots of new skills like:
1. how to make your own bias tape
2. working with elastic thread for gathering
3. how to set a sleeve
4. how to bind a neckline

Come join us on Wednesday nights, August 19th and 26th from 6:00 pm to 8:30pm.

Heads up! There is summer sale going on in the Maker Shed. Craft books and kits are majorly clearance priced. My favorite crafty business book, Craft, Inc. is marked down to $12.00 from $16.95!!! What a score!

And Susan’s Beal’s Bead Simple Vintagesque Necklace Kits are marked at a mere $5.00!

Also, Chronicle Books is having their summer sale too! 35% off with the coupon code FRIENDS at checkout through Aug 5 - along with free shipping with minimum purchase.

Today’s events are just incredible and awe inspiring. StitchCraft will be closed today as I (and the rest of the world) am glued to the tube watching the inauguration. So proud to be an American!

Well now, the rest of 2008 slipped away in a blur & here we are in 2009. I was a slacking blogger during the end of last year and promise to work on that in the new year. We have tons of new and exciting classes planned for this year at StitchCraft. One that I am looking forward to is the Amy Butler Messenger Bag class that is happening this Saturday.

Perfect for guys and girls! You learn how to put in a magnetic snap, insert zippers and more! There are still a couple of spaces left so call or email to reserve your spot!

Also, starting February we will be offering serger classes! We’ve had so many requests but never had enough sergers to be able to hold a group class. But we now have 3 sergers available for use and the first Serger Basics class will be Saturday, February 14th. Look for all sorts of classes using knit fabrics to hit the schedule in March. I’m thinking T-shirts, dresses, panties and lingerie!