Could it be this easy? Just add a knob to the hand wheel? I didn’t know, but the motor doesn’t work any more, so there was nothing to lose by trying. I drilled a hole in the hand wheel and attached a bit of dowel with a screw. Voila, a modern zigzag hand crank sewing […]
My Homemade Hand Crank Singer 403A Read More »
It’s about as simple, basic and easy as a sewing pattern can get. Free pdf to print at home. Free pinafore dress pattern with modest neckline and long armholes. Adult woman/misses size. This is a multi-size pattern I made up several years ago. Nowadays I think I made the sizing more generous than it needs
Jumper Dress Pattern for Women Read More »
Here’s a great project from a reader named Susan. She wanted to sew a sushi pillow as a gift for her grandson, and happened across my spirals page while looking for ideas. I had no idea “sushi pillow” was a thing, but when I googled for it, it looks like many people have made one.
Sushi Cushion to Sew Read More »
From May 2009. I’m putting it back because it is still one of my favorite stories! I went to the free swap at the library, bringing my bags of old junk and expecting some other, fresher and thus more fun junk in return. I did not expect a Pfaff sewing machine to be sitting on
My New Pfaff Sewing Machine Read More »
Dramatic black, white and red music-themed fabric chosen by a musician. I only have a couple photos while it was in progress. Hopefully one day I’ll have a photo of it being worn! This was made from the patterns on the spirals page.
Music-Themed Spiral Skirt Read More »
Here’s a full length spiral dress for a grown-up woman! …with wolves on it. Long ago, I found a spiral dress at a second hand shop. It was too small for me, but I was so fascinated with those seams going round and round that I bought it anyway. Eventually I decided it was silly
Adult Size Spiral Dress Read More »
Ruffles! A huge, swirly overload of fluttering spiral. How to do this? We need volume of fabric. As usual, I started moderate before going more extreme. The first attempt with a 4″ curved gore produced a conservative A-line skirt shape. Simple. Just add more stripes. The delightful “Peppermint Swirl” gave me the idea of gathering
Child Size Spiral Dress Read More »
Easy and quick homemade scrapwork potholders make great DIY gifts! You don’t need a pattern and they’re FREE to make out of fabric scraps. Most of the instructions I found for quilted potholders use bias binding, like commercial potholders. But it’s so hard to sew bias binding on straight. Why not cut the backing larger
Quilt As You Go Potholders Read More »
Free printable peasant dress pattern for adult females. (The word for grown up girls is “women”. I dislike equating “women = fat” and “misses = thin”. Unmarried women come in all sizes, and neither maturity nor marital status doom one to be overweight. There’s a big fat opinion.) Simple pattern in PDF format for 8.5
Women’s Peasant Dress Pattern Read More »
All patterns are Adobe pdf for free download and printing. They print out onto sheets of 8.5 x 11 printer paper which you tape together then cut out. Be sure they print out at 100% size not “scale to fit” the paper. The skirts can be made any size you need by using whatever number
Spiral Skirts and Dresses Read More »
It’s just a basic skirt shape with some lines marked. Years ago I cut something like this out of heavy paper using a string for a compass, and it’s come in handy dozens of times for all kinds of applications. I thought I’d share it in case someone finds it useful. Here it is as
Simple Segment Skirt Pattern Piece Read More »
This is about as medieval-looking as I need to be, and I’m sharing my pattern here in case it comes in handy for anyone else. I read the instructions about how to cut a medieval t-tunic dress the authentic historical way, but my attempts didn’t come out very well. I would have had to adjust
Medieval Dress Pattern for Women Read More »
A great idea, and I looked around the internet for instructions, but nothing really clicked and gave me a clear sense that I was ready to get started. I had to mull it over for a couple days. When patchwork quilting was first explained to me as a child, I thought it was a really
Quilt As You Go – String Patchwork Read More »