Sushi Cushion to Sew

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…

My New Pfaff Sewing Machine

Pfaff tiptronic 2030

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…

Music-Themed Spiral Skirt

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…

Adult Size Spiral Dress

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…

Crocheting for Relaxation

Yarn is a very good thing for PTSD symptoms  🙂 Here’s my latest scrapghan project. No, that’s the old one!  I started that long ago, at the other place, and had worked on it in little bits for so many…

A Better Spiral Crochet Granny Square

I found lots of ideas that were cool and artistic, but they seem to be more complex, more work and less “granny”. The beauty of the granny square is its utter simplicity. I wanted that same classic shape, only in…

Child Size Spiral Dress

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.…

Barbie Body Types to 2008

Summary of all the different Barbie body types up to 2008 (when I made this page). It was after that when they came out with the Fashionistas tall, petite, curvy etc. Classic / Vintage / Original / Traditional shape –…

Quilt As You Go Potholders

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…

Women’s Peasant Dress Pattern

Free printable peasant dress pattern for adult females. The word for grown up girls is “women”. That word is not a code for fat. Age and marital status do not doom one to being overweight, any more than unmarried “misses”…

Round Knit Dishcloth Pattern

Cool round doily style cotton dishrag or mat, written out to be ultra simple for non-knitters like me I saw someone making one of these and got stars in my eyes. She was kind enough to write down the instructions…

Mailbag

Photos of finished projects that people sent in to the old version of this site. I'm uploading them again here because they're all so artistic!

Free Patterns for Tyler Wentworth

I made a bunch of outfits all at once when I needed them for gifts, and here I’m going to share the patterns. These are for the 16″ Tyler Wentworth along with Brenda Starr and many other Tonner dolls. The…

Spiral Skirts and Dresses

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”…