Clarasita

Currently I store fabrics I inherited from my mom in the garage, in a 5 drawer chest. Fabrics I've purchased recently are in clear plastic tubs under the dining room table. But everything is overflowing. In the next few months, I have 3 plans to correct this. 1) Make circle vests from lots of my inherited fabrics. 2) Clean all fabrics (except delicates) and store in vaccuum space bags so they stay clean and bug free. 3) Move the dresser into the dining room and store cleaned delicates in it. I like to store the fashion fabric, underlining and lining together. Velvets, however, I store in my closet on cardboard rolls placed on hangers. I cover the rolls with terrycloth to avoid disturbing the nap. I cover it with vented plastic wrap to keep it dust-free. I have more fabric than projects. So I keep a small swatch of each in a notebook with my measurements. I take it with me when shopping for clothes, fabrics, or patterns. Now if I could just make myself keep that notebook updated.

I have a 37 year old sewing machine without automatic button holer. No matter how careful I was, my buttonholes were never consistent. So my mom taught me how to make buttonholes using only a zigzag stitch. After carefully marking the buttonhole I zigzag first at the wide edges of the buttonhole with stitch set about 2 1/4 times wider than the stitch width of each planned row of buttonholes fabric edges. Then set stitch width of each buttonhole's edges and zigzag closely two lines of stitches, one on each edge between which you will later cut. Then for a finishing touch, go back to the wider stitch and re-tack each edge. However, I never realized how easy it is to make bound buttonholes, so I'll probably be doing this more instead of sending outfits to the dry cleaners to do this for me. And I can't wait to try hand-stitched, maybe on my Christmas outfit!