Different Crafts You Can Make with Sewing Machines

There are so many things that you can make with your own sewing machine. You can have hours of fun creating new things and designing your own fashions. It does not matter if you are a little girl or an adult, you can do anything you want with a sewing machine.

Many people make their own clothes with their machine. Lets face it clothes are expensive and some of the new fashions of today can be so tempting, buy we cannot afford the prices. There is a way that we can afford these great looking clothes and have some fun too. You can buy patterns at most clothing stores for less then a pack of socks. Once you have the pattern, you will be able to create the piece of clothing you have been wanting for less then you would buy it.

Some of us are very creative and we like to make and design our own clothes. There are so many ideas that you can get from looking at magazines and in catalogs. Once we get the ideas in our head, we can then start designing and creating our own fashions. Imagine the fun that you can have on a rainy afternoon or when there is nothing else to do. You can save yourself some money and learn a lot at the same time.

You do not have to be perfect to use a sewing machine. You can start out just playing around. The first thing that you can do is start using your sewing machine by fixing a rip or making doll clothes. Starting out with small things on a sewing machine will get you ready for the bigger items and get you prepared to do almost anything on a sewing machine.

Once you have practiced on your sewing machine and have all the skills to use it, you can then teach your friends how to get in on the fun. You can have friends over and show them the things that they will need to know to get them started with creating new designs on a sewing machine. You and your friends can spend great quality time together while creating new designs and having fun at the same time.

What are you waiting for? Go out, get a sewing machine today, and find out what all the fuss is.

For more information on sewing machines, please visit: http://www.1-sewing-machines.info

Hoopless Machine Embroidery: How To Do It

All machine embroidery requires a stabilizer applied to the back of the fabric to prevent stretching, waving, pulling and skewing the design, but hooping fabric can be a frustrating challenge. And once the fabric is hooped correctly you often end up with dreaded hoop marks. The answer? Don't hoop the fabric; use a sticky stabilizer and hoop it, not the fabric, and eliminate frustration and hoop marks.

What is Sticky Stabilizer?

Sticky stabilizer is a machine embroidery stabilizer that has a slightly waxy paper coating, called the 'release side', over a self-adhesive, non-woven sticky backing. Some brands have a grid on the release side that comes in handy for positioning and marking.

When to Use the Sticky Technique

The hoopless sticky technique works best on smaller, less stitch intensive designs and on small areas such as pockets, edges, ribbons, cuffs; in other words, those areas that are difficult to hoop anyway. The hoopless sticky/float technique is by no means for all machine embroidery projects but it is a machine embroidery hooping option and finding what works best for you is a matter of good ol' trial and error.

Mastering the Sticky Technique
1. Trim the sticky stabilizer to about an inch wider and longer than your hoop.

2. Hoop the sticky with the release side up. It should be secure in the hoop: Tight, flat and without puckers or bubbles.

3. Remove the waxy paper coating from the sticky inside the hoop by first very gently scoring it with something like an X-Acto(R) knife or thread pick, then peeling it off.

4. Use your hoop's grid template to place marks on the stabilizer to locate the straightline center and right and left edges. Be sure to place your grid gently over the sticky with the bowed side up. Otherwise the sticky will do its job and grab onto your template.

5. Now lay out your design's placement on your fabric or garment, again marking the straightline center and right and left edges. Important: Place these marks on the backside of the fabric.

6. Grasp your fabric from the backside on the marks to make a gentle fold and, lining up the fabric marks with the marks on the sticky, carefully lay the fabric, backside down, on the sticky.

7. Smooth out the fabric, ensuring it is flat and secure on the sticky all around.

8. Now lock the fabric to the part of the stabilizer that is hanging over the edge of the hoop (the part with the paper still on) just to make sure it doesn't get caught on anything while embroidering. I often just pin it but double stick tape works great, too.

9. Mount the hoop onto your machine and 'float' a layer of stabilizer (tear-away, cut-away, or whatever type is recommended for your fabric) between the embroidery hoop and the needle plate.

10. Push the button and embroider it!

11. When your absolutely perfect design is finished, remove the hoop from your machine and remove the floated stabilizer.

12. All you have to do now is slowly peel the embroidered fabric off the sticky.

Machine embroidery just doesn't get any easier or more fun than this. And no hoop burns!

Deb Schneider is an embroidery design digitizer offering her machine embroidery designs, Redwork designs and appliques and machine embroidery information on her website: WindstarEmbroidery.com