Hush Hush!

I have been working on a little "something something" lately. I can't mention it nor describe it because it just happens to be a Christmas present. *cue all friends and family into worry mode*. However, as I go through this project I've learned a few things that I just couldn't miss writing down.

First of all - I found my favorite pattern, by far.

Not the best picture, but if I got any further away from it, I would have given away the secret! As soon as I saw the pattern, I knew I had to do something with it. It's your best guess - is it a Salvation Army find? Is it something I already owned? Or is it just a piece of regular ol' fabric? You shall see after December 25th!

So while I was sewing up my Christmas gift, I had an absolute crisis.

 

Yeah - these right here? These should not have had to be used. Alas, they were. Here's the story: I was watching a YouTube video that said "go ahead and sew right over your pins". Mind you, this is something that I've done before so I went about my business and pinned up my Christmas gift (yes, with my usual 10-20 more pins than actually needed. I really need to quit that habit) and started to sew. About 15 sewed-over pins later - CRISIS. My needle hit the pin. As a result, the needle bent in half, jamming itself inside my machine. Yes, you read that right. Inside. The only thing I could see was the colored little head. And I was a bad little blogger because I didn't get a picture of it. To be fair, pictures weren't the first thing on my mind.

 

After staring in amazement for a few minutes (mumbling "seriously? that just happened?), I had to figure out what to do. So... I went into panic mode - totally rational. My first step was attempting to drag my husband away from his video games. When that didn't happen instantaneously, I grabbed the above needlenose pliers. I also pulled out every piece of paper that I owned in my craft room in search of the booklet that came along with my machine. Then I grabbed the pin and pulled. Really hard. Luckily, I didn't break anything but the metal foot thing on the machine continued to get in my way and I wasn't able to pull straight up. Then I actually took a look at the booklet, and didn't it show me how to take that foot off.

 



Once I got it off, I just pulled really hard and out came the pin. Luckily, once I started sewing again, there were no side effects and nothing was broken. I have a feeling that I struck lucky on this one, so from now on I'm certainly pulling out pins before it goes through the "feed dog" - yup, learned that from the book that came with the machine.

In the end, I got the Christmas gift about halfway done, and hoping to get it done in the next week if I keep plugging away at it.

Up next: I have a Christmas party on the 15th and I have some awesome purple Nine West shoes that I've been dying to debut ever since I bought them. I think another Salvation Army Trip is in order. This time, I have an idea to create a whole new dress using a few different pieces. We'll see how it goes!

Also found a neat fellow blog (this one much more popular) that is just like taking a Home Ec course - but a real one, not the Minerva-style one we had; we learned how to write checks and organize the teachers office.  If you're interested, here's the link. I'm certainly going to check it out. I'll be a pro before you know it!