Sewing swag

My old Brother Project Runway sewing machine died. It died a horrible grinding death. It was only a couple years old and it just couldn't take the daily sewing. I've been wanting a new one for a while but I figured you do really get what you pay for so I wanted to wait till I was in a position to buy a good one. I found the Singer 9960 Quantum Stylist on Amazon at 53% off and I fell in love. It does everything I need an more. The only thing that disappointed me was that the lettering you can embroider is not changeable. Meaning, it's only one size, like half an inch tall. Its really only good for making tags or a little bit of script. It also came with no less than like 15 feet. It has a foot for everything you can think of and some I couldn't. I can't wait to try out the walking foot too!

Anyway, I'm working up a quick apron as a birthday present for a dear friend. The polka dot colors and the coral band are colors she is using to decorate her cottage so I think it will be a fun and whimsical apron to wear around. I did a sample tag I wanted to include with her name and the year. I still need to work out the spacing I think.

I also wanted to show the way I do gathers. I find doing a basting stitch and pulling the threads together is just awful. The threads snap and you have to start over, or the gathers end up being uneven. I do a wide zig zag stitch on regular tension and sew over a piece of dental floss (don't laugh, you know you have a hundred little floss containers floating around!) or in this case a piece of cheap embroidery floss. Just sew slow enough so that you don't sew over the floss (of either variety). Then you hold onto one floss end (or wrap it around a pin) and push the fabric into gathers using the other piece of floss. It's amazingly fast and always even. It's also very easy to adjust the gathers if you over gather the fabric. Nothing snaps, it's looks cleaner and you can even pull the floss out once the gathers are sewn over. I think I'm going to try out a nifty decorative stitch on the waistband in a grey thread. Might as well right?!