fabric adventures around town

I visited two fabric stores in town today that I’d never seen before. One smelled like cigarette smoke and burned out vacuum cleaners. I did buy some neat, cotton fabric there and the shop owners were quite friendly. The second shop was a specialty shop for fabrics/notions used in making lingerie and swimwear. The shop owner was not so nice, quite curmudgeonly in fact, and therefore I bought nothing just to prove that I’m the queen curmudgeon in town.

I also went to my regular sewing shop because I needed help learning how to use this narrow hem foot. I tried to use it last night for the first time, but after a couple of hours of trying, I got frustrated and decided to go to a local sewing shop in the morning for some expert assistance.

At the shop, the gentleman who demonstrated how to use a narrow hem foot employed a method of mashing on the foot control and prodding the fabric through the machine. It was not elegant. Let’s just say it made me a bit uncomfortable, as if I were spying on a man who grunts and sweats as he toils away at some menacing feat of labor. After he completed a few inches of stitches, he took out the fabric and proudly showed me his work.

“But this isn’t a rolled hem. You can see the raw edge right beside these stitches,” I told him.

He informed me that a narrow hem foot doesn’t roll the raw edge. I insisted that it did, so he tried again, this time by jerking the fabric around under the speeding needle. OK, I’d seen enough.

His word of advice to me was that I should starch the fabric.

I did find a smaller hem foot (maybe 2mm?) for $3! I think it will work better for this project than my expensive 5mm narrow hem foot, so I’ll consider this part of the adventure a success.

inspira hemmer foot

And the news you’ve all been messaging me and tweeting about… I’ve chosen the turquoise linen as the lining for my brown dress. I cut it all out last night- it was quite a chore- and I’m sewing it all together now.