Let's Inspire each other to be Creative

I just had to pop in here, just had to.  Sunflowers, it's fortunate you have Barbe on this thread - and she is the resident expert.  Good luck on finding a simple & sturdy machine; I hope you find exactly the right one.  Who knows, there might be one of the old Singer Featherweights at a church rummage sale... they are great ones. 

Me, I guess am stuck in the past:  DH had an ooold hand-crank machine called a "traveling or maid's machine" when I met him. No elec. needed.  We still have it.  I made a living for a number of years when I lived with out elec., with my old White Treadle complete with all attachments including buttonholer - I made custom clothes especially men's western shirts, & dolls -.  I still have it, and when we were without power in '96 and I was making quilts for everyone, I finished 3 quilts using kerosene lamps, treadle machine, AND a set of sad-irons I heated on the woodstove.  Christmas got finished in time!  I had moved up to a 1964 Pfaff (all metal, & a workhorse) and continued - including sail repair and all the canvas work on our 30' sailboat. I still have the Pfaff too.  Finally, after Mom died, I inherited her 1985 Bernina.  It's as techno as I can handle...  These days I am writing, not sewing so much, but our new little boat needs a cover and that will be my winter project.

Sunflowers, I am big on simple - and elastic waist pants are Easy once you have adjusted the pattern to your particular proportions.  I often would make a "sample", basted together with big hand stitches, in muslin first, then learn how I needed to adjust for my particular self.  I am partial to cotton knits and natural fibers. 

I really get the small cabin (and all the books you can stuff in it) - you learn to really simplify. I have been there.  It's wonderful.  Our current and we hope retirement home was built in the 60s, added & warted on to; we bought in 2000, and remodeled and added a new kitchen and a study for me (bay window & all. (DH is Mr. Fix-it).  There's a second/spare/guest bedroom that periodically gets cleared out and I set up the sewing machine.  It seems like as soon as I set up the machine, something comes up, or unexpected guests arrive, and it gets put away again.  But I have managed a few projects. Your thread has helped inspire me, although as I said, I'm writing more these days and have a couple of major life-technicalities to take care of first but them am going to (try) to return to 1750s frontier and write about this woman I know quite well... the hardships she endured have always been my "bar"... if she could endure that, I can endure this... whatever the "this" happens to be at the time.

eta:  on simple pants, pockets aren't hard, any way you want to do them - slash, sideseam, patch...

Sunflowers, I get you on the space part - a small machine is all I really have room for, and my poor treadle (sews through SIXTEEN layers of denim) sits in "the shed", unused.  There just isn't room in the house for it.  Every now and then I think of selling it, but they aren't worth all that much.  I'm sentimentally attached I know - but it's the only mechanical thing I've ever owned that I've been able to take apart and put back together again and not have pieces left over, and it work!  I pretty much decided my technical skills peaked at the wheel. (I just really don't want to know how to do a whole lot of things; too much responsibility .  I'm in the Sierras, west of Tahoe - Plumas National Forest. We've lived here off and on for almost 40 yrs...(during that time, we sort of collected experiences instead of stuff -- but stuff accumulates anyway...) Anyway -- after we get this legal & administrative stuff taken care of, I've promised myself that Mary's book gets priority in my life.  I've already done a dozen years of research and have published a number of fact-based articles, booklets & books and did quite a bit of technical & legal writing during my job-years.  This one is fiction. I'm terrified.

eta: I just admitted I'm afraid of failure. 

I really enjoyed the inner color of this rose..

It was really more deep yellow-orange than red,

Lisa, today's roses have been just about the most beautiful you have posted since I've been on BCO.

SunflowersM - I clicked on 'properties' but there is nothing that says URL. What is that?

I'm trying to get a picture posted but it's being stubborn.

i think i broke my sewing machine today.. trying to sew a quadruple seam of heavy fabric.. i know i can fool with it, but it takes time time time.

I did make a pillow case today.. tada.

You can also do it by uploading picasa into a google web album..

then right click on the photo and get copy image location

then click on the little tree and where it says url location paste by clicking

sometimes I have to do it twice for it to work..

This is the last watercolor I did. It's called :On the banks of the Peshtigo river".

Thanks, BinVa, that was easy going the Facebook way. SunflowersM, my favorite watercolor

 books are Making color sing by Jean Dobie and Watercolor-pour it on by Jane Wallache.O.K.

how come my picture stays so small?

So Lisa...how do you get yours to look so beautiful and BIG. I love your stuff.