Sometimes you hear people say that as long as your seam allowance is consistent, it doesn’t matter if it’s ¼” or not. I don’t think it matters if it’s an exact ¼” or scant ¼” either, but in some patterns it really matters how much of the fabric is taken up by that seam.

Keep thread and pins away from your helpers, no matter how much they want to learn!

Maybe you’re short, like me, (have been, all my life!) and need to shorten everything. Or maybe you bought a camp shirt and want to make it straight instead of hanging down in the back and sides.

In this case, it was both. This was a crepe shirt (purple, of course) that I wanted to straighten. I use a ¼” adhesive tape that dissolves away in the first washing. (26120) It has paper on one side so the adhesive is exposed only on the other side.

I first measure, down the side seams, to be sure that both sides are the same distance from the underarm seam to the current hem. If they are, I put the tape from one side to the other on the back, just above the hem.

Then I go straight across to the front on both sides. I check to be sure this is a good length, and that when I button the shirt, the bottom edges will be even in front.

I cut off the excess fabric right along the bottom edge of the tape with my favorite Ergo Rotary Cutter (13613 for right handed, 81972 for lefties). The tape serves as a stabilizer for both the cutting and the sewing. Since crepe stretches, this was especially helpful.

Take off several inches of the paper. It’s easy to turn up the fabric against the tape. Then turn it up a second time.

I use a foot with a blade on the right side, set my needle so it’ll sew just inside the fold, lengthen my stitch by half a millimeter, and stitch. Quick and easy!

Four of us are just back from Husqvarna Viking Convention, and we are “pumped!”

Here’s the dress made with the Ruby, done with the new cutwork needles. (Becky and Lynn restrained themselves in this photo.)

We were happy to welcome Katrina Helmkamp as first female CEO of a major sewing machine company. Had she still lived in St Joseph, MI, as she did when she was with Whirlpool, we would have been delighted to acquaint her with the Viking machines, but she’s already moved to HV headquarters. And of course, she’ll be very busy, but she says she does plan to fit in some sewing and embroidering as she can.

We sat with Angie from Lunch Box Quilts at the banquet. Her new About Trout (59812) and Recipe Towel (60930) Collections are flying off our site! If you’re in our area, watch for our Recipe Towel of the Month in the store this fall.

I got to use the new 8” hoop on the wonderful Ruby for this fun project. I didn’t quite finish it, and Kassi wanted a good look at how I used the wonder tape to do the self-binding. She is “right there” for every step of my sewing and quilting. None of the others have been such a sewing enthusiast. I’d thought finally my projects were safe from the felines… and then we got Kassi! I have to completely release my quilt from my Handi Quilter frame when I finish for the day so she doesn’t claim it as her personal hammock.

Although this has nothing to do with Viking Convention, I want to slip in these photos. One of our students asked if we had a reducing glass, and we no longer carried them, but just got them back in (A10096). They are great at letting you see the whole picture. In fact, if I’d used one when I pieced my Snowman Collector quilt (22025), I might have seen that one unit I put in upside down! It’s one of our most popular machine embroidery pieces, and though we’ve displayed it for a few years, no one saw it until recently! Too late, not taking it apart now.