99 Bobbins of Cotton in the Box

I started this posting on the 10th April, but unfortunately I've been too busy to upload the photographs and finish off, so I'll apologise now if the timeline seems a bit weird. I've finished all of the Pottery Painting workshops for this school holiday, and I've taken lots of photographs of the items. I'm hoping to do a long posting on this during the week especially for those who have painted with me and haven't any idea what happens between painting and me delivering the glazed item back to the schools.

Ok ... back to my sewing post ........

So, maybe 99 bobbins of cotton is a bit of an exaggeration ... but there's a lot! I decided it was time to wind all of my empty bobbins this morning .. and boy did it take a while. I've been embroidering like crazy over the last week or so and didn't realise how many I had empty, despite the fact that they were right there in front of me and I kept taking one out every ten mins or so LOL. But the dreadful job is done now and these should last me quite some time. I think there's around 50 that I've done!

When I last purchased some new embroidery threads, I decided to purchase 2 x 10,000m cones of sewing cotton. I honestly thought that I would never get through it, or if I did it would take me years to do so. With that in mind, goodness knows why I decided to purchase 2 of them. BUT during my bobbin winding marathon this morning, I've finished it! I can't believe I've used over 10,000m of thread, I knew it was starting to get low, however I was sure that it would last me a long time. I've now broken the seal on the second one and have it ready and waiting for the marathon sewing of bags today......wish me luck.

I've been wondering why my sewing machine is playing games with me today. I've had 5 broken needles within the space of about 20 mins ... very unusual as they don't break that often at all. Then the penny dropped when I looked properly .... Stooooopid me had been putting embroidery needles in there when I was sewing - no wonder they were breaking d'oh. Once I changed to a 'proper' sewing needle, the machine worked perfectly.


I was very proud of myself last weekend when I was able to post all of the bags that had been ordered. I thought it was going to be touch and go for a while as I've been so busy working, however they went out on Saturday and were received mid week after the Bank Holiday. All customers were very happy with their wares.
Little Ruby has been carrying hers around the house completely empty and won't let it out of her site ... bless her. I understand that she's going to pack a few things in it and take it to nursery with her next week.
I made this one as an Easter present, her mum has asked me to make some party gift bags with the same designs for Ruby's birthday at the end of May ...... I have an idea in my mind as to how I'm going to do them, I just need to get cracking on them soon. (it's in my task master list to ensure that I don't forget).

Nicki is getting married soon and saw my auction on eBay. She asked me if I could do a Greek Flag design for 2 children and then 2 tote bags for the Mothers. I came up with these, I received a lovely email from Nicki saying how pleased she was with them. Don't they look fantastic all together there in the photograph? The one at the bottom is an additional gift I did for Nicki for her large custom order.


The last bag was made for another lady who purchased following my auction on eBay. She asked for a rainbow which I found amongst my vast collection. The photograph doesn't do this one justice, the colours are much brighter in 'reality'.









I haven't got around to finishing off our laundry bags yet. The above ones took priority over my own sewing. I think I mentioned in my last posting that I've got them all embroidered, they just need finishing off which shouldn't take a huge amount of time.

I did however, have a play with my machine yesterday (on my one day off this week) making some labels to put inside any future bags that I make.

This is a picture of them all together and shows you how many I can make per hooping. i.e. 3 large, 4 medium or 6 small ones. I've included a £1 coin in the photographs to give an indication of sizing on the close up photographs.



These are the 3 large labels. I have my own favourite, however before I comment on any of them, I would like other opinions.

Although these labels do look ok, i was very unimpressed with how the machine stitched the border on them. I've never known it do this with anything else, but it only stitched around once and didn't knot the ends properly. As you can see in the photograph on the right, they are coming undone at the start / end point. If I decided to use this size, I would change to the border used on the smaller ones below which stitched around the whole border 3 times and knotted properly.



I love these small labels with the reel of cotton on them. I played around with these for quite some time. I didn't want to make them any bigger as I liked this size to use on the inside of Party Favour Bags. Unfortunately, however it did mean that I wasn't able to stitch the website address on one line. So, I decided to make a feature of it and spread it across 3 lines. I thought that it would be nice to stitch some in both blue and pink rather than all the same. I had images of boys opening their bags and throwing a fit because it had a pink label on the inside LOL. I like the effect, however I'm open to constructive suggestions and comments.

Gen is back to school on Tuesday, and I'm going to go off to quilting class where hopefully I can finish off Jo's quilt. I haven't been for a few weeks and am really looking forward to catching up with everyone.