A Few Little Treasures

One day last week, my brother and I decided that we needed to start cleaning out my dad's house. Fortunately for us, over the past 5 years, he has been getting rid of most of his stuff. This makes our job a heck of a lot easier. Anyway, although most of my mom's sewing stuff is long gone, I did find a couple of interesting things in a drawer.



















First of all, this undermarker is something you don't see anymore. It is a plastic device made in two pieces. The carbon paper slips between the base and the frame. This goes under the fabric and you mark the top of the fabric with a pencil or sharp chalk. I didn't try it, but it looks like my mom probably used it more than once.





Another treasure is all of these safety pins. They are heavier and thicker than today's pins. Also, I only have small ones, and there is a variety of sizes here. And check out that tomato pin cushion. It is actually a needle sharpener. It has something like sand inside of it, and it made of a satin like fabric. And... have you ever seen a little spool of thread like that? Maybe it came out of some kind of travel kit.






I haven't had much time for sewing, but I did manage to make one more CJ basewear 2 top. I had fabric left over from Maureen's top already out, and since I hadn't put away the pattern yet, I figured I might as well cut it out and sew it up. This time I left off the turtleneck and just turned under the seam allowance and stitched it with my coverpro. Now, for those of you out there without a serger or coverstitch machine, these tops are still super simple to make. For seams, you can either use a slight zigzag or use a slightly longer stitch and stretch as you sew. For hemming, I always pressed the edge then used a narrow zigzag to stitch it.


Knits don't ravel, so there's no worry there, and the zigzag gives you plenty of stretch. You could make this top, cutting and all, in close to an hour. The thing that takes me the longest is turning under and pressing all the edges!