Red and Blue For ME

Hi !  

It's Sandra!

I've been busy this week tweaking my sewing\craft room and sewing another little cosmetic bag in my... 

favorite patriotic colors.

RED     and    BLUE  !!! 

Hubby is putting together a cute white Ikea cabinet like this one for my sewing area and boy does it have lots of drawers for my sewing stuff.   

I can't wait to get have it in my craft/sewing room.  

I think it will hold quite a bit.  

Can you say "EMBROIDERY"?

I'm practicing...practicing and practicing!

I'm getting brave...moved this center bows and flowers embroidery design in the hoop for better placement on the bag and succeeded setting up the second duplicate design as a mirror image.

  Because this bag is a practice one it's a gift to myself!

I can live with my mistakes.

One flower isn't perfect because I didn't change my embroidery needle when I messed it up by striking my plastic embroidery hoop with my needle over and over.  That happens when you tell lie to the machine you are using a larger hoop but you really aren't.  My bad!  

And my top stitching under the zipper is all over the place.   

Hopefully the ones I sew for gifts will be better. 

In my opinion the Janome MC 12000 manual isn't printed professionally especially considering the exorbitant cost of this embroidery sewing machine. Their manual is cheaply bounded on poorer quality paper with that "spiral" binder that makes it difficult to turn the pages.  

But what I really dislike is the extremely poorly printed overview - "drawings" - of the letters and designs at the back of the manual (see photo above).  

You can't tell what these designs look like they are sooooo small and fuzzy.  

You would never know what number 39 would look like looking at this overview.

It's a wonder I chose it!  

Yea..you can see the design better on the machine screen but I would still like to see it on paper when comparing designs.  

Don't get me wrong...I love this embroidery/sewing machine but...

for being the TOP of the line and newest...

 -come on Janome - 

spend some money and put out a professional looking instructional manual for this machine!

  

OK...I'm done complaining.

Back to my cosmetic bag.

This one is a little bigger than my last one (see it here).

Definitely "handmade"! 

That's why I added this cute embroidery "handmade" lettering to the lining. 

I lied...I'm not done complaining.

I want to show you a comparison between manuals printed by Janome - separated by thirty years.

My 30 year old New Home (Janome) Memory Craft 6000 - that was 1/12 the cost of my new machine - has a wonderfully printed manual on good paper with clear and detailed pictures.   You can see this manual's larger drawings of the 6000's designs in the photo above.  

Now compare it with the Janome Memory Craft 12000's manual's overview below.  

   

It may be hard for you to tell but these are soooo tiny!

And maybe if these pages had been, at least, printed on better paper they would be clearer if not still tiny.   

Just saying... 

I did read that Janome is bringing out a new Memory Craft Horizon 12000 inspiration book (read about it here). 

I'm looking forward to seeing it.   

And I pray it is a step up from the manual.

All in all this was one pretty embroidery design and I love it embroidered on my blue and white seersucker fabric in the my FAVORITE shout out red and blue thread colors.

Just to let you know that I'm sewing more (and not crocheting as much) to be prepared for the embroidery/sewing lessons I'm taking this summer.  

I joined my sewing shop's embroidery club that meets monthly and enrolled in some other classes too. 

Well, time to get back to practicing...

MORE BAGS!!! 

Thanks for visiting!