SYNTRYZ Stitches

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting pics of our completed sewing room. We all love how it turned out and it's already gotten a lot of use with a very busy past couple of months. But first I wanted to tell you about my lighting. One of the key upgrades we needed for the sewing room was really good lighting so we could work when it was dark or winter outside. Before we would go out wanting to get a full day of sewing in on a day we were stuck inside but get so depressed in a matter of minutes we'd come back in. A couple years previous Dad had put a new window in and that helped but still needed more. We ended up installing 4 Led 4 ft lights on the ceiling, I believe they show up on a previous post, but I had also been saving some Joann's gift cards that my friends had given me for a lasting purpose, so I decided I would also buy some spot lights with them so I could light up my work or my photography corner even more if need be. I waited till the OttLite brand went...

Juki HZL-29Z Sewing Machine sews in reverse  What to do when... You have scheduled your day so you can fulfill your many sewing orders but for some odd reason a pin pops from behind your feed-dog (I did not run over a pin!) falls down into your machine and now your sewing machine only sews in reverse.  Do you ... A. Get behind your machine and sew backwards. B. Take all the screws out of the machine and try to take it apart. C. Shake it like mad and hope the pin falls out. Last Friday this was the predicament I was in. I would have probably been a lot more mad if I hadn't been so tired. I worked more than 2 hours trying to fix my machine. Don't get me wrong, I love my little Juki machine and even though it's just a basic machine, with the few special stitches it has, I can get a lot done with it instead of having to use multiple machines, for instance it has overcasting which I use when I make my tiny dog sweaters since they are too small to go on the serger...

As I've been posting about our current Sewing Room remodel, I noticed that I never posted our kitchen remodel from a couple of years ago. We've been too busy using it I guess. We love how it turned out and in our small house it made the small space so much more useful.  We used the Ikea cabinet system and it just so happened that they were transitioning to a new cabinet format so when we went to pick out what door-fronts we wanted Mom and I had decided on the white since we have such a small space we wanted it as bright as possible. Well we walked down to the clearance section and they had all the door-fronts from the old system marked down to $2 each. Needless to say we grabbed all we could and ran out of there like one of the old Ikea commercials. Problem was the pre-drilled holes did not match the new cabinet system but that wasn't a problem for Dad. We used Sketchup to lay it all out and it ended up coming out pretty close to our computer design. We ended up maki...

We love how our ceiling came out for the sewing room. It was actually an idea we had seen on Pinterest. I had already picked out the 'white-wood' paneling but I wasn't sure how it would look on the ceiling. Then I found a pin from someone else who had used it in their basement and had them cut in half and then rotated them which kinda gives it a basket-weave design. (Perfect for a sewing/craft room.) Plus our room is 12 feet by 16 feet so they fit perfect and I  think it makes the room feel larger. Lowe's will cut them for you before you leave the store so it also made it easier to bring them home and to install them.

History of making this Crochet Dog Sweater Pattern Okay, so let me tell you the story of this dog sweater pattern. From the first year that I started selling dog sweaters on Etsy, I received requests for my pattern. Now mind you I had never written any patterns before so I had to respond that I didn't have one yet, it was just in my head. Well 100's of dog sweaters later I still have it memorized and have made changes to it over the years but it got me to thinking that I probably should write this down, just in case I forgot, or if I need to get someone to help me make them, or if some of my friends or customers would like to make their own. I've intended every year to get this written and published for fall time and here I find myself again in the month of September and I still do not have the final draft ready. But I thought why not post it here and let you try it out for me? I'm hoping the final product will be as simple on paper as it is in my head. If yo...

Dad has been faithfully working on updating our sewing room for us. I haven't been able to help as much as I've wanted since I got sick and then Mom had to go into the hospital. But we did get our accent wall done. I love how it came out, we used carpet tile samples bought at Habitat for Humanity for the 'quilt-look'. I still have extra so I'm going to make a carpet out of some of them. Stay tuned as we finish each area and I'll post more photos.

Lacy and Macy 2017 Lacy and Macy are the 'dogs of the week' at Dallasdoglife.com  This is a local website and newsletter that keeps us up on events around Dallas that the girls can go with us to, many of them free admission. To read their full story and to check out this really great web page click the link below. LACYANDMACYSTORY

We started remodeling our sewing room. It's been over a year in planning and gathering materials but we've finally started clearing the room out. The ceiling and new lights will be first. Stay tuned.