This week's show begins with my friend Rebecca Kemp Brent. If you've watched much of It's Sew Easy TV you have seen her many times and know that she always has something interesting and a bit different. You may also be familiar with her teaching style. Rebecca gives each step in a manner that is easy to follow, nice and slow with careful words of encouragement along the way. This time around she is making a pretty little purse that resembles a lantern, hence the name Lantern Purse. Be sure to login to the website and download the instructions she wrote to help even further.

Next you'll see Kathy McMakin serge her way through the steps to make a beautiful heirloom baby gown. It's absolutely amazing what you can do with serger style heirloom sewing. Now only does she make it look easy she tells you precisely how to do each step so it's easy for you to make too!

Watch how the little pieces all come together to produce this beautiful baby gown!

She presents so many great heirloom techniques you'll be scrambling for a notepad. Not to worry . . . just login and go to the project section on the website.  You'll find seven pages of instructions plus a printable pattern to make your own precious day gown! 

Project information for each It's Sew Easy TV episode is FREE!

On the show Marie uses one of the Brother PR Series Multi-needle machines along with a special attachment called the Cylinder Frame to embroider near the hem on her jeans. 

While this is truly a specialty attachment for a specialty machine it is possible to embroider along the leg of jeans with most any home embroidery machine. You may want to practice stitching on an old pair first.

Here are some practical tips:

• Find a pair of jeans with only one flat felled seam. Most jeans have a standard seam on one side of the leg. This standard seam is easily opened with a seam ripper. 
  
• Open the seam beginning a couple inches from the hem and go all the way up to the top of the thigh, giving yourself plenty of room to spread the leg flat. Note: If your jeans are really narrow you'll need to open them all the way through to the hem, which means you'll have to re-hem them as well. Since the original hem on jeans is hard to match you'll likely be forced to re-hem both legs. With this in mind you may want to opt for jeans with larger rather than smaller legs.

• Next, select your design. Hoop your first section of the leg. Using a template helps greatly with positioning. 
• If you have difficulty hooping the fabric, use a piece of sticky stabilizer, either wash away or tear away, to hold the fabric in place.  Regular hooping can be tricky depending on the leg size and the location of the opposite, thick seam. Sticky stabilizer makes this easy. I prefer wash away because it is completely removable. However, tear away is more economical. Stick the portion you want to embroider to the stabilizer and stitch away, starting with a fresh sticky sheet for each additional hooping. Add additional stabilizer if necessary.

If you have a 5 X 7 hoop size take a look at the Jazzy Jeans Designs offered by Dakota Collectables. They are not too dense and include coordinating small and large motifs, perfect for jeans and many more garments as well! Click on the image below to see the sunflower designs I used in this example.

Certainly, embroidered embellishment of some sort keeps popping up on the cuff, side seam or elsewhere on the leg of ready-made pants, jeans and capris. Personally I really like the idea of embellishment near the cuffs on capris. Whatever design idea you may choose this is a style that continues to show up over and over again. I guess you could say it's moved beyond fad stage and could be considered a lasting trend. Think about adding a coordinating motif to a top for a unique set you'll enjoy for both casual and more dressy wear!

CLICK HERE for my previous, detailed review of show #813,  with pattern tips and ideas for making your own peasant style "boho" blouse. CLICK HERE to watch It's Sew Easy Episode 813 until Friday September 25th.

This week you'll see lot of ruffles made with an ordinary technique called gathering. Recently I learned that darts came into play in the 1960's as a way to control fullness that was common in the 1950's. 

In this show Angela creates appliqués with the Brother ScanNCut. You'll see her cut with a digital cutter, fuse the perfectly cut pieces, and then accent them with machine embroidery. All nice and neat and fun too . . . but have you ever appliquéd the "old fashioned" way? For many years I did appliqué without the aid of a computerized machine, much less one that stitched  everything automatically. I still love the tried and true method of appliqué made with simple machine stitches. All you need for this no tech technique is an ordinary zig zag stitch. It does help if you can fine tune the width and length of the stitch but beyond that, you need no special features of any kind whatsoever! I thought you might like a few more ideas so I'm preparing a tip sheet for you titled Basic Appliqué with a Satin Stitch Foot. Stay tuned! I'll let you know as soon as it's available for you to download.

Would you like to read my previous post for Episode 810? CLICK HERE to read it and  when you're ready you can CLICK HERE to watch show #811 until noon September 11th.