The statistics on pesticides in conventional cotton are almost unbelievable. The USDAs Agricultural Chemical Usage report from 2008, states that there are 10.2 million acres of cotton in 11 major cotton-producing states, and these acres received 52.25 million pounds of pesticides.

Let’s say that again:  52.25 MILLION POUNDS of PESTICIDES, on 10.2 million acres of cotton.

Cotton uses more pesticides than any other crop; more than 16% of the worlds pesticides.

Many of these chemicals are considered carcinogens. Think about that for a second – we’re sewing clothing from fabric that can cause cancer.

Organic cotton avoids conventional pesticides, and that means we also help prevent the included water, land, air, and worker exposure problems.

And the conventional cotton industry relies on a high level of forced child labor – not necessarily applicable in the US, but in other countries.

Organic cotton is cotton that is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides from plants which are not genetically modified. As of 2007, 265,517 bales of organic cotton were produced in 24 countries and worldwide production was growing at a rate of more than 50% per year. Naturally colored cotton has also been grown successfully with organic methods.

Organic cotton production in Africa takes place in at least 8-countries. The earliest producer (1990) was the SEKEM organization in Egypt; the farmers involved later convinced the Egyptian government to convert 400,000 hectares of conventional cotton production to integrated methods, achieving a 90% reduction in the use of synthetic pesticides in Egypt and a 30% increase in yields.

Those are amazing numbers!  90% less pesticides, 30% increase in usable cotton, and it’s safer. So why isn’t everyone doing this? Oh yeah, it costs more in the beginning.. silly Annie – money is more important then our lives.

Here – in no particular order, are places you can buy organic cotton online. Or course you’ll find other goodies on these sites too…

Mother Earth says thank you.

• Ambatalia Fabric – ambataliafabrics.com
• Chandler & Greene, Inc.  – chandlergreene.com
• The Moonbath Shop – moonbathshop.com
• Dream Designs Co. Ltd. – dreamdesigns.ca
• Earth Friendly Goods  – earthfriendlygoods.com
• Dharma Trading – dharmatrading.com
• Greenfibres  – greenfibres.com
• Wildrose Farm Organics – wildrosefarm.com
• Green Mountain Spinnery  – spinnery.com
• Harmony Art – harmonyart.com
• NearSea Naturals, Incorporated – nearseanaturals.com
• Mod Green Pod – modgreenpod.com
• Organic Cotton Plus  – ocpstore.com
• Heart of Vermont – heartofvermont.com
• Organic Weddings – organicweddings.com

< Back to Wildly Wonderful Wearables >

So let’s start this love affair off with sewing machine needles. I feel like I’ve used them all at one time or another, but if you look in my needle drawer, all you’re going to find are Schmetz.

When I was working on that Christening Dress for my newest nephew, they’re all I’d even consider using. I just love them.

Here we go, in no particular favorite order:

• Universal – rounded point, great for wovens and knits, an all around terrific needle.
• Denim or Jeans – reinforced blade and slight ball point, heavy fabrics don’t stand a chance of fighting. The ball point helps prevent damaging your fabric and skipping stitches.
• Stretch – special eye and medium ball point helps prevent skipping stitches and snagging. Great for knits, stretch fabrics and elastic too.
• Ball or Jersey – Ball point primarily for knit fabrics
• Leather – With a cutting point on the end, sewing leather is like cutting through warm butter. My leather version of the Lone Star Vest would not have been possible without this needle.
• Top-Stitch – If you’re doing decorative sewing, this is needle is for you. A very long eye 2mm, means threading and using heavy, fancy threads won’t drive you crazy. Good for using double threads too.
• Microtex – A needle especially for densely woven fabrics, micro fiber and synthetic leathers. It has an especially slim acute point.
• Hemstitch – I used a lot these when creating Heirloom Christening dresses! There’s a wing on each side with creates wonderful open work on light or medium woven fabrics; I used it on delicate cotton batiste with silk and rayon thread.
• Double Eye – Yes it has 2 eyes! Use two different threads at the same time – think of the possible effects. Good for both woven and knit fabrics because it has a univeral point.
• Embroidery – A larger eye and grove means this needle helps to make free-motion embroidery headache free. I do a lot of free-motion stipple work on our wall hangings, sanity matters!
• Metallic – While I will never enjoy sewing with metallic threads (I just sew too fast to really be nice to the thread), this needle helps a bunch. A enlarged grove and bigger eye mean less breakage and throwing things.
• Stretch Twin – Double rows of stitches, perfectly spaced, on knits or stretch fabrics. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 2.5 and 4.0.
• Metallic Twin – Same as for the stretch twin needle, now if I could only sew a bit slower… 2.5 and 3.0.
• Embroidery Twin – Yes we’re on a roll! 2.0 and 3.0.
• Double Hemstitch – Another favorite of mine for heirloom sewing. Has one wing needle and one universal needle – 2.5 mm separates them. Helps create amazing double row stitch designs.
• Universal Twin – Double rows on lots of fabric, think pin-tucks! 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.o, 6.0 and 8.0.
• Universal Triple – Yes I have these too. It’s worth the hassle of threading everything up – again, I use to use these on the Christening dresses with rayon and silk threads. Beautiful results every time.

It seems to be a failing that at one time or another, we’ve all used ‘cheap’ or generic sewing machine needles. While they might have got the job done, it was a struggle with them breaking, thread shredding and other delightful reasons that cause us to consider never sewing again.

It is not worth it.

Next time you’re in your favorite fabric shop, pick up a few packages of Schmetz needles and try them out. I guarantee you won’t be sorry you did.

< Back to Wearables >

She was very interested in our Pleat N Go, and had a bunch of questions as to whether or not it would work for her, with her drapery and home decor custom sewing. Well to make a very long story short, here are her words and a few pictures.

“You had asked me to send pictures of my finished project using the pleater board. I made 440″ of pleated edging for the valances in this room. It was the most wonderful detail I have ever used! I hope you like it – I enjoyed your product so much and plan to offer this custom detail to many customers!”

A view of the large, triple window with the new draperies.

The top of the drapes and topper – again you can see the very top is pleated.

A great close-up shot of the pleats at the very top and the corded edge.

Terrific results and Cathy is happy! That was a lot of pleating and she discovered an easy way to do it. You can sew for me anytime Cathy

< Back to Wearables >

We show you how to use it on and with cottons, polyesters and velvet blends. You can also use it on heavy papers to create one-of-a-kind invitations and announcements.

I filmed this one alone – with one eye firmly on all three fur-kids the entire time. While I’m sure everyone would have loved seeing them ‘help mom’, mom was a bit short on time this go round.

Hmmm maybe next video we can feature the three kids…

Enjoy!

<Back to Wearables>

Fannie lives in California and is a few years older then I am. We started out laughing about our rhyming names and remembering songs: Fannie, Fannie bo Bannie… (don’t forget that little trick with Nick!) and nick-names like one of mine: Annie Bananie.

What? You wanted us to just dive into sewing stuff?

We have a mutual problem with losing things; you put them down and they mysteriously walk off. She’s still doing some custom sewing while I stopped years ago. The issues haven’t changed though: people wear the wrong foundation garments to fittings; tell you the wrong initial sizings; pick styles that are really not flattering and of course don’t want to pay you when the garment is ready.

I was ready to nominate Fannie for sainthood for her patience alone.

So we finally started talking about the pleater board. She had tried to do pleats without the board and was real frustrated – so the hunt began! After lots of phone calls one turned up – a fair drive from her home and costing $40. That wasn’t going to cut it.

Fannie called a good friend here in Dallas needing a sympathetic shoulder, and the lovely lady told her about our pleater board kit. Six Degrees of Separation anyone?

We talked pleater boards. The how to’s, putting it together, using it, the step-by-step demo we have on the site, the different ways you can use the pleats. We discussed the regular board versus the fan board and the original idea to create it.

I had a blast! When you find you’re laughing together every 5th sentence, it’s just got to be good.

Fannie got the regular board (I wouldn’t sell her the fan board until she was sure she liked the standard one) and promised to call me after it arrived. She did – we talked – and she was heading off to put it together and create pleats.

About four days after that, Fannie called again. That was one happy woman on the phone. She was amazed at how quickly the pleats were created and made me promise to tell Storm (my good friend and the creator of the boards) that she did good!

To understand why she had been so frantic about making the pleats Fannie gave me the pattern name and number to see for myself. Oh boy. I’d have been borderline hysterical myself.

Fannie promised to call again; I hope it’s soon as I could use more of that kind of shared laughter.

<Back to Wearables>

One of my more memorable endeavours involved making a larger then normal pleater board. I wanted to pleat yards of very thin, silky fabric with nice little 1/2″ pleats. At this point we’d created and had been selling our Pleat ‘N Go pleater board kit for several years, and I knew it worked perfectly.

My reasoning (reasoning – is that what you call it?) was that if the base was too small (only a 10″ x 15″) it would take too long to pleat a section, iron it, and move it, then do the next section.

Did I mention I was a lot younger and much more impatient then?

Anyway, I put together a very large base: 18″ x 21-1/2″ and then spent a healthy chunk of money getting enough of the poly-slating we use to create the rows on the base. After at least 2-1/2 hours of cutting and sewing the slats on, I decided maybe it WAS a bit big and cut the size down to only 12-1/2″ deep.

Silly, silly Annie – I still hadn’t a clue…

A few minutes ago I pulled the ‘big-board’ out to take a picture, and Molly decided it was hers – just like everything else around here.

So I finish putting this monster together, grab a big piece of fabric and rush to the ironing board to get started. All told, I’d put in about 5-days making this huge pleater board to make my life easier. Uh-huh.

Have to be careful – this is a ‘big board’; need to get the fabric in those slats evenly. It takes a bit of playing, but I get the hang of the silky fabric and the wide board. Well for the first row or two at least.

You know where I’m going with this don’t you? After about 4 rows the first one would start pulling out… that in turn led to the second sliding out of the slat… and I got to start again. The board was so wide and ackward, it was unmanageable! Add to that this really pretty – but really cranky fabric and I was doomed to failure before I even got started.

All these years later and I’m still beating myself up over it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. There was a reason the Pleat ‘N Go was sized at 10″ x 15″. I keep the ‘big-board’ around for two reasons.

1. Remind myself to really think something through before starting it
2. I wasn’t throwing anything out that cost me that much money!

<Back to Wearables>