Sunday Studio Tips #2 - Safe Pets

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope all of you survived the holiday and are settling in to celebrate the coming new year. How many of you got new toys with which to create? I've seen on Twitter some sewing machines and a Cricut that Santa delivered across the land, oh the lucky folks with their new toys!

I got my Janome Memory Craft 11000 serviced for Christmas. Once a year, servicing is a good thing. She got oiled, cleaned, tweeked, and she is thrilled. Running perfectly! Not that she was running badly before, as I keep on top of the internal cleaning as best I can. Now she's just extra perfect and ready for a whirlwind of sewing that is coming up this week :-)

Today's tip involves pets in the sewing room. I don't know if dogs are as curious, but it never fails, Cleo and Max want to know exactly what I'm doing, and they must be in the middle of it all when I'm doing it. Sewing of course creates things like small pieces of snipped fabric and stabilizer and loose threads. You want to be sure to keep such things away from our pets, so that they don't eat them. Eating them can lead to vet bills, and who wants that?

I keep an empty (and washed out) soda can on my table. In it goes snipped threads, little pieces of stabilizer and fabric, and used needles. The hole in the top is a good size to let things in, but not let them out. Cleo often knocks it over, I've not had anything fall out yet.

I also keep my pin cushion handy so that pins go directly back into it. When I'm done, I put it back in my sewing box, as it's a nice size for kitties to grab with their mouths and try to run with. Pins in pets mouths, not a good thing!

Lastly, to help manage my snipped threads, I have recently begun using the scissors built into my machine. What a wonderful invention that I never realized I could use for sewing (silly me, thought it was an embroidery function). Now the machine cuts most of my threads, nice and short, and I have eliminated a lot of long threads that need to be snipped. If your machine does that, you should get in the habit of using it. Excellent invention :-)

That's it for tips today. I'm off to cut out some things and get moving on samples I need to have done by next Saturday. They are samples for classes I will teach this session at work. Have a few things to make :-)

Have a great Sunday!