Hi lovelies, 

Today we've got a guest post by the Leslie from Love Rubie. Leslie has written about how to make Zipper Tab Handles for the free Pampering Pouch.






8. Continue on with the pattern directions to finish your Pampering Pouch!

Once again, another winning title!

I'm a member of a facebook group for local crafters and the subject of photographing stock came up and it inspired me to take some photos of how I prepare my stock for sale so that I can share it with you. I only photograph small items this way, you could use it for jewellery, supplies, smaller items but I guess the principle is the same for larger items.

I use a cheap point and shoot camera, my windowsill (any time of the day and weather) and PicMonkey for editing. This is really not that hard.

Note:  I've edited my photos to look brighter, it really was a dull day!

Here's my set up.

yes, we're moving...I'm sure you knew that by now though ;)

I pull my voile back from the window, pull my curtain out of the way, lay a piece of fabric down (cord this time because I couldn't be bothered to iron my white cotton) and that's my set up done. As you can see it was a gloomy day, mid afternoon, raining and I didn't even bother to move my big scraps bin. (This is the bin I have for pieces too small to be considered worth keeping. It's mostly thread cuttings if I'm honest, it's hard to part with scraps!)

I bought my tripod for 69p from B&M but it's the first time I've used a tripod, usually I hold my camera. I just wanted to try it out. For 69p it's great quality!



I use either macro or super macro depending on the item, I use auto white balance (there are people unsubscribing from my feed now..auto?!), no flash and I have it on shaky hand setting. I can never seem to get them not blurred when I don't use shaky hand!

Never, ever, ever, ever use flash. Especially if you are photographing metal or gems, natural light is always better, even on a dull day.

Here's my photo straight out of the camera. I resized it but didn't edit it at all. Not bad, but could be enhanced.


 I used PicMonkey to 'auto' adjust the exposure and resized to 800px on the longest size. That's it. Two clicks. Go to exposure, click auto adjust. Go to resize, resize to 800px on the longest size (it will work out the other as long as you've got keep proportions ticked) then save. Job done.


Next I sort my triglides and rings out into size and colour piles. I stock silver nickel, antique brass and gunmetal in sizes 1", 1.25", 1.5" and 2". I've also tried some triglides for thicker straps in 1.5" this time, but I'm not so keen on those. My originals look so slick!


Each buckle comes in a plastic bag, ten buckles in another plastic bag. I open them all out, make sure I've got enough to make up a set and then bag them up in sets.


Oh the wasted plastic!


I use glassine bags and washi tape to package my strap kits in. Each bag has one triglide slider buckle and one rectangular ring. I have spare rectangular rings which are bagged separately. I use a different colour washi tape for each colour metal I have and I store them in boxes in size order.

As you can see from this photo I appear to have over-ordered on the gunmetal 1.5" sets this time. They're my favourite though it's hard to find matching magnetic snaps.

Oh yeah, and if you want to see them in the shop, click the 'My Etsy Store' tab on my top bar.

 I love hemming with bias tape. I'm lazy. I hate hemming. Let me repeat that. I HATE HEMMING! Bias tape makes it a bit easier. I realise that I already sound like I'm being sponsored to write this post, I'm not. I wish I was. Wouldn't that be good! I could add a box-full of bias tape to my already overflowing stash cupboard.

Anyway. First you'll need a tea dress. Or whatever you want to hem. Obviously if you're a boy you wouldn't want a tea dress. You'd want a shift dress to fit your body shape. Maybe you don't want a dress at all. 

Firstly you'll need whatever you want to hem, I had a tea dress that I made.

 My tea dress was made from poly peachskin and unravelled terribly. I made it before I had my serger. Which means that these photos have been waiting to be blogged for over a year. Well done me!

 The hem on my dress after I'd made it but before I hemmed it.
 I chose some bias tape in a bright pink to match the flowers on the dress. And make it a bit more fun. If you're going to be doing this, I suggest making a feature of it.


 Open one side of the binding and pin it all along the bottom edge, overlapping the ends. I tucked under the bottom edge so that it would be sealed when turned over.


Sew along the fold line and then I pinked the edge to get rid of any stray unravelly bits.


Turn the whole hem over and press along where you want your bottom crease. You could measure this. Wait, you should measure this. :/

 Stitch along the top edge of the bias fixing it onto the wrong side of your garment/item/tea dress.


Job done, pour yourself a cup of tea and dunk a rich tea (I wanted to say hob nob but they just don't have the structural integrity).
 I love the pop of colour in the hem. I don't think anyone else ever sees it but if they did they'd think it was a really cute feature!



I use bias on sleeveless tops instead of facings, necklines, cuffs, hems, all sorts really. If it can take this kind of laziness, I'm on it.

A conversation overheard in the Hussey household today:

Dusband: Baybeeee, what are you doing?

Me: I'm deep cleaning the bathroom hunky trunks.

Dusband: Oh, so you're moving things to clean rather than just cleaning around them?

Me: Hmmmm *walks off seeking consolation in a bar of galaxy*

So, yes, there we go. I've moved things to clean around them. Actually I've done the usual bathroom cleaning of sink, bath, toilet, floor, windowsills etc. But I've also wiped down the walls (they seem to gather dust which is odd), cleaned the tile grout, taken everything out of our set of drawers, cleaned them and put everything most things back in neatly.  I've also taken the shower hose off the electric shower unit and cleaned it. It seems to gather black slime in those coily rib things on the hose that wiping just doesn't get off.

So...step one, turn off shower power supply. Probably didn't need to do this but better safe than sorry.

Step two, unscrew shower hose and shower head

Step three, dish soap + hot water + shower hose & shower head


As you can see I'd already done some scrubbing and that's what all of those grossy black bits are floating around at the bottom of the sink!

I kinda forgot to take pics before I put it in the sink but you can use your imagination.

Step four, get your cleaning toothbrush (note, not husband's current toothbrush) and brush the shower hose. I found brushing up and down the dip in each ridge worked better than side by side along the hose.

After a soak but before a brush

Step five, rinse with clean water and take photo for blog


Step 6, screw back onto shower and feel smug.

Good job done! Well done us!

I totally wish I was being paid to give my opinion on this pen, or even having received it for free to review it. Unfortunately I just love it so much I felt I had to share it with you!

This is a regular inky ball point pen type affair for writing on paper. Or as I like to....on fabric.

They come in all different colours as you'd expect a 'normal' pen to and are so accurate at marking your work they're ideal as a fabric marker.

However, they're removable by friction. Frixion is it's name, friction's it's game...gettit? Fab isn't it. Anyway, but I don't want to rub my fabric to shreds so all you have to do is touch with a warm iron and the writing disappears instantly.
I know I could have just taken a photo before I'd written on it but hopefully you can tell this piece of cotton's been ironed and the written on one hadn't.

At a couple of pounds this really makes an ideal dressmaker's tool. It's great for accurate marking, is easy to remove and comes in such a range of colours you're bound to find one you can see on your fabric.

I know, totally gross. We've lived in our house since January 2010 and when we moved in there were some spots of old black chewing gum on our nice mangy old cream carpet.

So, I did what any girl would do...ignored them! Until I found the Ask Anna blog and followed her oven cleaning tips and realised she knew her stuff! Who better to ask than ask Anna?!

Anyhoo, so I asked her and I'm not surprised that the answer she came back with was I've never been dirty enough to have chewing gum on my carpet!

"Thank you for this question!  I actually don't have any personal experience with getting gum out of carpet and I wasn't able to find any clear answers online.  I did find a couple answers that I like and would try if it were my carpets.  I think they will be helpful for you."

So, I followed the link and tried the suggestions. Now I'm telling you so that you need never have crusty old chewing gum on your cream carpet!

First method:
"Peanut Butter! If you get gum in your hair, on your clothes, or in your carpet, definitely peanut butter is the way to get it off. The oils in the PB break down the sticky-ness of the gum and make it a snap to remove. Oh, then use regular old carpet cleaner or a 1 part vinegar to 1/2 part soap & water solution (1 cups of vinegar to 1/2 cup of soapy water) to clean the peanut butter residue. Good luck!"

I don't have peanut butter....urm...try lovely lady next door. Nope, she doesn't have any either. In fact she's never even tried peanut butter! Hmm, ok, well we'll move on and I can't tell you if this works or not!

Second method:

So, I got me a little baggie of ice and laid it on the chewing gum on the carpet. Oh, this would be a good time for a pic....*goes back to the start and adds pics in*
While that's freezing I went onto the third method but to save my head exploding I'll pretend we've fast forwarded 15 minutes and tell you what happened when I took the ice off the chewing gum.

Nothing had happened. I rubbed a bit of laundry liquid onto it to see if that would do anything. (It wasn't mentioned on the tips, I was freestylin' it at that point!)
It didn't do anything either.  So I guess unless you can put the item that has chewing gum on into the freezer, it's not gonna work.

Third method:
"I've been told olive oil will remove gum also."

That's it, the sum total of the third method....hopeful much?

Anyway, so I thought in for a penny in for a pound.

The two opponents squaring up

I got some kitchen towel and dabbed a bit of oil onto it.
It was at this point my husband looked over and said 'You're not actually going to put that on the carpet are you?!'. 'Urm, yes dear Dusband' was my reply. Men eh?
After the first two swipes the chewing gum looked like this:
 Then I swapped to a J cloth and scrubbed a little (with more oil of course, it seems to soak in and disappear!)
I attempted to add more oil to the gum and..urm...take it from me, don't pour.....just dab gently even if it does take a million dabs!
Oops! Anyway, then it was time for DIY knife. I love my DIY knife, we're tight. I've carried him from move to move with me and he's been invaluable for cleaning under skirting boards, fastening screws, scraping things, opening things. There's nothing this knife can't do. Except be found. Never mind, I used a nice shiny posho knife instead hoping Dusband would glance and assume it was DIY knife!
Anyway, so I gently scraped just to get the oil really into the fibres and then I rubbed it again a couple of times gently like a woman possessed. Here's what it looked like when I'd finished.
Cue angels singing, sunlight streaming onto my face, upturned basking in the glory of chewing gum out of the carpet. It worked! Dusband and I were both so amazed that if we hadn't actually done it ourselves (one of us from a purely spectator position) then we wouldn't have believed it!
However, remember that big oil spill?
Urm, yeah, great. So I did what any normal sane person would do. I got the bicarb soda out to soak it up.
I rubbed it in.
I hoovered it up, then I got a bit of laundry liquid, rubbed it into the oil patch then using an ice cube from method 2 (I was too lazy to go downstairs and get real water) I rubbed the laundry liquid and ice cube until that patch of carpet came clean.
It's still wet here and it has dried nicely. The only issue I do have is that all this rubbing has lifted the pile of the carpet so this patch looks new! Who woulda thunk it?
Anyway, so the first patch that didn't work with the ice? I oil'd that too.

Before

Two swipes

A few swipes

A few more scrubs

Time for un DIY knife!

Amazing right?

Anyway, so then I got some laundry liquid and some ice and 'washed' that little patch and here's the after.
Hurray! Finally, a definitive answer of how to get chewing gum out of carpets. Thanks Anna!
p.s. I do realise I somehow managed to get my after photo a bit higher than my before....back to picnik I go!
Ah, that's better...the miracles of modern technology!

Anyway, I'll share this with Anna so she can tell the world of the oil!

Psst! If you found this post useful, you can support my blog by visiting my sewing pattern shop on Etsy, Sewing Patterns by Miss H. Thank you :)

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