The end of summer nears as a breath of autumn meanders by whispering to trees it is time to reveal hidden brilliant gold and red hues, for gardens to hurry the last of their bounty and nudging our thoughts to cooler days ahead. Time for flannel and warmer clothing to make an appearance. Time to sew!

The most traditional way to sew a dart in a garment is to begin stitching at the wide seam end of the dart, stitch to the narrow point, backstitch a few stitches to secure, cut the threads and tie off in a double knot to secure. What if stitching were to occur starting from the opposite end?

Some times achieving eye-catching topstitching seems to require artificial intelligence, a machine of magical capabilities, and a juxtaposition of the best thread, sewing machine needle, an otherworldly presser foot and forgiving fabric. It can be done, not by wishing but by knowledge and technique!

The timeless expression - practice makes perfect, is never truer than when applying a machine-made buttonhole to a carefully sewn garment. The best way to ensure a machine-made buttonhole comes out the way it is expected to look is to make a test buttonhole using a fabric scrap from the project.

Despite our best efforts at coaxing our sewing machines to produce a secure, uniform interlocked stitch, frustrating difficulties are inevitable along the way. This highly functional multiple component machine must have everything working in synchronous harmony to produce thousands of even stitches.

We can think of upcycling an item as changing or modernizing it to increase its value and recycling it when we reuse an item to reduce waste. At times the distinction between the use of the words upcycle and recycle is indistinct in common usage.

When the only sewing space available is a corner of a room or a tiny closet or even open space under a stairwell then how to accommodate what may be an exponentially growing fabric stash, numerous sewing notions, of course a sewing machine and more? It all becomes a challenge of organization.

Repurposing old denim jeans, particularly their wonderful back pockets, is a sustainable way to make use of once favorite jeans. Old jeans can be cut up and refashioned in numerous ways for sure, however the back pockets can be incorporated into so many functional and creative sewing projects.

Although an efficient and organized sewing area may at times seem like an impossible dream, particularly after viewing the photos of dreamy sewing and craft room organization efforts of others, it is worth a try to apply some organization, and even personalization to our favored sewing areas.

In trying to decipher optimal sewing machine tension for fabric, as if needle and thread choices were not enough for the home sewer, the serger or overlock machine elevates all, at times frustratingly, to an entirely new level of machine sewing considerations. Balanced serger stitches are the goal.