Gardening Apron and Deliveries

This has been a great week.

Firstly, lots of things arrived in the post (and I love getting orders delivered in the post):
- My copy of 'Love At First Stitch', which poor Royal Mail have been trying to deliver to me for about a month and a half. I started reading it as soon as it arrived, and I already love it!
- A rotary cutter, to stop me cutting wobbly lines with my scissors (in theory, anyway).
- The amazing and adorable purple dinosaur fabric from the Natural History collection by Lizzy House. Purple and dinosaurs, together, in one fabric. It's pretty much my ideal pattern.

And yesterday, my colleague gave me the ruler you can see at the top of the picture. It belonged to her Mum, so I was really humbled that she gave it to me, and I now have someone else's heirloom alongside my own, which is lovely. It'll also make measuring things a heck of a lot easier than using my 30cm ruler!

The second reason that this has been a great week is that my sewing machine was fixed. It's been having problems with tension, so I gave it a clean, then realised a lot of the tension problems came from having too long a stitch length.

The manual for the Singer 28k says that to shorten the stitch length, you turn the screw 'outwards'. I took this to mean clockwise, towards the hand wheel. After a couple of days of trying it, getting confused, then comparing the different stitches, I realised that I had assumed wrong. Unfortunately, after I'd had this revelation, the screw on mine became stuck; on 4mm stitches, too! I tried turning it, with no luck; but after getting my boyfriend to help, carefully turning it with the wrench, it moved and can now be turned by hand again.
So, to summarise: to shorten the stitch length on a 28k, turn the screw anti-clockwise. To lengthen it, turn clockwise. It might take a bit of effort, like it did on mine!

And finally, this week was finished off perfectly because I finally made my gardening apron! I've been wanting to make this for ages, since I first saw this tutorial on the Hobbycraft blog. Here is my finished apron:

And here it is modelled by me, with some of my gardening tools in. I opted for three pockets and lengthened them too so that I would be able to carry my forks, trowels and other tools in it, and it worked! It even fits my new gloves in, too.

So I am very happy this weekend, despite the heatwave we're having in England. Hopefully next I'll be attempting a headscarf/headband, and then after that the plan is to make the cover for my sewing machine and its 'coffin lid' box. Although I do also have plans for a bag, too, so we'll see what happens. :)