It's surprising though how much quilt you can stuff through a machine if you need to.

Isn't that the truth.

Tumble drying the linen a time or two before you sew the garments out of it is a good way to get all/most of the shrinkage out of it. Washing alone only gets part of it.

Good luck with the PR Bee Ruthie.

I think the old sheet will be great for the inner bag. Just something light and flexible, bigger then the poof, that you can cram full of scraps.

Mine will wind up with Velcro. Glad you mentioned it. Came across a 2 yard length of sew in a couple of days ago so might as well use some of it.

Those turned out lovely. Congratulations on getting finished and marrying off the daughter.  Best wishes to the both of them. 

Yes and no. I do understand though. I started sewing at about age 10 as there were few age appropriate for the time clothes available for a girl who was 5" 7 1/2". My Mom taught me about picking good for me patterns with more than one view I liked and also how to change the look with different fabric. Back then I could sew a dress for a fraction of what retail was. And I remember making my jammies and shorts in my teens. Then garment prices leveled off while fabrics continued to climb in price. After there were fewer domestic factories and more 2nd & 3rd world imports in the shops garment prices dropped. I'm in the US but I'm sure it applies to most other 1st world developed nations. Fabric selection broadened but much of it seemed to be left overs from those same factories.

So now I find a nice tee with some embellishment retails for $35 and up. I can make a more simple tee than that for much less, about $18. Sales help. BUT- if that top is on sale, which happens frequently, and has matching dyed lace or something on it, I can't make it as cheaply. That gets frustrating.

On a plain tee sewn vs purchased it is as you said: I can buy for less than I can sew, often about 1/2 of what a simple tee or tank would cost to make. Plus they have coordinating neck binding and coverstitched hems. I don't own a cover stitch machine and don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to duplicate tee's that sell for $4 to $7 USD.

If retail is selling tops I can use in an acceptable quality, which means similar to what I make, in colors I like and wear I've decided to just be thrilled about it and use my time making other things or reading.

@Ellabella , though I do feel for the plight of workers in many places I'm also mindful that they do have a job, no matter how bad, and that my little handful of tops might have helped put dinner on the table for them and their family one night.

Have Imself trim his toenails if the rip was at the bottom. OH was always destroying sheets between his nails and restless legs.
 
As for the Liberty set,  . It's always sad when old cottons start to show wear marks (holes) or the fabric begins to deteriorate. Give it some loving stitches to keep it going longer.

Acorn stop tempting me to change my mind    your work is lovely

I would suggest you keep the machine, as it is already a sunk cost, especially when you add in the extras, like thread and stabilizers, unless you need the space they take up or the money you would generate from the sale. In which case, move them on out of there and don't look back!

As I said before we almost all have multiple features and stitches on our machines that we never use. But they are there if we ever choose to use them. You and I just happen to have embroidery modules we don't use.  If a few years down the road something possesses us to ME we are ready.

Mine is a smallish Brother SE 400 combo machine limited to a 4" x 4" field. I was shopping for a new machine, just looking about, wanting a computerised machine for the first time. One night at an all nighter at the local quilt shop a gal had one of these. She insisted I sit and sew. It purrs. The stitching is brilliant on it. Has a zillion buttonholes. And, by the way, it machine embroiders, which she had never used and couldn't tell me about. I checked them out online and it sounded good and price was fair, USD $399 at the time. I thought about it for some months, maybe a year, and would occasionally look at one in a shop. One day I looked and they had reduced them for clearance the day before, now only $299 USD. Brought one home the next day.  Next day did a red work embroidery on a shirt. Embroidered a bouquet of flowers over a shirt pocket the next day. I had just enough variety of ME threads to make it work. Then I found Urban Threads that week with a site wide 50% off sale. I used 2 of those designs on a project, never finished and......haven't done a stitch since. That was in 2013.

Occasionally on sales days I would pick up more thread, so I could probably do most of the designs I bought and for several years I went to monthly meetings of a Machine Embroidery group and still, nothing. Two of those gals do ME every single day.  But I don't feel guilty about it. I just stopped buying thread for it. I do occasionally look at UT or EmLibrary to see what the current free designs are. I also download every size, just in case I ever get a machine with a larger field.

I second Urban Threads. I think they may have amalgamated with Embroidery library as the websites look very similar. I thought I'd digitise my own designs & have the software which came with my machine, but I have no desire to. I'm happy to buy a tried &tested design for a couple of dollars.

Billed as sister companies now. In the beginning IIRC the gal who runs UT was an intern at EL and had the idea for more contemporary, edgy designs and was encouraged to go for it. They use the same digitizing stuff and obviously same web people. 

Celia, I get where you are coming from. You have nice equipment and feel a bit silly for having all that sunk money and not be wanting to use it, especially as you also have the knowledge and skill to teach the rest of us. It's perfectly understandable but nothing to give yourself grief over. It's also perfectly fine to keep the fancy sewing & embroidery combo and only use the sewing part. Most of us utilize only a tiny bit of what our sewing machines can do anyway.

I'll talk about my ME exploits later. Cough. Maybe I'll dust off the thread first. IF I can remember where it is. And I love everything I embroidered! All 3 things.........!