Olivers New Harness

I saw this tutorial for a dog harness at Sew Mama Sew. I am one of those weird people that take their dog to daycare and I'm always looking for ways to improve the car ride. The daycare workers and my husband have a lot of trouble figuring out how to attach the side straps to Oliver's current harness and this new one completely eliminates that step so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I decided to make a matching bow tie out of scraps. It attaches to his collar with Velcro. Since this is for a car seat, I did a lot of re-enforcing. I serged the lining to the top piece, mostly to use my new serger. I'd never sewn curves on a serger before, definitely going to have to work on that skill. I also had a lot of trouble with the binding. I should have cut bias binding and I bet that would have made it easier. I also used some really cheap fabric from Joanns. If you look closely, you can see the mistakes, but it's a dog harness so I don't care. I prefer to make something functional while learning rather than scraps.

Here's the finished product:

Sewing Desk/Cutting Table - Conception

So I have been on a mission to turn my sewing space into an actual sewing space.  I'm fortunate to have a spare bedroom to make a sewing room/guest room right now so I have the room for an actual desk at the very least.  Right now, I have my sewing machine set up on an adjustable folding table.  At full height, it's too tall and and the next lower notch it's too low.  Plus the lack of drawers drives me nuts not to mention it shakes when I sew fast (usually on accident).

After much searching online, I decided that I would either have to shell out hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a reasonable solution or figure out how to make something on my own.  The engineer in me, of course, says design it yourself and after finding this site by Ana White with instructions on how to build your own furniture, I had decided to try.

Here it is.  The table top is 4' by 8' and it's 27" tall.  I'm 5'4" so it should be a good starting height.  If I need to raise it another inch I should be able to add something to the feet.  I putting books and other such items on the two shelves on the sides.  I may decide to add a shelf to the top section to for baskets to store sewing machine things.  The bottom shelf in front will probably have a giant bin for scraps.  I'm also going to cut a hole in the top for my sewing machine.  It's not shown, but there's a shelf underneath the top for the machine to sit on.

If this goes well, I hope to make a cutting table next based on the Varde Base Cabinet from IKEA.

My table is a bit smaller and right now 32".  It's designed to have two drawers, not shown.  I'm still working on the exact details.  My intent is to store fabric and projects on the shelves below.

Neither my husband nor I have a truck and our tool selection is very limited so my dad is going to help me with the project.  Hopefully it goes well!

Cost Break Down So Far:
$40 on a new fine tooth saw blade for my dad's saw
$20 for some roller stand thing to cut the wood
$40 for a Basic Kreg Jig Kit (it's how you make neat pocket holes to hide the joins for the wood)
$20 for the Kreg Jig Clamp to clamp the kit to a table.
$8 for two different sizes of screws for the Kreg Jig

It's feels like I've already spent a lot (which I have), but the IKEA table alone is $350 and most sewing tables are $200 plus.  I alway have the tools (minus the saw blade and screws) so $80 isn't really towards the project.  The wood should be around $100 total for both projects and depending how it goes it will either get stained or spray painted white.  If my estimate is right, I'll have a sewing table and cutting table for around $200, which would definitely be winning.