Sewing Circles

This morning's blog reading found me this little gem:

Circle Sewing Tutorial from the Fibre and Stitch Blog.

I am more of a visual person, takes me a few minutes with written instructions, but the gist is that you tape a thumbtack (pointy side up) to the bed of your sewing machine. The distance between the tack and the needle of your machine is the radius of the circle you will be sewing. Place your fabric under the needle, with where you want the center of your circle on the thumbtack, push the tack through your fabric. As you sew the tack holds the fabric, causing it to pivot in a perfect circle.

The instructions say to use fabric that has interfacing on it. I can see where the stiffness helps to make a perfect circle. I tried it using a piece that I was using to practice machine quilting on (3 layers) and it seems to move a bit, but I got a lovely circle.

The creator of this web site does an on-line magazine, which looks really neat but the thrifty part of me objects to paying $8.95 for a magazine in the first place, and then it's not even something you can hold in your hands, you have to print it yourself if that's what you want. The current issue has an article titled "Text on Textiles" which I'd love to read as my plans for my current version of my "self portrait" assignment needs some writing on it.