THIS CONTEST ENDED 08/31/12. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED.

Nine tutorials plus five techniques plus today's Great Giveaway equals three weeks of beauty and imagination. We hope you've enjoyed the Romantic Bedroom Retreat series with Rowan & FreeSpirit Fabric as much as we have. It was a challenge to take four new, and somewhat disparate collections, and bring them together into a harmonious theme, as well as blend in a variety of fabric substrates, such as voile, cotton sateen and laminates. But the result was well worth the work; we loved the final look of the Bedroom Retreat, and we were so happy to read all your comments and know you loved it too! The goal of this series was to give you the tools, inspiration and confidence to mix and match designers, fabrics and substrates to create your own unique look for a single project or an entire room. Today, we bring you TWO big bundles of fabric, allowing two lucky Sew4Home commenters to do just that: take what they've learned and enhance their own space. Our two winners, drawn at random, will both receive two yards each of thirteen different fabrics from within the collections featured in our series (yep, do the math; that's 26 yards each). It's a treasure chest of inspiration! No wait... it's TWO treasure chests!!

THIS CONTEST ENDED 08/24/12. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED.

There are the Seven Wonders of the World, and then... there are the Seven Weekend Wonders of Sew4Home. Our seven are magnificent in their ability to be very pretty projects you can whip out in a weekend. We chose a casual summer theme, so each one is a perfect way to spend a sunny weekend. Our thanks to Series Sponsor: Fabric.com for providing the fabric and notions to make it all happen, as well as the support to help us continue to bring all these great ideas to you for FREE! And... it doesn't stop at "free." Today, Fabric.com celebrates ten days of Weekend Wonders with a seriously Wonderful prize package. One lucky S4H visitor will receive everything pictured above. From a Deluxe SideWinder bobbin winder to a dozen cutie-pie buttons, it's a bundle of terrific goodies for your sewing space. Total prize retail value: over $295!

It’s a wee bit of an understatement to say there are lots of sewing trims. In fact, if you were to lay all of the trims available end to end, they'd likely cover the earth! But choice is what we love, isn't it? It adds the spice to our sewing life. And, a room like our Romantic Bedroom Retreat, sponsored by Rowan and FreeSpirit Fabrics, cries out for some extra special embellishments. If you’ve been a Sew4Home reader for a while, you may have read our original tutorial on Terrific Trims. Since then, we’ve developed more project ideas using different kinds of sewing trims – some trendy, some traditional. A perfect example is the current Romantic Retreat projects for which we dove into the upholstery trim section to find an unbelievable assortment of tasseled and beaded trims and fringe. Another recent example was our experimental trim week with Simplicity; we designed two fashionable handbags (links are provided at the end of the article for these and other trim-focused projects) around “new” metal trims. This lead to our popular tutorial: Adding Metal Trims to Sewing Projects. Between these and others, we realized it was time for a Terrific Trims update.

There's always a certain amount of hemming and hawing about having to hem. Just about every project you do includes some sort of a hem, and there are so many from which to choose. There is the simple double-turn hem, the blind hem, faced hem, covered hem, taped hem, curved hem, single hem, narrow hem, cuffed hem and bias hem. Then there are all the special hemming techniques for certain fabric types, such as leather, fur and lace, as well as projects with scalloped edges or pleats. Whew! But with even with these choices, there is one particular type of hem we receive more questions about than any of the others: the rolled hem. Our current Romantic Retreat series with Westminster Fibers Lifestyle Fabrics includes projects that incorporate a number of different substrates, from sateen to voile to laminates. A rolled hem may just come in handy, so let's get rollin'.