A sewing machine dust cover has been on my to-do list for a while. I used this tutorial to guide me. I used a jelly roll I bought on clearance once upon a time for the exterior and pockets, double sided fusible foam interfacing someone gave me for the "batting", a fat quarter for the sides, and muslin for the inner lining. I added pockets on the side for storing the food pedal because it gets in my way when I'm not using it; it's like 98% of why I wanted to make a cover. I quilted the stripes by stitching in the ditch with clear thread. I didn't bind the seams like in the tutorial. I just serged the inner seams and rolled under and stitched the lower edge.  I might go back later to make an opening for the machine's handle. I didn't do it now because it was late and I just wanted to finish up and go to bed. I'm really happy with it! I tried to make a quick and dirty cover a month or so ago and it turned out pretty crappy. This is a worthy upgrade. Now ...

After my first test pieces this dresser went pretty smoothly and much faster. Part of that was the joinery was simpler, and part of it is I had all the tools and design finished before I started. I based my design on this tutorial then modified it to match my own aesthetic.  We have a Black and Decker Matrix power tool which allows the user to buy different attachments to use it as different tools. We have the circle saw attachment but it's a pretty small blade and not adjustable so it's not great for ripping down big sheets of plywood. We have a table saw but it requires two people to cut a full sheet of plywood because the sheet is so big and our table saw is a small job site saw.  So I bought myself a new 7 1/4 in circle saw from Harbor Freight (my new favorite store 😍) so I could cut down the big sheets by myself with greater ease on the work table. It worked great. I rough cut pieces a little bigger with the circle saw then cut them precisely to size on the table saw....

As the next step toward building myself a dresser, I made myself a nightstand. I've been using a step stool for a nightstand for a while and it was really getting old. This also seemed like a logical step in my learning process. I used skills I learned for the box (mitered corners, dados) and added to it drawer making, drawer slide installation, and leg construction and attachment This took me way too long to finish. I knew what I wanted it to look like, but didn't have all the specific design details decided in advance. It took me a while to figure out what kind of legs to put on it, what wood to use, and how to cut and attach them. It kind of became a "give a mouse a cookie" scenario where I decided I wanted to do one thing, but that necessitated a tool or a jig or a whatever in order to do it so I'd go about procuring/making that first before I could go back and finish the step I originally started with. The good thing is I now have a complete design with all t...