I agree with all the other comments concerning less drama, more design and sewing. There have been many occasions when I was sure that someone was not eliminated because it would reduce the conflicts in the studio. After the last two seasons, I'm willing to watch it only one more time before giving up entirely. Sometimes I wonder whether I have mistakenly taped an episode of The Real Housewives of Hell.

Last year I went through my complete fabric stash, which was at the time in five different drawers and an armoire. I managed to be relatively rigid in my sorting and ended up selling about 30 or 40 fabrics on eBay. Then I pre-washed all the fabrics that would need that step and folded them in half lengthwise (for easy cutting) and in fanfolds 1/2 yard apart. Then I sorted by season and by color and stored the fabrics in clear zipped bags about 24" x 18" x 6". (fairly easy to find online; I had some left from quilts and bedspreads, etc. that I had purchased). Then I cleaned out a small closet and stacked the bags neatly, so that I could see and easily access each as I needed to. Your plan sounds awesome, but not suitable for my situation, and I don't like to think of the wrinkles that would be caused by folding the fabrics to fit even the magazine-size tubes. Unless there's something there that I don't understand.

I agree with MachineQueen. Staggering the notches makes for a smoother convex seam, just as staggering the slits is better for a concave seam. It's more trouble, sure, but worth it for special projects. I don't bother with pinking shears for anything but silk organza. They just don't work for me.

My daughter says that I need two people to make anything: myself to actually do it, and someone else to tell me when it's done. I do tend to be a teensy little bit of a perfectionist. When I found myself putting a zipper in a duvet cover for the fourth time (a 60+" long zipper), I finally had to tell myself that it was going to be tucked in; I wasn't planning to wear it.

For the first time in my life, I have a dedicated sewing room. We live in a restored 1890 Victorian home, and although I use the most modern equipment in the sewing room, the room is a half-open space at the top of the stairs, about 12 x 12 feet, and I didn't want for it to detract from the ambience of the home. My sewing machine (a relatively new Janome) sits on top of an antique Singer sewing machine table--the original Singer is below in its compartment, and the treadle is useful in keeping me relaxed while sewing. The drawers are perfect for storing scissors, needles, pins, buttons and other fasteners. There are two comfortable upholstered chairs on one side-wall that are perfect for hand-sewing tasks. Between them is an antique oak bench with a back that pulls up over the bench to create a cutting table (when covered with a piece of formica that can stand up behind the bench when not in use. The bench has a large compartment below the seat for storing fabrics (not all my fabrics; I still have other stashes, of course--I've been sewing for 60 years). There is an antique oak washstand on the opposite wall, with mirror and several drawers for storing thread, bobbins, zippers and other essentials. It also has a doored cabinet for patterns.

The most important feature to me is having the sewing machine in front of a large east window, through which I can watch birds in the large hemlock behind the house and other wildlife in the five acres beyond. My relatively new Janome sits on the table of an antique Singer machine (the old machine is still below in its compartment, and the treadle is helpful in keeping me relaxed while I sew. But I also have an Ottlite beside the sewing machine on the Singer top, as well as another on the bench top to use when hand-sewing or pressing. (The cutting table is a good base for a legless ironing board.)

Because I had serious spinal injuries in an auto accident three years ago, I am unable to get around very easily, but I use a comfortable adjustable office chair at my sewing machine, and it allows me to get around to the other convenient spaces on the same floor and to adjust the height when I am cutting or pressing. Fortunately all our floors are hardwood, and that means that all the thread and clippings can be easily vacuumed with my little "alien" hand-vac while I am sitting in the chair. (The vacuum is actually a Dyson Animal, but it is the only item in the otherwise Victorian room that looks alien.)

I hope these ideas are useful. They have certainly added greatly to the quality of my life--which without being able to sew would be depressing.

Anthony's reaction to winning made the night! I agreed with the judges on that, but I thought Ben's design was a very close second. If Mila had used a more "springy" color combination, it could easily have been the winner, too.

In general, I agreed with the judges--particularly on the winning design. But I disagreed wholeheartedly with their assessment of Amy's design. The guest judge who went on and on about the lack of color coordination must have gone to a weird art school. Orange and blue/turquoise are wonderful together, being exactly on opposite sides of the color palette. And the design was really imaginative.

On my TV--and also on my computer--the stripes in the skirt definitely look pale blue, and I agreed that the dress was the clear winner. I had a much more difficult time picking one clear loser, and I agree with Corkys Kid that the shirt-dress was a classic for the workplace, but the other piece in that duo looked like a leftover from the maternity challenge.

I am definitely an addict of Project Runway, and if they want to include all the drama and fabric fights, they should make the show 90 minutes to extend the runway show. Not only should each design be on the runway longer, but all of them should be paraded for comparison. Top Chef does a much better job of displaying (and tasting) all the entries; sometimes you could almost taste them. I'd like to see PR's runway show make me consider whether either my daughter or I could wear the item.

I'm 73 years old and have been sewing since I was ten. My mother made all my dresses from feedsacks and trimmed them with her wonderful handmade tatting. My grandmother made all her own dresses and my grandfather's shirts. The only B that I made in high school was in Home Ec, because I tried to show the teacher better ways to sew clothing. My mother, also a teacher, told me that if that B kept me from being valedictorian I had no one to blame but myself for being a smart aleck.

Even during the years when I had a very stressful career in and around the Pentagon, I still made most of my own clothes. Since the age of about 14, almost everything I've made has used a Vogue designer pattern (many of which I still have from the Jackie Kennedy/Audrey Hepburn years in the 1960s. They haven't fit me for the past 20 years, but suddenly I'm able to use them again.)

I also make a lot of clothes for my daughter, who is definitely a fashionista, and all her friends are jealous.

As many other comments have noted, it's hard to find good fabric locally. We are now retired and living in a rural area in WV, and for a long time I drove back to G Street Fabrics in Washington to buy. But once I got online, those trips ended permanently. Most of my best fabric buys come from www.fashionfabricsclub.com. They take orders without requiring that you pay their low membership fee, but you get great discounts if you do become a member, as well as getting envelopes full of fabric samples regularly. The "hand" of a fabric is important to me, so I especially like the samples. There are many other online fabric sites, of course, and that is the solution for those of you who are having trouble finding good fabric at a reasonable price.

I can't imagine a life without sewing, and Threads is a wonderful source for techniques that beginning sewers can learn from--as well as advanced seamstresses.

I think we stopped using the term "maternity" when men started saying "We're pregnant". Ah, would that that were true!