I sew.  Adult, kid, fine.  Give me a 1/4 inch seam allowance and I'm golden.

But... my niece wants the doll I gave her for Solstice/Xmas/Festivus (she has an Obitsu 27 cm with a factory face and eyes, factory hair I cut n curled to match hers, nothing extravagant) to have a matching costume for her birthday. (DN asked for an Emily the Strange Costume.  Gotta love a 5 year old Goth.)  I adore this kid.  She's good to her doll.  I want her to have what she wants.

Her dress is done. Her shoes are here.  Her tights are in transit.  I have three weeks to get her doll dress done, and I may run out of time because I can't manage to sew the seams narrow enough.  The fabric ends up in the bobbin slot and I have to speak soothingly to my machine to get it free. 

What do I need to do to get very narrow seams to feed correctly (and oh, hems are scaring me...) Is there a foot I need to buy and learn to use, or is there something else?  I tried handsewing one and it came out okay, but not what I want; the seams never pressed right to my eye.

I've got a midlevel singer, about 6 years old, in very good shape.

Thank you!

I don't have a huge collection, but I have some, though most is just costume stuff. Right now it's stored in small wooden boxes in my bathroom, but it gets tangled and pieces get separated. I don't have room for an armoire (and haven't found one that fits my aesthetics) and I have yet to see a jewelry box that I like so I think I need to make something, but at the moment, I'm a bit stumped. Anyone willing to share their secrets for keeping earrings together and necklaces untangled?

We have a lovely dining room table, a 1930's Duncan Phyfe repro with the tripod legs and claw feet, but the chairs went AWOL long before I met table. (Table was a flea-market find...)

Dining room is an extension of our living room, and so is painted Ombra grey (Lowe's, Am. Trad, National Trust paints, Mark Twain house). At the window, we have black wrought iron rods, black curtains, and a white roman shade (because the view... not so grand). In one wall we have a red and black storage unit made of 42 wooden cubes in a checkerboard pattern. (Yes, there will be pictures, soon...)

I'll be building in corner cabinets in the spring, but I ran out of time this year, and I really can't deal with the dust that having the saws inside would create, or the cold of playing in the shed or the garage. They'll either match the black, the grey or the red.

The problem is our chairs. I married a BIG guy - 6'4, 260... and whether he wants to or not, chairs fail around him. Our dining chairs are giving up the ghost, and are no longer repairable. (They're currently late 1980s parsons chairs with slipcovers - either to match the tablecloth or black.) While I don't mind him using his very sturdy, comfy office chair when it's just us... we do have regular guests and so we need some chairs.

I'm looking for a basic base -- I can paint, stain, pad and staple with the best of 'em... but we're SOL on IKEA. Any sources for basic flat-pack chairs I can trust?