A change is as good as a holiday

Having had a tiring, but really good weekend away last week, I seem to have come back exhausted, but extra motivated.
This week I have mended a record 8 pairs of trousers (the other leg of most of the ones I fixed last month), and made 2 stash-busting skirts. I managed to use up the best part of a frantically floral single sheet.
Warning!! Photos of overly cute and delighted pink children coming up.

I made Piper’s wraparound skirt using this tutorial from Simple Simon & Co, and given free choice she picked the pink sheet.
The next day I asked Robin what she would like and showed her a handful of other fabrics – the blue one, the green one, the spotty one…. But she was adamant that she wanted the same as Piper. So I made a different skirt – using Dana’s circle skirt tutorial – using the same very pink fabric.

Next time I’ll hide the pink stuff when I offer them choices.

Down for maintenance

The last few weeks have been less inspirational sewing and more maintenance sewing. By which I mean I have now patched almost every pair of trousers in my house.
I have of course had a couple of other projects on the go, but one is for my new nephew who isn’t here yet, and interestingly neither is his present!

I have also seen some progress on one of my stashbusting projects, but more on that in a couple of days’ time.

It has also been the Easter holidays so I have had all three children home. All. The. Time. Plus we have had visitors, so my creativity has been in the cooking and cleaning departments. And also in the co-ordinating of Robert and myself to actually hanging some pictures and mirrors that have been decorating the floor rather than the walls for slightly too long.

On a footnote, I would also like to say thank you to Sally of sallysewssometing.blogspot.co.uk for awarding me the One Lovely Blog Award and the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. Expect a post shortly where I follow through and pass this accolade on to other lovely and inspiring bloggers.

More Trouser Art

Just recently I actually got around to making some more decorative patches, specifically for my elder sister who loved the one I made for my daughter’s trousers last year. The timing worked well as not only does she now have holes in her trouser, but I managed to get them ready for the new school term – my sister is a teacher who loves her job, but gets end of the holiday blues, so she got these with instructions not to open them until the last day of the holidays.

I actually forgot to photograph these at the time, but conveniently she had them with her when she stopped by for birthday-ness at our Mum’s house last week so I attached and photographed them there (in good light!).

Technically this was quite an interesting project as I wanted each patch to be different from the others, but still very Cathy. The daisy was fiddly, but basically a reworking of the one I made for Piper’s trousers last year. The blue patch was very simple, but so satisfying and possibly my favourite. The orange and  yellow was a bit of a departure in style, as it came from a piece of flimsy printed fabric which I reinforced with calico. It then needed brightening up as it had black outline, so I hand-stitched satin stitches all around the edge and inner boundary to match the heart of the flower, and made the stem green. Time consuming but also satisfying.
Lots more projects coming up over the next couple of months, so hopefully I’ll have time to blog about them too.

Trouser Art

So I finally got bored with just patching trousers. With some of the buttons I have just bought (for an entirely different project) I customised this pair of slightly broken jeans with a robot (in case you couldn’t tell). Much to the delight of the children.

A Retrospective (III) – Patches

As the owner of any small boy will know holes in trousers are a given. So patches soon became part of my life. Not having any denim to match the trousers I went for the total contrast look (bright red). When I needed to patch a pair of his old trousers for my daughter to wear I went a step further!  (I love bias binding!). She liked them so much her first reaction was to kiss the trousers. And equally gratifying was the fact that my MIL didn’t even realise it was a patch.

I did a similar thing in order to mend my younger sister’s favourite trousers and now my other sister has requested some for her jeans - even though she doesn’t have holes!