End of School

Which of course means teacher presents – and I sort of forgot for a minute that I now have two children at primary school, which meant twice the number of presents…

So, 2 Teachers and 2 TAs, plus a leaving present for pre-school as my youngest says goodbye to them. The pre-school was easy though, as Robin regularly wore her butterfly costume to school where it was greatly admired, so I made another one for pre-school. (I “slightly” overestimated how much fleece I would need first time around, so had plenty on hand!)

Traditionally I have made reversible totes for Matthew’s teachers (well, TAs really, as until this year he hasn’t had a teacher last out the year), which as they were all ladies worked well, but this year I had the challenge of a male teacher (couldn’t picture him with one of my bags…) But he is a tie-wearer, so courtesy of the free pattern at Coletterie I had a go (with some more of the linen from Cathy’s wedding).

The bags came together very nicely. As usual each bag is lined in a sturdy fabric to reinforce the decorative side, with a large pocket from the contrast fabric on it. In this case the blue and green bags had a calico lining, while the fern pattern fabric was paired with dark heavyweight denim. (Of course, the whole bag can be reversed so that the plain/pocketed side is on the outside, and the more decorative side tucked away discreetly inside the bag.) I even remember to sew tag in before stitching the side seams, and put the handles and ties in the right way round FIRST TIME!!

The tie was straightforward, but, unless I misinterpreted the instructions for folding, came up far too wide around the neck, so I ended up tracing some changes onto the lining from one of Robert’s ties, trimming it down and refolding everything. Came together beautifully the second time around, which isn’t bad for a first time make. And I think we had four happy teachers (the tie was even being worn by the end of the day).

The Christmas 2013 Picture Extravaganza!

Otherwise known as a somewhat belated, picture heavy, recap on Christmas.

Teatowels (I cheated – in the interests of sanity, and not having to go to the fabric shop again, I bought ready made tea towels!)

Aprons – for two utterly different people! And modelled manfully by Robert and, er… the door!

Butterflies – courtesy of Lier of Ikatbag’s brilliant and simple tutorial. Unfortunately my really careful calculations for the amount of fabric needed missed a bit and I now I have about 3 metres of really quite pink fleece lurking in my stash. :-/

Slippers (again), this time made from one of these – perfect for my little big sister (as modelled by Piper, which is why they look a bit roomy).

Rompers for my nephew – NOT FROM SCRAPS!! I actually won this in a giveaway at My Happy Sewing Place. Katie from Little Dress Kits had kindly given Debi one of her kits to give to one of her readers, and it was me! Aside from some slight heavy handedness on my part it was great. Once I had finished cannibalising the cutting process the whole thing came together very well. I have yet to see small Stocks in it, so we will all have to make do with Pyjama Dog standing in.

And a bag for my newly acquired but much older nephew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by Karen of Did you make that? I made some quilted mats.
A seasonal table mat:

and two sets of coasters – one in seasonal fabric. The other was for my new Brother in law – and true to form I failed to photograph! However somewhat like the first set of coasters, but made out of remnants waistcoats from the Cathy & Skip Wedding Show.

nearly there

Patchwork denim cushion…

A log carrier for my country dwelling parents made of this…

And finally, two candle holders made of salvaged wood from Robert’s workshop. One was a piece of fence post, which once it had been planed and sanded turned out to have a delicate pink cast one one side. I indulged in a little light stencilling (pun fully intended) and waxing.

The other – a piece of joist - was a bit more worn, but the woodworm tracks add a nice texture, and the nail holes were camouflaged with a flourish of butterflies.

thank you, and

The End

Scrapbusting Slippers

This month’s theme for the scrapbusting sewalong was “itty bits”, namely lengths of fabric of less than a yard. I managed two already, despite having a really nasty cold which meant that I just wanted to be in bed and not even watching the TV, let alone sewing. I didn’t even make birthday cakes for Robert and me, I was that under the weather.
I did however make Robert’s birthday present (out of remnants of calico and some black bias binding left over from another project). For his inner (and outer) geek:
Not surprisingly he uses them to store and transport his collection of cables and his headphones that he takes to church each week.

I have also been experimenting with making slippers – I bought a pattern in the post-Christmas sales, and despite completely messing up my size selection for my first go I think they are not bad.
Apart from some of the wobbly stitching. And the fact that the fabric is a bit thin. But this will all be corrected next time around. This pair is made from a remnant of a sheet which I had already cut up for making aprons, and a pillow case.
On to February with its Love Challenge!

**** UPDATE ****
Here is another pair of slippers which just made it into January - but not gifted until February 2nd, so I had to wait to include them here. Made of some old jeans, remnant of cotton, and a drawstring bag hastily constructed from an old trouser leg.

Leaving Home

If only for day. Today my Mum and I are going to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, which means that Robert has be Full-Time Parent for 24 hours.

This of course meant that I had to do every thing I would normally do on or by Saturday by 6pm on Friday so that I could catch my train. But this week, on top of making sure that the children all have sufficient clean clothes and meals available to them while I am out of the house, I had to add making a birthday bag and accessorising a fancy dress costume as Matthew has a party to go to this afternoon.

The plus side of all that drawstring bag making is that I managed to rattle out a couple of stripy drawstring backpacks one afternoon – and I only need one this week!

Having found a bandanna, a shirt, and a belt and sash (for Matthew to choose from) I felt compelled to make him a proper pirate hat using a tutorial I found online. I already had a worn out black vinyl coat ready to cut up, and absolutely no time, so what could be better?

Hopefully Matthew will wear it as gracefully as Rupert the coat-hanger.

Christmas? Done!

Of course, it is not my Christmas that I have finished, just somebody else’s.


That heap of festive fabric I showed you in the last post turned into this:



← Which are actually 50 of these.
The purpose of this was to provide, lighter, re-usable and more durable "Shoe Boxes” for a local organisation called Hopestonia to use to send Christmas presents to the children they help in Estonia.
This was a fairly slow moving project, mainly through procrastination, but also due in part to trying to work out what fabric to use, and how to reduce cost as much as possible. Then my lovely (and now closed) local Salvation Army shop had an unexpected donation of LOTS of Christmas stuff (in May/June) including lots of small remnants of fabric. They gave me everything I needed. All I had to do was launder it, unpicking the existing seams and iron all the fabric.
…And then work out how to cut all the slightly random bits of fabric into fairly consistently sized bags, actually cut them, sew them up, fold and sew again, thread the ribbon, stitch it down and hand them all over!
Now I just have to work out what I am doing about our Christmas.

Holiday anyone?

About 47 practice buttons holes later I finished off my cushion commission. Apparently I didn’t photograph the finished articles before sending them off, but they looked like this, but with more cushion-i-ness (and slightly greener).
	After that I rushed to complete my niece’s birthday bag, which I also forgot to photograph, but it was great.

Then I had a holiday, so of course I travelled around London with cake making paraphernalia and produced this (with a little help from my sister).
And now we are home, and resting. Kind of.

Summer is here

Well, the holidays are anyway (3 hours and counting). And the sun has been out (interspersed with cloud) for nearly two days now!
However, in our final mad dash before the end of term Matthew and I finished our projects for his TA (teaching assistant). I am not normally a gifts-for-the-teacher kind of person, but Matthew’s teacher left at Easter and they have had about a million supply teachers since then, so the TA has been really important to the class (besides being lovely, and really good with the children).
Out came the reversible shoulder bag again, just in a different colour way.
And Matthew made a Thank You card too. (Shown tied up with string to the bag).

Back in business!

It has been a while, but I have now (finally) updated my Folksy shop. We managed a photo shoot back at Easter and it has taken me until now to get focussed on putting the photos, descriptions and shop all in the same place.
It looks like this:
(models not for sale)

There are a couple more things to come later this week (tea towels, a reversible bag in Amy Butler Love Sunspots) and in between birthday presents I intend to add some Baby Bunting. Hopefully I can work on getting word out there and people will want to buy something.

It’s been a busy week.

I approached this half term week with some trepidation, as there was just so much to do!

We started out with the Jubilee weekend, and the grand cake making.



This was supposed to be followed by a day out in the New Forest with some grandparents, but Matthew broke his toe on the Bouncy Castle at the Jubilee Party, so Monday was cancelled. Instead we made another stripy back pack for a birthday present.


Then we had lovely visitors and some horrible weather which we combined with making more Baby Bunting for a new baby and tried to have a picnic on the most ridiculously wet day of the whole week.
Having said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa, we made cakes like they were going out of fashion (2 birthdays this weekend), and personalised them! (Gotta love ready roll coloured icing).

A bit of frantic beaching, an outdoor birthday party and then a family tea for our own birthday girl and we are about done…

Roll on school.

In Reverse

Backtracking a little, a while ago (just before I made a medical bag for the children) I actually cut my teeth on making shoulder bags for grown ups.

At my Christmas my elder sister gave me a length of Amy Butler fabric in olive and yellowy green spots. And my sister in law is handily quite a “green” person, so that seemed an ideal place to start. It is quite a full on colour effect though, so I decided that the inside/other side (as it is technically a reversible bag) should be calico, with a small stitching detail to tie in the greens.


And so I ended up with a rather nice bag which both its recipient and myself are very happy with. (Oh, and my Mum wants one too!)

Flappity flippers

Which makes sense if you have under children under 6 who are obsessed with the Octonauts. One of the most heard phrases in our house is “I’m Kwazii and Piper’s Peso”. (Sometimes followed by the slightly more cryptic “and Robin is Pinto”).
So you can imagine the fun that they had with the Octonauts comic Matthew bought recently, especially as it came with a medical kit for Peso. Less fun for me as the bits (bandages, medicine tube, stethoscope) tend to end up lying all over the floor. So I have just indulged in my first secret overnight project (Christmas and birthdays not included) and Peso now has a case for the med kit.

Can’t wait until they see it.


**UPDATE** Sometimes I don't know why I set myself up like this! Piper's response was great - non-verbal squeaks of excitement. Matthew (to paraphrase) said "it's great. Why didn't you do it like this though?" Hmmph.

Zig Zag

Apparently birthday party invitations work both ways. Since Matthew’s party a few weeks ago he has received 3 invitations to other children’s parties. Unfortunately we couldn’t make the first one, but a present was called for so I rustled up this:

(By rustled up I mean cut out the carefully measured fabric, realised that I had cut it wrong, and then cut out some extra bits to attach in order to make the bag bigger. Then tested the zig-zag stitching a lot before appliqueing the front of the bag, applying the fabric paint and then sewed the whole thing up. See, easy.)
I was so pleased with this that when I have a few minutes (not this week then!) I may well list this kind of bag for people to order/customise in my folksy shop. It is certainly going to be revisited for the upcoming birthdays.

Advent-ures

Gotta love a bad pun!
Having been following various other blogs recently I was inspired to create my own advent calendar for the children. I started with the large collection of small boxes I acquired after my sister-in-law’s wedding (they were favour boxes at the reception). Having been hoarding them for over 3 years now I was glad to find a use for them.

Add some string (to hold them closed properly), a nearly empty can of silver spray, and lots of bling we achieved something approaching what I intended (the children like it anyway) and I filled it with mini pyramid bags with jelly beans inside.

Finished, with 20 minutes on the clock

This afternoon my little boy went out to play with friends (for possibly the first time), and was going to need his car booster seat in order to get home. Given how cumbersome they are he obviously needed a custom bag to carry it on the bus, and with 6 hours before he left, why not? (yeah, I know, I’m insane).

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However after about an hour of thinking (and more thinking, and a bit of internet poking, realising that officially I possessed none of the recommended items for making a bag, and just a bit more thinking) I got the scissors out and started cutting out rectangles from an old cushion cover.

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If I made it again it would probably be constructed in a completely different order, and with some more conventional bits and bobs rather than random items from my shelves, but when Matthew left at 4:30 he had a recognisable bag which wasn’t spilling its contents all over the floor and actually stayed on. So a good job in that respect, I just need to see how all that stick on velcro has worked (didn’t have any sew on velcro to hand) or whether it will have all peeled off by the time he gets home.