Wardrobe Makeover

Well, it is a kind of stashbusting. In that we no longer have to edge into the garage and complain about not being able to find anything “because there’s a wardrobe there”. :-)
My online presence has been little bit sketchy over the last couple of months. I nearly blogged on my April makes, but with two lots of school holidays, plus some other things to be doing, I feel like I got sucked into limbo and have just been spat out again.
My big (non-sewing) project was a long-awaited paint job on the wardrobe I promised Matthew last summer. It arrived then as a plain, beaten up, scribbled on pine wardrobe (£12, ebay). Summer 2013, before the sun went away, I let the children help me prime it (why???) and then it got mothballed in the garage while it rained. End of April/beginning of May I made some space in the living room, and spent the next few weeks giving it a top coat and then decorating in the previously approved fashion, while fending off offers of help from the children. It is now residing in Matthew’s tiny bedroom (it fits under his loft bed!)


I did do some sewing, but nothing that needs much explanation…

Leaving present for my son’s fab Maths teacher	non-food items for the Easter Egg Hunt.
money pouch, using vintage linings from my grandmother’s stash…	Leather brooch made at a workshop at the fab Love From Hetty & Dave.

I also made two items of clothing – a frilled, polka dot crimplene skirt for Robin, and a green and orange linen shirt for my 1 year old nephew, only “Failure to Fotograph” struck again so no photos. (Sorry, alliteration was too good to resist).
And I moved my sewing machines from the dining room to the recently vacated garden office (or “shed”). This has had an impact on my sewing too, as I have to go outside to get things done, but it is also helping my to think about how I approach my sewing tasks, and what state I leave everything in at the end of the day!

Here’s to a more productive June/July, before 6 weeks of no sewing hits me.

The Moustachathon

Project no. 3 for March – an utterly seasonal marathon running costume!
In a couple of weeks’ time my elder sister will be running the London Marathon (again) and felt that her earlier foray into Marathon/Moustache combos was just too low key and commissioned something like this but out of felt.

http://circle.sewweekly.com/photo/giant-mustache-halloween-costume

Pretty straight forward to make – 1.5m of black felt, some kind of covered wire I was gifted last year when corset making, and lots of black thread. (We considered using cardboard, but thought it might be harder to run in, especially if it rained). I broke out the zigzag machine for this one, and having cut out two layers of moustache shaped felt zigzagged over the wire to attach it to one of the layers. If I hadn’t been trying to work it all out on the fly I would have then done the same thing with a wide H shape of wire (to provide vertical and horizontal support) and repeated for the other piece. As it was I attached the two layers a bit too soon, so had to be a bit more creative. Especially as it needed a little bit of padding to give the curves some character. However, by dint of layering in some spare felt/wire/batting and then painstakingly sewing in some more wire to the lower edge of the front piece for support, attaching it to the RTW black tutu at regular intervals, and stitching more bits closed to get it to hang right when worn we ended up with “the vision”.

And a bonus piece of theming is the comedy facial moustache that no-one can miss!
If you want to sponsor Cathy then please visit her sponsorship page here.

p.s. apologies for the quality of the photos – the light was poor, the house was a mess and I was using my mobile phone – never a good combination.

World Book Day

Apparently this was the 17th World Book Day (the fourth since I first heard about it – when Matthew started school) and I love it. The notion of having a day to celebrate the joy of reading a book, and even better, going to school in costume to illustrate it and to share new books and characters with your friends!
This year Matthew and Piper both came up with really clear ideas of which characters they wanted to go as. And posed for LOTS of photos.

Piper chose Katie Morag (recently made into a TV series, but we have a couple of the original books at home too). The key items of this costume are a cream chunky knit sweater (with some blue detailing), a green check skirt and a pair of wellies. Well, the boots we already had and the basic jumper I found in Tesco marked down from £10 to £4! The skirt was trickier though as it is a very green on green check, and didn’t quite fit any of the tartans or checked fabrics I could find locally. It also bugged me that I wasn’t going to be able to use anything out of my stash – until I realised I had the perfect base fabric for the skirt. Then I just cut out the pieces I needed (traced from one of her school skirts) and I used fabric paints to print the squares and draw the lines. A few hours later and I had the perfect print, mimicking the watercolour style of the original illustrations! The skirt then just needed sewing together,  I couched a length of blue yard onto the jumper to create the decorative element Katie Morag has on her sweater and I had one happy Piper.

Matthew selected a brilliant character costume that is completely his style, and couldn’t have been more obscure if he tried! One of his most read books is one I bought when I was his age called “Aliens in the Family” by Margaret Mahy. Bond is a shape changing alien sent to Earth on a fact finding mission. He disguises himself as a human in order to not stand out. His clothing is described in detail: “Pockets of orange, green and gold, all differently shaped, were sewn down the legs of his blue jeans, and there were others like bright windows on his brown shirt.” The book also makes reference to his white hair and the red and black tattoos on his neck which in his real form are his gills and there is a plot element where he acquires a transistor radio with ear piece which he carries around everywhere.
One charity shop shirt, one existing pair of jeans, and some more wedding linen from the stash (plus some junk from Robert's collection of broken tech that he hasn't thrown away yet) and we had it!

	In progress shot – tattoos applied, and hair spray in progress – outside!

I love World Book Day, and I think they did too.

A little bit of Love

Stashbusting in February has been going very well – and with a brief to make either something I love, or for someone I love it was very easy to fit with other practical considerations.
First up was Superhero Day at school (much admired already by my fellow stashbusters. Most of the costume was made a couple of years ago for Matthew, but Piper is a different kind of superhero, so she definitely needed a red skirt to really work her superhero status.

February is also a birthday month and sister in law Sue wanted a barista style apron. Half a remnant later (plus some leftovers from Robert’s shirt) we have an apron. I was undecided on a pocket, so left it for now and will add one to Sue’s requirements next time they visit.
Sister in law LJ’s birthday was soon after, and in a spectacularly unimaginative move made her an apron too! However as they have utterly different styles I was able to be much more creative in my fabric choices.

(modelled by Robert and Matthew!)

Contrary to all the clues this is in fact NOT a valentine! Except in the sense of being an enduring reminder of my love. I wanted to provide my little sister with something that would remind her how much she is loved on the days when everything is a battle. As a first pass I made this simple needlework design using a piece of the leftover wedding fabric. The embroidery hoop was just for the making. I ended up gluing it to a postcard, and backing it with another piece of card to hide the edges, so that she can lean it on a shelf or stick it to the wall easily.

Finally(ish) my other sister came to visit over half term, bringing with her a onesie which needed to be altered to make a Max (from Where The Wild Things Are) for World Book Day. This was great fun, working out how to achieve the look without drastically altering the original garment. I turned the round bear ears into horns by twisting them up and stitching in place. Then I raided my cupboard for black covered wire (I don’t know what this generally used for, but someone gave it to me when I was corset making…) for wonky whiskers and some white fabric for the tail. Finally I added four large buttons down the front – and added white stickers to the front of each one to make them more like Max’s. One happy Robin… I mean Cathy.

Next up, more World Book Day costumes. :-)

Not a portal to Narnia*

We recently invested in a wardrobe for my son’s bedroom – but it had to be small enough to fit underneath his IKEA loft bed. And cost almost nothing. So Ebay it was. After three days of searching and bidding I then got the wardrobe I kind of wanted from the beginning (main criteria being size and price). It does need some love though. Aside from repositioning the hanging bar inside, we want to do something special with the outside.
We asked Matthew what he wanted and he responded “cogs and pulleys!” Robert’s response was “ooh, steampunk!” but I was a little more cautious in embracing this notion as:
a) Matthew is 7 and he hasn’t come across steampunk yet and
b) if it doesn’t contain bright colours he doesn’t want it; brass and sepia just don’t fit into this picture.
After a little more conversation I had a clearer picture of brightly coloured stencilled cogs connected by the occasional belt. A further search of Ebay, and a couple of hours later I had these:
Watch this space… possibly for a really long time, nothing happens fast around here.

* the actual portal to Narnia lives here. (no, honestly, just scroll down!)

The Clothkits Peekaboo dress

Most mornings my elder daughter hops out bed and says something along the lines of “I want to wear this [insert description here] dress today”. Trouble is she keeps growing, so her selection of dresses is being whittled down to a very small number. So last week, instead of starting on my dress (no, NOT procrastinating) I reached for one of the Clothkits dresses that I was gifted from a friend, whose daughters had grown too big for them. 
It came together very nicely. My only real error was cutting it to fit Piper’s chest (age 4) and forgetting about her length (nearer age 5). So after realising that it sat too high in the neck and under the arm I spent the rest of the day unpicking everything that I had painstakingly sewn together.

I used the remains of the visible markings to extend the neckline and armhole and sewed the whole thing back together. Then I just had to wrestle with the placket. A lot. May add an invisible zip next time instead…
I must admit, I cheated on the button holes, as I was sewing it up at Mum’s house, and rather than learn the process on her fancy computerised machine, I just worked out the spacing, marked their positions and let Mum work the machine. Next time buttons, next time.
(I feel like I made up for this though by being more creative with my button choices!)
However Piper and I are both really happy with this – apart from the fact that it needs washing all the time – and it is already one of her go-to dresses.

And some of the other stuff…

Aside from the birthday fun we had in June I have been kept quite busy on other projects.

One of the school mums seems to have fallen in love with the backpacks I have been making for children’s birthday presents, and has been spreading that love among her friends (thank you!) so I had another four bags to make last month – three Butterfly Backpacks and a Simply Stripy one.

And then our soon-to-be brother-in-law Skip had a birthday. Cathy is trying to train him in her use of all the different towels and cloths to be found in the kitchen, so a while back mentioned tea-towels as a useful present. And because the children have great memories of scoffing raspberries straight out of his garden that is what we put on them.

This was swiftly followed by an emergency birthday present make for one of Matthew’s friends as we received a belated invitation to her birthday party. She already had a butterfly bag (the first one!) so she was due a pencil case this year.

My other sister also had a birthday, and she too is trying to get her house sorted out, so she got a carrier bag holder, a couple of lavender sachets (to match last year’s cushion) and a Beezer annual from 1979 (her birth year).

And then of course there were the bean bags. *sigh* I had made both bean bags on other occasions, but had slightly under-stuffed them so when the one my sister had commissioned came back I not only topped that one up, but also Matthew’s bean bag which was a little limp. The (big) downside was that my house was full of small polystyrene beads AGAIN (I am still finding them lurking in corners that I thought I had already vacuumed). he plus point was that I finally got to photograph the other bean bag which I made back around Christmas and despatched so quickly that my camera never got near it.

one very badly edited photo of the purple bean bag

On top of that I did LOTS of wedding related laundry – but no photos as they would be spoilers!