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. :-)

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

So far, so good!

See, not even a week later, and here is my second post of the year. The Stashbusting Sewalong was so popular last year that it is running again for 2014. My pledge this year is to make at least 2-3 items out of stash every month.  As soon as I have wrapped my head around it I will update the button on the right of the screen. All the stashbusting group action is taking place on facebook, but I will also be blogging about the (hopefully) interesting stuff here too.

There are themes for each month again, but the emphasis is on stash busting rather following the themes if they don’t fit. For example this month’s theme is “Itty Bitty Scraps”, but my two January makes have used up about 2 1/2 metres each!

First up this year was Robert’s Birthday Shirt - not to be confused with his birthday suit ;-)  This just about counts as stashbusting – I bought everything intending to make it for Christmas, but reality got in the way again, so it got deferred to January. I used the Colette Pattern Negroni, which comes with a really detailed book of instructions. In addition the ever entertaining Peter of Male Pattern Boldness ran a Sewalong with this pattern a couple of years ago, and this was really helpful in giving all those hints and tips a first timer really needs, plus some extra photos of the complicated bits. Plus of course his recommendation of the Singer Buttonholer attachment, which I bought last year, and means that Robert doesn’t have to make do with velcro or popper fastenings on all his clothes!

Very satisfied with the first go – especially as it was a secret from him, so I didn’t measure Robert, just his shirts to get the fit right. In fact Robert asked if I can make all his shirts from now on! Now I feel I just need to work on my photo skills – and Robert on his poses!

Well, hello there.

Turns out last year got quite busy, and I utterly failed to post anything after the start of October.
To put this into context, the rest of October was spend frantically sewing for the wedding including the essential, if last minute, aprons for the bridesmaids. This was followed by the frantic baking of three different flavour wedding cakes, and then a convoluted system of travel to get everyone and everything from Dorset to London plus two days of church and venue decorating.

Wedding was lovely.
From London we went directly to Cornwall for our hectic and ridiculously stormy half-term holiday, and once we got back it was Christmas all the way! Christmas was a personal stash-busting special, so I will be posting about that separately, but suffice to say, with 20 presents to make over two months I was a bit busy. Especially as it turns out that the whole family still wanted feeding on a regular basis! Oh, and I have been running our church choir, so we had 3 “events” to prepare for, and I accidentally invited them all home for a Christmas party so had to do housework too! If I wasn’t so haphazard I might even be accused of overachieving.
On top of all that we spent Christmas out in the countryside and the storms knocked out the phones and internet so we had a low-tech Christmas (no bad thing) followed by more hospitality back home before the children finally went back to school.
I have every intention of now being much more organised and consistent, but we all know how that one goes…

September Stashbusting

September… September? Oh, right the one between August and October when everything happens and there is no time to blog? I remember.
This month’s theme was sewing for kids, which frankly is what most of my sewing is anyway; unfortunately this month’s crop wasn’t very newsworthy…
We had a vast amount of label sewing (using up my label stash one by one… stretching a point too far? oh, alright then.) Combined of course with the annual sewing of the school trouser turn-ups.
Then there was the last minute swimming bag, which actually used stash material. I forgot until the night before his first session that Matthew didn’t actually have an appropriate bag. And I can’t even show a photo as I didn’t snap one earlier, and today is swimming day.
In fact the highlight seems to be Piper’s birthday hedgehogs.
My Mum and I have of course been making wedding clothes for all and sundry, including our four diminutive bridesmaids, but I can’t release photos of those in all their glory until next month. Sorry.
Ah, well, roll on October with it’s theme of Unselfish Sewing, into which 2 out of my 3 scheduled projects should fit.

Hedgehog Day

Also known as Piper’s birthday. Which, as she has been telling anyone who will listen over the last few weeks, means Bolognese and Hedgehog Cake for dinner.
At one point she had grand ideas of hedgehog decorations and hedgehog costumes for all the (adult) guests but we were able to manage her expectations back to just the hedgehog cake.

As a special gift for her I used some of her beloved “slug scraps”* to make a little hedgehog brooch, now known as Hedgy. Not my greatest achievement, but after the third go I gave up trying to improve the shape, and besides which Piper seems to like him, which was the point really.

* A local (and online) shop called Love From Hetty & Dave makes these fantastic slugs, which Piper likes to go and visit. Last time we were there Zoe kindly gave Piper some tweed scraps from the slug she was making. Piper is quite attached to them. And has a postcard of one of the slugs on her bedroom wall.

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!)