My Sewing Blog

The Bento boxes turned out to be too small. According to Japanese guidelines they're about the right size for a two year old! So I'm using them as snack boxes. Here's a little snack I made the other day. What else... well I made a few nappies. Finished them off really. They were cut out ready to sew. They're the top three. The yellow, orange and ocean (I think!) colours. The touchtape looks kind of horrible already. It seems thinner than aplix , so its more see through. I think that adds to the grubby look. I don't like aplix loop much either. It looks horrible after a few washes, and it tends to hold crummy bits. The coloured touch tape is good though. So I'll probably stick to that ( haha - unintentional joke). This is my nice Ikea baby changing unit where my nappies are supposed to live. It's looking a bit bare.... Because most of the stuff is dumped on the floor next to it. What a mess....

I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. I uploaded my novel to be verified 15 minutes before the deadline! Better than last time, when I uploaded it just a few minutes before the deadline. I was hoping to actually finish the thing tonight. It's about a chapter away from being finished (must admit I haven't put any chapters in at all - its something I plan to do when I edit it.) R didn't go to sleep tonight till after 10pm. I think he knew my plans! Kind of sad I didn't finish it. Without a deadline I probably won't get around to finishing it. At least not for a while anyway. I can't wait to get back to doing some sewing at last. I've worked on this novel every single night since the 1st of November. Feel quite proud I managed to do it :-)

Before I start, may I direct your attention to my word count -------> 49,100! Only 900 words to go!!!!!!!! Alright, these are some things I got just recently. Some fabric from Purely Patchwork. Got some fabric for something I'm making for my mums birthday and some Christmas fabric too, to make some Christmas nappies. I spent a whopping £5.99 on a reel of variegated Christmas coloured thread. And I got some pins and needles. Moving on... a delivery of stuff for my new obsession from The Japan Centre in London. I've got 3 child sized bento boxes, farm themed plastic cups, farm themed mayonnaise containers, paper cases, rice ball maker, triangle paper cases, soy sauce bottles, teddy bear mould - for cookies, cutting sandwiches or a mould for rice, star and heart egg shaper and cocktail stick sort of things. Aren't they so cute!! They're for picking food up, like sliced sausage, or maybe fruit that's a bit messy. These are the sauce bottles, it says you can...

Finally got a chance to upload some photos. This is one of the weirdest projects I ever did. I've never done so much preparation! Usually I just jump straight in. But for this I very carefully traced all the pieces, I marked everything that needed marked, ironed on all the interfacing, ticked off all the pieces on the pattern sheet once they were ready. I even used pins!!! When I actually got down to sewing it all came together very fast. Apart from the gusset part. There wasn't a pattern piece for that. Just measurements for the piece, but i think they must have been wrong. There was no way the piece i cut could fit anywhere on the bag. The instructions really weren't clear. It looked from the drawing that there were gussets on both sides, but not the bottom, but there was no mention of sewing up the bottom part. So I just made it up as I went along. Front of the bag: I wish I'd put the panel on then interfaced the whole front, instead of just the corduroy. The back o...

I'm at 11,445 words now! I was quite stuck the last few days, and really had to force myself to increase my word count. Last night I managed a decent chunk of writing though. I only stopped because it was after midnight and the baby was waking up. I'm going to try and write some during the afternoon, when R has a nap if I can. But I have mountains and mountains of laundry that's somehow appeared from no where. And Saturday is a day we do our work home education-wise. Both S and E are starting a maths block this week. I kind of want to give up this novel thing. i just don't have the time for it. And if I don't have the time I won't make the 50,000 words. But I hate to fail... The main fabric arrived for my bag I'm sewing yesterday, so I've got that prewashed. Just waiting on the Japanese fabric arriving and the bag handles. If I get a chance I'll trace the pattern pieces and cut out the main fabric. It shouldn't take too long to sew ...

That's National Novel Writing Month. You have a month to write a 50,000 word novel. If you reach the 50,000 by the end of the month then you win! Well, there is no real prize. Just a finished novel. I put a little ticker thing on my site so you can see how I'm doing -------> It's going ok so far, I'm already slightly ahead, which is good because I have quite a lot on this month. I've been writing every night from 11pm till midnight, which is my usual sewing time. But I'm signed up to do a bag swap (things are coming along quite slowly with that - I'm still waiting on some yummy fabric arriving from Japan) I've a few custom sewing jobs to do (but they're all quite simple) and I've got a couple of things to finish off. I just realised that my mums birthday is at the beginning of December and I wanted to make her a knitting bag. The pattern looks quite complicated, so I think I really need to start it before the end of the month. I need...

Here's what I made on my mini sewing challenge week... Thursday: A small Chloe Toes pocket nappy. Yellow PUL outer and a mocrofleece inner. Friday: I made the star print pocket Chloe Toes, and also put snaps onto the AIO. I used red lycra binding on the microfleece inner pocket edge. I don't know if it is the same stuff as FOE. It looks and feels exactly the same, but I decided not to make the whole thing with the red in case it leaked or something. Cat was getting in the way when I was taking the photos! He was trying to catch the cord on the camera. Saturday: Medium sized Poquito Pants. This is the 1st pair I've made using FOE. I wasn't too sure if I'd like it or not, but it turned out really nice. It's fast and easy to make them this way too. Sunday: Made another pair of medium Poquito Pants - t&t version this time. The knit fabric is really stretchy and seems quite fragile. I didn't sew a size tag on. Might go back ...

It's going quite well! I've got 6 completed items. Two more almost prepped to sew tonight. After that I'll probably be making snap in soakers for the nappies I've made recently. I've also joined a bag swap on my sewing group - which is kind of exciting! I don't have my swap partner yet, so I don't know what I'll be making. I want to make some bags for Christmas gifts this year too. Here is a little preview of some of the completed items: x3 Chloe Toes - one is an AIO the other two are pockets. Here is what the boy was up to while I was trying to put snaps on them. Tipping a bag of snaps out all over the window ledge.... Playing with the snap press. He was trying to put a pen through the hole in the handle. And, his all time favourite thing to do... fiddle with the radio! He has been sleeping a bit better now. I noticed he has some new teeth at the back, so maybe that's what was causing him to wake up all the time. Poor thing!

I'm giving myself a mini challenge. To sew one item or complete one UFO every day this week. I've started the week on Thursday since we'll be out all next Thursday evening. I completed one item on Thursday, and one last night. So its going well so far! Not too sure what I'll work on this evening, but hopefully I'll get a chance to cut or apply snaps during the day so I'm ready to start sewing this evening when R goes to sleep. Will post pictures of everything next Thursday. Once I've done that I'm going to start on some Christmas sewing!

Well, I got my fabric! I also got some really lovely patterns this week too. All I need now is time to sew with them. With a boy who seems to wake every half an hour after he's been put to sleep time isn't something I have much of :-( I just wanted to make a post about home education. For the first time ever I feel like we are getting somewhere and that I know what I am doing! I've finally got all the stuff together that I need for this school year and I've been busy scribbling down some sort of a time table. I wanted to post it here so I don't lose it! This one is for S - who is nearly 7. He is doing Christopherus 1st Grade, and his time table pretty much follows what they've set out. September 2 weeks - getting ready for school 2 weeks -Language arts (introducing the alphabet) October 2 weeks - Language arts (introducing the alphabet) 1 week - Nature 1 week - Holiday November 4 weeks - maths (introducing numbers) December 2 weeks - Language arts (introd...

Gah. Still waiting for my fabric. I found the tracking thing on Paypal and it said that it left the US on the 3rd of October. So that's not too bad. I'm sure last time I looked at it it said that it had dispatched on the 25th of September! I was starting to get worried about it. It'll probably be here by Friday. I made my 1st Chloe Toes nappy last night. Its a pattern I've been wanting to get forever! It was actually a bit trickier and more time consuming that I had expected. And the blades of my overlocker made a horrible job on the soaker :-( I looked them up online and they are very expensive :( We have ordered a family railcard, and when I get that I think I might take a trip to Stirling and see if they have any - and probably eye up the embroidery unit for my sewing machine. I think its £495. Eeeks. But maybe it might be on special offer or something. Not sure if I'll have an awful lot of time for sewing (not that I ever had much time for sewing!). We've b...

I'm sure I must have put a pic of them somewhere... These are some KCK Ones I made for someone from our home education group. The flower and ladybird one is a modified KCK One. I put a snap down rise on the front, something like a Bumgenius - not that I've actually seen a Bumgenius in real life. I might make a snap closing one at some point. I think the wings would need to be shortened just a little bit, and I'd probably put two rows of snaps to stop wing droop. The paper in the pic is an instruction sheet I printed out. I think the colours look really pretty together. The royal blue seems a bit out of place I think. I did have a yellow and a red cut out, so it was a selection of primary and pastel colours - but I've run out of labels and aplix now. I used microfleece for the inners of these, but I'd like to try suedecloth. I plan to order some to try out, and I think I'd like to get a few cuts of PUL in colours I don't have. Like some greens ...

I haven't updated for a while, so I thought I'd put these (really bad) pictures up. Just a little pile of stuff I've been working on. These two are very long overdue gifts. I really don't like the way they turned out. Still need to put snaps on the front. My overlockers blade needs replaced - but I can't afford another one. It really didn't like the birdseye and flannel combo and chewed it up at the edges. These are newborn Darling Diaper AIOs with snap in soakers. PUL outers, 2 hidden layers of birdseye and flannel inners. These are two bamboo velour Little One Sizes. Without soakers. Haven't got round to doing them yet. I got tired of messing up with blind elastic so I decided to try a different way of putting it in. Don't know if you can see the difference between the two. I'm not sure if the new way is any faster though, but it is less frustrating. You can't really see the snaps on the front, but they have cute little peng...