My Sewing Blog

Work in Progress...

2011-08-29T20:19:00.000+01:00

Lots of stuff on the go... first is this jacket from Ottobre 3/04. It was meant for summer but summer seems to be gone now! It still needs some buttons to finish. The collar was a complete disaster. I couldn't figure out from the instructions what I was supposed to do, so I made it up, and it turned out very wrong! I have tried my best to fix it but it is far from perfect.

This is from Ottobre 1/07 - the cover design. I need to put the collar on then finish it off with hems and buttons etc.

A quilt top made from Moda's Birdie fabric. The picture doesn't show the colours up very well. I need to cut the binding and the backing then it is ready to quilt.

This is going to be a bag from the book Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags. I need to find buckles and things before I can go any further with it. My picture is pretty bad - the colours are much brighter in real life.

This is going to be a cathedral window cushion - eventually....

Finished!

2011-08-29T20:05:00.000+01:00

Finally finished something! One and a half pairs of pyjamas. I don't know where the bottoms from the smaller size went. Maybe I didn't even cut them out. These are from Ottobre issue 4/05. They turned out far too huge and baggy. The neck line is also very large.

I didn't do the neck binding like it said in the instructions. I copied the method from a Jalie pattern, which I really like the look of. I didn't manage to get my V quite pointy enough though.

Girls pyjamas. The top is from Ottobre 1/03 - it's not a pyjama top, just a long sleeved t.shirt. The bottoms are the leggings pattern from the book Sewing Clothes Kids Love. The top turned out to be a bit on the large side, and the leggings really are very tight, so maybe not the best thing for pyjamas. I didn't like the neck binding on the top. It turned out very bulky. I need to make more girls pyjamas and also some plain long sleeved tops for wearing under things, so I think I'll have a look around for some different patterns.

Actually sewing!

2011-05-16T11:44:00.000+01:00

Well, that's not quite true. I have been cutting out though. Finally got a bit of a sewing bug again.
I did actually sew some cushions for the boys room with Ikea fabric a week or two ago. I was pleased with how they turned out.

Now I have some pyjamas cut out to sew for W & R, I did trace out the same pattern for S but I ran out of fabric. The pjs are from an old Ottobre magazine. 04/05 I think. I also have a jacket cut out for E from an old Ottobre mag. I'm making it from a striped orange fabric, since orange is her favourite colour. It looks like a fairly complex project. I'm not really sure what she is going to wear it with either. I have some other things cut out for her from a really ancient Burda magazines. There is a shorts and top set, and a short tracksuit set.

Hope to have some pictures to post here soon.

UFO Challenge

2011-02-06T15:27:00.001Z

So I'm not quite finished my To-do list yet, but I fancy a change of scene. I’ve just had a rummage through my UFO boxes and I’ve found:

Girls Pjs
Ooga Booga hooded top
Smocked dresses x3
Oliver+S playsuit
Newborn nappy cover
Newborn AIO
Newborn nappy
AIO nappies x2
Dress/pinafore type thing
Baby carrier

Most of them are fairly simple to finish. Makes me wonder why I never finished them in the first place! I’ve got 13 items, so I will see how many I can finish in 7 days – starting tomorrow. That gives me today to find pattern instructions and get everything I need to hand to finish these projects.

To-do list completed so far…

2011-02-06T14:21:00.001Z

Finished the Ottobre pyjamas. They’re from the 6/2009 issue. I am not overly impressed with them. The necklines are very wide, the top seems quite baggy, and the trousers are very small. I get that they are supposed to have a legging type fit, but there isn’t much bum space! For a child in nappies they would be useless.

This is the first pair I made. The squirrely/moose fabric is from the JOS co-op, and the grey knit is from eBay. Its not quite as stretchy as the interlock. I made these the way the instructions said to make them – the seams are overlapped then sewn with a cover stitch. I found this very annoying! It kind of has a chewed up look to it.

I don’t like the wavy effect on the ribbing. Maybe cutting the ribbing slightly wider would have helped.

The second pair is made from some fabric I got from a friend paired with eBay interlock. I made fake cover stitched seams this time. I just sewed and ordinary seam, then cover stitched over the top – I actually used a mock cover stitch that I have on my sewing machine because I just could not figure out how to sew it with my overlocker. Again I didn’t like the way the cuffs looked.

The third pair are made with JOS and eBay fabric. I did the fake cover stitch seams again and this time skipped sewing it on the cuffs. I think they look a lot better this way.

Here is a close up of the cuffs.

The red trousers look totally stretched and wavy with the extra topstitching. And I’m really not liking the white matched with the red! For the robot pjs I wish I’d used the light blue instead of white for the arm cuffs, but I thought red and blue might look odd together.

Here is a pic of my re-organised fabric storage. I still have a whole set of drawers full of fabric that I could be doing with to store clothes in!

On top from L to R are boxes with micro fleece, scraps, UFOs and wool.

Top shelf from L to R is misc knits, PRR fabric, misc bits and pieces then fleece. I think there are folders in the cube that is hidden behind the dress.

Middle shelf from L to R has plain knits, boy knits, girl knits, then stripes and fabric I plan to use soon. The hidden cube has interfacing, and some old clothes I plan to recycle into something else.

Lower shelf from L to R has basket of craft bits and pieces, PUL, basket of xmas craft things, PUL with suede cloth on top, then… dunno actually. Must be a basket of something! The dress that is hanging there I plan to take up.

Updated to do list

2011-02-02T19:28:00.001Z

Alterations needing done:

~~Take up really long jeans~~
~~Take up other pair of jeans~~
Take up knit dress
Take up other dress
Take in denim dress
Possibly take up dress I am currently wearing(?)

Cutting out needing done:

Corduroy jacket
~~Mark cream blouse markings then remove pattern~~ and cut out white blouse

Finishing:

~~Elastic in pjs~~
~~Jalie top needs hems~~
Possibly have a finishing marathon on old box of UFO’s

Sewing needing done:

Ottobre top – needs some interfacing cut out first

My to do list

2011-01-29T16:43:00.002Z

Alterations needing done:

Take up really long jeans
Take up other pair of jeans
Take up knit dress
Take up other dress
Take in denim dress
Possibly take up dress I am currently wearing(?)

Cutting out needing done:

Corduroy jacket
Mark cream blouse markings then remove pattern and cut out white blouse

Finishing:

Elastic in pjs
Jalie top needs hems
Possibly have a finishing marathon on old box of UFO’s

Sewing needing done:

Ottobre top – needs some interfacing cut out first

(Edited to add - this is my first time posting with Windows Live Writer. It seems to be easy enough to use. Will need to see what it is like with photos, since posting them with blogger can be a bit of a pain.)

Giving up supermarkets - pt 2

2011-01-21T15:29:00.002Z

I cleaned out my cupboards last week. I didn't think there was that much in them. Wrong!!!! I have been hoarding brown rice (4 packets of it!) and tinned tomatoes (7 tins). There was more food in there than I would normally buy in a week. So we've been eating from the cupboards for the last week. I've just done a £50 order from Tesco since I had a £10 off voucher. I went through mySupermarket.co.uk (clicked on through topcashback.co.uk so I could get some money back!) and I ended up saving £12 on the things I was going to buy. They are a really good site. Never used them before. They suggest cheaper alternatives to the things you are going to buy. It showed me that Tesco's "special offers" were not so special after all. I'm hoping that this and the stuff in my cupboard will last me till the 4th of Feb - 2 weeks.

Then I will start up a weekly order with Grow Wild and do a bulk order for things like toilet roll etc from somewhere else.

Some exciting news (well exciting to me - my life really isn't that interesting!) my little corner shop has been taken over by new owners, and they stock organic milk! And meat products from a local butcher, and today I noticed that they had Scottish yogurts. They have a small stock of everything. I already bought some dishwasher tablets from there. They are open till 9pm every day too. I'm thinking that if people don't buy the organic milk then they will stop stocking it, so I will make sure I buy from there.

I have ordered a few cook books this week from the last of my Christmas money. I got a book called Five Minute Bread from the Book People. This is the UK version of the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Basically you just make a huge batch of dough, store in the fridge then bake as you need it. Its about £8.99 over at Amazon, but the Book People are selling it for £4.99. I also got myself Jamie's America (my family will laugh - they say I am obsessed with him! I'm not, I was just really impressed with his 30 Minute Meals book) it was only £5. I got a few books for the children, qualified for a free book and free delivery! I went through the Top Cash Back website and earned £1.65 cash back on the whole order. (if you want to join topcashback please can you use my referral link - http://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/member11601040954 It's free to join. I can earn £2.50 for referring people. Thanks!!!!)

I bought a book from Amazon called The Takeaway Secret. The guy who wrote it had agoraphobia and really missed going out to get a takeaway, so he started experimenting at home to try and recreate the perfect takeaway. We don't really eat a lot of takeaways, occasionally a pizza, but my home made pizzas have never been much to write home about. I bought it to expand my cooking a bit.

Sewing - I rearranged all my fabric storage, so it is all tidy now. I tided up my sewing desk and shelves too. I plan to finish off the pjs I was making this evening, and I am going to cut out a shirt pattern for myself. A lovely friend sent me some fabric since she is giving up sewing. There is some fabric there that is perfect for a shirt.

Giving up supermarkets

2011-01-16T00:58:00.000Z

This isn't about sewing, but I am sewing right now. I've almost finished 3 pairs of pjs for R, and I have something cut out for myself. I bought myself an Ottobre Woman magazine for my Christmas. I also bought a bag pattern and some vintage patterns. I plan to do quite a bit of sewing this year (like I planned to do last year, but just never got round to...) Just reorganised my fabric stash the other day too.

I wanted to blog about my new idea... to give up shopping at supermarkets. There are lots of reasons I want to do this. It seems like supermarkets are trying to take over the world. All the local shops are closed. All their stuff is totally over-packaged. And they're always trying to make me buy stuff I don't even want or need with their special offers.

I want to be more eco-friendly - cutting down on the waste we produce. I want to support local businesses that people actually own rather than big companies. I want to eat more locally produced foods rather than stuff flown in from overseas. I want to eat more organic food.

I am thinking I will start a weekly order from Grow Wild - a local fruit and veg delivery company. They source the majority of their stuff locally. And it is organic. They also sell locally produced organic meat, honey, jams, eggs, and dairy. I just priced up a few random items - Grow Wild was £9.97 and Tesco was £8.41 (is it just me or do Tesco just bump the price up of anything that has "organic" in the title?) I usually have my stuff delivered from Tesco at a cost of £4.50ish. Grow Wild charges £1 for delivery, so shopping from there is actually saving me almost £2!

I can use Grow Wild for my fruit and veg (just need to decide on what size and type of box to get) milk, cream, butter (will switch to real butter instead of margarine), eggs and some other things like pasta and even some cleaning products and toiletries.

I think I might use somewhere like Ethical Superstore or Goodness Direct for toilet roll and bulk buying of flour, grains etc. If we switch from boxed cereals to porridge, (quinoa porridge for me!) or eggs and toast etc in the morning then I think that will cut down on packaging and also be healthier.

I'm thinking I will put the bread maker to use again. I've never been that happy with the bread I've made in it before, but it is good for mixing dough for things like bagels and rolls.

For the cats, Grow Wild sell a beef/lamb mix for pet food. Not sure if I am meant to cook it or feed it to them raw? I can also use the sort of local and family run pet shop in Linlithgow for cat biscuits and rat food. I am going to avoid Pets at Home, since I think they count as a supermarket. There is also place on the way to Larbert that sells bulk pet food. I noticed that Ethical Superstore sells Bio Catalet cat litter - which we use for the rats. Might be able to get that locally though.

Other things I have been thinking about - fizzy drinks (bad habit I know). The amount of plastic bottles we go through must be huge! I was thinking about getting a soda stream machine. The children also like drinking squash type drinks... so what would they be replaced with??? I could get the Rocks Organic brand from Ethical Superstore. They come in glass bottles, so easy to recycle too. We can work on cutting down the amount of non-water drinks we drink. Yogurt - we don't eat a huge amount, but I have always wanted to get a yogurt maker. The cheapest place selling them is on ebay - but the place that sells them also sells "poultry dispatchers" which is something you can use to break a chickens neck... not sure I can buy from somewhere that sells stuff to murder chickens with... Next cheapest place is amazon, but does that count as a supermaket? Its a massive shop that sells everything. Probably taking business away from local book sellers and companies. (tis my favourite place to shop tho!!) There are loads of those EasiYo yogurt makers around, but it seems like the stuff you need to buy to use them is quite expensive, and I'm sure I remember reading that it comes from New Zealand... might be wrong on that though.

Other things we buy from the supermarket are crisps/biscuits and other snacky type foods. I'm thinking that we could bake more. Cheese scones for a savoury option and biscuits, cakes or muffins for sweet snacks.

I feel like this is probably going to be more expensive than my normal Tesco shop, but I have a pretty decent £500 a month budget for 2 adults, 4 children, 2 cats, 2 rats and some fish.

Got to get to bed. I will add more ideas later, but I think I pretty much have it covered. Just have to put it into practice really.

Nanowrimo is over for me.

2010-11-21T23:20:00.001Z

My laptop just died. It was going pretty badly anyway. I changed my mind about what I was going to write on the first day - then I was ill for over a week, so I fell way behind. Then I realised that my new idea basically had no plot, so it was really a drag to write. I managed to get to about 17,000 words. Now the hard drive has gone on my laptop. It was kind of old. I got it in 2004 and it wasn't new then. My other two 50k+ novels are on that hard drive, and pretty much anything else I've ever written. But I'm not too sad about it. They are still in my head. I could always write them again if I wanted to.

While I was ill I did some smocking. I started on an unfinished project. Now I'm not going to be writing for the rest of the month I am going work on some sewing instead. It's a bishop dress I am working on, so once the smocking is done it just needs a couple of bits of sewing to finish it off. I have 2-3 other almost done dresses. I will work on getting them done.

I didn't get any good pictures from Hallowe'en detailing the costumes I made. This is S - wearing his mask the wrong way round. The elastic should be on the inside.

This is E in her girl superhero costume. The tops on both costumes were very very short. E wasn't supposed to have red hair either. We just sprayed it on last minute. It doesn't really match!

A not very good pic of everyone. You can't see the capes very well or the boots I made. E was wearing her own pair of boots over a pair of orange and black striped tights.

Hello!

2010-10-26T15:53:00.001+01:00

Hello poor neglected blog. I was just finishing sewing something and thought of you.

We have been moving. Hooray!!! It gave me the chance to look through all my sewing stuff and get rid of things. I gave away lots of sewing patterns and pattern magazines to the charity shop. Oh my gosh - I actually gave away some fabric to the charity shop! Anything too bad I put into textile recycling. I sold some fabric on ebay - also some half finished projects too.

The new house is great, but my fabric is all stored in the bed room, along with pattern magazines and notions and my sewing machines are crammed into a tiny space on the desk in the study. Yes we have a study now. Aren't we posh! Its not exactly and ideal sewing set up.

A few weeks ago I finished off a few dresses that just needed buttons and button holes. I also mended a few dresses, where the bodice had come away from the skirt. They are all going to a friend, since my "little girl" is too old for twirly dresses now :-( I was working on some pyjamas, and some how managed to break my overlocker, so I've put them aside for now.

Right now I am doing Halloween costumes. I am making Simplicity 2567 - which is a superhero costume. I have pretty much almost finished with them both - one boy one and one girl one. I'm a bit stuck now, because I need some heavy weight double sided interfacing and I haven't been able to find such a thing. I am going to have to wing it with what I have lying around.

In my last post a few months back, I mentioned I'd read 20 something books. Well, the total is now 63 books this year. My reading has slowed down quite a lot. I am now getting ready to do Nanowrimo. Without any real planning. I don't even know what I want to write about yet!

Right now I am filling in a travelling notebook. It is turning out to be a very creative exercise. A travelling notebook is basically a notebook that travels round a group of people, then goes back to the original sender. The one I am filling in is about my country. I should have it ready to send out in a few days. I have a few letters I need to get written and sent, and the costumes to finish, then I should be ready to start the ridiculous task of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days :-)

Haven't blogged in a long time

2010-06-13T15:43:00.002+01:00

Probably because I haven't sewn in a long time. I have been reading though. A lot. I've read 27 books this year so far. Novels anyway, that's not counting all the non-fiction books I've read. I am sewing now though, but what was I thinking....

I am making a mens formal suit. Burda 7842 for the jacket and Burda 7841 for the trousers. M has, well possibly has an interview. (I am confident my creative writing skills on his application form will get him an interview.) He doesn't have a suit to wear. Looking at the cheap Asda brand suits depressed me. They are made out of cheap sort of school uniform polyester. The tailoring is rubbish, and because he is tall and thin they never fit well. A better suit would be about £100. Too much money. And charity shop is too much of a hit or miss.

I decided to make one.  I bought discount fabric from Croft Mill. It's a wool/poly/spandex fabric. Altogether for fabric, lining, interfacing, zip etc it comes to £57. Not including the cost of the two patterns, since I can use them again.

I picked the patterns because they were kind of trendy, rather than just a square shaped suit. BUT... it is a real challenge.  There are french darts (think thats what they're called), welt pockets galore, handsewing... yikes. It has to be perfect too.

I've cut the trouser pattern, adjusting the length slightly. I've got all the pieces cut out and all the interfacing and bits and bobs cut. I've done all the tedious marking, so I am ready to sew this evening.  I decided to do the trousers first, since they are less work than the jacket. So, wish me luck! I already have doubters, who are making comments on the fabric, and saying why not just buy one, and just saying that I can't possibly sew a suit. I think they are imagining a hideous mess. But it is going to be fine. (I hope!)

Actually doing something!

2010-02-14T13:42:00.000Z

Yes! I seem to have failed miserably with my sew-one-thing-a-week goal. I haven't felt very motivated, and I have been quite busy with reading, and preparation stuff for home ed. But!!! Last night I actually cut TWO things out! A pair of pjs for R and a hooded top for him. I hope to have both of them sewn up in the next few days. I'm also going to make a top for myself from a Burda magazine I picked up the other day. I'm going to order an Ottobre magazine that has pyjamas in it. I like the look of them better than the Kiwk Sew ones I've been making. Hopefully I'll have some projects to blog about soon!

Shocking News!

2010-01-08T00:13:00.000Z

My boy has potty trained!!!!! Just when I reached PUL fabric nirvana! Actually he has been potty trained for a good few months now, even at night.... All that fabric looks lovely. What am I supposed to do with it now? I organised it into a rainbow on the shelf - impermeable to cats, who like to sneak in behind the stacks and lie on the flannel, which picks up hairs like crazy!

I have organised my fabric shelves. There seems to be more than ever! I have about 12 yards from a co-op waiting to ship home too... Oops. Oh yeah - and 4 more yards of PUL too! It was ordered about 6 months ago, but it had to be custom milled and laminated. I never thought R would have been potty trained by the time it arrived. I have cleared up the sewing desk too, but M has moved his computer upstairs and his stuff is spreading over my sewing area. I have not done any sewing at all this week. Bit disappointed since I planned to sew at least one evening a week. I am still gathering inspiration though. I'm waiting on two sewing books from amazon.

It has just been so cold recently, I don't fancy crawling about the floor in the draught trying to cut out patterns. I might clear off the table tomorrow and cut there. I'm going to sew something for myself, but I'm really not too sure if the fabrics are going to go together too well.

Goals for 2010

2010-01-01T23:51:00.001Z

I can't be bothered doing a total of last years projects right now. But I don't think there is much. I had a terrible sewing slump at the beginning of last year. I know I've sewn a few nappies, quite a lot of wipes and some pyjamas.

Usually I just make a goal of sewing more often, but after learning about goal setting from a book about running I have decided to do something different this year. I am setting myself some smaller, more specific goals.

Aim to use up 20 yards of stash fabric
Keep an ideas book for inspiration
Aim to complete at least one project a month (of course more would be better)
Make time to sew one evening per week (again, more would be better)
Plan my years sewing in advance leaving plenty of time to complete projects
Complete 1-2 smocking projects

I have written down a list of things I'd like to make. An apron from the Sew Liberated pattern, a knitting bag for my mum, Halloween costumes, Halloween table runner, autumn cushion covers and wall hanging and Christmas pot holders are what I've got so far. I think it will make fabric buying easier if I know what I am buying for, rather than just buying things thinking "I'm sure I can use this... for something".

I got some money for Christmas and I have bought some sewing books. I got a heirloom sort of sewing one, a book about making pyjamas and a book about making skirts. I don't even wear skirts.... It just looked kind of interesting!

I need to make sure my sewing area stays tidy. It makes it so much easier if I don't have to waste precious time rummaging around for a seam ripper or measuring. That is my goal for the week, and also cutting out some things to sew.

More Pyjamas

2009-12-20T11:34:00.000Z

I just finished up these two pairs of pyjamas. The top on the first pair is from Kwik Sews Sewing for Toddlers book. I hemmed the sleeves instead of using cuffs. I followed the instructions for the non-ribbing neckline, but I think it has made the neckline too wide. The bottoms are long johns from Ottobre 3/04 or 4/04. They look adorably cute! The hem of the top looks a bit wavy in my photo though. I used a mock coverstitch on my sewing machine instead of switching my overlocker to coverstitch. Its such a hassle to switch it to the coverstitch setting!

The second pair has the Kwik Sew top and Kwik Sew pj bottoms.

I did buy the brown interlock to make something for myself! But I'm not sure I'll have enough for my project. I'm going to use the rest of it to make another pair of pjs. I think I will try an Ottobre pattern for the top this time. I'm also going to make 2 hooded tops for R with it. The pattern isn't for a hooded top, but I am just going to wing it and add a hood.

Got so much tidying up and things to do for Christmas, but I am going to try and make time for sewing.

Been sewing

2009-12-07T21:25:00.000Z

For the first time in ages I have actually been quite productive! Firstly I made another hoodie from the Lil Blue Boo pattern for W. He loves it. I found it a bit harder making one of the larger sizes. The green top was xl size, but the black was only an L so there wasn't as much fabric available. I ended up cutting the sleeves from further up the t.shirt and having to hem them myself. The black band around the hood had to be cut from a piece of black jersey from my stash.

The print is terribly squint though! It looked squint and very off centre on the original t.shirt. I thought I'd done a good job of cutting it till I sewed the bottom band on. Argh! It looked hideous! There was no way I could really fix it. Its going to be on moving child though, so I doubt anyone will notice. I plan on making a few more of these.

Then I made some girls pyjamas from a 1970s pattern. They certainly look 70s! Whats with trousers that almost go up to your chest??? I still need to sew a button on the back. I felt a lot of the sewing techniques in the pattern made the pjs look very "home made". I'm sure there is a better way to do some of the things that would produce a more professional look. I'd quite like to try making the nightdress with some broiderie anglaise or something similar, with a ruffly bit round the yoke, just for something fancy.

I just finished some more girls pyjamas. The leggings are from Ottobre magazine (4/04 i think) I haven't actually finished them, still need to hem and do the elastic waist. I made a t.shirt from a Jalie pattern to wear with them. Luckily I had some lilac ribbing which was a good match. I've made this pattern before and had some trouble with the ribbing. I had trouble again this time. It looks quite uneven in places. I had quite a lot of the fabric left so I decided to make the vest style top as well to make some mix and match pjs.

What's next... well, I'd really like to get some brown knit, so I can pair it with a bunch of other fabrics, to make a top for myself and pjs or tops for R. I also have the beastie fabric in the pink colourway, so I might make another set of pjs. I was thinking maybe a swing top sort of thing paired with leggings this time.

Lil Blue Boo Hoodie

2009-11-21T14:02:00.000Z

My brother was getting rid of a lot of his old t.shirts. I knew they would come in handy for something! I made this top in the T3 size for R but it is too big still. I never have much luck with sizing! The pjs I made recently from the Kwik Sew pattern were T2 and they're a little bit on the small side.

I used two t.shirts to make this, and I think it turned out really nicely. The print on the front is a bit high though. Its not the best photo. I am going to make some more of these soon.

Boy t.shirt to girl t.shirt

2009-11-11T22:34:00.000Z

We got some t.shirts from my cousin recently. One was a Harry Potter t.shirt (apparently! I've never read the books or watched the films - its not something that appeals to me). E is the only one that likes Harry Potter, but the t.shirt was a bit boxy and boyish, so I turned it into a girly t.shirt. Ok, the print doesn't look at all girly but she likes it. I used a Jalie pattern and I was able to cut it so I could use the hemmed sleeves and bottom edge which saved a lot of work. Hems are my least favourite parts!

Boy t.shirt:

Girl t.shirt:

I really need to press the seams but my iron is broken!

My brother gave me a big bag of t.shirts so I am going to recycle them into some tops for the boys, which will be fun.

Not Sewing

2009-11-06T17:21:00.000Z

I planned to make a costume for R this year. He was going to be a bee, but I thought by the time I buy the pattern (£5) and the fabric (£10-£15) and the other bits and bobs it was going to cost a fortune. So I bought a £7.99 costume. The sewing on it was hideous, and the fabric felt horrible. But it looked effective. Next year... (I say that every year, and suddenly before I know it its Halloween and because its close to Christmas I don't tend to have a lot of spare cash).

We did make a costume for S though. I sliced my finger with the tinfoil and it was agony! And burnt myself with the glue gun. Most of the buttons (milk bottle lids) had fallen off by the time we took this picture. Oh!!! I did make the silver trousers he wore. At about 11:55pm the night before.

Cutting Fest

2009-09-26T20:04:00.000+01:00

I spent an evening cutting out fleece nappy covers. I don't even like fleece nappy covers! But I have a lot of fleece just hanging about doing nothing. I also cut out some pyjamas from the Kwik Sewing Sewing for Toddlers book. I always think everything in the book looks very 80's or early 90's, but who cares when it comes to pjs.

I sewed up the first pair of pyjamas, and they fit really well. He put them on and went straight outside. If I decide to cut any more out I think I'll do them without the ribbing waist band.

The other pair I cut out aren't quite finished yet. I decided to cut out the jumpsuit pattern. It made really cute pjs! And the ribbing I had matched really well. R is helping me by plugging the camera in. Its impossible to get a picture of him these days because he always wants to help.

I'm hoping to finish the pjs and start some of the fleece nappy covers tonight. If I sew them assembly-line style then they should be done pretty fast.

Something Girly

2009-09-17T11:52:00.000+01:00

I've been doing a little bit of sewing. I'm really in a nappy sewing mood. Unfortunately I've used my very last bit of bamboo fleece, so I can't really make much. I did find some birdseye though, so I used that to make a nappy. I think I'll make a couple more with birdseye. I have on way to me some time soon... some new PUL (greens mostly), some PUL prints and some suedecloth. But no soaker fabrics! I've also got a huge parcel I need to pay shipping on. $80. Gulp. Its mostly knit fabrics and a few patterns.

This is the first thing I made. Its a Darling Diapers AIO with a snap in soaker. I still need to get rid of the blue marks, and cut the threads on the soaker. The whole thing needs a wash because both fabrics I used were really dusty.

Next I made a sort of t&t/overlocked hybrid nappy. Its knit outer, bamboo fleece hidden layer and bamboo velour inner. I still have to cut and made the snap in soaker, so I used the birdseye soaker in it to give it a better shape in the picture. I sewed around the front and legs, added elastic and then turned and top stitched. Then I put in the back elastic and overlocked the back closed. I was going to add the snaps before overlocking the back closed so they'd be hidden. But I had a little problem with that on a previous one I tried to make. A needle hit a snap and got smashed. I think I'd need to adjust the snaps in a bit if I was going to do that. It is a small size, so there's not a lot of room to manover.

Here is a little bundle of things that I'm sending to a friend. A couple were made a while ago.

Starting from the bottom there is:

A Little Comet Tails Sprightly Soaker made from wool
PooPockets side snapping nappy (still needs snaps and a soaker)
2 Fattycakes pocket style nappies
Darling Diapers AIO
Darling Diapers fitted nappy
A pair of Poquito Pants

They're all small size. There doesn't seem to be much variation in size between the different brands, although the PooPockets is quite a bit wider.

The Results...

2009-09-03T11:48:00.000+01:00

This is what we ended up taking camping with us. At the last minute I decided not to take the Imse Vimse nappies to save space. We made it through 4 nights, with two nappies to spare :-)

Pants

2009-08-26T10:46:00.001+01:00

Sorry, bad pictures again. It was late at night. I made 4 pairs of these. They did say the sizing was 18-24lbs - but they looked as if they'd fit. The pattern was already cut out on my desk, and I've run out of tracing paper to trace any more.

I tried them on the babe this morning and they do fit quite well. They are a bit on the small side, but they'll do. But he says "No! Hate!" lol.

5 Done!

2009-08-25T20:00:00.001+01:00

Suddenly it seems like quite an achievement now that I see them all together - and realise that 5 can probably see us through a whole day if he has some nappy free time.

Pictures are pretty awful. My camera was on easy shoot mode. Never really had a problem with that before. Maybe the lighting wasn't quite right.

I've got a dark brown one, a navy, a baby blue and two print ones. The navy and brown one are front fastening ones, with touchtape. I was rushing so they look as if I've been sewing while drunk! They look bad. But they'll do the job. The rest are side fastening, with touchtape. I realised that I couldn't put fold back laundry tabs on the front of the side fastening ones because I wouldn't be able to get the inserts right to the front.

I used free moving elastic in the first ones I made, which ended up looking pretty horrible. You can see in the picture, the car print one - it looks all kind of lumpy. It's maybe not the right technique to use for pocket nappies. I sewed the elastic to the seam allowance on the owl print and baby blue one and it looks nicer. The fabric gathered nicely.

I was going to take a picture of the fronts of these two, but a little boy climbed up on his chair and plonked his (bare) butt on the table, sweeping the nappies away as I was taking the picture.

The plan now... make up a few little pairs of underwear using the Sprightly Soaker pattern. They are really fast to make up. I can probably get 6 or more pairs made up tonight. Tomorrow I need to go to the sewing shop. I was in there today to get elastic, and I noticed they had suedecloth. But I didn't have enough money on me. I'll get a yard and make up as many nappies as I can. I'm also going to make a few covers, so I can use my tots bots nappies. Then we'll be all set!

Tie Dye

2009-08-22T19:05:00.000+01:00

I cleared out my drawers recently and I was going to get rid of all my old grayish whites, but a friend suggested I dye them. At first I thought that sounded like too much work, but then I remembered the tie dye kit I've had for YEARS. It was FUN!!! We all want to get some more dye and dye some more t.shirts.

The vest top and long sleeved top are mine, and the other one is a t.shirt of W's that I grabbed out of the washing pile. It turned out really great! We all said "Wow!" when I untied it.

This turned out pretty cool too, better than my long sleeved top I think. My top is a bit patchy.

This looks so cool! The blue and yellow made green, and the yellow and pink made orange, and the pink and blue made purple. Nice! I didn't like the look of the yellow much when I made the dye up. It did look as if the colours were going to make brown when they mixed together.

These are some play silks. They were supposed to be backdrops for our nature table. These colours are hardly found anywhere in nature! I used the same dye technique with these, so they look kind of marbled. The green one looked really terrible, but it rinsed out nicely.

I've almost finished making one nappy. I just need to sew the touchtape on. I'm not too happy with the way it looks. I think the fleece is a bit too bulky for the elastic to gather nicely. I hope to finish it tonight, and maybe even get two more done. Not very likely though.

Emergency!!!

2009-08-20T18:44:00.000+01:00

We have a nappy emergency! We're going camping in a week and we are very short of nappies. The batch of pocket nappies I made a while back are too small now. I haven't really sewn anything in ages. i never seem to have the time. The baby has a 10:30pm bedtime right now, so it always seems too late to start something. But I'm going to have to make time!

I'm going got use the Darling Diapers pattern, large size and make some front closing and side closing nappies. I'm going to make them with free moving elastic in the casings, because I think that'll save time. I was going to make the front closing ones with snaps and the side closing ones with aplix, but I might do some with front aplix to save time. The problem is I only have a small amount of suedecloth (that I didn't even know I had till recently!). And I'll probably run out of elastic. Or maybe I already have run out of elastic. A trip to the fabric shop tomorrow I think!

I think the pocket part is going to be a bit time consuming. I'll make up the 3 I have cut out tonight (hopefully!) Well, I'll aim to complete one, then I can try it on R for size tomorrow. I don't want to make a ton and find they don't even fit. Once I've made the one then I can make the rest assembly style.

Watch this space!!!

Chloe Toes

2009-07-28T22:57:00.000+01:00

I made this today. It was really quick to make. I have lots more cut out, but I've run out of fold over elastic. I had a 100yd roll of it! How could I possibly have used that much?

This is made from laminated poly knit fabric and a microfleece inner. The blue fleece doesn't match any of the colours in the print, but I think it looks quite good together. Usually with directional prints I cut two pieces and sew them at the crotch, but since this was a waterproof fabric I didn't want to have a big seam that could leak. I put the print right side up on the back, so it looks a bit odd from the front.

I made the large size, and it is a bit on the big side. I did think it was a bit big when I was sewing it. The bigger sizes just don't look as cute as the teeny ones either! If I pull the elastic tighter I would maybe get a tighter fit around the legs. I do like the fit though. Its nice that it is under belly fastening.

I've stuffed it with a prefold for the picture. The tabs are pretty much even in real life, but they look really uneven in the picture. (Ignore the terrible rust mark on the table that my snap press made. Someone had spilled juice and not wiped it up properly. It had gone under the snap press and left a big rust mark!)

New Fabrics!

2009-07-15T10:44:00.000+01:00

It's yummy! These are the fabrics that Ive been collecting over the last few months. These are what I'm going to make R's new nappy stash from.

Can't wait to get started, but I need some bamboo or some other absorbent fabric.

Not sure...

2009-07-11T14:59:00.001+01:00

I don't know... not sure I really like these. They're made with a pattern from Oliver+S. I haven't hemmed the legs, or put the buttons on. As you can see there isn't much leg to hem! They're going to look like a thong!!! These are a size 2, and R isn't 2 yet, but they're a bit of a tight fit. They seem long and skinny. His little fat tummy is bursting out! I really liked the idea of some short overalls that had a different fabric on the top, but I think these are just aren't practical for a little boy. There isn't much room for movement in them. I'm thinking I might add bands of the contrasting fabric onto the bottom of the legs, rather than hemming them. I think all that blue needs broken up a bit. I think it'll balance them out a bit with the contrast on the legs too. I'm not really loving the pointy button tabs either. I'd rather have the straps go behind the front. It gives more room for adjustment since you can move the button as they grow.

Bit disappointed, but I'll see how they look when they're completely finished.

Girly Stuff

2009-07-11T14:36:00.001+01:00

Argh, all the pink is hurting my eyes!

These are for a friend. A VERY late baby gift! The ones on the bottom row are Poquito pants. This is the first time I've made some with a waterproof outer. I hope they'll work ok. I felt that they could have done with an extra layer of fabric inside to give them a bit more stability.

The chick pair gave me fits! The colour was very hard to match. I have a lot of pinks, but not anything that is such a bright magenta pink. As I was stumbling around in the half dark, trying not to wake R I thought that the wings on the chicks looked a plum colour. I found a fabric that I thought matched really well. In the daylight I realised that they are not plum at all, they are 100% chocolate brown! Ideally I'd have used white, but the only white I had was really thin and unstretchy. I also seamed the chick ones at the crotch, since its a directional print. That way the chicks will be facing up on both sides.

All the really bright pink was blinding me, so I decided to make a nice neutral pair out of hemp jersey. I added pale pink snaps engraved with penguins.

The pair at the top are made with the Sprightly Soaker pattern. I have used it for making wool soakers before, but it also has an option for underwear. I thought I'd try it out. There was the boy cut and the high cut option. These are the high cut ones. I should have been more careful lining up and cutting the print because its a bit off centre. I sewed a little label on the back too. I quite like these and might make some for R at some point.

Wipes

2009-07-11T14:21:00.000+01:00

Here are all the cloth wipes I've made so far:

I think there are about 40-something of them. I made them the same size as a disposable wipe, but maybe they'd be nicer if they were just a little bit bigger.

I stacked them concertina like, the way disposable wipes are in the packet, so when you pull one up the next one is handy to be pulled out. But they all stick together and won't come apart when you pull them. Maybe if they were wet it would be ok though.

This picture isn't too good. It was getting dark. The ones on the top row are flannel on both sides. The space fabric and dog fabric are backed with hemp stretch terry. I've got a couple more of the dog ones still to sew, but I ran out of the rainbow thread. The cat ones are flannel on both sides. I used pink thread on one side and blue on the other. But you can't see that at all in the picture.

These are yummy! They're nice thick interlock fabric. Mostly for nappies, but I think R needs a pair of pyjamas or a t.shirt or something made from the "beastie" fabric. He had some beastie pjs before that he loved but they're too small now. I have a very exciting parcel on the way!!!!! Hope to get it next week. Its some more interlock fabric and some matching PUL made from the same fabric. It is going to be delicious!

Sewing related injury!

2009-06-27T19:05:00.001+01:00

Was just merrily sewing some wipes on the overlocker when there was a big bang. A needle exploded, scattering tiny sharp bits everywhere! Got stabbed in the boob!!!!!! Well, at least it wasn't my eye.

I have cloth wipes now :-) LOTS of them! As soon as I have fished all the pieces of needle out of the machine and replaced it I can finish sewing the rest of them. I think I've done about 35 so far. I'm hoping to stop buying disposable products in an effort to be more eco-friendly. I won't need to buy disposable baby wipes any more. I had stopped buying kitchen roll, but M just bought some. To clean the windows he said. But I think flannel fabric will do a better job. I might make some "un-paper towels" for using in the kitchen. And I think i might make a small stack of cloth napkins for the children to use at the table. Not fancy cloth napkins like you'd get at a restaurant. Probably just some flannel squares to wipe their hands on.

I'm also working on a couple of other projects. Just got some snaps to add to one of them, and one bit to sew onto another.

My new fabric has been held hostage!!! Its at the Parcel Force depot till I pay the customs charge on it. I just paid for shipping of some other fabric today. It worked out at £28. Gulp! That was 6 yards, so it was £4.60ish per yard. I think i paid about $7 a yard - thinking hey, it's dollars, it'll be cheap! But maybe not.

Sunday

2009-06-15T11:16:00.000+01:00

The end of my weeks challenge... and I did nothing! R didn't go to sleep till 10:30pm and I was a bit tired. I did sort through some things that just need a couple of things done to finish them. And I cut out a pattern.

I don't think I did too badly this week. R has a new nappy and outfit and a pair of waterproof trousers for wet days. I've got a new top. And the smocked Ollie outfit is finally finished off (just about 5 years too late!)

I think over the next few days I'll work on finishing off a few more things then move on to some new projects. I'm trying hard to keep my sewing area tidy, clearing up after every project. Sewing goes much faster when you know where everything is and don't have to spend half an hour hunting around for a seam ripper or fabric marker.

I've bought a "few" more things in a couple of fabric co-ops. I can't wait to have a stack of lovely new knits to sew with. I'm also getting some new colours of PUL - greens, orange and some others. Everything moves so slowly in co-op land though, so it might be a while before I get them.

Saturday Sewing

2009-06-14T13:20:00.000+01:00

Waterproof trousers - well at least I think they are waterproof. They're made with a nylon fabric. Not very good to work with while you have a baby sleeping next to you! Its very noisy. These needed the crotch seam sewn. I'm not sure why I hadn't done it. I think these were from a Kwik Sew pattern, and are a size T2. They fit Mr Fluff perfectly! I was going to put elastic into the bottom of the legs, but I couldn't find a safety pin to thread the elastic with. I can always do it later.

Its lined with a light weight micro fleece on the top part.

I also finished off a KCK One nappy. It needed sewn together, elastic put in and all the velcro put on. I think I made a mistake with this. I didn't have the original pattern in front of me, so i cut the loop on the outside of the wings to 3 inches. I think it might have been 3.5 inches because it looks a little bit short compared to the others I have. But it doesn't really matter because we don't use the crossover loop anyway. It looks nice and crisp and new. Its nice to have a new nappy to use. I really like the combination of the blue and the black.

A really bad photo shoot

2009-06-13T17:02:00.000+01:00

Yay! It's finished!!! But one of the snaps is squint. And I just noticed a tiny scissor cut in the cuff of the shirt! I'm not sure if it happened while I was trimming the threads or if it was there when I started working on it.

Ignore the little feet in the picture. He was asleep on the bed while I was taking pictures. The arm hole bindings are terrible, and I don't think the front button band is right at the bottom. I couldn't understand the instructions for that so I just did the best I could.

The backs - I put snaps on the back of the shirt too. You were supposed to use buttons, but I was fed up with the project and I just wanted to get it done.

The very unhappy little boy modelling it! Everyone came charging up the stairs and woke him up so he wasn't in a good mood.

E is trying to make him stand up so I could take a picture and he is shouting at her!

Huggles with mama made him feel better!

We swapped the shirt for a t.shirt. It doesn't look so girly and frilly now. (the fabric shelves actually are leaning to one side - not because of all my fabric! It seemed wonky when we built it and it is also on an uneven part of the carpet.)

More huggles with mama!

Oh well, this is about as good a photo as we're going to get.

Tonight I'm not too sure what I'm going to work on. Button holes for a dress maybe. And I found a pair of waterproof trousers that are almost done, and another KCK One nappy that just needs sewn together and elastic put in. Will post pics tomorrow.

Preview of the pesky romper

2009-06-13T11:22:00.000+01:00

It is almost done! I took this picture at 12:40 last night.

The only thing that really needs done now is marking the snap placement and putting the snaps on :-) The snaps are supposed to be metal snaps, but I'm going to use the plastic ones that I use on nappies.

R went to bed quite late, but at least he stayed asleep while I was working. He likes to sleep the wrong way up in the bed, and he hates having covers on - which is very annoying!

Thursday

2009-06-12T19:30:00.000+01:00

Nightmare... That baby didn't want to go off to sleep till nearly 11pm last night. I had a headache after that so I didn't do anything.

Today I've been working on the pesky romper suit. Now I remember why I never finished it! Frustrating isn't the word for it... I nearly tossed it back in the UFO pile, but I made myself struggle on. It is the right size for R so I should finish it now if I want to make use of it. There is a lot of very slow hand sewing to be done on it. I might finish it off tonight - if I figure out how to do the front button bands. I don't understand the instructions at all.

Wednesday

2009-06-11T18:47:00.000+01:00

Cheated again because I didn't get it finished off till this afternoon.

This is a nursing hoodie from the Blessed Designs #1003 pattern. I made the small size. All through sewing this I thought it would be too small. I should have read the pattern instructions more closely. It does fit though! But it would be better with a bit more ease.

I cut this out not too long ago, from a knit fabric I bought on ebay. Its kind of an odd fabric - it's a knit but its very thick. The fabric was a very strange width too. Very narrow. It doesn't have a huge amount of stretch to it either.

I added cuffs to it to make it look a bit more sporty. I copied the cuffs that were on a hoodie that I already had. The nursing openings work really well, they aren't too small but they aren't so big that they are gappy.

I've got quite a lot of transfers, labels and other embelishment bits a bobs. I knew I wanted to use something on this because it looked so plain. The heart wasn't quite what i had in mind, but I think it looks great! Its kind of like little crystal bead things. Hopefully it won't all fall off first time I wash it!

Tonight I plan on sewing buttonholes and buttons on to a dress and a shirt, and finishing off a little romper thing.

Tuesday

2009-06-10T17:08:00.000+01:00

Cheated a little bit. My mum came over last night, and the children didn't get to bed till late, then M brought takeaway home, so I only had the chance to sew a couple of buttons on and hand stitch the cuffs in place. I finished it off completely when R was having a nap this afternoon. Perfect timing - he woke up when I sewed the last button on!

The pattern is called Ollie. Its a long sleeved shirt that buttons onto 3/4 length bloomer sort of trousers. The trousers are cord and the top is made from a very soft and lightweight twill. I had to hem the bottom of the shirt, hand stitch the cuff linings, sew button holes on the back of the shirt and sew all the buttons on. There are buttons on the legs of the trousers too, so you can change a nappy without unbuttoning the trousers from the shirt. I also tried to fix a slightly crooked bit of sewing on the collar band, but I think i ended up making it look worse :-O

Here is a close up of the smocking. I think this is one of the first projects I smocked actually. Shame it took so long to finish it off!

I have projects laid out for tonight. Putting a zip in (scary!) and if I finish that, sewing up a top. Will update with pictures tomorrow.

7 Day Challenge!

2009-06-09T11:13:00.000+01:00

I've given myself a challenge. Finish up one project every day this week, starting Monday and ending on Sunday night.

Mondays Project.

Cloth pads from the Fern and Faerie patterns. Two of them needed over locked together and they all needed threads trimmed and snaps put on. Three of them are the #304 Foldable Wing pattern, and the others are made with the tops from the #303 Contoured tab pattern and the wings from the foldable wing pad. The patterns are interchangeable, so you can make any combination you like. I thought the tabs would be too hard to over lock around. It turned out the wings were hard to over lock around and they look kind of horrible and messy, like they've been sewn by a 7 year old. No more over locked pads I think. When I get round to making some more I will turn and top stitch them instead.

The maxi sizes look pretty good (they're the medium ones) but the mini pads look kind of useless. I can't imagine using them. They are quite small and fiddly to make.

Here you can see the crappy sewing on the #303 style pads! I made the insides with scraps of hemp fleece or cotton sherpa fleece - which are all knit fabrics and they seemed to get all twisted when I did the quilted top parts. It all seems to be slipping about inside the PUL now. The sewing on the #304 style pads is much better, but as you can see they aren't waterproof. The absorbent part is folded into thirds underneath.

This is it unfolded. This is the super size pad. I used 2 layers of hemp fleece sewn together, so there are 6 layers altogether when its folded.

I love the fabric. It was a remnant of quilting flannel that I bought from ebay. I also bought a couple of FQs of co-ordinating flannel.

That's project #1 complete! Tonight I am planning on finishing a smocking project that has been on the go since William was about 4 months old - he is 5 now!!!! It is sad, because it is even too small for R now, but I'm sure I can find it a loving new home once its done. Can't wait to finish it - it is adorable!

Big Clean Up

2009-06-07T13:26:00.000+01:00

I got a new shelf unit from Ikea for my fabric. I thought it might be easier to have it organised on shelves, so I could see what I had more clearly, and reach things easily. I had it stored in boxes before. Its taken me about a week to move it from the boxes onto the shelves, but its done now! I also sorted through unfinished projects, patterns and cleared up my desk.

I've got fleece on the top shelf - kind of messy since I can't reach that high. I just threw them onto the top shelf. Next shelf is knit fabric and cord fabric, next shelf has PUL, flannel, PRR fabrics and interfacing, on the bottom shelf there is a big stack of random fabrics and some natural fabrics - like bamboo and hemp. In the boxes next to the shelf I've got clothes for recycling (or upcycling I think its called?) a box of cut out projects, a box of half done projects - also known as UFOs (that's UnFinished Objects!). The narrow box is filled with smocking projects. On top of that is a box of finished projects, mostly things like small sized nappies, or things that I've taken so long to finish they've been outgrown. I will probably gift them to people or give them away. Next box has a lot of PUL scraps. I have plans for them! And the last box is just stuff I haven't put away yet.

I've got magazines stacked on the drawers. Mostly Sew Beautiful, Burda and quilting magazines. I think I will look for a better storage system for them.

These are my knit fabrics, they're double stacked since there are a lot! Next to them is some cord and other random dress making fabrics - now completely covered in hair, since the cat decided to perch up there.

PUL fabrics, flannels behind and stacks of PRR fabric organised by fabric type. In the little clip on basket I've put iron on interfacings. Can never seem to find them when I need them!

I was just standing back, admiring all my lovely fabric when I suddenly thought eek! Imagine how much all that cost!!!! I think £100 alone on just the PUL, never mind the rest. Maybe I should increase my home contents insurance cover!!!

Next to the shelf is a tall stack of drawers. This is the patchwork/quilting drawer. Not really much in it. I think the FQs could be better organised, maybe in a little basket or something like they are in fabric shops. The other drawers have a random selection of fabrics. I may go through them all again and get rid of some of it.

My desk. (picture taken at half past midnight when I finished clearing up!) In case anyone was wondering, I have a Husqvarna Huskylock overlocker - I think its the 936 model, and a Husqvarna Quilt Designer II sewing machine. I LOVE it! In the background you can see my embroidery machine. Its a Brother 190D and it is a piece of junk! I hate it. You have to hold the thread tension by hand, and it will not connect to the internet, so I'm stuck using the built in designs. The only cards I have for it are Disney cards that came with it.

On the window ledge next to the desk I keep needles and labels and things. On the shelf above the embroidery machine I've got little boxes filled with embroidery threads and embellishments. I've got a Black and Decker tool box thingy that I use for snaps and buttons. I also have a pot that I keep fabric pens, markers, scissors and rotary cutter in.

Under the desk is an Ikea unit on wheels. I pull it out when I'm sewing and use the top to put the pattern I'm using on. In the top drawer I have lots of touchtape and aplix.

Bit of a tangle - elastic and trims.

Thread drawer.

Behind my chair I have a stacker and some boxes. The bottom box is full of things that need mending. The blue box has got patterns that I'm currently using, or plan on using sometime soon. The bag on top of the stacker has got some wool in it.

Here's what's in my stacker. Top drawer has my nursing pattern collection. Patterns from Elizabeth Lee Designs and Babe Too. I will probably never use them as they are so dated. But I'm keeping them because I like looking at them. They also give you ideas for altering other patterns.

More patterns that I'm not really using. I actually have a whole other pattern storage system with the pattern covers in a folder and all the pattern pieces boxed away in envelopes. These are just patterns that haven't made it into the pattern storage system, or ones I've finished using and not put back!

My most adored smocking magazine collection! I once paid £40 for a single issue :-O It was a rare hard to find back issue. I've kind of stopped collecting them now since they're no longer available to buy in the UK.

I have a couple of projects that I really want to start, but I'm going to make myself finish off a few of my UFOs before I start anything new. R slept through my moving things around in the bed room, so I think it might be safe to sew in the evenings when he is asleep.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of my sewing room... well, my bedroom.

Old Sewing

2009-06-01T13:30:00.000+01:00

I got a new shelf unit from Ikea to store fabric on. I'm in the process of transferring fabric from boxes and drawers onto the new shelves. I have found a LOT of unfinished projects. I also found a little dress that I made for E when she was about 3. It was one of my most favourite things I've ever made. I kept it even though she'd outgrown it. I thought maybe some day I'd have another girl to put it on, but I've ended up with 3 boys instead! Well, i pulled it out and thought hmmm... that could be a top. And so it became a top! It looks really nice too, and seems to fit a lot better than it did when I made it. It ties at the shoulders and it was always a bit gappy. Its the perfect fit now :-)

E tried to model it creatively so you could see better what it is like!

There are a lot of unfinished things in boxes, some only need a couple of things to finish them off, so I'll get onto that as soon as I can. Some things I did throw away (into the textile recycling bin of course). I'm looking forward finishing sorting all the stuff out. It is a big mess at the moment.

Wow...

2009-05-17T16:14:00.001+01:00

I haven't posted here for months. I haven't been doing any sewing really. R is so hard to get off to sleep these days. It takes me till almost 10 to get him properly asleep. My sewing machine is in the same room as him, so I don't dare to sew in case it wakes him up... Apart from that I just haven't felt motivated or inspired to sew. I started off the year with such good intentions too!

I have been busy buying on fabric co-ops though. I got some money for my birthday and spent it (and more!) on fabric. I've ordered quite a few new patterns and a pattern book, about 15 yards of different knits (!) some woven fabric, some print PUL and some pre-cut patchwork fabric. Some of it is ready and I'm just waiting to hear how much it'll be for postage (an eye watering amount probably, with all that fabric). Some of it is going to be custom milled, so it'll be an age for that to be ready.

One thing I have done recently is cut out some PUL to make a new stash of nappies for R. I'm going to make some large sized Chloe Toes this time. The KCK nappies I made are getting a bit small. I need to get something for the insides of them though. I'm thinking I might get some suede cloth. And I probably need some more FOE. Gathering all the supplies is going to take some time and money, so it'll take a while to get them made.

I did actually sew something just recently! I did it all in an afternoon. Its a nappy and cover. I found that the Darling Diapers pattern that I'd bought had had an update, so I was quite excited to see what was different and try it out. These are made with the new "tiny newborn" size. It fits from about 5 to 12lbs. The nappy and cover are going to friends from our home ed group who just had a new baby.

I also wanted to post pictures of this dress - even though it must have been about 2 years since I made it! I'd given it to my mum to hem, and I think it ended up getting lost in her junk room. I need to sew some buttons on. E hasn't tried it on, I'm sure the length is fine, but it might not fit round the middle now. I think it turned out really lovely. I am sad that I used cheap poly cotton for it, because it would have been nicer with a nice crisp cotton.

Hopefully I will have more time to sew soon!

Baby Sling

2009-01-26T13:58:00.000Z

This is the sling I made just before new year.

I used a Girasol wrap sling. I measured myself and decided on how long I wanted the tail to get the length, then I cut it. It was a bit scary! The wrap originally cost about £40! I over locked the raw edge, then sort of pleated it to fit it through the rings. I just folded along the different lines of colour. I threaded the end through the sling rings then sewed it down. I found a decorative double zig zag stitch, and decided to sew that between the lines I'd sewn for extra strength. The baby changed the stitch when I was in the middle of sewing, so its a bit wonky at one bit. And that was it done! It hadn't occured to me that the wrong side of the fabric would be showing on the tail though - maybe I should have sewed it the other way round, so I could have the right side showing. I think the rings are a bit low on my shoulder in the picture too. I always seem to have that problem with ring slings. The rings slide down when I'm putting the baby in.

Plans...

2009-01-21T19:53:00.001Z

Some more lunch box pictures! (sorry for the coloured text! My blog is refusing to put a space between my paragraphs and its all just a big long mess)

Spaghetti fritata (again) on mixed leaf salad, half a crusty roll and butter, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and strips of red pepper with guacamole dip and a piece of chocolate brownie cake (yum!). Photography by E.

Lentil soup - turned out way more watery than usual, half a tiger roll and butter, mixed grapes, slice of orange and a mini chocolate brownie. Photography by E.

Asian style pasta salad, mini pitta, piece of cheese, cherry tomato, carrot sticks and nacho cheese dip, melon, strawberry, grapes and blueberries. The pasta salad came from the Laptop Lunches recipe book. I wasn't sure I was going to like it, but it was extremely delish! It's made with cooked pasta, broccoli, carrot, (any other random veg you feel like!) and bean sprouts. The dressing is made with sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds and some crushed garlic. Really delicious. I think it would be nice with egg noodles too. (photography by me on this one)

My other lunches planned for the week are:

Thursday - vegetable samosas, carrot and raisin salad, wholemeal roll and apricot cookies.

Friday - Pitta bread filled with Quorn meatballs in a tomato sauce (not sure how that's going to work! The idea just came to me.) I'll put some lettuce and maybe onion in them too and maybe a bit of grated cheese. With that we're having carrot sticks and dip, an apple flapjack and some fruit.

Saturday - Chinese noodle soup, roll and butter, apple coleslaw and a slice of carrot cake.

Sunday - A noodle salad - made with whatever veg I have left over. Veg sticks made from whatever I've got left lying around in the fridge, some sort of dip for them, yogurt and a fruit salad made with leftover fruit.

We got new doors put in our house today. I thought they'd be those horrid plastic kind, but they're actually quite nice wooden ones. There was a choice of white, blue, green or red. We picked red, because we'd had a red door before. Everyone else in the street seemed to pick white! So we're the odd ones out.

This is the front door (with a wee boy testing out the letter box!) Its only the outside thats painted red.

And this is the back door. The kitchen seems so much brighter!

This is my naughty wee boy doing his favorite thing! Rummaging through the potatoes. He likes to get the onions and garlic out and peel them. Or take all the spices out the spice basket. He's got two bashes on his head. (Only two this week! He usually has much more. Sometimes he headbutts the floor if he gets annoyed!)

Some very big children (and a cat!). Can't believe how grown up they look! Someone is missing from the picture - he was playing the computer. His favourite hobby at the moment.

Because we were getting new door fitted I spent the last couple of days tidying up the kitchen. The washing was VERY out of control. Its all sorted now, and the kitchen is neat and tidy (well, by my standards!) I hope I can maintain that. I recently decluttered my sewing area too, so that's pretty tidy and its easy to start a project because everything is to hand. I'm hoping to work my way through the rest of the house and then set up some sort of a tidying/cleaning routine to keep everything in order. Of course, I've said this many times before.... we'll just have to see how long it lasts this time!

I'm waiting on some books arriving from Amazon. My children were wanting to do some more structured work, and I found a great (and FREE!!!) curriculum online. Its called Myths, Maps and Marvels. There are quite a few books that you need, most of them Usbourne books, and classic children's stories, but my library barely has any of them!!! It's not so free when you have to buy about £100 worth of books! I'm going to substitute some of the books and use what I have or what I can get from the library.

I can't wait to get started with this though! It looks great. I don't think I've ever really learned about history in a linear way. At school we just did the odd random project about the Victorians, WW2, ancient Egypt etc. The curriculum covers history, geography, literature and introduces children to the major world religions. They're all interconnected, so you are never just studying a random topic. It also uses the internet a lot too. I always knew there was a lot of good stuff on the internet, but I was never really sure how to use it for learning. When you are learning about dinosaurs for example there are links to watch videos, play games, see reconstructions etc. The Usbourne Internet Linked Encyclopedia is awesome!

We usually do some work in the afternoon - when R has a nap (which doesn't seem to happen very often these days!) so my plan is:

History
Geography
Maths or language arts block work (from the Waldorf curriculums we usually use)
Chapter of our read aloud book
Crafts

With the read alouds I'm going to get the children to make a page about the book, with the title, author and maybe some bits about what they liked or didn't like about it and some drawings. I'll make them their own personal reading logs too. Its nice to look back and see how many books you've read. I used to keep track of my reading, but I never have time to read these days!

Sewing-wise - since this is supposed to be a sewing blog after all! I just got the most BEAUTIFUL embroidered nappy cuts. They are too nice to make into nappies that are going to be poo'd in! I was planning to make them into "luxury" nappies, made with bamboo and natural fabrics. I will get to cutting all the inners and soakers as soon as I have a minute. It's kind of given me the embroidery bug. I DO have an embroidery machine. Its a very basic model, and has built in Disney designs. I also have two cards I got free with it, but again they're Disney, and I really don't like Disney. Also the truth is, I don't even know how to use it properly! It CAN connect to the internet and download designs, but its so vintage. It uses one of those old style printer cables, with all the pins in the plug. Its so vintage my computer wasn't even able to detect it, even with software updates. BUT... all is not lost! I'm going to see if my brother can do anything with it. If not, I think I might just embroider a few Disney designs anyway to make some pockets or covers. I hope he can fix it though. There are so many ADORABLE designs on the internet. I've seen this lovely under the sea set, and I can just imagine a whole sea creature set of nappies! Or some Christmas ones with snowmen and snowflakes (though he might even be potty trained by then).

Also, I was going to make some overalls/dungarees for R, but my mum has just bought a couple of pairs, so I probably won't bother now. I still want to make some wipes, and haven't got round to it yet.

So the plans are:

Embroidered nappies first
Wipes
Mothers Day gift
Embroider some PUL fabric to make some covers/xl sized pockets

Then... I was thinking maybe a fancy Easter/spring time outfit for E and for R, a few tops for myself and some pyjamas for me and E.

A KCK Rainbow!

2009-01-18T14:44:00.000Z

I just finished sewing the last one! These are made with the Kayla's Cloth Kits sized pattern. I made the large size. They're all pocket nappies that I plan on stuffing with small sized prefolds. The pattern recommends stuffing with a microfibre cloth, but I've never been able to find any good sized ones around here. I seem to have quite a few in shades of blue. I'd really like to get some green PUL to even up my rainbow a bit!

All the inners are made from suedecloth fabric (except the orange, which has a black microfleece inner). I've never used suedecloth before. I'm not sure if I like it or not. It's nice that it doesn't stretch while you are sewing, but it feels kind of synthetic. Thanks to M's help I managed to squeeze 7 inners out of 1 yard of the tan coloured suedecloth. They say men have a better spatial awareness, so I asked him to help me fit as much as possible onto the fabric. I got the suedecloth in a swap. The penguin one I bought a small piece of a while ago, and the ivory or lemon one was very kindly gifted to me. Nothing really matched the orange PUL, and I'd ran out of suedecloth, so I ended up using black microfleece. I wish I'd used black touchtape on the front too, because it would have looked better, but I'd already sewn white on.

They all have welt pockets on the front. I did have some trouble with that though. Because the pocket is so close to the edge and there are a lot of layers of fabric there its really difficult to topstitch. Some of them look kind of horrible. At least no one will see when the nappy is closed though. I figured out - after sewing most of them - that if you trim the excess off the welt pocket before you sew the PUL and suedecloth together then it makes less bulk and its easier to topstitch.

I estimate that these took about 6 hours - from cutting to finish. I sewed them in assembly line style, 5 at a time. Doing too many at once gets boring. I used a whole 3m pack of elastic, and some extra elastic! I used polybraid elastic, because I don't really like lastin in pocket nappies. The legs just never seem to gather nicely.

You know what the awful thing is? I think these are going to be too small!!!! They're large - which says they fit approximately 20 to 30lbs. I always thought my boy was about 10kg - about 22-ish lbs, but I weighed him at my mums the other week and the little lardy thing is 28lb! The nappies just look a bit small on the rise too. I will have to try them on him when he wakes up from his nap.

***Update*** We tried one and it JUST fits! They're so much smaller than the KCK One. I thought they'd be quite similar in size. Even my prefolds that fit prefectly in the KCK Ones needed extra folding to fit in the sized nappy. I'm sure I'll get a couple of months use from them though. It is nice sometimes to have a smaller trimmer fitting nappy.

Lunch Boxes

2009-01-08T20:52:00.001Z

The children got a laptop lunchbox each for their Christmas this year, and I got a book about healthy lunches. Here's what we've come up with so far.

A spaghetti frittata (good way to use up left over spaghetti), lettuce and cherry tomatoes, tortilla chips (i made them myself) and tomato salsa to dip them in and a fruit salad.

BBQ tofu baguette, carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes (underneath the carrot sticks), apple wedges and toffee to dip them in and a fruit salad with blueberries, strawberries and kiwi.

Sausage & barley salad (made with veggie sausage, barley, garlic, tinned tomatoes and oregano), a boiled egg (made star shaped with my egg mold), grapes and a clemintine and some strawberry yoghurt.

Pizza calzone - bit too big for the lunch box! (made with veggie mince, carrots, red peppers, onion, garlic and mozzarella cheese), a carrot and raisin salad, chopped apricot and cherries and a mini packet of sweets (not at all healthy!).

This one has been partially scoffed! This was for the baby - who decided he'd rather have a nap than some lunch so he ended up leaving most of it. It was a mini piperade pitta (scrambled egg with tomatoes, pepper and spring onion, a pesto pasta salad (made with pasta, pesto, broccoli and cheddar), spicy popcorn (i popped some corn and sprinkled cajun spice mix on it) and a selection of melon. The little turtle pick thing was for picking up the melon.

These lunches have taken quite a long time to prepare. If I was more organised I could make some of it the night before. Everyone seems to have enjoyed them though. I'd been making different foods at a lot of meals for my picky eater - age 4, but I decided just to make him a lunchbox the same as everyone else. He's been doing quite well with it. I try to encourage him to try a bit of everything. So far he has discovered that he actually likes boiled eggs and he likes cherry tomatoes and cheese - but only cheese cut into chunks! If he doesn't like part of it then there are other parts that he can eat.

The baby is enjoying the different selection too. He can get bored quite quickly at meal times, but the lunchboxes seem to hold his attention quite a lot longer. He tends to go for the fruit first then any of the sweet sort of stuff, but he'll usually come back and eat bits of the rest.

I need to make a shopping list and plan what we are going to eat next week. I've also got a very exciting sewing project to do!

2008 Totals

2009-01-01T19:45:00.000Z

Just totalling up what I've sewn over 2008...

x37 nappies
x15 pocket nappies
x12 nappy covers
x10 mini diapers
x3 sets of washable wipes
x5 wool soakers
x5 pairs of EC pants
x1 bag
x1 nightdress
x4 breastfeeding tops
x1 camisole top
x2 pairs of pj trousers
x2 baby dresses
x1 SCC style sling
x1 pair of baby overalls
x3 felted balls (but they don't count since they're not really sewing)
x1 smocked shepherd suit
x1 pair of yoga pants
and, just before new year x1 ring sling - but no photos of that yet.

I don't think I've bought too much fabric this year. What I have bought has been needed to finish off some projects.

My goals for 2009 are probably pretty much the same as last year! To sew more! I'd like to make a bit of a dent in my fabric stash. And I'm going to try and be more organised, like starting my mothers day gifts pretty much now! Maybe an Easter dress for E and an outfit for R. And I plan on starting my Christmas sewing some time around August. Some gifts, some decorations and maybe some outfits.

I've been tidying up my sewing area over the last few days, so that'll give me a good start. I'd like to finish up some of my UFOs and I have about 12 pocket nappies cut out for R. I'd like to make some washable wipes and some other reuseable bits and bobs, so I think that will be my goal for this month - the nappies and wipes. Then next month I'll do my mothers day gift.

Bits n Bobs

2008-12-15T14:24:00.000Z

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 DID IT!!!!!

2008-11-30T23:53:00.001Z

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 :-)

Some Goodies!

2008-11-30T16:06:00.000Z

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 fill them with tomato sauce too if you like, but they're a bit on the tiny side.

This is the inside of the bento box - it cost a whole £3.99! The bottom part is probably for rice, and the section with the divider sits on top of that. Some of them came with bits to put your chop sticks in, but they were a bit more expensive. These ones seemed the best value. Can't wait to try them out!

Bag Swap

2008-11-22T15:27:00.000Z

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 of the bag.

Inside. I put a little label under the zippered pocket. I also only had a FQ of the print fabric, so I had to use cord for the inner gusset part.

Don't look too hard at the zippered pocket! It's actually the best zip I've done, but it's still far from perfect. I'm not sure if the fabric I used for the pocket inner matches that well, but it's inside the pocket, so it won't be seen.

Another view of the inside.

I put some stuff in it too. A 2009 calendar and a postcard too.

I'm very nervous about it now. I hope it gets there ok and that my swap partner likes it. Some things I learned about doing a swap are:

1) Use fabric you have in your stash. Don't order from Japan! It takes too long to get here.

2) Get your notions and stuff locally. I ordered my bag handles online and one was damaged when it arrived. They're really quite sturdy plastic though. The post office must have run over them or something to break them! Anyway, I had to wait on a replacement. Afterwards I found out that my local shop had handles in stock!

3) Don't lose your your dies from your die set! I put one snap on then couldn't find the other die to put the other one on. I spent a whole DAY looking for it! S found it for me :-)

4) Don't sign up to a swap when you know you are going to be doing something ridiculous - like trying to write a 50k word novel in 30 days. I'm not very good at balancing what needs to be done.

Little Update

2008-11-08T10:49:00.000Z

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 once the Japanese fabric arrives.

Better go and get on..............

Nanowrimo

2008-11-04T10:49:00.000Z

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 to think about getting some fabric for that. How am I going to fit all this in????

It's Free Film Education week here, so tomorrow we're going to see The Spiderwick Chronicles. On Thursday we're off to see Horton Hears a Who and on Friday we're going to see Charlotte's Web.

I'm also trying to keep up with the Flylady babysteps, but that'll be the first thing to go if I find I have too much to do!

Sewing Challenge Results!

2008-10-24T10:48:00.000+01:00

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 and do that later. I also added snaps to the small pair of Poquito Pants - they're the pink ones. I had to seam the fabric at the crotch because I didn't have a big enough piece to make them with. They are VERY tiny!

Monday: Another pair of medium Poquito Pants. I seamed the fabric on these too so there would be a chick facing up the way on each side. I also tried putting the size tag under a snap, but I don't think that was very succesful. I think the raw edge at the top will fray.

Tuesday: A final pair of medium Poquito Pants. The outer fabric is sort of a brushed cotton knit, and the inner is velour on these. Ran out of interlock. I also ran out of white thread while I was making them, so I top stitched in red. I don't think it looks very good. Black might have been better and black snaps too, rather than red.

Wednesday: Didn't make a thing! Came in at 9pm from a meeting, and by the time I got R to sleep it was too late to start anything.

Here's my weeks work! Not too bad I think. I really need to make an effort to get a couple more things finished. I have a project to work on this week, but I need to give myself a few more challenges to complete.

Sewing challenge update

2008-10-20T11:16:00.000+01:00

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!

Mini Sewing Challenge

2008-10-18T11:46:00.000+01:00

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!

Home Education

2008-10-16T13:51:00.000+01:00

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 (introducing the alphabet)
2 weeks - Holiday

January
1 week - Nature
3 weeks - maths (introducing 4 processes)

February
4 weeks - Language arts (starting writing & reading using Fairy Tales)

March
3 weeks - Nature (planting a garden etc)
1 week - holiday

April
1 week - holiday
3 weeks - Maths

May
2 weeks - Language arts (fairy tales)
2 weeks - Nature

For this we are using the Christopherus 1st Grade Curriculum, The Seven Year Wonder Book, Grimms Fairy tales and Painting with Children. We have several library books for read alouds too. In between the lessons we've got painting, drawing, baking, cooking, knitting, nature crafts, playing the recorder etc.

E is doing 2nd grade. Here is her schedule.

September
3 weeks - Language arts (Fables)
1 week - Michaelmas

October
2 weeks - Language arts (Fables)
2 weeks - Language arts (The King of Ireland's Son)

November
1 week - Language arts (The King of Ireland's Son)
1 week - Martinmas celebrations
2 weeks - maths (odd & even numbers,vertical sums)

December
1 week - Saint Nicholas celebrations
1 week - Saint Lucia celebrations
1 week - Winter Solstice celebrations
1 week - holiday

January
4 weeks - Maths (Months of the year, days if the week, seasons, time, place value, 3 & 11 times tables)

February
4 weeks - Language arts (Saints and hero's)

March
3 weeks - maths (place value, carrying & borrowing, more times tables)
1 week - spring equinox celebrations

April
1 week - Easter celebrations
3 weeks - maths (money, times tables)

May
1 week - May Day/Beltane celebrations
3 weeks - consolidating what we've learned/ finishing up unfinished work.

For this we're using A Little Garden Flower 2nd Grade curriculum, Christopherus 2nd grade maths book, Christopherus Saints and Hero's book, The King of Ireland's Son, Aesops Fables and a ton of seasonal and nature books from the library. Plus some read alouds. We've already read Georges Marvelous Medicine, Gobbolino the Witches Cat and Diary of a Killer Cat. We're also doing knitting, painting etc to go with this.

I think that's everything! Hope to have a sewing post soon.

No fabric yet...

2008-10-07T22:56:00.000+01:00

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 booked tickets to see Horrid Henry at the Kings Theatre in Edinburgh. Thats in a few weeks time. November is National Novel Writing Month (also known as Nanowrimo) and I plan to do that. You have to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I did it in 2006 and won. R was just a few weeks old last Novemeber so I didn't do it then. I'm spending a bit of time over the next few weeks planning for that. Then it'll be December. Yikes! We're going to see a Christmas panto in the Tron theatre in Glasgow. Its a home ed trip. So I'm going to be kind of busy.

Can't really do a blog post without pictures, so here is some of E's work that she's been doing. We've been doing fables. She took the photos herself, with a close up of the peacock that she drew because she was really proud of the way it turned out :-)

Did I already post these?

2008-10-05T22:22:00.000+01:00

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 maybe. I think I will probably make more of these for R because we use them so much.

I'm actually waiting on a delivery of PUL. Hope it arrives tomorrow! Most of it is colours I already have - I'm just topping my stock up. But I've got chocolate brown ordered. I'm not a brown fan, but it seems to be an in colour at the moment. Brown and pale pink, brown and turquoise - they're all nice combinations. Please let it arrive tomorrow!!!!!!

Another Sneak Peek

2008-09-29T21:52:00.000+01:00

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 penguins engraved on them! I've made two blue ones and a pink one. I've got another one cut out to sew.

These are Sprightly Soakers made with wool interlock for the body and wool/lycra blend for the waist and leg cuffs. I had 1yd of interlock and 1yd of blend and managed to make 4 large ones and 2 small ones.
Just a close up of the labels I got to sew on them :-)

Here is R modelling his. These are my new favourite covers. When I can afford it I will buy some more of the wool blend and maybe make some longies with it. And more covers. It is expensive though. Something like $20 a yard. Plus a hideous amount for postage. Apparently it dyes really nicely too.
This is the inside of another Little One Size. I made a fold out soaker for it. Looks like it'll be good for boys. I have a whole load of these at various stages. Some needing threads trimmed and some needing completely sewn.

Aw look - a little hand! These are medium Little Starter covers. With gussets. They were a bit tricky to do.

Cute labels on the back. Bad picture though.

I hope to get some more stuff finished off soon. I just don't seem to be getting the time to sew lately. And the Jeff Show has been taken off the air! I can't sew without listening to the Jeff Show!!! Will have to find some more late night listening.

Thanks Denise!

2008-09-29T20:46:00.001+01:00

Denise sent me a lovely pumpkin hat for my little R. It's soooo cute!

I tried my best to get a good photo. He kept trying to take it off. How do people get their babies to wear hats?

Can I take this off yet???

I'm taking it off right now!

Haha! I'm free!

Oh alright - one more picture then.

Fed up of all this modelling malarkey..... I'm off!

Random Bits

2008-08-21T13:32:00.001+01:00

A fluffy stack! I found a piece of fabric one day when I was rummaging and I had an idea about making a whole matching set with it. I got some Dylon and some white velour and dyed my fabric to match the print. The lime green and print ones are Little Starters, the lime green velour is a side snapping Little One Size, and the rest are front snapping Little One Sizes. There are a couple more that aren't in the picture. I still have to put snaps on for the snap in soakers. This is a one size on a small setting, and one on a bigger setting. The rise snaps down inside.
These are two medium Fattycakes I sent to Denise for her little boy. Both are PRR knit prints on the outside. The whale one I have had for about 6 years now! I used woolly nylon thread on the whales one. It turned out quite nice. I planned to use a nice lime green french terry for the inside of the car one, but when I came to cut out I found my bit of fabric was too small! So I was stuck with this not so nice sweatshirt fleece green. The other one is a dark blue velour. I have washed it THREE times! I was worried the dye might come out.
This is a very boring picture of the trifold soaker. Its two layers of hemp fleece and one of the sweatshirt fleece. Folded up it will be 9 layers altogether. I think my trifolds are a bit on the short side. I need to make them a bit longer.
Well... this was my attempt at a close up of the little size tags. Didn't turn out too great though... I did do hidden snaps on these for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe I didn't have enough snaps when I was making them.

Some of my mini diapers and the cover. But the cover is too small!!!! Or my baby is too fat.... I am going to try making extended tabs with the touchtape so it should fit a bit better.

This is the diaper shower gift that I sent off to Australia.
I sent these two AIOs as extras. They're made from the Darling Diapers pattern. The yellow one turned out a bit wonky on one side, which was a shame. Probably no one else will notice it though. I LOVE the way the multi coloured thread looks with the heart print flannel. The soakers and the hidden layers are made from birdseye, which is a fabric I haven't really used much.
Little dress from the Vintage baby Bubble pattern. Its made from linen, which as you can see creases badly! I'd just ironed it, then folded it to see if it would fit inside the parcel and it got a big fold line down it.

My favourite!

2008-08-21T13:18:00.000+01:00

This is my favourite KCK One out of all the ones I made. Its a cotton woven fabric laminated with PUL for the outer and a red microfleece inner. I used blue touchtape on it. It blends in quite nicely.
This is the back.
Close up of the cool woven label.

I used royal blue PUL for the welt pocket. The other star one I made I used red touchtape and red PUL for the welt pocket. It looks nice, but not as nice as this one. I've got this one stuffed with a small prefold.
I tried to take a picture, but he kept walking to me. Yes! Walking!!!! He is really walking!

Sneak Peek

2008-08-04T20:24:00.001+01:00

I have been very quiet lately. I joined a stash reduction game and so I've been busy sewing. It was scary cutting into all that fabric at first.. but now it feels great! Look what I've made... (pictures are rather awful since they were taken at night with the light on.)

A big pile of stuff!

Two Darling Diapers AIOs and a teeny weeny Little Comet Tails xxs AIO. These were for a diaper shower gift, but the baby turned out to be a boy! I will make something new. Poor baby boy is in NICU because he was born early and is having some problems :-( Hope he gets well soon.
Colours look awful in this pic. The orange is nicer in real life. Its a cover, and there are two Fattycakes nappies underneath. (Those are for you Denise!!!) The cover is part of a set i'm making.
10 Artistry Baby mini diapers and 10 KCK Ones. There is one modified KCK One that I put snaps on.
I adore this cover! Its so perfect. Its a much nicer colour in real life though. I put baby soft loop on the front and lined it with suedecloth fabric.
Look it has penguins on it! And it matches the outer fabric so nicely.The mini diaper fits perfectly inside it. I think the mini diapers will be handy to put inside night nappies too as mega boosters. Fingers crossed it will fit on the baby!

All that photo taking woke the poor wee boy up. He looks so crabby!

Well, thats all for now! Got to get cutting and sewing again...

Kitten Update

2008-07-13T12:24:00.000+01:00

**Chloe is a boy!!!!!***

lol! They went to the vet and it turns out Chloe is a boy. We are trying to decide on Leo or Theo for a name, though i have been calling him Grey. Because he's grey.

Our new kittens

2008-07-11T13:32:00.000+01:00

We decided to call this one Chole. She is grey and white. She has some sort of tabby cat stripes through her fur.
This is Max - asleep. He is a sort of fawn and white colour. He's also got some tabby stripes. Their mum was a tortoise shell colour. They really like playing with lego!
Chloe asleep.
R asleep too!

Their new kitty sofa from ebay! Its so cute and its reversable too. I could have made one, but the kittens arrived sooner than we were expecting them. Kwik Sew has all sorts of patterns for pets. I'll get round to making something for them soon.

Diaper Shower Part 2.

2008-07-06T12:17:00.000+01:00

My pictures aren't great here because it was night time and I had the light on. The colours didn't come out very well.

So, this is for another Diaper Shower. It's off to Australia this time:-) Its my 1st time using the Little Comet Tails patterns. I made a pair of Crecent Moon yoga pants - the picture doesn't give you an idea how tiny they really are, there is an xs Little Starters nappy and an xs Little Starters cover.
The yoga pants were fine till i decided to hem them with a decorative stitch. Now it looks like someone has just punched 100s of holes in the hem instead. The picture doesn't show how crappy it really is. I made these with some PRR knit that I've had for about 6 years! I used co-ordinating ribbing on the top, cutting it slightly smaller since the ribbing is very stretchy.
Look at the little gussets on the cover! I had to unpick lots of FOE here because I didn't stretch it around the leg openings. Really, it wouldn't have killed me to get up and check the instructions. Unpicking a 3 step zigzag is not fun! Sewing over the gussets while stretching the FOE was really tricky. Maybe because it is such a little size. It might be easier with the bigger sizes. You can't see in the picture, but the snaps are actually engraved with little flowers :-) I'm not too in love with the yellow, but it was the best match I had for the fabric.
Here is the nappy. Its lined with yummy bamboo velour. I think I did something wrong with this. There is an uneven amount of snaps on the front and its kind of odd. I must have not trimmed 1/4 inch properly from the wings because they are overlapping. The pink overlocking doesn't look too lovely either. It looks kind of orange where it goes over the yellow print. I used hemp stretch terry as the soaker fabric and it feels really light. I think I'll make an extra booster to put in it.
How perfect are the snaps! They match the blue and yellow exactly. They are engraved with flowers too.

Nice boring picture of the inside. The snaps at the front are hidden and the elastic is only on the top two layers, so there is no elastic stitching on the inner layer. Because its the xs size it has a dip in the front for a newborns belly button.
This is the nappy inside the cover. It doesn't fit too well because i made the mistake with not trimming off the seam allowence.
And this is just one last pic for good measure! I really want to make some of these yoga pants for R. They look so comfy and the have lots of nappy space inside them.

Sewing in action!

2008-07-05T22:17:00.000+01:00

This is the little chick romper I made. I'd almost forgot I made it! It fits really nicely, and is great and roomy over cloth nappies. Being velour it makes R even more soft and huggable than usual!

KCK One

2008-07-05T21:04:00.001+01:00

I've seen this pattern for a while but I never bought it because I really don't love aplix. And this has LOTS of aplix. I saw it again while I was looking for the Darling Diapers pattern and I thought why not - its only $5, plus it was downloadable, so no waiting around for the post. I saw the cool video on the website and I was even more convinced to buy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97s5wKbS9Fg

And here is the 1st one I made... Basically its a one size pocket. Great if you don't have a tumble drier and good value for money since you only need the one size.

This is a close up of the welt pocket opening on the front. Fuzzi Bunz have patented the traditional back opening, and apparently they come after any little WAHMs who are making nappies like that to sell. How mean! So this one uses the welt pocket opening, which IMO is 100 times nicer looking - and easier to stuff than the Fuzzi Bunz. I thought it might be quite difficult to make, and then I read the instructions - a whole page and a half dedicated to the welt pocket and I was extremely confused. But I just followed it step by step and it turned out great! Well, actually I sewed it on backwards at first and had to unpick, and I sewed it a bit further down than you were supposed to and one corner isn't so pretty... But apart from that its perfect!
This is how it looks on the small setting. Not the prettiest, but its not got the bulk at the front that other one sizes have. In the 1st picture you will see little hook tabs on the front of the loop, well you pull the little hook tabs out and then fold over the top. The loop on the front sticks on to the hook tabs.
I didn't realise I'd made a trio of primary colours!

Darling Diapers

2008-07-05T20:19:00.000+01:00

I just got this pattern a few days ago. Wow! It has so much in it. I could hardly decide what to make. I decided on some All in Ones for easy Daddy changes. The first one is made with yellow PUL, a hidden layer of hemp stretch terry and a striped flannel inner. The soaker snaps in and is made from 3 layers of hemp fleece and matching flannel.

Here is the side view. its really quite trim. I used blue touchtape for the side tabs because I thought it would look cool.
This is the inner. The soaker is overlocked with woolly nylon. I don't usually use woolly nylon, but it was in my machine, and it was a pretty good match. My boy would not let me get a picture! He is trying to get the camera. And yes, I totally dress my boy in a lilac nappy!
Was trying to get a modelling shot, but he wasn't co-operating. Its actually a bit smaller than I thought it would be. As I was sewing it I was sure the legs were too big. It didn't seem like the elastic was stretched enough, but it fits fine. I think I'd have been better off going for the large rather than the medium size. I'd prefer it if it was a bit trimmer through the crotch. I might modify that a bit if I make it again. The flat front didn't seem to gap like I thought it would, so it was pretty succesful... except Daddy still managed to put it on backwards. Then he accused it of being a stupid design and because he hadn't stuck the tabs down right it fell off and he accused my sewing of being crappy :-(
I made the red one with snaps just to be different. It turned out ok too. Its the same as the one above except for the red PUL and the flannel has stars on it. I also did a decorative stitch round the front. The stitch didn't want to go round the curves very well, so its a good job the snaps are hiding it :-)

Cuddlebuns

2008-06-21T15:41:00.000+01:00

This was one of the first nappy patterns I ever purchased. I remember making some using the turn and topstitch method since I didn't have an overlocker, and using metal snaps. They were awful to apply! I decided to dig it out and give it a go again. I'm really proud of the result. It took forever to make. Such a faff! I had to keep switching between machines, changing stitches, walking foot on, walking foot off etc. If I make it again I'll ignore the instructions and do it my own way.

This is it on the bigger setting. It fits from 8-40lbs supposedly. This is the little setting. You fold the top over and there are snaps underneath for the smaller size.This is the inside. I also made the snap in toddler doubler. It snaps into the small snap settings.I'm not sure about the sizing of this though. It's soooooo wide. And the wings are sort of short and stubby. It looks like they are going to curl once its on too. Here it is with a small Very Baby. They're roughly the same size but it's so much wider. I don't see this fitting an 8lb baby at all. It'll be really bulky between the legs for the smaller sizes.Here it is back on the big setting. Its roughly the same size as the medium Fattycake nappy, but still its so much wider. Speaking of the Fattycake. Here it is. It's a medium size.
The inside is made with a yellow velour. It matches nicely with the stripy fabric.This is the 1st snap in tri-fold soaker I've made. I used two layers of hemp fleece and topped it with the yellow velour.

Both of these are on their way to a friend. I need to finish cutting out a few bits then I can get down to some serious sewing. I'm going to make everything assembly line style. It's boring, but before you know it you have loads of finished nappies.

Diaper Shower

2008-06-20T20:49:00.000+01:00

One of my sewing groups hold "Diaper Showers". Its based on the idea of a "baby shower" except the gifts are nappies. Here are two shower gifts I've made. Just need to get them posted. One to Canada and one to the US.

The 1st one is a Very Baby nappy made from bamboo velour, with a cover from the free Chloe Toes pattern and some flannel/hemp stretch terry wipes)

The 2nd one is also a Very Baby nappy, but made side snapping. The cover is the Very Baby Snug Wrap, which I put snaps on. The little bug on the back is an iron on motif that I stitched on. I'm going to get some fabric glue and glue the rest of it on. I should have placed it a bit lower down really.... I'll know next time. The wipes with this set are also flannel and hemp stretch terry.

I'm just finishing up a bunch of nappies. Off to do that now...

I made a sling

2008-05-31T20:21:00.001+01:00

I just finished this sling from the Blessed Designs Comfort Cuddler pattern. It only took a couple of hours. But.............. I don't think it fits properly. Look at my boy in the pictures. He can't really see out. The straps are really slippy also. I need to add a chest strap. I did shorten the straps already, but I should have shortened the body too.

I made it with a lovely soft aubergine cord, and lined it with some delicious bamboo velour. I've put a hidden layer of denim inside to strengthen it. The foam padding for the waist and straps came from an old changing mat. It had ripped and I was going to throw it away when I thought the foam might come in handy for something :-) I washed the foam in the washing machine, so I know it won't disintegrate or anything when I wash the sling.

The sling has a large elasticated pocket on the front. I wasn't going to put it on, because I wanted to make it up quickly, but the pocket was really fast and simple to make. There are darts in the seat of the carrier too.

Hopefully I'll be able to figure out a way to make this fit better. I can't really sell it or pass it on to anyone because I cut webbing for the waist really short. I was running out of webbing and was trying to be frugal with it so I'd have enough to finish it off. I think I cut some off the shoulder straps too. So its not really very adjustable for different sizes.

I've also been working on another sling. The pattern was free to download. It's going to be denim with a Michael Miller "lovely lanterns" print front panel. I've got a cool little clip thing I'm going to attach to the waist so I can clip keys on it etc. But the whole thing has been a complete PITB to make. And now I'm out of webbing too. The pattern instructions specified one width of webbing, but on the pattern pieces the webbing is narrower. Oh, and I've made a wool wrap. But it has no snaps on it yet. I'm still waiting on my snap press getting fixed. I reeeeeeeally need it back. There is a big queue of nappies waiting to get snapped. (I just ordered two new wool wraps today too. Shhhh)

The long awaited shepherd suit

2008-05-10T00:10:00.000+01:00

It feels like this has taken me forever to do! The smocking didn't take too long, but construction took quite a while. then I gave it to my mum to hem. Then I lost a piece of fabric for the pants and had to re-cut it. It was then waiting ages for the button holes. I decided to do them tonight, but I nearly gave up! I just don't like doing button holes. I don't understand how the thing works. There is a little wheel thing on the button hole foot but sometimes it doesn't turn, and it doesn't sew the button hole right. Very annoying. But its done now. Phew! Because I've lined the pants in white its making them look a slightly different colour. But I'm sure no one will notice when they're on.

I forgot to get a picture of the little blue leather shoes that match. Nevermind. Will have to get a picture of it all in action.

I have another little smocked outfit to hem and add buttons and button holes to. Might work up the courage to do that tomorrow! It's navy cords that button onto a smocked shirt. Nothing quite as fancy as this one.

I've ordered some new snaps and dies. The snaps are all in really cute colours! I've also ordered some new patterns from Blessed Designs, some jeans stitch thread, and.... something else I think? Don't know. Got a lot planned to do!

A few more things...

2008-05-08T11:03:00.000+01:00

This top is made from Blessed Designs #1002. It is a nursing top. You lift the top layer and there are extended armhole openings in the white layer. Very good for keeping your stomach covered! It was so fast and easy to make! I will definitely make this again, but next time lengthen it by quite a bit. It's too short on me. Because I am small it makes me look even shorter! I think if I wear a longer top it'll make my body look longer and I'll look taller. The pink fabric came from my stash. I've had it about 4 years. It's not really my colour though. I just really wanted to try the pattern out.
The hems were done on my sewing machine. I was too lazy to set my overlocker up to do cover stitch. I think they look pretty good and quite professional. Picture is a bit blurred though.
One morning a few months ago I woke up and just randomly decided to sew this! I neglected my house for the day to sew it. It had just been waiting for snaps. It's from the Ottobre magazine. I have made this pattern before a couple of years ago. It's blue velour - very snuggly! The binding was a pain to do. I cut it to the width you were supposed to, but its really too narrow and annoying to work with. I think it looks horrible, but probably no one else will notice. I've never done anything like the chick applique before. It's not great. i had trouble turning round the curves. It still needs an eye. i have a packet of teeny beads somewhere, but I can't seem to find them. i might just draw it on with a fabric pen.

The drity marks are from dust. M decided to drill holes in the wall, and didn't bother clearing anything away. Loads of dust fell onto my sewing! I can't seem to rub it off. i will have to wash them.

A close up of the chick - and the dust. I used an satin stitch on the chick, a decorative stitch for the grass and a quilting stitch for the egg. the egg is cut from a piece of fleece and the chick from quilting cotton. The pattern had it just as an embroidery, not an applique. But I didn't think it would look so good on blue.

These are some felt balls that we made from wool. I found the instructions online and felted them in the washing machine. I didn't think they were going to work because we had trouble shaping the wool into a round ball. But they turned out ok I think.
R likes them! We were thinking about making one with a jingle bell hidden inside it. We might make some more later on.

Some finished items!

2008-05-08T06:48:00.001+01:00

These are the finished Fattycake pocket nappies I was making the other day. My hand hurts from applying all the snaps!

This is the inner. It's made with a really soft microfleece. Unfortunately the stud part of the snaps are cream, because I've ran out of white studs. The lilac one actually has pink studs on the inside!
This is how the pocket works. Apparently it's technical name is a "sham pocket". I didn't hem the edges since its fleece and won't fray.
Just thought I'd add these two pictures. I made them a month or so ago. I think they are medium sized Very baby AIOs. These are daddy-proof nappies! I made them so they'd be easy for him to use. Half the time he puts on two covers, or uses a cover with a nappy that it doesn't go with. The light blue is an AIO with a birdseye inner. The royal blue one is a pocket. It leaked spectacularly on its first use. Out of the back too, which is really quite odd. I put R down for a nap and when he woke up whe was soaked right up the back to his shoulders almost!
This is a baby gift I finished last night. Well not totally finished, still have to trim threads etc. its a Fattycake nappy with a cover. The cover was made from the same pattern, just bound with FOE.
Recognise the soaker pad I'm holding? It's the disaster I made the other day! I just chopped the seams off and shaped it into an hourglass sort of shape. I added an extra layer of sherpa to it. The body is cotton knit, hidden sherpa and topped with velour and the soaker is cotton knit, two layers of sherpa and topped with velour. I think I will make a hemp fleece booster to go along with it.
This is the inside of the lilac cover. I lined it in microfleece. You can't really see it well in the picture, but I left an opening in it. So its a 2-in-1. It can be a cover, or stuffed with an insert and be a pocket nappy. I'm not sure how well it'll work, but I think its a cool idea.

The lilac cover matches perfectly with this little Ottobre dress. (which still needs hemmed) Originally the dress is what I planned on making for a gift, but I don't think I will send it. I just don't like it that much. It's also really quite small, and the nappy set is quite big (for a new baby) so I doubt they could be worn together anyway.

These are the pants that are supposed to go with the dress. Annoyingly the pants pattern was in a different Ottobre magazine, even though they were pictured together. I think the leg openings are just too wide on them.

More pictures later.....

Fattycakes - take 2

2008-05-05T16:51:00.000+01:00

Well, these turned out not too badly. I think. I hope they will work ok. This is a small sized Fattycake. It's made from PUL and microfleece. I stitched them RS together and turned them. I sewed the elastic to the seam allowences. I topstiched really close to the edges, but not through the leg area.
The inside. I made the pocket opening at the front, so you don't have to stick your hand into the back of a stinky nappy to remove the insert. I hemmed the edges of th opening on this one, but it does make it a bit bulky. Since its fleece it won't fray, so i've left the edges unhemmed on the other ones. The opening is kind of envelope style.

This is a close up of the topstiching and the casing I made for the front elastic. I made a casing on the back elastic too. I still have to add snaps. I've made a lilac one and I've got a pale pink one cut out ready to sew. They are quite narrow through the crotch. I'm not too sure what to stuff them with. This one has a newborn sized pre-fold in it. Since they are for gifts I should probably send something to stuff them with. Maybe a tri-fold soaker or a contoured one.

I measured my own little Fattycake, and his measurements seemed to put him in the small size. I tried this one on him and its too small. I will make him some in medium size instead. Here is a pic of the little darling Fattycake. He'd just been outside in the sun :-) I think this is the first really nice sunny day we've had since he was born.

Trashed

2008-05-04T16:50:00.001+01:00

I made these pj trousers a few months back for S with some flannel I'd had for ages. They were from a pattern from Burda magazine. Look what he did to them!!!!! I think he was sliding around on the floor and caught them on something sharp. Or so he says.... I might cut it into boosters for R's nappies. Don't want to waste fabric.

Some more mess... a prize for anyone who can guess what this is supposed to be!

This is about as good as I can get it looking. It's supposed to be a Fattycakes diaper. I don't know what went wrong. Maybe my elastic was too tight? Maybe I should have sewn it through all layers? Maybe using knit fabric was a bad idea? It's all just curled up and blah looking. It was supposed to be a baby gift too! I'm running low on all my nappy fabrics, so I'm really annoyed at messing this up. I also realised why I never t&t nappies... because I HATE it!!! So much extra work. It looks less professional. And the topstitching looks awful if its ever so slightly off.

I don't think I'll even bother trying to fix it. Especially as it is a gift. I'll cut out the centre in an hour glass sort of shape, maybe add an extra layer of hemp fleece, then serge it all together. It can be a snap in soaker for the next one. The next one will be made on the overlocker!!!! I will go back to using my usual elastic too. It was going to be part of a gift set. I want to make a matching cover to go with it. I'm not sure what pattern to use yet. I'm thinking I'd like to line the cover, and have an opening in the lining, to make it dual purpose. A cover or a pocket nappy. But I'm not too sure how that's going to work yet.

Also adding a picture of what happened when the baby got hold of a felt tip pen! It took a couple of days to come off, because there's only so much face washing a baby can take!

If I get a chance later I'll post some pictures of two tops I've made. Off now to order a knitting set for E.

More Nappies

2008-04-25T10:27:00.000+01:00

This is the baby gift I made all finished and ready to go...

I really hate uploading pictures with Blogger. That is NOT where I wanted that picture to go!!!

Well, never mind.....

This week i have been working on some newborn nappies. They need some snaps. Applying snaps really hurts my shoulder and arm. Its hard work! I'm running low on a lot of snap colours too, so I had to use a combination of white and off-white on the nappies. I have some money for my birthday and I think i might buy a new set of dies, for size 20 snaps - slightly larger than the ones I have. And some new snaps. Anyway, this is what I've made:

x4 Very Baby newborn nappies, made from hemp jersey

x4 Mini nappies, made with a modified version of the Very Baby pattern

x2 Covers made by modifying the Very Baby pattern - these are for the mini nappies to snap into.

Ugh!!! Blogger and pictures is so annoying!!! These are the two covers. Still need to add snaps to them. I haven't decided if they should be front snapping or side snapping. I am leaning towards side snapping. The wings look a little bit big, so i think they'd be better tucked underneath.

This is the mini nappy that will snap inside the cover. I think I've put it in the wrong way round in the picture! The mini nappy has a hemp jersey inner and outer and a hidden layer of sherpa fleece. It has elastic legs. I suppose its something like the Imse vimes contour nappies. The soaker will snap in on top of it - once I add snaps! Its made from 3 layers of hemp fleece and topped with hemp jersey to match the mini nappy. The inside of the cover is lined with micro fleece.

I hope these will be ok for a newborn. It should be quite snug once it is all on.

This is one of the ikkle nappies with the snaps on a larger setting. For some reason there is only 4 snaps on the front of this. I'm not sure if that is a mistake on the pattern or not. Or if it was me that made the mistake??? There was a snap down bit for the umbilical cord, but I left those off. It might be a bit irritating having a snap near the belly button.

I do really like the look of the natural hemp fabric and the pastel coloured thread. The snaps on the front are off white, which matches nicely, but I ran out of the off whites, so the sockets underneath are white.

Oh, and this is a picture of my little darling!

Right now I'm working on another baby gift. It's a little dress with matching pants. I think I'll do a little top to go under it and make a matching nappy. It's from the Ottobre magazine.

I've also made something for R from the Ottobre magazine. It just needs snaps to finish.

Also on the list is finishing his shepherd suit. I've been working on it for ages!! It just needs button holes. I'm allergic to making button holes so I've been putting it off.

I'm planning on making lots more nappies. I'd love to have some tie dyed ones! I've also just ordered fabric for making a top for myself, and for making a sling.

Busy, busy, busy!!!

A Baby Gift

2008-04-12T14:48:00.000+01:00

I haven't managed to do any sewing for a while, but this project seemed to come together really quickly. I traced and cut the pattern during the day and was able to sew it - assembly line style in the evening. I was really pleased with how it turned out.

It's not the best photo really. There are 3 small sized Very Baby diapers, one newborn sized Chloe Toes cover, 6 cloth wipes and 5 fleece liners.

This is the inside of the Chloe Toes cover. Its a free pattern. The newborn size fits from 6-13lbs. It's really quite tiny and doesn't fit over my nappies - which are small size and fit 10-16lbs (i think!) I'm going to send it anyway. I'm just in the process of making a small sized cover. It fits 10-20lbs, so should fit nicely over the nappies. I'm making it in the pale pink, same as the other one. I also found an extremely cute ladybird and flower print fabric, which I'll use to make another cover. Am getting a bit carried away I think!

This is the Very Baby nappy. The soaker snaps in rather than being sewn inside, so it will dry faster. There is an extra booster pad as well, which fits under the soaker pad. The nappy is made from the knit outer, with a hidden layer of sherpa fleece and topped with cotton velour. The side snaps are hidden and so is the elastic, so none of it will touch the baby's skin. The snap in soaker pad is made from 3 layers of hemp fleece and topped with the white cotton velour. The extra booster is made from 3 layers of hemp fleece. It is going to be a very absorbent nappy I think.

I don't really like the bulk of the wings inside the nappy. It seems a bit fiddly to sort them as you are fastening it. I have a couple more baby gifts to sew - once the babies are born. Don't know if they are boys or girls yet. When I do them I'm going to change to front snaps rather than side snaps. Still, I'm fairly pleased with this project. I just have to wrap it up. I'm going to tie the nappies up in a bundle with ribbon and make a little tag to thread onto the ribbon with the size and washing instructions.

Blessed Designs ~ Sweet Blossom Lingerie

2008-03-15T14:27:00.000Z

I need to figure out what is wrong with this. It feels too small. The body fits ok, but not the bust. Maybe I need to make a bigger size. Or do a FBA, or even a LBA. This is the buttercup size. I used a nice stretchy knit I bought on ebay. It turned out to be more purple than it looked on the picture.

My photo of this project is REALLY bad. Batteries in camera went flat. It looks really nice in real life though. I haven't hemmed it yet. Think I will do a lettuce edge, because the knit is too stretchy, it'll end up going lettucey anyway. I think I will trim the under bust seam next time I make it because it ended up really thick. You had to sew through 3 layers the front, then fold it up so you were sewing through 4 and the elastic. I think i will grade the seam down to just one layer of fabric. I think I'll top stitch the arm and neck elastic a little bit further in next time. I think I've done it too close to the edge and its trying to roll out a bit. I don't usually wear anything without a bra, but this top is very supportive. I just need it a little bit bigger I think.

This is supposed to be a camisole, but I'd wear it for a top in the summer. Once I figure out the sizing I think I have enough fabric left to make a night gown and another top. I have a pj top that I don't like, because it has itchy lace on it. I'm going to buy some white knit and make one of these tops to go with pj bottoms. I'll do lettuce edging in pink, so they match. I also need the white to sew up some Blessed Design #1002 tops.

I also finished another project this morning. I just bought a load of nappy making fabrics, and I sewed a Very Baby AIO. It's baby blue PUL and it has a white birdseye inner. I had some real trouble with it. My inner and outer would just not match up. I think I might have traced the wrong size or something??? A 15 minute job turned into a 45 minute nightmare! I ended up putting a little tuck in the birdseye to get them to match. It shouldn't affect the performance at all. Just need to sew on the aplix and its ready to use :) Will post pics when I get new batteries.

Not Sewing

2008-03-03T18:50:00.000Z

Me and my lovely boy. Look at his red cheeks! He'd just woke up from a cosy nap on my knee.

He's only 4 months, but he's into Nintendo already.

My cake :) AKA "The most bestest chocolate cake in the world" It doesn't look quite as neat and lovely as the one in the magazine. It has two layers of white choc sponge and two layers of dark choc sponge, sandwiched together and topped with chocolate ganache (think thats what its called!) There is white choc and maltesers on the top. Mmmmm. Only about 1,000 calories per slice.

The aftermath. The cake was REALLY rich. If i made it again I'd use milk chocolate. We had whipped cream with it - just to quadruple the calories. I ate too much.

Back to sewing.....

Elizabeth Lee Designs NC#307

2008-02-16T14:56:00.000Z

I have two finished projects! Both of them are made from the Elizabeth Lee 307 pattern.

Hmm, I look a bit odd in this picture. This top has been in my sewing box for about 3 years. Maybe even longer!

It's not exactly the ELD pattern. As I cut the pieces I thought they looked a bit square, and I wanted a more fitted look, so I'd cut pieces from a different top pattern and used the ELD instructions. At some point I decided it looked a bit odd so I threw it in the UFO box.

I found it again and I finished it off. It only really needed hemming and the button sewn on. It seems to fit well, although I have a bit of trouble keeping the neckline nice and straight while I'm wearing it.

It's made from black cotton velour and the mock t.shirt underneath is made from a cotton jersey knit.

This one follows the pattern exactly. It turned out quite nicely. It has optional ties at the back, which I decided to put on to give it a more fitted look.

The black fabric is a ribbed velour knit. I really love the blue butterfly stripe knit. I've had it for a long time, but I'm not really sure if it is quite right for this project.

The only thing I didn't really like is the length. The t.shirt is a bit longer than I'd usually wear. It sits over the top of my jeans and looks a bit lumpy.

I haven't found these tops particularly easy to breastfeed in, even though they are specially designed nursing tops. It is hard to undo your bra, and the top needs a lot of tugging and smoothing after you are finished to get it to lie flat again. Its hard to keep the neckline from shifting around too. And I found it was actually less discreete than an ordinary top! R isn't that keen on it either. The fabric of the outer part kind of drapes over him a bit and gets in his way. I'm sure I'll still get plenty of use out of them though.

Tonight I hope to hem a t.shirt for myself and if I get the chance, to cut out a pinifore/dressy type of thing for myself. I'm still working on R's smocked shepherd suit. All it needs is button holes and buttons and the pants part finished.

What I'm Working on

2008-01-31T22:42:00.000Z

Thought I'd update this with this months totals. I've actually done quite a lot of sewing during January - just nothing is quite finished! I made some pj bottoms with a pattern from a Burda sewing mag. I used flannel from my stash. One pair for S and one pair for E. We want to get some plain t.shirts and use the flannel scraps to applique something on to them to make a matching set. I used some of E's left over flannel to make a nightdress by sewing it into a skirt and attatching it to a vest.

I used some black ribbed velour fabric to make myself a breastfeeding top using the Elizabeth Lee mother cover pattern.

The rest of the ribbed velour I made into Elizabeth Lee 307, which is a mock twinset. I squeezed the two tops out of 2 yards of fabric! Both of them together should have used 3 yards.

And lastly, I am half way through making a smocked shepherd suit for my delicious boy. He will look sooooooo cute in it. He will probably complain about me making him wear a "dress" when he is older though!

That's all I've done this month. I hope to buy some t.shirts so I can finish off the pjs soon. I really just need to hem the breastfeeding tops and to finish off R's little suit. Hope to get all that done soon.

My next project is going to be a bit more ambitious. I plan on making a top for myself with a silk fabric. Never sewn with silk before, so it will be a new experience. I'm going to try and alter the pattern too.

Sewing Goals for 2008

2008-01-26T22:44:00.000Z

My sewing goals for 2008 are:

Sew more!

and

Sew better!

I'd like to try and use up a lot of my stash. If my kids need something new I'll see what I have in my stash before I buy anything. I'd like to try and improve my sewing techniques, and make things that look more professional, rather than home made.

I also want to finish 3 quilts. The tops are done,they just need layered and quilted. One of them is a Christmas quilt I started in 2004! I'd really like to have that done for this Christmas!!! I also have fabric bought for a quilt I wanted to make for my parents about two Christmases ago. Its not even been started yet! It is quite complex, but if I work on it a little bit every so often surely I can finish it for Christmas.

I'd like to declutter my sewing area and organise everything so sewing is faster and easier. Not having to spend 20 minutes looking for something would be nice! I want to go through my UFOs and finish as much as I can, or get rid of things. Like things in size T4 for my now 7 year old! I think I will get rid of LOTS of patterns and maybe even *deep breath* some fabric from my stash. Not quite sure how I'm going to achieve any of this. My baby is 3 months old and never spends any time sleeping during the day. He has just the odd 15 minutes here and there. And he doesn't go to sleep till midnight!

Elizabeth Lee Designs 104

2008-01-05T16:39:00.000Z

I have been sewing!!! I made this nightgown a few weeks ago. I have some alterations to make on it. Its a nursing nightgown. The pattern is very frilly and dated, and not really me. But I thought I'd give it a go any way. I used a light blue knit fabric I bought on ebay. The fabric was a really nice quality knit, but really a bit too heavy and stretchy for this project.

Everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong. Scissors were blunt, sewing machine kept skipping, overlocker unthreaded several times, a needle broke, I accidently pulled out the gathering threads! I could go on...

I REALLY detest the elastic gathered sleeves. They feel horrible. I'm going to chop it off and just hem the edges. If I made this again I'd take some of the pouf out of the sleeves. And I'd make the nursing openings a bit larger. They seemed fine when I held it against myself, but once it was sewn up they didn't seem big enough. They're still useable though. I'm not sure about the square shaped yoke. I think I'd round that out a bit.

I still have to hem it at the bottom. I may even give blind hemming a go.

Baking

2007-11-26T16:06:00.000Z

Ok, its not sewing, but its creative. I baked two things yesterday.

1) A chocolate brownie cake. Doesn't it look delicious?

Unfortunately it tastes gross! It was too crunchy on the outside and not cooked properly in the middle. My oven really doesn't like baking cakes. What a waste of organic chocolate.

2) A kind of spur of the moment banana loaf. It was supposed to be a banana and chocolate chip loaf, but I'd used all the chocolate chips in the brownie cake. E chopped up some white chocolate and we used that instead. At least it cooked properly.

On the sewing front, I had some mini piping arrive from Australia just recently. Some pink to finish off a dress for E and some light blue satin mini piping for a Christmas outfit for R. I also bought the cream coloured fabric for R's outfit, but I don't really like it. It feels all rough and itchy. Might get a chance to start it on Wednesday.

I've also been looking at some German patterns. I might buy one to make something for E.

Got to rush...

Yay! I sewed

2007-11-15T15:17:00.000Z

Yes, can't believe I actually managed to finish something. Baby was asleep, so I took the chance to clean my overlocker and re-thread it. It went very well for a change. Usually all the threads get all tangled or it doesn't thread right. He was still asleep so, I thought I'd get on with actually sewing something.

Baby R sleeps in my bed, and occasionally his nappy leaks, or he decides to barf. Its a pain changing the whole bed, so I thought I'd make a waterproof sheet.

Here he is in his little corner of the bed.

I made the sheet with a layer of waterproof PUL fabric, a layer of Warm and Natural cotton wadding and a layer of flannel on the top. I intended to use white for the backing, since it wouldn't be seen, but I had none left. For some reason I thought I had loads. If I had more time I'd have done the edges in a matching colour of thread, but since I was in a hurry I just used white. I was going to actually quilt the wadding to the flannel, but, again that would have taken more time.

I'm pretty happy with it. Its not the loveliest thing I've ever made. The teeny little one is a practice one I made to check if the tensions were ok. Its not even sewn straight, but E has taken it to use for her Sylvanian Families to use. Apparently its a picnic blanket for them.

2007-11-11T13:06:00.000Z

I've decided to start a new sewing blog, although I doubt I'll be updating it very often. We have a new baby. He was 5 weeks old yesterday. I barely have time to eat or have a shower, nevermind doing any sewing! I still have lots of ideas for future projects, so I'll note them down here.