My eldest granddaughter is now thirteen, when I asked her mum if she would like a dress again this Easter she told me she’s going through a leggings and t-shirt stage so please don’t waste my time and money making her something nice that will just hang in the wardrobe. I appreciated her honesty! She suggested some hair scrunchies instead.
Whilst my daughter was at uni she had quite a good little business going making hair scrunchies so whilst she was up last weekend I got her to teach me how to make them…and it really is as quick and easy as she said!
This afternoon I made a handful for Pip, she’s still into neutral colours but also like electric blue! I raided my fat quarter drawers and came up with these. Some of them are left from the quilt I made her a couple of months back.
Hopefully these will get used and in time she will like dresses or tops again 🙂
I’ve been busy this week sewing for grandchildren, I’ve started making them something for Easter, rather than give chocolate. It’s what I did for my kids as they got so many Easter eggs from other people and at least one child didn’t actually like chocolate very much. This year I’m making dungarees for Hugo, my grandson. My daughter was up last weekend making some for her god-daughter and they looked very cute and fairly quick to make.
The pattern is from Waves and Wild, it’s called Heyday dungarees, it’s a pdf pattern which for children’s stuff I like, I can cope with sticking all the pages together when they’re only little and at least you can print a bigger size the following year. This time I even managed to surpass myself by working out how to only print the size I wanted!
The fabric is a denim look babycord, I bought it at Boyes in Ilkley last week, at first I presumed ‘denim look’ referred to the colour, however on closer inspection when I got home, I think it’s also the cut, the cord is cut pretty short and seems to have a wider trough than usual, making it look a bit like denim, but it feels soft like corduroy. I wanted some contrasting pockets and I found this chicken fabric in my stash which goes well enough. It’s not perfect but to be honest at this age (he’s not yet two) they often hardly wear stuff before they grow out of it so I really didn’t want to spend another £4 on a perfectly matching fat quarter. I felt self pockets could have got a bit bulky.
The pattern is designed to secure the bib by tying the strap in a knot, that seemed a lot of hassle so (with mum’s agreement!) I chopped three inches off and used buttons instead. The only bit I faffed about a bit with was the buttonholes, I hate unpicking buttonholes but I unpicked three altogether! The first one went too low off the facing, then I stitched two but realised when I put the straps next to them that I’d put them too far out as I’d made the straps slightly wider! In order to move them I also had to unpick and lower the bib pocket! I took advantage of this to cut a new pocket as typically, although the chickens go in all directions on the fabric, they were all upside down on the original pocket. Thankfully the fabric is pretty forgiving of all this unpicking!
As you can see, I had the same issue with the back pockets but decided they could stay!
There is plenty of growing room lengthwise as the bottoms are rolled up and there’s lots of strap beyond the button, so hopefully he will get lots of play time in them.
I do like stitching the ‘Made with love by Grandma’ label on!
I’ve been quite productive over the last three weeks with my embroidered garden book, I think now I’m nearing the end I just want to wrap it up. I’ve been stitching what I call filler pages, not a huge amount of embroidery on them, but will hopefully help the book to flow.
Three weeks ago I was stitching the map of the garden…
I added numbers to the key features, cut it out and stitched it to a plain background with a compass point in the corner.
I then obviously needed a key, I decided the easiest and clearest way would be on evenweave linen. I used the alphabet that is in the Strawberry Sampler book I’m also stitching at the moment. It’s the smallest counted thread alphabet I know and to say it’s based on just two cross-stitch squares per lower case letter, I think it’s a really pretty alphabet.
Even with such a small alphabet, I only just fitted it on the linen. I was originally planning to add trims such as lace to the page but it all looked too much and with the green leafy background, I think it’s enough.
I then decided it would be good to do a ‘title’ page for each of the big garden embroideries, they’re so busy that I thought having one of the crazy patchwork ones opposite them might detract somewhat. I could also use up a couple of mini embroideries I had done earlier.
The first one was the patio area…
I decided to use the same green evenweave and font, to give a bit of continuity. I used a technique I saw in a book by Tilly Rose, she does lovely vintage style stitchings. She made a hexagonal patchwork piece by folding the backing fabric over to the front to make a mock binding. I stitched the lettering first, worked out a hexagon size and then made another using an embroidery by Sookie Soo. A third one is just a pretty quilting cotton. I continued the shapes with a running stitch to complete the page. I also made a new name for the bed that is just full of potted plants of various sizes…the pottery!
I am currently stitching the summerhouse area facing page…
I’m using up all the mini hexagons I had left from the Owl and Hare Hollow quilt, I ummed and arred over how to arrange them, flowers, border round the words, hexagon… in the end I’ve gone for a block, sort of like a flower bed. I’ve the last three to stitch on, then I just need to decide on background. I’m dithering between a beige with ditsy flowers on or an ivory with ivory flowers…
I had a good lightbulb moment last night when I realised I didn’t need to remove all the backing papers from the hexagons (not my favourite job!) as they’re going to be on a stiffened page anyway!
Just one more facing page to do for the Amber and Amethyst garden and then maybe a title page for the book…I’ll see how the page layouts work out. I’m nearly there!
This SAL is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, please follow the links to see what everyone else is stitching.
I bought this pattern quite a while ago, 2020 I think, it’s a Very Easy Vogue pattern and although it’s a wrap dress (which I have a love hate relationship with!) I rather liked the collar and the full drapy skirt. I don’t think I realised initially just how fabric hungry this pattern is, it takes over 5m of fabric! So it was a while before I found a suitable fabric at a reasonable price so I could afford to buy 5m!
I bought the fabric on line (back in 2020) from Fabrics for All which has sadly since closed. Its a dark sage satin with a leaf design in a silver grey. It’s a really soft satin with not too much sheen too it, it feels really nice and soft. I think I bought it thinking it would be rather nice for Christmas, but pre-Christmas I was always too busy to make it…
Last weekend a friend was having a retirement come birthday party, so I decided to make myself a new dress. In an attempt to reduce my stash a little I decided to go for a fabric hungry dress and out came this pattern.
I’d forgotten what a nightmare satin can be to cut out! It didn’t help that a lot of the pieces had to be cut out one by one, not two at a time on the fold. It always makes me nervous cutting out like this as I always think I’m going to run out of fabric! The fabric moved a fair bit, I didn’t realise how much until things didn’t match up when I was sewing.
At first the seams were a little lumpy, I then tried stitching them with a stretch stitch and it did seem much better. I overlocked all the seams as it does fray pretty easily.
Last time I made a Vogue pattern dress I followed the measurements, cut out a size 14 and it was HUGE. This time the pattern said it was loose fitting so I decided to cut out a 12. I had checked the actual garment measurement round the bust, that gave me about 5″ ease…I didn’t notice that the waist was -1″!!When I first tried the top on the waist was decidedly snug and also seemed to point too far down. I decided as there were pleats front and back, I could let a bit out there without being too noticeable.
There were no pleats in the skirt so I just stitched all the seams with a 1cm seam instead of 1.5cm, which as there were seven seams, gave me a vital extra 3.5cm! I also realised just how much the front edge of the top had stretched on cutting, this is why the ends seem to point too far down. I also discovered the neck facing which comes all the way down the front didn’t reach the end of the front piece, it just about reached the end of the collar. I deduced that maybe if I attached the skirt to finish at the facing, it would work…and it did. The wide elastic belt I bought to wear with it also helped to cover up all the fiddling!
The final task was the hem. It’s a very long, curved narrow hem…not a great thing to stitch in satin! The pattern recommended using a gathering thread close to the edge to ease the fold in, but mine gathered too much as I was stitching it. My hem is a bit of a dogs dinner, but luckily it’s fairly long so not too noticeable.
I wore it last Saturday and it does feel lovely to wear, I love the collar, it feels almost snuggly. The wrap skirt hung beautifully and I didn’t have any wardrobe malfuctions with it but I didn’t wear it outside! My only misgiving is with my choice of fabric, it’s a printed satin so it’s white inside, so on the odd occasion when the skirt flapped, it was very noticeable. I can see why now on another wrap dress pattern I have, the front edge piece is self-lined. Despite this I did get lots of compliments and it did feel lovely to wear. I love the shawl collar and the deeper cuffs. If I can find some more reasonably priced fabric I might even make it again.
I’ve managed to get a fair bit done on my Owl and Hare Hollow quilt over the last couple of weeks, some blocks just needed finishing, others needed starting. Three weeks ago I had finished my windmill embroidery, it just needed the hexagons…
I had a big hexie making session, making enough for the last four embroidered blocks, that’s 76 hexies! I strung them together so they’re all ready to be stitched on. I stitched them round the bird block I made last month and then last night I stitched them round the windmill block.
I made four churn dash blocks which were then made into circles by gathering them round a template. Some fabric choices have worked better than others, I think the green and purple one is my favourite.
I made a cute appliqued house surrounded by a ring made from ten paper-pieced arcs and also some flowers in a teapot with a matching surround. I’ve used bondaweb for the applique designs rather than needle-turn as they’re such little fiddly pieces.
So I’ve just got two embroidered blocks to make now. Officially it’s just one, but rather than an 8×6 quilt design which has 48 blocks, I’ve decided to make mine 7×7 so I need one extra block. I’ve found a lovely circular sewing design in which I can incorporate the name of the quilt, date and my initials, a label within a block.
I still need to choose fabric for the sashing, I’m aiming for 1″ sashing with cornerstones, I just need to lay a few blocks out and have a play.
Hand Quilt Along Links
This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another. If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.
Well I never did find the original design for this final piece for my garden book, it’ll turn up one day…in the meantime I redrew the map of our garden. I used Google maps as a basis of relative sizes within the area. It’s not perfectly accurate or properly to scale, but it gives the idea of where each area or feature lies in relation to the other areas.
It took me a while to work out how I was going to create this piece, I wanted it to be fairly clear and not too labour intensive. I decided on a four-patch pieced backing with applique shapes applied using bondaweb. Once I’ve finished the embroidery I’ll cut it out and mount it on a plain fabric page. This is where I’m at so far…
As you can see I’ve just done back-stitch round the applique and chain stitch where the walls are. I’ve just got the conservatory to stitch round, then I’m thinking of adding straight stitches where the steps are and a little symbol where the arches are.
I’m then planning to stitch numbers on each area or feature and then on the page opposite I’ll have the key.
Once I’ve cut the garden out and stitched it on to the page, I’ll probably do some minimal back stitch to indicate the road and the back lane.
After this page I’ve just three fairly simple pages to do and then I’ll start putting it all together, At the moment I’m thinking of a fairly stiff interfacing and then using a pretty binding to cover the outer edges. It will be a little bulky at the edges but that might be an advantage in protecting the raised stitches. Another idea (which I’ve just this second had!) would be to cut the back page a quarter inch bigger than the front page, I can then fold the extra over the edge and blanket-stitch down…that idea is growing on me!
I’ve a bit of time before I need to decide on my method, any thoughts welcome.
This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis, from stitching by the sea, please follow the links to see what every one else is stitching.
Day 9 of the Sewing Room Declutter 2024 is threads, a huge area. I did a lot of organising and sorting last year, but my machine embroidery threads were just jumbled in a box, inevitably getting tangled. I’ve got quite a few now with making the Ragged Ruff quilts and they definitely needed sorting.
As you can see I have them all in one of those pretty boxes you can get from TK MAXX, it’s a shoe box size , which they don’t do very often but I really like. Last year I had an idea of how to easily make a try to go inside the box. Luckily I had written my idea down on a post last February!
I have some Pellon in my stash which is like a really thick interfacing, like 1-2mm thick, it’s adhesive on one side too. My idea was to cover the pellon a bit like you can bind a quilt, by double folding the fabric over the edge. I had some fat quarters in my stash that I thought would work well, with the added bonus that I couldn’t see me using them in a quilt.
I ironed the pellon to the backing, which was cut 1″ bigger all round. I used 505 spray adhesive to secure the top fabric, this had the added bonus that some 505 inevitably went on the borders which made them more controllably when I was double folding the edges under. I stitched them om my sewing machine with the walking foot. Here’s the sides half made…
I hand-stitched the sides to the base, neatening up the mitred corners as I went along. I added tabs to the short sides – I did this on the machine too as with the sides being made of pellon and not card, I could bend them under the sewing machine!
Having made one, I realised I needed another, I had to make it slightly shallower so I made the sides with one deeper piece of fabric – fiddly but it worked. I also added a central divider, again I machine stitched it in place, just hand-stitching the ends. This doesn’t only keep the spools neat, it also adds support for the tray underneath.
I’m really please with them, they’re not perfectly made, but they’re functional and don’t my threads look neat in them!
And I’ve used another three fat quarters from my stash! Win, Win!!
I’m progressing slowly with my sewing room declutter, this is the annual challenge organised by Karen of Get It Done Quilts. I like the way she breaks it down into manageable chunks – much more doable than just looking at the whole room. It’s a 21 day challenge, supposedly starting 1st January, some days take longer, some I can do several in a day…
Day 8 was scissors and all things cutting, like rotary cutters, thread snips etc. I’ve written before about my extensive scissor collection, I had a bit of a cull last year and then took them to be sharpened at a new cutlery shop that’s opened in Ilkley.
So my scissor collection stays the same, however I have sorted my unpickers, you know the little things with the red blob on for unpicking seams. I knew I had a few, but I didn’t realise I had twelve!! I decided to have a sort out, I had an embroidery I wanted to unpick a coil of thread off, so I used that to check the sharpness of my unpickers, two jobs done in one! I’ve whittled it down to six, one of them is a beautiful hand turned wooden one with an awl at one end and a seam ripper at the other, that one was definitely staying.
I’ve also had a bit of a rethink with my rotary cutters, I have three, one for fabric, one for paper and fabric (such as paper piecing) and a small one which needs a blade in it. Recently I’ve had problems with the paper one, the screw which holds the blade wouldn’t stay tight, when I tried tightening it it was difficult to get the tension right so the blade would rotate but not wobble….anyway I decided it was time to replace it. It was pretty old anyway as it’s one I inherited from my mum. So I’ve still got three, but two which work well and one just waiting for a new blade.
Day 9 was threads, a huge area, as I’ve thread for sewing, overlocking and embroidery. My sewing and overlocking threads are pretty sorted, they’re all on my pegboard. I had a bit of a sort out with bobbin threads, you know those with a quarter spool of thread on that you never get round to using, well they’re now empty. Any Gutermann spools that are nearly empty go in the draw next to my sewing machine for tacking etc. Reassuringly last year the spool rack was full, now I have more than a dozen empty dowels, so my stash is going down!
DMC embroidery threads are all on Pip and Chip bobbins, so my basic set is sorted numerically in custom made drawers (from Creations by Rod on Etsy) I do have rather a lot of spare skeins though which I think mainly came from my mums. Last year I listed them all in a book so I knew which colours I had spares of. This was a good idea except I still had a jumbled box of threads, so even if I did look, I then had the job of finding them – I’ve over 100 spare ones!
Recently I discovered the app Thread Box, I use my Fabric Stash app a lot so I thought I’d try a thread one. I’d already listed all basic stash of DMC threads on it, but not my spares. Today I went spare threads and listed those too, so I know which ones I have multiples of. I even bagged them all up so each number group such as 301 to 399 has it’s own bag! All I need to do now is make sure I update the app when I get a spare out or buy some more. There’s a shopping list section too which I find useful, so I’ve listed the threads I know I’m getting very low on and when I happen to be in a thread shop, I have my shopping list ready.
None DMC threads are on bobbins but stored colourwise, I used to have them in a box but I could never see what I had, whilst thin bobbins probably aren’t ideal, it works for me, it means I do use the threads.
All that was left to sort was machine embroidery threads, but that will have to wait for another post!
Well I’ve made some progress on this quilt, not as much as I would have liked, but progress is progress!
Three weeks ago I had the basic blocks made for four more pieced blocks, they ‘just’ needed finishing…
…well turning eight square blocks into circles and appliqueing them takes a surprising amount of time, like several evenings. They were gathered round a cardboard template then the 7″ circle was stitched on first and the backing cut away underneath, then the 4.5″ circle could be centred and stitched on top. It took time but it is done…
Some of the colourways work better than others, but I’m fairly happy with them, the only thing I would change with hindsight is the backing fabric to the bottom right one as it’s all a bit busy.
I’ve also finished another embroidery, I think I just have two more to do, so I think I’ll have a big hexie making session, making enough for the two that are just waiting for the ring of hexies and the remaining two too. That’ll be 76 hexies!! I’ve hopefully got a few already made.
I’ve another four pieced blocks to make with a churn dash block on and two applique blocks, once those are all made I can start putting it all together. I think I’ll have a prepping afternoon so I can do the hand sewing on an evening.
Hand Quilt Along Links
This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another. If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.
I think I’ve got too many embroidery projects on at the moment, like four! Rather than concentrating on finishing my long running ones like my garden book and the Owl and Hare Hollow quilt blocks, I keep being distracted by the new ones, namely the embroidered tote bag and the strawberry sampler book, hence I’ve finished another page for the strawberry sampler book.
This is a kit produced by the Cross-Stitch Guild, I bought it at the Knitting and Stitching show last year with the idea of stitching it on holiday, which I did. I stitched the cover…
This still needs finishing with a double folded edge and some hem-stitch.
I also stitched the first pair of pages, these will be folded in half to make a double sided page…
I’ve now finished another page set, this one is called Strawberry Cottage, for obvious reasons! I did make a couple of mistakes on this one, the main one being that the cottage should be pinkier. One thing I have found a little confusing with the instructions is that each double page spread has it’s own set of charts over two A4 pages, which is great, but the colour symbols vary from one page to another, which I don’t find quite so great.
I automatically thought white for the picket fence, and the symbol had I think been used for white previously, so I continued with a white cottage. When I then added the shadows in a slightly darker shade of pink, it looked totally wrong. So of course, me being me, thought there must have been a printing error, unpicked the darker pink and restitched the shadows in the pale pink, which in my defence looks more like the photos in the instructions! The cottage (and the picket fence) should have been in the pale pink, then the darker pink shadows would have looked fine!! It still looks pretty!
I’m already almost halfway through the next set of pages which concentrate on darning stitch, which is basically running stitch made into patterns. After that it’s the more complicated pages with hardanger, they may take a little longer.
Half of me thinks after this next page I should put this project on one side to get the stitched garden book finished, the other half says crack on and finish this one!
thecraftycreek 