Apple happiness

With thanks to L&J for sharing their unexpected delivery of 25 apples!

Apple pie in the fridge, apple turnovers in the freezer, 7 apples left for cake and other delights. And I have finally overcome my fear of pastry!

Housewarmer

2.30pm on Sunday, first visit to K&J's new house in Halle scheduled for 3.30pm. Just enough time to bash together a housewarming present! I found this fabric at ETS Berger the other week and, like everything else in there, it was cheap enough to buy a metre on the off-chance it would come in handy (I have to stop doing this - I popped in for a few cm of felt the other day and came out with enough to sew stuffed animals for an unlimited number of babies).

As usual there was a very handy tutorial on Sew Mama Sew - although in fact this was so simple to do, it was hardly necessary. Wooden frame + fabric + drawing pins = cheap and cheerful kitchen art. And we only arrived at K&J's an hour later than intended (I point the finger at the last minute bakery cake dash).

The kids fill up on sugar before testing out the new living room with a 3-hour balloon fight:

Trials and errors

My rediscovered love of sewing over the last year or so owes a lot to the allure of making my own clothes.  I've been growing out of the high street (literally and figuratively), and passing my time stitching things that fit well seems like a total win-win situation. The flaw in this plan is that although I know how to sew, I have more or less no idea about fitting and adjusting patterns.

Thus, I requested and received this book for Christmas. A revelation! It is possible to make dresses for people who have both small shoulders and large boobs! All you need to do is understand and follow the instructions...

So if I'm going to learn this thing, I'll be thorough. Oh yes. I will adjust the pattern and make a 'draft' dress out of calico first before unleashing my newly-acquired expertise on the expensive stuff.  In fact, I'm so thorough, I'll do this THREE TIMES! Because I actually prefer to learn by visualising my mistakes in 3D!

It all started well with L helping to make a nice colourful line of pins:

Imperfectly modified bodice #1: 'x' marks the, err, bust point.

Um, actually, no it doesn't. And the dart I added is pointing at the opposite armpit. And the calico practice dress is a bit spooky and unpleasant. Does it help I wonder that I picked a pattern which doesn't include useful information like ease and the finished dimensions?

I have no pictures of adjusted bodice #2 because it was 11pm on Sunday and I was pissed off. But I was so pleased with neat, tidy, accurate #3 that I can't resist showing it off (apart from forgetting to merge/cut the lines properly at the side of the dart, don't look at that bit).

 

The bodice result is more or less perfect (on me if not the dummy). However the skirt hangs like a sack.

By now though I am so fed up with trial and error that I have cut out the real thing and just done the skirt part the same but smaller. Let's hope this wasn't a(nother) monumental mistake.

Photos of the finished dress will follow, once I have it looking as fabulous as intended.

Buon appetito

I'm not usually a fan of mess, but I can definitely make an exception for homemade pizza. Especially when T spends the whole time climbing up to look at it and going "mmmmmMMMmm nom nom nom".

Is it nearly ready? Is it??

Oh when will it be ready?

Buon appetito!

Unnecessary backpack

It turns out that L already had a waterproof bag that is ideally sized for swimming stuff - but I had forgotten it existed and was in any case possessed of an overwhelming urge to make one specially for her out of plastified tablecloth material. Because it's too cute, no?

Off to the pool...

... tired out and happy.

T models the spare bag:

Recycled skirts

It seems that the word for this these days is actually re-fashioning. Call it what you will - basically, I made two skirts out of two unwearable dresses.

This was the first one:

A lovely Zara dress in nice slinky fabric - but I finally had to admit that I'm never going to fit in it ever again. I bought it at my thinnest ever and that's just the way it is. So I chopped a rectangle out of the skirt, sewed it into a tube, turned over the top and put elastic in. Et voilà, skirt for a 3 year old! It didn't even need hemming as I just used the bottom of the original dress.

The second dress I had made myself, and it was a disaster. Wrong pattern/fabric combination, and a terrible fit too (I'm trying to learn my way out of that particular problem, but it's slow going for someone with no fashion school skills - I'm doing bas couture rather than haute at the moment). Two people suggested I just chop it in half and give it an elastic waistband, and once I'd got over my fit of pique about the original project's utter failure, that's what I did. It's a jersey fabric so I added some cheap polyester lining to make it hang nicely, and then I experimented with the invisible hemming on my new sewing machine. Result: rather nice skirt as long as you don't look too closely at the finishing.

Here we are wearing our recycled skirts:

As you can probably tell, we posed and took the photos ourselves.

Be my valentine

Lemony shortbread loveliness. Who could resist?

(Lovely vintage saucer picked up one wintry morning at place jeu de balle).

Bib for baby A

In flat contradiction of her father's wishes (no homemade presents - err, sorry Toby), I had been itching for an excuse to make bibs. Bibs are cute and bibs are useful - and I have a Martha Stewart book with some very straightforward ideas for making them.  So the arrival of baby A was the ideal opportunity. And as she turned out to be a girl, I was able to bring out my favourite baby-stuff colour combination of lime green and loud pink:

While making it I was struck by how much sewing stuff is like having babies. The whole process takes and feels much longer than you think it will, and the romance of conceiving the idea (this fabulous bib in these fabulous colours!) is soon overcome once you realise that there's no going back: the fabric is bought and the pattern printed and all that remains are the painful practicalities. As you approach the very end of the project you realise that you vehemently hate attaching bias tape and swear blind you will never ever again sew anything that uses the sodding stuff and whose stupid idea was this anwyay??? And then it is actually finished and it's so darling and lovely - it even smells nice - that you are totally enamored of it and immediately start thinking about the next one.

Now there remains only the great pleasure of meeting baby A to hand it over. I hope she gets dribbling on it immediately.

L's Ikea dress

I am such a huge fan of Ikea that I am actually unable to find the words to describe how excited I was upon discovering just how cheap and how cheerful are their fabrics. Yes, it's heavy duty curtain material, but seriously - who could resist designs like this at 4 euros a meter? Followed by meatballs in the most child-friendly cafeteria possible?

3 metres and 12 euros later, I was all full of ideas about the fabulous dress I was going to make myself - until I realised it would make a much better dress for L. And here it is:

Not quite awake but just about standing still...



She loves it , and I love it, and it gets so many compliments that I can only assume it's in fact irresistibly lovable to everyone.

So the only question is, what shall I do with the other 2 metres??

Pre-Christmas crafting bender

Amid all the Christmas shopping, planning and cooking dinner for 13, I managed to make these things for my friends. I don't really think they look that impressive given what an achievement it felt like to get them all done in time! But it was nice to give them - and I will learn to take better photos...

Heat therapy bags filled with rice, for those who need a bit of pampering to soothe aches and pains and general pregnancy discomfort. I made these folllowing this tutorial on Sew Mama Sew.

Tin can lanterns for L and J's garden, from the crafty bit in the Guardian.

Flea market crockery stuck together into a stand for fabulous H's fabulous cakes.

Mugs by L and T for their godparents, done with a painting kit from the wonderful Hema.

It was all rather addictive - I fear no-one will ever get a present bought from a shop again.

First post

This is my idea of a good time: at home pottering about and making a merry old mess. Them: toys, crayons and books. Me: pins, needle and thread.

I learned to sew with my mum and at a rather traditional girls’ school where I and 5 others took GCSE textiles. In my rose-tinted memory the class was a twice-weekly haven of calm, creativity and gossip; my mum mainly remembers the enormous practical coursework burden and desperate all-nighters trying to finish the projects.  These were clearly enough to put me off, because I hardly sewed anything for the next 15 years or so.

And then last summer I got my stitching mojo back. I rediscovered my sewing machine (a secondhand 1970s model that cost 20 pounds and weighs about the same), experimented with some easy dresses, and then threw myself into making Christmas presents for my friends. Since September I’ve spent more lunchbreaks than I care to admit on fabric porn*. 

Even at its most frustrating, sewing is total occupational therapy. It’s absorbing and it's liberating, keeping my hands busy and clearing my head. I find myself actually thinking about things again (with two toddlers and a full time job, it's been a while since I did that).  So this blog is mainly about keeping a record of the things I’ve made - but it’s also about getting myself to keep sewing and thinking. Because another thing I really enjoy but don’t do any more is writing.

The idea is that making stuff and writing about it keeps me more or less sane...

* i.e., wandering around fabric shops, stroking things and trying not to drool.