Too cute to survive

Because really, who can resist a teeny tiny pincushion that has a tendency to roll away, and is extremely attractive to toddlers?

Boygoblin called this "Mummy's yellow car".
Deeply unfair, because it is eerily similar to "'Goblin's yellow car."

Thats a strip of printed jersey rolled, handsewn and popped in the tray.

Babycrack. Right. there.

Too cute to live, and Boygoblin has car back now.

Happy belated birthday

BoyGoblin turned two not long after The Big Move, and so it was time for another birthday badge. You can see last year's here (and there's a pdf tutorial too).

This year it was all about steam trains.

This works the same as the last one, with a magnet sewn into the frontspiece, and into a large plain felt circle worn inside the clothing. 

A big hard-to-swallow felt circle for the back, with the magnet double-sewn in.

You can see that I had to use oblong magnets this year - round ones work better.

The ribbon really lifts it

The ribbon was a real find - from a bargain store, of all places!

Pun-tastic!

This was a cat-warming gift for a friend

Our should that be a housewarming gift for a cat? Not sure.

How is it that he looks smiley when I didn't give him a mouth?

It’s a simple little handsewn feltie, stuffed with crinkly plastic, and long jumpy legs of ribbon.

Looong legs

His toes and back ridges are embroidered in variegated thread (which I hardly ever see the point of, but it works well here.) and he has little yellow French-knot warts.

Warts never looked so good

He’s dangling on a piece of elastic, and jumps quite nicely I think…

Jumping!

Reggie seems to like him in any case...

Planning, and packing, and planning to pack.

Whoa! Life has been a little chaotic recently, in a good way, hence the radio silence.

Below is a post I never got around to posting. You'll see why...
 

We are looking down the barrel of a big, big move in a couple of weeks time, which will entail all of my beautiful Stuff being out of bounds for something like 3 months. Eep.

I've spent an unsatisfying few months not quite finishing things, but getting my WIPs into a parkable state for shipping. Last weekend, while the BoyGoblin had the Biggest Nap Of All Time, I finished the machine sewing on the final project I will make in the UK. I know this is true, because when I was done,  I packed up my machine, removed the needle and foot, and tucked it gently into the corner of Stuff To be Shipped. (Momentuous times call for Many Capitals.)

We ended up with 100 of these.

And it feels pretty momentous, frankly. Never mind that we have spent the last few weeks cleaning shoes, counting CDs, sorting paperwork (essential (to be shipped), irreplaceable (to be flown on our persons) and shreddable (not to be confused with the previous)) and revaluing everything from lithographs to lampshades. The moment I really felt my stomach drop was when I unscrewed the little knob on the machine and removed that needle.

I'm not quite going cold turkey as I’ve already started planning a strategy to keep me crafting throughout. Some projects will need to come on the plane, and others will be stashed in the suitcase. Some wull be stashed in the suitcase and then removed at the last minute in favour of traintracks and sticker books, and posted instead. (Its a tough call, but I think Boygoblin is marginally more cranky than I in the absence of playthings.)



BoyGoblin was quite clear he wanted to come
 in the plane with us, but he did think hard when
his train set was packed for the ship.

Some might think there are better things to plan for (job search? housing? childcare?) but I know better.

The end of the rainbow...

I finally finished it. Goodness me.



Juicy colours, made with love, sweat and tears.

I can’t tell you how painful the freemotion quilting was. I’m clearly not a natural (hence the deliberately off-centre swirls) and I had all sorts of issues with my tension (both the thread, and my shoulders.)

Charming wobbly spirals - the much contested limit of my freemotion prowess.

There are four big pockets in the back,  that will loosely hold cars, crayons, whatever.

These are the pockets...



... and these would be the Whatevers. DearWife was not impressed.

It all rolls up neatly.


Oh, and I appliqued some shapes on the back too. Templates via Word, sanity via Bondaweb.



I wonder how long it will take me to sew on a strap?

Like a yummy car-filled sushi roll

 I think the Cath Kidston ribbon I got for my birthday makes perfect binding. Lucky I procrastinated over finishing then, eh?

By far the biggest challenge was met by DearWife, who completed her mission to find a car to match each panel. Pink was a particular challenge.

I can hear the engines revving, can't you?

  This one's going on the plane with us. 

Vintage Summer

I think I’ve mentioned before that in my stash are some bits and pieces that I inherited from my grandmother. Among her estate were a number of old womens magazines, and tucked in the pages of some of these were vintage, unused embroidery transfers. Most of them still with the giveaway threads attached.

They seem particularly timely just now, with the Summer of Nostalgia we all seem to be indulging in. First the Jubilee, then the Olympics - anything London is quintessentially Summer. Despite the rain.

This pattern is from Norman Hartnell's London Pride trasfer library, given aaway with Women's Day, sometime in the '50's I'd guess. Hartnell's career spanned the three decades to the 60's, with a long association with the Royals and the stars. He designed the Queen's coronation dress in 1953, so I'm guessing that, like the Jubilee, this would have seeded London Fever (and giveaways in magazines

Tower Bridge

Feeling stitchy are running a vintage stitchalong this month, which was just the firecracker I needed to take needle to thread.

Close up of laurely wreath and sunsety Thames



Something from the archives

This must be one of the first thing I ever stitched, so it must be about 25 years old.

Well worn

I think this is supposed to be flower, possibly as tulip? Snowdrop? I’m not sure whether I got the pattern wrong, or used weird colours (possibly both) but I don’t remember a time when I thought it looked pretty.

Not convinced about the red trim either.

Delighfully wonky red stitching

I assume I was working with what was available – offcuts and scraps from my mums sewing room, and I do know cross-stitch patterns were nowhere near as available then as they are.

Some of these needles have been in here for years.



It's been in heavy use ever since, and had travelled halfway across the world, so I can’t hate it. 

Fraying

Although I do think its time for a new one…

Scrap attack!

Remember this?

hundreds and hundreds of hexes

I’ve turned them into this:

Memory quilt top

For a while now I’ve felt a growing need to try english paper piecing. This is the type of patchwork my mum did, and she recently sent me the cot quilt she made for me, which we use on one of BoyGoblin’s change tables. Last year I went to the v&a quilting exhibition   – this was the impetus really for me to start patchwork, and it was the paper pieced quilts, with scraps of love letters and household receipts sewn in, that really captured my attention.

So, in the cross-generational spirit, I kept aside all of the goblin’s sleepsuits and onesies from his first 6 months. I feel slightly guilty, because some of these could be passed on, but most have had pretty heavy use and lots of washing – after all, the only things a newborn does really are sleep and make mess. (older children of course stop sleeping, and come up with new and e exciting ways of making mess…)

Because they were all stretch jersey, there was some front-end faffage involved in stabilising the scraps with iron-on interfacing before I could cut out my hexes.

So, here are the hexes, all ready to be pieced.

I did most of the sewing on my commute. Assembling  the daisy chains was just about doable in transit, but putting them together was definitely a late-night-telly job.

Now I need to sort out backing and binding. I’m reluctant to buy new fabric but don’t really have big enough scraps for the backing…

Back view, where all the process (and layout notes) is visible

Not cranky. Not even a little bit.

Here is the first piece of beading I have tackled in nearly 10 years. The last time I tried to bead, I got so incandescent with rage that my partner confiscated my loom. So. Here we are.

the very very beginning.

This is the start of a simple beaded fringe. Its the subject of a tutorial I wrote for Korbond's Sewing Solutions site.

I might try some more.

Scrap happy

With BoyGoblin now fully mobile and into everything,  everything’s a choke hazard!

To give myself a fighting chance of keeping the sewing room at least a couple of steps away from being a deathtrap, I’ve made a scrap basket to catch quilting trimmings and stray threads.

Fresh spring florals

It hangs on the back of my chair, where the horrible old tesco bag used to sit.

The mouth of the bag is kept open by an embroidery hoop, an idea I cribbed from a laundry bag pattern.    The bag is quilted, which also helps add structure and stiffness. Happily, this also means the bag will sit up on the cutting table quite happily as well.

Pretty and perky

Pleasingly, it’s also made from scraps and oddments. The feature fabric is trimmings from a “Me and My Sister Favourites” jellyroll from Moda, left over from a long running WIP (technically not yet left over, as the blocks haven’t been yet been joined up, but they have been pieced and the border, binding and backing put aside, so I’m quietly (foolishly) confident).

Sneaky peek at work in progress

The buckle, ribbon, and sequins were all fossicked up from various jars of findings.

Dainty buckle

The flowers were simply cut freehand, backed with iron-on interfacing and sewn in place by hand. They are secured in the centre with the embellishments and the petals are left loose.

Juicy blooms

Delicate daisies

A wild night in

This is what I'm doing tonight.

sigh...

Thats right folks, I'm sewing buttons on my winter coat.

Yuk Yuk Yukky Yuk.

Last year, my coat shed buttons all winter. I wore it right with no cuff buttons, and then no double-breasting buttons, but when the actual fastening buttons on the front came off, i finlly had to admit defeat. Its been hanging in my wardrobe, sans buttons ever since.

This week, the snow, and the fact that my spare coat looks like its been lived in by a stray cat, has conspired to get me to stop procrastinating.

On the other hand, there's pinterest...

A Hex on all your houses!

This would be a very clever title for this post, except that a good portion of my hexes are actually pentagons, and “a polygon on all your houses” is less catchy, somehow.

Hexes and Pents

Four corners just aren’t enough for me at the moment. Three very different projects have conspired to make piles of polygons in our house. More later.

These were initially made as an advent calendar – a mammoth thing that hangs down the length of our hall. The sacks, however, work really well as gift sacks or table favours so I’ve made a few extras since.

Each sack shows a British woodland Christmas scene. Many of the animals, like the woodpecker and the stag beetle, can be found in our London garden andmost are based on photographs that my wife has taken at home or on holidays:



swap fish for tinsel...

Although we’ve yet to see a hedgehog wearing a hat:

These are fantastically portable (an emerging theme of mine), and great for using up oddments of scraps. I'll post a tutorial in the next day or so.

Update: The tutorial for the sacks has been posted at The Sewing Directory (worth a good poke about while you're there) and I'm lazy enough to send you over there, rather than faff about with Google docs. Besides, I know that as soon as I open the file I'll find hundreds of things to improve. So here it is in its imperfect glory: http://www.thesewingdirectory.co.uk/small-gift-sacks/

Christmas countdown

 

Actually, Christmas started for me about three weeks ago when I dug this out from my WIP bag.

It’s a feltworks kit from Dimensions that I’ve been pecking at for the last couple of years. I think it will take a few more to be honest.

Although I’m up to the fun bit now – these little felt tokens are useless, and fiddly, and some of them are not even that pretty but there is something about them that is oddly satisfying

sparkly!



And I’ve even managed not to leave the floor scattered with beans and sequins (otherwise known as choke hazards). Needless to say, its not quite as portable as my usual handsewing projects...