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...

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…

A calendar quilt of kittens

Goodness me, what have I done?

In 2010, World of Cross Stitching magazine gave away a diary featuring twelve little designs of Nelson and Tibbs. I like a portable project for  my commute to work, and I thought these would be ideal. So far so good.

By mid-March I had finished the twelve, and as by that time we found we were pregnant, I thought that taken as a set they would look good as a wall hanging for the nursery. Again, so far so good.

The next bit is a bit hazy, but I suspect it has something to do with the excellent and beguiling Fatquartershop and resulted in a package arriving containing a jelly roll, 3 yards of backing fabric, and a pattern book.

The pattern was perfect. Almost. I set about altering it so that the central squares could accommodate the cross-stitch panels – they needed to be bigger.

And then my head exploded, as I realised that that meant the inner framing needed to be longer as well, which meant I had just enough fabric. Just. But only if I juggled everything around a little and made not even one little mistake.

Combine that with the embroidered panels and the fact that I had only been using a sewing machine for a week and my rotary cutter was still in its packaging. No pressure.

After a couple of sessions of stitching and unpicking, and slightly more than one little mistake, I very sensibly and calmly put Nelson and Tibbs (temporarily) into the “Work in progress” pile.

Now that the baby is nearly 18months old, and far, far more interested in diggers than kittens, I thought now would be a great time to dust the pair off and get the quilt finished.

The thing is enormous – laying it out took up most of our double bed.

Certainly too big to hang on a wall!

And its been a rescue job at every stage. My seam allowances have been just a fraction over ¼ inch, which, given that every alternate block is made of 5 jelly strips (that’s four seams) has meant I’ve had to trim all the blocks down by ¼ inch. Which is just as well because the piecing on the first embroidered blocks was so dodgy that even working to the smaller size, it required considerable fudging and ingenuity to get it all together.



 Trimming and finessing



Fudging the seam allowances

But now its nearly there. I have a back, a front, and a juicy roll of binding, and am wiating for delivery of my batting. Oh, and a free motion quilting foot.

Juicy binding

I'm not in love...



Could do with a press...

 Sorting out the blanket box this weekend, I uncovered a baby afghan I made last year.

I’m not in love with it. For a start, the boygoblin is over a year old now, and that’s older than I thought it was when I began. Even at six months he was a little too old for pastel gingham bears. *sigh.

Finishing  the cross stitch was faff enough. I remember working on it at the height of summer - the one week we got – when sitting under a blanket was not my favourite thing.


bear escaping (don't blame him...)

 And I’m not particularly enjoying the flannel either. Taken with the chunky cross-stitch it makes the thing look clunky, rather than cosy.



chunky clunky

 For the quilting, I found a variegated thread that picks up all the colours in the embroidery, and went for a sketchy tartan type of quilting , running along each edge of the woven borders. Sketchy because I patently cannot sew in a straight line.

My mother would call the sketchy quilting a "design feature" (aka rescue job)

I bound by hand. Why? Because I’m slap-dash. The edges of my quilting lines were messy, so I needed to cover them over both front and back. And I got impatient over the iron (again, not the wisest project to undertake on a midsummer night) so the binding’s all wonky and I just couldn’t see how I was going to wrangle it in place by machine. If this thing had any chance of not being a complete dogs breakfast it needed its binding to be gently and sensitively eased into place.

Besides, I fancied a bit of CSI…



Wobbly binding (cute flannel)

So here we are – a baby blanket that is too small for darling goblin, and too ugly to inflict on any other child. I’m just, only just, too invested in the thing to throw it away. I’ll pop it back into his blanket box and wait a few more months…

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/