Simple little blanket

Well, not as simple as it could have been. The rick rack was frankly a bit of a faff, and is discouragingly wonky.

Simple little flannel blanket. Hah!

Discouragingly wonky

 But Boygoblin likes it, (more to do with the diggers than the handiwork, truth be told) and it keeps his splint safe, so, job done.

The racing boot. And a definite vehicle theme.

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...

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. 

Chasing rainbows

For the past four weeks my sewing studio has been out of bounds – first filled with houseguests, and then packed up for the painters, (neither DearWife nor me being the sort of domestic goddesses who relish redecorating, our response to chipped walls being “get the little men in!”)  and finally carefully dressed and posed for sales viewings.

Well, the men have been and gone, as have the estate agents. I spent most of last night reassembling the space the way I really like it, and rather a lot of time simply fondling my stash, if you know what I mean.



Lovely rainbows



And all this led to me starting a bit of an impulsive project – a colour-sorting table mat for the BoyGoblin that I’ve had in mind for a while. Using spare charm squares from the Eye-spy quilt, and scrap batting too.



Coloured cars waiting for their parking spaces



I’m using it to practice quilting freemotion quilting, and I am truly rubbish at it. I’ve stitched and unpicked so many times that the cotton is starting to look like tulle, and I have a pile of threads the size of a pelican’s nest on the sewing table. Arrgh! and those threads are getting everywhere! I noticed one caught in my stockings yesterday at work. Whoops!

Lesson learned!

Remember that slippy organza?


And my first failed french seam?


Well it's all come together in a "Sewing Solutions" article for Korbond.


Korbond are creating a sewing resource for the tips and techniques that loads of pattern-writers take for granted.



Trimming the seam allowance - lesson learned!

 Like, or instance, sewing a french seam.

Very Useful Bag

We went to mother's day lunch at a friend's house on Sunday, and, as ever, arrived loaded up with toys, books and puzzles to keep the BoyGoblin amused.

The bookbag got its first outing:

That's Rosie's walk peeking out - one of the Mummas' favourites.

Turns out it a perfect size for jigsaw puzzles too, and the handle is long enough to loop over a resteraunt dining chair.
All of which is a happy accident, as I made the thing before the Boy was even born! It was one of the first things I made with my sewing machine, and therefore is the first time I sewed a french seam or tried topstitching.



Which is why there are tail ends of fabric peeking through the seams:

Hairy seams

and the topstitching is in wimpish white:



Pale blue would have been better

The pocket is made from a piece of cross-stitch. Pattern from Cross-stitching Magazine, I think. and was, now I come to think of it, the first time I had used Anchor threads (being a bit of a DMC girl myself, by dint of an inheritance.

Yes, I know, some people inherit the family pile, I inherited a pile alright - of embroidery cottons in every colour available, as long as that is red, or, at a push, pink.



Easter Treats

For reasons that are too dull to explain, I was wrestling with some nasty willfull organza over the weekend. It slipped, and frayed, and tore and wriggled. When, oh when, will I learn that its not worth scrimping on quality, not even for prototyping.

In order to properly pit my wits against it, I knocked up a small organza gift bag – seen here stuffed full of easter treats (its never too early for egg-shaped chocolate) but also good as lavender bags or party favours.



The filling is nicer than the wrapper in this case





I certainly didn’t win every battle – the casing for the ribbon frayed out before I even got the ribbon into it hense the little cross stitch design feature at the back to hold the ribbon in place.

But I’m going to claim victory in the great Organza War of 2012. I’ve tested the concept for the tricksy little simple little casing, and have a mildy unattractive bag full of chocolate in the fridge.

buttons

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…

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 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.

Not just a hooker

I’ve noticed that recently my posts have been focussed on crochet. That probably reflects the way I’ve been using my time, headspace, and, frankly, pursestrings, but we’ve been in no way monogamous, Crochet and I.



Pleasantly mild chaos



And here is the evidence of my other current dalliance – a mildly chaotic pile of half-cut squares I’m preparing for an eye-spy picture-matching quilt for my son.

I’ve decided to base it on the disappearing nine-patch block, (CluckCluckSew has an example here.) using 3 1/2 inch squares, but I’ve not yet decided on a finished size for the quilt.

I’ve been collecting novelty prints for a while now, and spent rather a lot of time lovingly laying it on my lap (on top of the cat) and waving cardboard windows over it to plan the fussy-cuts.

Even after rejecting a good proportion for being too big, too small, or too ugly, I still have 66 matching pairs, and counting. DearWife has suggested a lap quilt for the car, but one that’s double-sided. She so loves throwing me the curve balls.

So, when I’m not waggling a crochet hook, I’m brandishing a rotary cutter. Nobody told me fussy cutting took so. Much. Time!

Dribblicious

When our boy was teething like a teething thing with his first two teeth, he was perfectly dribblicious. We’re talking two bibs and a soaked carseat before we even start the engine.

And I am appalled at how expensive bibs are - £10 a pop? You must be joking. So. To capitalise on a new-found love of snaps, and to overcome my fear of topstitch, I made some bandana-style dribblebibben in jersey, cotton drill, and jersey-and-cotton drill.

Offending teeth clearly visible in toothy grin.

Tutorial here.

Nice. Turns out he’s dried up the drool for pegs 3, 4 and 5.

Birthday fun!

We've just had a birthday in our house - the little one turned one!

This is a big felt badge I made for the special little boy. It attaches with magnets, sewn into the big felt discs - safe to chew but too big to swallow.

Happy birthday boy!

This shows the backing disc better

It was easy to make and came together in an evening Once I'd faffed about with the sketchbook, and i think it translated pretty faithfully.

There's a project sheet here:Birthday badge tutorial