A busy summer

The Simplicity skirt in the last post was abandoned and still remains insewn, because only a couple of days later, we sold our house! We'd already found the perfect place to buy, and almost unbelievably, we got it! After a very stressful couple of months (thanks to the way UK property transactions work), we moved at the end of July, and had a fantastic summer enjoying space, glorious space.  Then it was back to school and a busy (as ever) September with the girls' birthdays. In the mean time I've become rather addicted to Instagram, and rather neglectful of my DSLR (in addition to this blog). Here's a small selection of my Instagrammed photos from the latter half of summer into Autumn.

Simplicity 2152

This is my project for the week - a skirt for me, from a proper pattern for the first time. Or at least making a muslin. And lots of mistakes, no doubt!

Raspberry ripple chevron picnic mat

I thought I was immune to the chevron craze, but this post over at Treefall Design finally gave me a hankering after something (anything!) chevron-y. With no chevron fabric in stock at any of my favourite online fabric shops I headed off to Ikea for stripy fabric with the idea that I could make my own. Of course, I was far from the first to have that very idea. Dana from MADE has a great tutorial on how to do it, and if the yellow fabric had been in stock in my local Ikea I think I would have ended up making exactly the same cushion. However all I could get my hands on was a much wider cerise and white stripe. I pieced it without much of an idea about what to make with the resulting patchwork fabric, thinking perhaps of a large tote or beach bag, but when it was done it cried out to be laid flat. I settled on a small picnic mat, using some leftover polyester for a waterproof backing as I did for the one I made last year. It was surprisingly fun to put together, and I can't look at the finished mat without thinking of raspberry ripple ice cream! I think I'd like to make a few more of these.

Pacman Macbook sleeve

I originally intended to make this for my husband as a Christmas present, but that proved to be too ambitious and he had to wait until March for it.

This is the second time I've used the fantastic Laptop Sleeve Tutorial, by amyalamode, and once again I'm really pleased with the results.

The question everyone asks, though, is where is Pac Man?

I don't know! He's not there. In fact thought it might have been a good idea to try and find some Pac Man buttons, but perhaps that would have made it a little too childish. I quite like the simple black buttons with the turquoise accent.

Bread, glorious bread

I'm completely astonished that I've managed to live for 34 years without knowing it's possible to make bread as easily as in this recipe for cold-rise breakfast bread rolls by Anne's Food. No kneading (well I did a little, just to get a more even texture) but best of all no bother about finding a warm enough place to let the dough rise and no stress when hasn't doubled in size in the time the flour-packet recipe insists it should. In this recipe, you simply leave the dough to rise in the fridge overnight, ready to bake first thing in the morning, and the best bit is the slow rise gives an even better flavour. As I didn't have any fresh yeast, I just replaced the 10g specified in the recipe with 5g of dried active yeast, used lukewarm water and dissolved the honey in it before adding the yeast and leaving to froth up a bit before mixing with the other ingredients and following the rest of the recipe.

Delicious! I'm going to struggle not to make these every single day.

Hello!

Well here I am again, out of winter hibernation! I've been busy working on our house for the past few months, and have struggled to fit in time for other projects. But that's just about finished now, which means a little bit more free time, and personally I find there's no better inspiration to be creative than a good dose of spring sunshine, and colour that you can almost taste.

I can't remember if I've shared this before, but is the 'sky' wall in El's room, complete with wall stickers from Nouvelles Images. As a sidenote, I've found these low-tack stickers to be a little too low-tack for my painted walls. I'm not a particular fan of stickers and would have painted the tree as a mural if we weren't planning to move soon. I do love the graphic style of these stickers.

Autumn (?) colour...

I took these photos on our little country walk on Sunday afternoon, when the air was still warm, the sky was blue and the oak trees didn't seem to think it was autumn. (Or perhaps it is still too early for them? I really should know!)

Well, since the weekend, autumn has well and truly hit with a vengeance! In fact it feels more like winter. We have the worst winds here, truly, I'm sure I would be much more enthusiastic about getting outdoors if they weren't so bad. For now I think I'll just use them as an excuse to stay indoors and make soup.

Back in the sewing seat...

I have a new sewing machine! My little sewing nook is relatively tidy for the first time in months, too, which means I've been inspired to get back to it, so hopefully I'll have some new projects to share here soon. First I thought I'd better post some photos of the hobby horses I made for the girls' birthdays last month. I used this pattern for K's horse. She asked for her horse to be green, so I used some lovely vintage style quilting cotton from Fabric Rehab together with some multicoloured merino yarn I originally bought for doll-making.

Once I'd collected together all the bits needed for the pattern, the sewing, stuffing and assembling was quite straightforward, and the pattern uses a clever method incorporating cable ties to fix the horse's head to the handle nice and securely. Ki is rather fond of him. She loves to comb his hair and use his handle as a balancing beam when she'd not riding him. Hmm.

El, on the other hand, told me in no uncertain terms that she did NOT want her horse to be a stupid colour like green. Horses are brown, or black, or ideally as white as pure snow. 

Bearing in mind that a pure white horse was likely to become a grubby grey horse within a few days of her company, I was pleased to find some zebra-pattern fur at my local fabric shop, and steer her towards that. The size of the print meant a bigger head was needed, so I drafted this pattern myself.

The only black yarn I could find locally was some floppy acrylic stuff, so he had to have his hair braided.

Now I just need to work out what to do with the zebra fabric I have left over. And with 94 cable ties.

Current Work-in-progress and a thrifty find

There are only so many baby clothes you can fit into a memory box, and yet some hold too many memories to part with. So I've spent the past couple of evenings sorting through stacks of knit rompers and bodysuits and turning them into this:

And even though it's painful to cut into some of those cute itty-bitty clothes, there's something quite satisfying about a stack of neat 4 1/2" squares. I don't have enough for two quilts, so I think I'm going to turn them into two super-soft pillow covers. Pillows are very popular in this house, especially with the nearly-two year old...  

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share these lovely bowls I spotted a few weeks ago in a charity shop window.

Usually the charity shops pickings are pretty poor around here, but I was rather pleased with this set of a large and six small glass dessert bowls for £10.

Not exactly cheap, but they are old (the ticket said 1930s although I'm not sure they are quite so old), they are in perfect condition, and I love the combination of frosted and clear green glass, especially on a sunny day.

Beach days

I want to share the finished Jester costume I made for El last month. It was a success, and in fact she won first prize at the church medieval fayre, although I think the judges were rather more impressed with her wellies than the costume itself! I made the hood based on photos of a traditional medieval costume I saw online. (Can't find the link just at the moment though - I'll add it here when I track it down.)

Both the hood and tunic were made from two adult-sized t-shirts I bought from the supermarket. El picked the colours herself, and I think she chose well (if not quite authentically!).

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I've been in a bit of a creative flunk; first sewing machine troubles and then the general level of clutter and things-to-do taking up not only my time but my energy too. Add to this school holidays and that little Miss Ki (who is not yet 2) deciding daytime naps are a thing of the past and, well, I'm often so busy watching the children and talking with them and playing and learning and tidying and tidying and tidying that I don't seem to have time to plan sewing projects, never mind think about writing tutorials. I'll be back, I expect, when I have space to breathe. 

But for now, we'll be on the beach!

A simple skirt and a couple of sneak peeks

I've been rather neglectful of this blog in the past few weeks; first we were away in Devon for a very welcome summer holiday and then Andrew and I had the luxury of a weekend trip sans kids to the beautiful city of Edinburgh. In spite of the stacks of suitcases that have been living in my sewing nook for the past few weeks, I have managed to do a bit of sewing, so here's a little update.

I made this skirt for El using the fabulous simple skirt tutorial by Dana over at MADE. You can probably tell her love of yellow has made a lasting impression on me! I love this beautiful print, too, Song Birds in Bright, by Alexander Henry, sadly now out of stock at my usual online fabric store.

Next up I thought I'd show you a couple of sneak peaks into projects I'm working on and that I hope to share tutorials for in the near future.

Child's jester costume:

 - made from upcycled t-shirts, featuring a (kind of) authentic medieval hood!

DSLR pouch: 

- I'm not a fan of the black neoprene cases that seem to be the only choice for protecting your camera when it's in another bag, but my poor Canon EOS was desperate for a bit of padding. So I thought I'd have a go at making my own padded pouch. This is a photo of my first prototype made from oilcloth and bias tape. Hopefully with mark II I'll have a free pattern to share!

From an English country garden

Today was an event I really look forward to each year - the day the owner of this beautiful house opens its gardens to the public.

For a few hours we got the opportunity to explore the formal gardens and beautiful woodland walk, enjoying the flowers and trees in their full glory.

  

I decided last year that I wanted to sew dresses for the girls for this year's open day, and although I left it to the last minute, I just got a couple of simple little frocks done in time.

For El I made this sundress from Carefree Clothes for Girls, my first attempt at clothes from this book. I really enjoyed making it. I was worried, based on the photo in the book, that it might be cut a little low and loose at the front, so I changed the front to a round neckline rather than square.

I used a tie at the back instead of a button, to allow for a little adjustment and avoid hair getting caught up.

For Kiki, I used this ruffle shirt pattern by Heidi and Finn and added a couple of inches to make it into a dress.

This is the only photo I have of her wearing it - a rare moment of stillness between bouts of running around as fast as her little legs could carry her.

Contrary to the impression the photos above might give, the weather was very changeable today, with showers, lots of cloud and a very strong wind that shimmered through the meadow grass quite beautifully. Not the easiest thing to photograph!

A skirt for dancing

When I saw this ladies' (UK) size 8 cotton skirt in a charity shop last week, I knew it had to come home with me.

This might have been my most satisfying sewing project ever! I just chopped out the side zip, cut a couple of inches off the width to neaten it up, sewed a new side seam and then turned the top outward to form a channel for some elastic. Voila! A dancing skirt for El.

I added a drawstring at the waist just for extra security when those dance moves get too erratic.

Didn't get a photo of her dancing in it, of course, just this face when I asked her:

But it proved good enough for exploring, and sulking in too.

Incidentally the first photo above was taken on a hilltop near us, at a beacon tower (the type where fires were lit in Elizabethan times to signal the invasion of the Spanish Armada). It has the coolest old graffiti.

Just look at those fonts! I suppose if you go to the trouble of taking a hammer and chisel up a hill, you're more likely to take a bit of time and care with your lettering.