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.

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.

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.

The final shirt (and another!)

In the end I wasn't too happy with just the stencilled Union flag for El's shirt, so I made another print with a further stencil of three hearts and a crown (which I drew by hand) on top. I appliqued the final design to a white t-shirt , added some off-cuts of knit fabric as bunting around the shoulders, and she was ready to go.

I loved the look of the bunting so much, I decided to make a shirt for Kiki too, using an old white hand-me-down t-shirt that was getting a little short on her. I added a couple of ruffles at the bottom and a string of bunting made from more offcuts and some ribbon.

 

I didn't have interfacing to iron on to the back of the triangles to stop them curling up so I had to sew them in place. I think I might make more in other colour combinations as I have a lot of fabric scraps and old t-shirts to use up!

As for the wedding itself, I loved Kate's dress, and those trees in the Abbey. The girls were not terribly impressed (neither of them are really the princess type, except for princesses who fight baddies and fly on spaceships). But they did approve of the mini Victoria sponge cakes and strawberries we had at tea time. And Daddy's home made bread.

The You and Me mat: a tutorial

One of the things I love about being able to operate a sewing machine is that often, when I think 'you know, right now something like x,y,z would be useful...' I don't have to go and scour the shops/internet to find it -  I can just go home and have a bash at making it myself, and even save a bit of money in the process.

I'm trying to be outdoors with the girls as much as possible at the moment, and snack stops on wet spring grass mean they need something to sit on. Our big picnic blanket is far too big to stuff into my bag (already overloaded with changing things, snacks, drinks, sunblock, etc etc). We have a few play mats that are about the right size but they would just end up soggy.

What we really, really needed something exactly like this:

It's lightweight. It's comfortable. It's a mini picnic quilt that's perfect for two. It's backed by waterproof polyester, and if it does get dirty, it's machine washable. It's the You and Me mat, and here's how I made it.

Materials

• Sewing machine with walking foot installed.
• Disappearing fabric pen.
• Hair grips (the metal sort with one wavy edge and one straight edge; we call them bobby pins).
• A piece of lightweight cotton for the top, sized 1/2" bigger all round than the desired mat size. I used a 37" x 27" piece of this "Gullan" cotton from Ikea featuring an appropiate food-splodged print, and I pre-washed and dried it.
• A piece of lightweight cotton for the ties (40" x 4" for the size of mat I made, I used a leftover bit from cutting the top piece).
• A piece of quilt batting cut approx 1/2" - 1" larger all round than the cotton top piece. ( I used Sew Simple 80/20 cotton blend)
• A piece of lightweight ripstop polyester, sized 4" bigger all round than the desired mat size. (The fabric I used was 130grams/square metre).

Instructions

1. Sew the quilted top
Place the cotton top piece on top of the batting and pin all round. With the walking foot installed, stitch around the edges with a 1/2" allowance (from the edge of the cotton top piece). Then, using a disappearing fabric pen, mark lines at equal intervals along the length. I used a 3" interval. Pin in the spaces between your lines to stop the layers from shifting, then machine stitch along the lines.

 

(Here's the top quilted at a 6" spacing. I then went back and added another set of lines to make the spacing 3").

Trim neatly around the quilted top, cutting through both layers to an allowance of 1/4" (from the stitched border), thereby making the top the size of the finished mat.

2. Attach the backing.
Place the piece of ripstop polyester on a flat surface, wrong size up (on my piece one side was slightly shinier than the other). Place the quilted top centrally on top, so 2" of the backing is visible all around.

You can't iron the polyester because it will melt, and you can't pin it either because any holes made will be permanent. So you have to fold and press the backing over the quilted top by hand, and secure with something that doesn't puncture the fabric. I used hair grips.

Fold over each edge by 1" to meet the edge of the quilted top, and then 1" again to overlap the top. At the corners, fold each corner of the polyester in underneath the corner of the quilted top to make a neat corner in the binding. Hold in place with the hair grips.

(You can also fold the corners like this). Continue all the way around.

3. Machine stitch the backing to the quilt top.
Large machine needles can rip big holes in the polyester fabric, so you now need to switch to a thin needle. I used a size 9, which didn't seem to be a problem with this thin cotton fabric and fairly lightweight wadding.

Still with the walking foot installed, sew around the top of the quilt, 1/4" from the inside edge of the binding.

 

I found this wasn't enough to secure the folded corners, so I pulled them to overlap a little and stitched close to the join.

To finish off and hold in place, edgestitch a second row of stitches on the binding close to the join with the quilt top.

4. Make and attach the ties

To make the ties, Take a 40"x4" strip of fabric and fold in half to make a 40" by 2" strip. Press, then open up and fold each long edge toward the crease. Press again, tucking in 1/2" at each short end, then fold in half so the folded edges are together, making a 40" by 1" strip. Press and pin in place, then machine stitch 1/8" from the edges to hold it all together.

Place the tie on the reverse of the mat, on one of the long sides, 1/8 of the long edge length (about 4 1/2 ") from the corner, with the middle of the tie positioned over the mat's stitch lines. Sew in place by following the two existing stitch lines. (With the mat unfolded, obviously.)

Roll the finished mat up by folding along the long edge, then folding again, then rolling towards the ties.

All ready to take out on expedition!

 

Just to the back garden... 

 

 

Or further afield. (A field).

 Washing tip: a 40 degree wash on a gentle spin cycle seemed fine, but probably best not to tumble dry.

Happy sewing!

(Personal use only - please do not sell items made from this tutorial, thanks)