It's a boy!

He's here!  Actually he's been here a while now - 10 weeks.  It's taken that long for me to find the time to update the blog!  He was nearly two weeks overdue, and weighed a very healthy 10lbs 4oz (ouch!).  He's lovely, and we're all enjoying having him join our family.

Of course, in the weeks following his arrival I had no time at all to do any making.  I put my knitting needles and crochet needles down at the end of February and I haven't picked them up again yet.  So, no progress on the woolly projects.  I'd already abandoned my sewing machine back in January, and I hadn't even been keeping up with the other blogs I read, so I didn't think I'd have much to show for myself on returning to the blog, but.....

Then I watched the Great British Sewing Bee - hooray!  The show was just what I needed to reboot my creative drive and get me thinking about future projects.  I really enjoyed watching the contestants (including Tilly from over at Tilly and the Buttons - surprise!) working through the challenges.  I really liked Lauren's style (if in doubt, flower it out!) but Anne certainly deserved to win.  She's 81 and has been sewing nearly every day for 75 years!  I guess there's no substitute for experience.

So, whilst watching the 'Bee and feeding the boy I browsed the online fabric shops and purchased these beauties from Frumble:

Aren't they lovely?  On delivery of said items I immediately felt the need to sew.  I'm restricted to post-bedtimes at the moment (at least until junior gives in and starts sleeping in  the day!) so I needed some quick and easy projects to get me going.  Also I only bought fat quarters so whatever it was would have to be small.

The Young Whales fabric really lent itself to the wet bag I've been meaning to make for ages.  I used a tutorial I found over at A Lemon Squeezy Home, only I modified it a little by sewing french seams (a la Handmade Jane's wash bag tutorial) instead of making an inner and outer bag.  The main reason I did this was to avoid too much direct contact with the shower curtain material.  It's horrible to work with and I developed a  loathing for it whilst making sponge bags over Christmas.  Next time I will shell out for some decent quality waterproof material instead of trying to net a bargain at IKEA!

I made my wet bag long and thin so that I could fit a fair amount into it but without using up my whole fat quarter.  I also split the strap and added a giant popper so that I can hang it from the buggy if need be.  Overall I'm pretty happy with it.

It's a lot neater and more professional looking than my wash bags - mainly thanks to the gorgeous fabric!  The only problem is, now that I've made it I don't really want to ruin it by putting soiled reusable nappies into it!  I guess I'll just keep it handy for damp clothing instead.


Next up - Kerchief-style dribble bibs!  I've coveted these in the past when I've seen them on other people's children or in fancy shops, but never got around to buying any for mine.  Well it just happens that, being a thumb-sucker, Jacob is quite a dribbly baby making it a well-timed project!  First off I made a practice bib using fabric from an old, stained babygro that I was going to chuck out.  I took the dimensions from this tutorial at Love Me Sew and followed the same basic process.

Once I was happy that my practice bib (does this count as a wearable toile?!!) fit ok I ran up a couple more.

Such a satisfying little make - I can easily run one up within an hour now that I've got the hang of it, and they'd make great presents, so I expect there'll be more of these to come!  And boy, are they cute...!

All together now..."Ahhhh!"

Favourite Makes (Part 3) - Bookweek costumes

This was a real quickie, and probably my last make using Grandma's vintage sewing machine.  The kids came home with letters announcing they needed to come dressed as book characters for book week.  Well, it just so happened that I had been taking up curtains the previous week and had yards and yards of spare red velvety material (IKEA curtains come sooo long!), so Emily's costume was a no-brainer!  

William's took a bit more thought as there are so few distinctive male book characters - many of the books we liked just had characters that looked like 'a boy' (e.g. George's marvellous medicine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc) and would require elaborate props to show who they were!  I also wanted to make something if I could so that William would feel special too.  In the end we decided on King Arthur.  I had an old blouse of my mum's that was a shiny silver meshed fabric (!) and had been meaning for ages to turn it into chainmail!  I added buttons to the collar/neck so that the blouse could be put on backwards with a kind of loose turtleneck.  I took off the cuffs and shortened the sleeves, narrowed the body and finally squared off the bottom edge.  Covered with a very simple tabard (a hemmed length fabric with a diamond shaped opening) and accessorised with a wide belt and Legoland crown/sword/shield it looks pretty effective!   

Favourite makes (Part 1) - Knitting Needle Case

When I sat down to Grandma's sewing machine two year's ago and thought about what to use it for, one of my first ideas was to make a needle case for my disorganised stash of knitting needles.  Shoved in a plastic bag all together they were a mess, and the more adventurous of them kept making holes in the bag to escape through!  Ah-ha, I thought, that would only involve sewing a few straight lines - an easy(ish) project!

I checked out a couple of tutorials on the web, such as this one and this one, and decided to combine a few details from each.  I was cautious about making it too thick with lots of layers as Grandma's sewing machine had a tendency to complain.  I cut out all the pieces (always the scary part for me) then spent a happy Mother's Day 2011 putting it all together, particularly special as this meant having several hours of 'me' time - unusual with two preschool age children.  Clearly daddy won brownie points that year! 

I was really happy with the finished product.  Using the tips from the tutorials it was fairly easy to put together, just a case of making sure the layers were sewn in the right order.  

Tidy needles make me happy!  Not bad for a bit of offcut from some Ikea curtains, and scraps from the duvet set I used for Emily's Teepee!