My favourite ever make!

Here's another long one folks!  Time to blog about my favourite ever make!  

I blogged before about changing the children's rooms about ready to make room for the new baby (who's nearly here!).  Emily and the baby will share what was our spare room.  Now, I don't know about you, but we've never put much effort into spare rooms.  In an ideal world it would be lovely to have a beautifully organised and 'finished' space to invite relatives and friends to stay in, but in reality our spare room is always a dumping ground with a bed in it!  I did recently invest in some new duvet covers, as our others spares were generally 80s cast offs passed on from parents, but that's been about it.  Of course, a child's bedroom is another matter - we wanted that to be cosy and pretty and inviting - particularly so that Emily would not be upset about the move!  We are a clergy family as I have said before, so we live in a house owned by the church and are consequently loath to spend a lot of money on alterations when we're unlikely to be here for long.  We had to concede to buying a new carpet, as the bare floorboards were not cosy and tended to amplify the patter of tiny feet throughout the whole house, but we were not keen to repaint the walls.  Which left us a problem with this -  

- the destruction left on the wall (against which Emily's bed would be) where some shelving had previously decided to part company with the wall!  Ugh!  

I guess we could have stuck a poster over the space, but never liking to miss the opportunity of bit of crafting an idea started to form in my head.  I would make a personalised wall hanging - something beautiful that would last and that could be taken with us to the next house (and the next...).  I looked around online for tutorials and ideas, but didn't find anything quite right.  I kind of liked a couple of ideas like this one from Sania Pell's The Homemade Home for Children, which used artificial flower heads, and this one which was inspired by the same book.  However, I wanted to make all the flowers, include a border, and, most importantly, take every opportunity to use my new sewing machine, which in this case meant trying my hand at applique, something I had not done before.  So, armed with scraps, ribbons, buttons and cat templates I started my planning.

The flowers were the easiest place to start.  I perused a couple of tutorials (here and here) first, but also used my initiative.  Then I planned out my scene (cats were an essential feature!):

Next I was back to mitred corners again for the border.  I did this using the same technique that I used to make the tablecloth/picnic blanket for Emily's Tea Set.  It was a little fiddly as I wanted to double layer the polka dot and gingham fabric so that it wasn't too see through, and I only just had enough fabric left to do it.  At least this made the decision about the border size pretty straight forward!

To prepare applique pieces for both the cats and also for lettering I ironed some interface onto my fabric scraps and cut out shapes from my cardboard templates (remembering to place the letters on backwards!).  When it came to sewing them on I was a little naughty - since my interface only had adhesive on one side, and since this was to be a wall hanging  and not clothing (and therefore was unlikely to be washed) I simply glued my pieces in place with pritt stick before sewing around them with a zigzag overedge stitch.  It may have been cheating, but it worked!  It also meant I could use my zigzag foot for the stitching and not my overcasting foot, which is great but doesn't give you much visibility to see where you're stitching.  

Then it was just a case of assembling all the different components.  The flower stems are a variety of ribbon, felt and crocheted yarn, all machine stitched onto the backing.  The leaves were all cut from felt and also machine stitched on.  I attached the front piece to the backing (wrong sides together - pillowcase style!) not forgetting to insert two pieces of dowling - one held at the top with ribbons to allow for hanging, and one at the bottom to weight the piece down.  The only handstitching I did was to attach the flowerheads, buttons and a few interesting insects for extra detail, which I did right at the very end.   

And finally, after about two weeks of working on it on and off, it was done!  And I LOVE IT!

Even more importantly, Emily loves it.  It covers the wall carnage perfectly, and really finishes off her side of the room.  Now I'll just have to make another one for the baby's side!

My work here is done!

Favourite makes (Part 4 - William's bed tidy)

I may have mentioned that we're having a baby (just once or twice!). It's our third which means that in some ways I'm much less stressed about it - after all, we have most of the 'stuff' and we pretty much know what to do with a baby by now!  However, having a third baby does require some logistical changes - for example, we've had to buy a bigger car!  We also needed to change bedrooms around.  Emily will be sharing with the baby, and so needed to move from the box room into the larger spare room.  This move required a very specific 'make' (my favourite ever make!) which I will blog about in due course.

I think because I knew that this move was coming up, and would involve some 'making it special' touches for Emily, I started to look at William's bedroom to with a view to giving him some special attention too.  Being a clergy family we don't own the house we live in, and we know that we'll only be here for a couple of years, so we won't be painting the walls or making any alterations.  William's room is small and the previous occupant was clearly a teenage boy.  The colour on the walls made the space feel dark, and there was just no room to play.  It just didn't feel like a little boy's room.

The solution: we bought a pine loft bed from ebay!  It has made all the difference.  He now has a larger floor space to play in, and he loves sleeping up high (not to mention climbing and swinging from it like a monkey!).  Of course, the thing I realised when we actually came to put him to bed the first night was that there was nowhere within reach to put a drink - even the windowsill was too much of a stretch - and as the week went on the bed steadily filled with books (which William would happily sleep on!).  So I promised him a bed shelf - until I saw the price of them!!  Even ebay prices were extortionate for what was essentially a plank of wood with fixings.

So, onto the make!  Being as I am not known for my carpentry skills, I decided to sew a bed tidy for him instead.  In fact, I was really glad of the idea as I usually find it easier to think of girly things to make for Emily and had been wondering for a while how to even it up a bit.

I had a look around on the web for ideas and tutorials, but I already had an idea of what I wanted and couldn't find anything that quite fit the bill, so I took the plunge and made it up as I went along.  Some of my techniques may be a little unorthodox, and I'm sure it could be improved upon, but I will try and show my progress step by step.

First things first, I laid out my base fabric (another trusty IKEA curtain ofcut!), decided how big I wanted it (both by measuring the area I wanted to hang it in on the bed and by laying out some books to give me an idea of the scale of the pockets I wanted) and cut out a back piece and four pieces for hanging straps, including a small hem allowance.  To be honest I was guessing when it came to the straps, but thankfully it turned out ok.

I then wrapped my books and formed some extra pockets out of my pocket fabric (chosen by the boy himself from IKEA, the haberdashery dept this time).  I cut these out, again leaving a hem allowance on all sides (leave a larger allowance on the pockets - you don't want to find that the books won't fit once you've finished!).






It's hard to see here but I factored in a sort of concertina effect on the larger of the two small pockets as wanted it to open wider to hold a drink.  There are more pics further down the post that attempt to show how I did this.





I ironed all the edges of the base material under twice and hemmed all the pieces, then pinned on the straps at regular intervals across the top edge.  I also positioned all my velcro pieces by taking the whole thing up to the bed and trying it over the rail to work out where I needed to put the bottom tabs.  I used a box stitch to fix the straps to the main piece, and to sew on the top and bottom velcro tabs.  I reinforced this a couple of time around to make it really strong, knowing that it was likely to get overloaded with books if not swung on from time to time!

My velcro tabs look a bit wobbly from the back as it's tricky to keep the velcro still whilst stitching from the other side, but the boxes look fairly neat from the front.

The next job was to pin the pockets on where I wanted them.  I hemmed the top edge of each, sewing a double line like a tramline as I had decided to fix the pockets on to the main piece with a double line for extra strength.  I don't have a twin needle attachment for my machine so I just did this by sewing round twice (again, just make sure you have left enough hem allowance so that the books will still fit once you've sewn your double lines!).

Sewing the concertina pocket on was a little tricky.  I started by folding and ironing the pocket in the shape I wanted. I sewed down the middle crease (right sides together) to help hold the shape.  Folding the whole of the bottom edge over to form a hem I attached the bottom of the pocket to the main piece first with my two lines of stitching.  Then I carefully stitched the back fold of the pocket to the main piece on each side, staying as close to the edge as I could manage.  It's probably not the best technique, but it seems to work.

And TA DAAHHH....... you're done!

Here it is, installed on the side of my son's bed.  He loves it, and it definitely helps keep his bed and room tidier.  I went with a large book pocket, a slightly smaller book pocket, a drink holder, and a 'secrets pocket', but hey, anything goes!

Sneak preview

Whilst the snowing is falling lightly outside the window, and I sit cosily cuddled up with a hot drink and my laptop, I've been fiddling about with Blogger trying to work out what I can and can't do (mostly what I can't do!).  Not completely happy with the blog design yet but it's coming along.  Decided to replace my title background with a sneak preview of my favourite ever make - yet to be blogged about!  Here's another peek...

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 2) - Emily's Tea Set

I was looking for a tea set for Emily's Christmas present last year, but had something in my head that I just couldn't find in the shops.  I saw lots of sets where I liked the tea set pattern, or the tablecloth/napkins, or the carrier, but I couldn't find one that had everything I wanted - I'm such a perfectionist!

So, I bought a pretty tea set from John Lewis and ordered a case and some fabric from ebay.

I used a tablecloth tutorial to learn how to sew mitred corners to do the gingham border, and TA DAAH......my I mean Emily's perfect tea set!!

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!