Christmas Jumper

Tis the season for office Christmas parties throughout the land...

So I decided to spice things up by making my own Christmas jumper this year. After previous felt based agony, I had the genius idea of just pva gluing it to the jumper. And it worked pretty well!

I give to you Rudolph vomiting Christmas decorations, accompanied by sequin trousers...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Just been wrapping presents (that's right, super prepared this year) and thought I'd try adding a little extra touch to some Christmas cards.

Some mini baubles from Paperchase later, et voila....

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's nearly that time of year again... Time to let the festive crafting begin!

Office Secret Santa this year is buy something for £1, and also decorate a plain mask with something Christmas themed.

Found a lovely deer mask pattern on www.illistyle.com/masks (good old Pinterest!) and thought it'd be easy enough to adapt to Rudolph.


Step 1 - deer fur. Or felt, y'know whichever is easiest to get hold of.






Step 2 - eyeholes.









Step 3 - ears.









Step 4 - that bit of deer face thing.









Step 5 - a little red nose.









Step 6 - antlers!










Need to replace the antlers with extra thick felt so they stand up on their own, but then happy days!

It's a bit girly for my male Secret Santa recipient, but I think his two year old daughter will love it.

Pretty damn proud of myself!

Halloween

Some friends had a fabulous Malice in Wonderland dinner party last night for Halloween. I wasn't feeling brave enough to make a full costume but I did make some ears for my White Rabbit outfit.





Just a bit of stiff felt with some blusher for the pink bits, but pleased with how they turned out!

Also made some gluten free chocolate cupcakes...





Happy Halloween!

Florence

Had a trip to Florence with little mummy, here's a few pics...

Pencil Skirt No.3 - Disaster

Merrily cracking on with pencil skirt number 3, this time in a lovely coral bike print fabric. I cut all the pieces and darted them months ago, but have only just got round to putting it together.

Disaster no.1 - may have slightly melted a hole in the lining fabric...






However, invisible zip tacked and went in perfectly first time - for the first time ever!

Merrily chugging away on the machine doing everything by memory = so chuffed with myself that I may have burst into a rendition of "They call me Mr Boombastic, say me fantastic". Oh how that joy was shortlived.





1. Forgot that one is not supposed to sew along the top part of the vent. Unsightly!

2. Some swiftly bodged hemming of both lining and main body.

3. Hmm, looks a little snug. Better try it on.

4. AAAAAAAAARGH! I won't treat you to a hideous photo of my chubby bum hanging out of the zip, but I'm sure you can picture it! How has all the room suddenly disappeared from the hips? All by itself. Am I screwing up the lining and that makes it too tight? How can it lose a couple of inches all by itself?

Oof, still feeling sew useless.

Jaffa Cakes

Chairing a meeting tomorrow where the rotating chair is responsible for bringing biscuits. So I thought I'd try a cheeky recipe from Homemade Memories book my lovely little mum gave me for my birthday.

How hard can a Jaffa cake be?!

I made the little cake biscuit things last night - dead easy. Then for the orange jelly. Note - I have never made jelly from scratch before. It is tricky. But also oh so simple! I was one orange half away from the full quantity of juice when I got distracted and knocked the whole jug flying. Typical! Fortunately I was a little baking psychic and bought shed loads of oranges.

I also have a slightly orange jelly-ish shelf in the fridge where I spilt it. Tonight was tackling construction...theoretically simple. How the effing jeff do you get a thin layer of jelly off a cling film lined baking tray?! Not the neatest orange jelly circles in the world but they'll do the trick...





A little not so beautifully tempered chocolate later (Mary Berry avert your eyes) and I've got some slightly wobbly looking homemade Jaffa cakes.





Fingers crossed they set ok and people like them!

Shift Dress

Thought I'd try a new fashion adventure and make a shift dress.

Got the pattern out of the Great British Sewing Bee book, but Rory had other ideas about letting me cut it out...









Once I finally persuaded the cheeky monkey that cats and patterns don't mix, I managed to trace out all the parts.

Thought I'd give it a go in some cheap calico first as there's bound to be some huge mistakes! Watch this space...

Bandana Bibs

A friend from work is off to have her first baby, so I made some teeny tiny bandana bibs.

Found a free pattern through the wonderful Pinterest and after 10,000 attempts to get all the gathers right and much pinning and repinning I finally managed to cobble three together!





Top stitching is 1/4 inch too wide (sew useless as always!) but not too shabby for a first go.

Finito

I've only gone and done it!

One pencil skirt, completed, pressed, and worn twice. Maybe not 'sew useless' after all!

Wonderful Sophia the sewing goddess fixed my broken zip for me (see previous disaster post) and all was well. I only had to unpick the vent once, then hems galore.

Sort of pattern matched side seams (ish)

Ooh, cheeky little vent

Phwoar, look at those beautifully pressed darts. Hubba hubba.

Now to work on my blog photography skills. Eg not in the messy bedroom with half the fan in the picture. New blog name... 'Sew useless at photography also'?!

Sew Useless Strikes Again

I have a friend who is incredibly glamorous and classy and swears like a trooper. All a girl could want in a friend. But she does have one down side. Quite a big flaw. She makes her own clothes. And they're incredible. We're talking skirts, dresses, coats. The whole nine yards. Lined, piping, bias binding. The lot.

She's also one of those highly irritating people who are just way too nice. So she offered to help me make my very first item of clothing. Oh, if she had but known...!

I boldly handed her my 'Great British Sewing Bee' book (which mother acquired at a bargainous price), and told her I had decided upon a pencil skirt. Not the slightest concern to our lovely Sophia (the only person I know to own an overlocker), who merrily set about cutting pattern pieces whilst I did some shoddy ironing of my gorgeous fabric. On the plus side, apparently my ironing water smells divine!

I forgot to take progress pictures whilst caught up in the fever of watching her work. NB. she was also hungover, having attended a fancy dress party the previous evening in a silver space cadet dress of her own creation. I mean, she really takes the mick with her skills.

We cut and pressed and sewed and pressed some more - I sewed darts. Darts! Me! And they weren't all over the shop. Darts! Sophia overlocked, I pressed again. But alas I had wrongly bought a bog standard zipper foot instead of an invisible one. And a concealed zip that was two inches too short. The less said about that the better.

So we paused, with a cheery "you'll be fine to finish it by yourself" from Ms Oh So Super Talented.

Two weeks later, I have attempted to finish the job. Here is a photo of an IMMACULATELY sewn invisible zip. Yup. I did that. By myself. And it only took three attempts.

Unfortunately, this part seems to be integral to making the zip actually work. It does not, repeat NOT, help if you pull it right off the top of the zip when closing it.

So yeah, no pencil skirt for me! Nice fabric though. Now off to the haberdashery in town to see if they can fix my disaster so I don't have to attempt to unpick it all. Hurrah!

Sew... Three years on

It's only been three years, but back at last!

In that time I've got married, moved house, got two cats. And sewn next to nothing. But has that stopped me buying infinite reams of fabric and sewing books that I know full well I'll never use? You bet your ass it hasn't!

So what have I sewn in the last three years? Precisely two things. Apart from taking up some curtains - I don't think that really counts. Especially when you really shouldn't look too closely or you'll see how wonky they are. Seriously though, they're like when your mum trims your fringe and you end up looking like a monk from all the 'I'll just even it up'.

Sewing project number one...

A penguin bus pass holder.

 This is a cat helpfully sitting on the pieces.

Attempted to give it structure with some business cards. Then when to turn it right way out and realised, business cards... not so flexible. Also, can't ever wash it or they'll turn to mush. Sew Useless strikes again!

Finished version closed...

 

And open.

Sewing project number two...

A minion cushion as a thank you to a friend for looking after the kitties.

One nicely pinned eye

Front all pinned together (slightly wonky, shh)

Sewing with felt. In a machine. Yup, that was interesting. Even with a calico backing, not the easiest thing in the world. Straight lines have taken on a creative interpretation, but otherwise pretty pleased with the overall effect. Just don't look too closely.

Disclaimer: Do NOT zoom in on the stitching. And just pretend those loose threads aren't there.

Ta-dah! (Or something else that Minions say)