Sewing Kids Clothes

With all the plans for sewing clothes for the girls swirling around my head, I've signed up for Elsie Marley's kids clothes week. I'll be away on the weekend for my nieces birthday but I'll make it work somehow. Hopefully there'll be buttons to handsew by then...

Sign ups are at Elsie Marley here

I'm still intending to do some sewing before then. V needs a summer coat and I thought I'd try to make one. With this unexpectedly summery weather I've washed all my fabric and line dried it...



And I'm ready to cut out. Straight from a simple shift dress to a vintage, no marking on the pattern, child's coat? I'm jumping in feet first....

It's about time I started this up again...

Here's a recent make.
Denim dress with button placket. I got the pattern from drawing round the pieces of a Clothkits shift dress, size 6, before I made it up.



The fabric was half price at Boyes because it had a fault line. I didn't use this piece for the dress, so no worries there! I have now hemmed the dress, since this photo was taken.




Here's the back. I used a vintage souvenir scarf from Australia for the lining and appliqués. I basically just bondawebbed them on and scribbled over the top with my machine needle.




And here's the lining. Can you see the koala peeking out.

Notes for next time.
Although this dress is a size 6 and E IS 6, there's very little room for growth here. I'd drop the armholes a little as they seemed a bit tight, and also lengthen it a bit in the bottom.

Vintage Bazaar

On Sunday afternoon we went to a vintage bazaar. Jo opened her beautiful home and garden to visitors and every available space was covered in vintage treasures to peruse and purchase.

..And an open garden to wander round, with spaces to sit and drink tea and eat cake


....perfect for Mummies


....Not always a 5 year olds idea of fun


..... So I gave her the camera and let her play




.....And I enjoyed the results when we got home
All photos by E. Age 5 and a half.

Raffle Winner Announced

We printed out all the comments and put them in a large jar. My 5 year old was very excited about this. We had talked about why we were having a raffle and she had helped to put together the raffle prize, but now she was just excited about the drama of picking a winner.



She gave them a very good swish and a swirl, then with her eyes closed, she pulled out her winner:



Sweatereyes! You are our winner (not sure why the photo is sideways), Congratulations!



Thank you all so much for buying the raffle tickets.
Sweatereyes - I'll be dropping you an email!

Japan Quake Appeal - RAFFLE NOW CLOSED

**Thankyou for your generosity. Raffle is now closed. Winner announced soon!**

Reclaimed crafty bits and spring treats!

Hi

I wanted to do something for the Japan Quake Appeal, in conjunction with Jo's Blog, but as I'm not sure anyone in blogland would actually WANT any of my crafts, I've decided to put together a selection of vintage/reclaimed crafty bits and a few treats. This package is put together with Spring in mind. New growth and renewal. Good Luck to Japan.

Here's a breakdown of what's included:

Vintage pillowcase in a flower design, yellow/mustard colour

Two pieces of 20cmx20cm felt

Assorted buttons

Spools of yellow and green thread

A spool of silver lurex thread, suitable for sewing, or knitting/crocheting in with yarn for extra twinkle.

Ribbons in mint green, white and gold

A vintage buckle with a pearly sheen

A vintage yellow plastic thimble

Package of tiny blue/green seed beads

Small test tube of yellow sequins in different shapes

Card of sewing needles, assorted sizes and uses.

Dylon "Golden Yellow" dye, instructions included

A few more sewing things:

Piece of linen or cotton (approx 60cmx40cm) with vintage embroidery transfer printed on half.

Two pretty pieces of fabric (approx 25cmx25cm) from a sample book (has two holes punched near the top from when it was in the book). These have a flower/leaf/branch design, one is green/brown colours, the other is mustard/grey

Piece of cream leather (approx 25cmx20cm) from a sample book (has two holes punched near the top from when it was in the book)

Two 4.5yard skeins of "Sheba" vintage rayon thread, one in light green, one in mid-spring green

One skein of DMC embroidery thread in cream

Two skeins of Clark's embroidery thread in light and mid green.

Small vintage booklet with embroidery stitches

Length of cream lace.

Small pincushion made by me from a tiny "Bless this House" cup.

Here's a closeup:

Some yarny bits:

Plastic flower loom

Small skeins of sample yarns to play with straightaway! Mustard, ochre, dark green, and green mix sock yarn

Small (tiny?) skein of pure silk, spun and plied by me on a drop spindle. I'm a learner! This is a little.... rustic :)

Vintage plastic knitting needles (Robinoid size 13 and Millwards size 11)

Some treats:

Three English breakfast and three Lady Grey teabags from Twinings (well, if it's good enough for Stephen Fry...)

Sunny yellow plastic bead necklace

Two Cadbury's creme eggs (I can substitute for other British sweeties if you live somewhere hot)

Sterling Silver Bird and Cloud Rings made by Tuareg nomads from Plumo. Unworn. They sent the wrong size, these are SMALL! (Review here)

Here's a close up of the rings. They're lovely. My chubby-hand loss is your gain :)

Here's a link to the full picture set on Flickr, incase the photos mess up here.

Here's how to enter:

Each raffle entry must be a donation of £5 ($8 ish).

This is open internationally, I will post anywhere. PayPal should convert your currency to £GBP for you.

To enter, go to Global Giving and make a £5 donation, when you have done it come back to this post and leave a comment with your receipt number and you must also leave a valid email address, you can write the address in the format of mymailname 'at' hotmail 'dot' com.

You may enter as many times as you like but each time you need a new receipt number. For help with the donation you can refer to this post on Jo's blog.

Raffle closes at 12.00noon GMT 26th March.

If you make a mistake or forget to add you email address please delete the first comment and re-write it.

The raffle held on this blog is in no way affiliated with Global Giving, that's just our chosen method of getting the funds safely to the affected area.

Hand spinning

I've been dabbling in hand spinning on a drop spindle. So far I've only produced two vaguely usable things:

Minty green silk

This is a really small skein, possibly only enough for a brooch.



I can't remember where this roving came from. It's been on my drop spindle for ages, and I only just got around to finishing it.

Don't look to closely, I kept getting my clockwise and anti mixed up when spinning AND plying. It's all over the place. But I think it's knitable


And here's my next project....

Roving from Woolie Bullie via the Phat Fiber Chinese New Year sampler box. But first, I'm going to draw some helpful reminder arrows on my drop spindle....

KCWC Round Up, and what came after

OK, so KCWC is gone.
I DID actually finish the two things I planned to during the week, but blogging about it too proved a step too far. So, here's what happened

V's Hat.
Is done. Definitely not my finest work: I need to practice sewing jersey, and it's too big, but it still looks cute. I'll take a photo when I can

Insa Skirt

Here it is without the elastic waistband sewn yet, I needed to check it against her waist.

I'm pretty pleased with this. It was really good fun to experiment with patterns and add whatever I wanted. I made some piping from string and ribbon to edge the front panel:


It was quite a bit of work, and you know what? E's not interested in it AT ALL. Sigh. That's how it goes sometimes I suppose.

In all, KCWC was a success for me. It made me find some time to sew, and when I did, I found it wasn't all that intimidating and I could actually get something finished.

And so, since then, I've made something else:

This is from Sew What: Skirts by Francesca DenHartog. It's the A-Line Skirt, Fitted Waistband version that you create the block/pattern for yourself.

And I'm pretty pleased with it. It fits! for one, and it's nicely Autumnal, and it was pretty easy to do if you took it step by step.

I used Ikea fabric (total cost £3.99) for the outside, and the fabric for the facing was from my stash of scraps, so also pretty cheap.


Now, what's next....