A gothic bag

I was asked to make a bag for a tween goth as a birthday present. I wasn’t really sure where to start apart from the fact I would use black fabric and accent it with red. I decided to use a rip technique. So began by backing black fabric (an old skirt that I don't wear anymore) onto red cotton using diagonal lines across the fabric. I made a simple messenger style bag, lined with red, fastened with a silver popper, and silver hoops on the sides for the handle to attach to. I then ripped the fabric between the diagonal lines. Although this did make quite a mess to start, as the black fabric was cord, with time the little bits of fluff will stop coming off and I loved the effect the ripping made. When it came to the handle I wasn’t sure what to do but finally decided to use a black chain (bought from B&Q) that I then wove some red, fraying, cotton through. Hopefully the bag met all the desired criteria. Sept 2010

Baby Snugglies

When I was out shopping recently I saw the perfect fabric for making baby snugglies. So I bought some knowing my sister-in-law was due to have her baby boy the next week. In the early hours of the day after I had made the purchases I had a text saying my new baby nephew had arrived. So I’m glad I had already got the fabrics. I popped into town to get a last few bits so I could get the gifts made before I went to visit that afternoon.
I made two snugglies.
One has a soft blue side and a cotton side with baby dinosaurs on, and I sewed ribbons along the edges.The other one is made all from the soft blue fabric and then I sewed that to a small plush toy walrus. Aug 2010

Hunky Dory quilt

For my birthday in June one of my sisters gave me some money to chose some quilting fabric. I found a collection that I loved by Moda called Hunky Dory and bought a layer cake, which consists of 40 10”x10” pieces of fabric. Because some of the fabrics had quite big patterns on I wanted to keep the pieces I used in the quilt quite big. I cut them all in half and then pieced them together in what I call a ‘brick pattern’. I still need to decide on the fabric I’m going to use for a border and then I can move onto the batting/backing/quilting stage. Aug 2010

Scrap Bag quilt

In June I went to the National Quilt Championships, Sandown. Not only did they have lots of quilts to look at but they had lots of stalls to buy quilting goods from. I found out about what is called a Scrap Bag. This bag contains odd cut offs of quilting fabric all from one collection by Moda (which just so happen to make my favourite quilting fabrics). The bags all contain a set weight of fabric and you can only see one fabric through the window, so unless you recognise that one piece from a certain collection it is just a lucky dip. I lucked out and got a bag that had some really nice fabrics from the ‘Simple Abundance’ range.
I decided to make a small quilt top. I haven’t gone any further than that as I am trying to decide whether to make it into a picnic blanket or just a small throw/quilt.I made the pattern myself just by playing around with what I had until I was happy with the look. It helped that I already had a fat quarter of one of the fabrics from the range that I added for some variation. Aug 2010

Before and After

My next job was pretty simple. I was asked to adjust a dress. I took off the top part and then sewed the raw edge over, and ta-da a new dress/top. July 2010

A tie by any other name...would still be a tie

When it came to my brother’s birthday I wasn’t sure what to make. This was the first grown male I had made a present for. Not sure that he would want a bag so I decided on making a tie. This was quite tricky in the end. It took me forever to find some fabric that I thought would work well as a tie and then the only guidance I had was a project in a sewing book that didn’t seem to tell me all I needed to know. It told me how much fabric to get and which way to cut the pieces of the tie from it but it had nothing about sizes. I managed to find my old school tie to try and work out the size but I think the school tie was smaller than your average tie, so I still just had to make it up. July 2010

Pattern...what pattern?

I made some pj shorts for my next present. I took a pair of short’s my sister had and used them as a pattern to make another pair. Because I used tartan fabric and I wasn’t sure how to match it at the seams I purposely turned the fabric so the pattern went a different way all together. The fit wasn’t as good as her original shorts but for a first try without a pattern I think I did pretty well. July 2010

A sewer's best friend...

With all this sewing I was doing I was finding one problem. I would sit on the floor to pin my project, leaving the pin-wheel on the floor, I would then go to the sewing machine and as I sewed I would take out the pins and put them on the table in a pile. I would then go back to the floor to pin the next bit and find I didn’t have any pins and I would then have to go put them all back in the pin-wheel before continuing. I found this all very frustrating so I decided to make myself a pin-cushion I could wear on my wrist, so wherever I went my pins came with me.It is only small but it does the job intended and doesn’t get in the way while I’m working. June 2010

Sophie the doll

I wanted to make something different so I started scouring the web for ideas and came across the idea of a doll. When researching I found a type called Waldorf Dolls. These have a face that is not just flat, but that is shaped to be more life like. I bought a book and went from there. It is quite specialized and so it took me a while to find somewhere to get the ‘skin’ fabric. It’s also meant to be made from natural materials, but instead of the wool fibres they recommend I just used normal stuffing as I already had some.
The head shaping was quite tricky. I used a sock (new/unused) to stuff then tied some threads around it to make the indentations specified. When I was happy that it would work I got the rest of the things I would need including ‘skin’ fabric, doll making needles, and wool for hair.
I had some chopsticks (that I had never used) that I used for getting the stuffing into all the small spaces, and found that they did a really good job. Who needs to buy special sticks just to stuff toys?
The whole doll was pretty tricky to make, but the hair took forever, as it needed to be hand sewn (something I’m not such a fan of).
I used patterns from the previously bought doll book to make the clothes, but did adapt them slightly. I made the top from some cotton I have used in several other projects and the trousers were made from some linen trousers I no longer wore.

The doll was named Sophie by my niece (whose birthday present it was). June 2010

Another birthday bag

It's been a while since I last posted as I've been working on making more things. Since I still have quite a back log of pieces to put on here the posts will probably be quite short so I can catch up with myself.

Making birthday present’s for my family has kept me pretty busy so far this year. For the 3rd birthday present of the month (June) I went back to my old faithful, a bag. I used material from a jacket I had previously pulled apart. I decided to do a simple bag without a lining and so I used French seams to keep it neat inside. I used ribbon around the top of the bag, sewn at intervals to draw the opening in. I then made a yoyo flower and matching handle in an accent material and added some buttons for decoration. June 2010