Jenerally Speaking,

Patchwork Chair Cover #3

 Another project has finally been crossed off my to-do list! Little R moved from his high chair to a booster seat on a kitchen chair several months ago. Since we only upcycled one... two kitchen chairs for ourselves three years ago, this required us to sweet-talk Grandpa into sanding another down and varnishing it for us. Rachel didn't have the time and I can't go attacking a chair in the garage with a sander and varnish while pregnant. That'd be a tad irresponsible! 

Happily, Grandpa was kind enough to oblige and the only step that I needed to do was to create a patchwork cover for the seat. This I managed to do over the Easter weekend at Mum's, while I was on my big finish-my-WIPs-mission (I nearly finished his Roman blind, made a start on his curtain tie backs and DID finish his monster bottomed trousers and some knitted cotton dishcloths, so I did quite well!). 

Step one was the hardest of all; drawing a diagram to decide how to lay out the patches. I found this not unduly taxing when I made the first two covers. But back then, I wasn't pregnant. I'm really finding the left side of my brain has genuinely packed up and gone on holiday this pregnancy. I'm much more intellectually hampered than I was when I was pregnant with Little R. My vocabulary is limited - I often pause partway through a sentence trying to recall a really quite basic word. Often I have to abandon the search for that word and explain myself a different way. Or kind people rescue me by suggesting what I might mean! I can barely remember any of my pin codes, which has caused some heart-stopping moments in shop queues. And I'm clumsy as heck. I literally cannot carry an object from A to B without launching it into the air or dropping it onto the floor. I'm just generally feeling pretty stupid. So this nearly reduced me to tears. I eventually managed to plan out the seat cover, but while cutting and stitching the fabrics found a glaring error whereby several centimetres had gone missing. Luckily my blagging skills are still in tact!

As I carefully measured and cut the pieces of fabric, I laid out the fabric on top of the seat (which I'd cleverly taken to Essex with me). 

 It looked fairly complicated. And rumpled. 

 So I gave all the fabric a wee press. Much better. 

 Mum walked in, raised her eyebrows and asked how on earth I was going to join those parts together. But that's actually the easy part. You just look for two pieces that join together and sew those together. Then another pair. Or a three. Each time I'd sewed a seam, I nipped over to the ironing board to press it flat.  

Gradually, you join together the twos and threes until you have an entire section.

And before too long, I had the entire cover in one piece. That was when we discovered that due to my calculation boob, it was a bit too small to attach, so Mum had the clever idea of sewing some bias binding all the way around the outside. Genius.

I said the planning was the hardest part. But the most infuriating, rage-inducing part was, as usual, attaching the cover to the chair. For some reason, whoever produced these simple kitchen chairs decided to make the seats from mahogany, or possibly diamond. It is an absolute %$*&^@# to try to get a staple into. Mum's stapler wasn't up to the task. We tried tacks, but they were huge, and were in danger of ripping the fabric, causing fraying So we use some upholstery tacks that Mum usefully happened to have. 

Even those kept bending over sideways. It was a nightmare. I was trying to hold the tacks in place with some pliers, Rachel was trying to hammer them in straight and without bending them, and we were both striving not to swear in front of our toddler. It was a CHALLENGE. 

We eventually got it attached by hook and crook. Looks bloomin' smashing underneath, doesn't it!?!

We could only get three of the four screws back into place to reattach the seat to the chair base, because one of the screw holes had been covered by multiple layers of fabric. Ah well, three will have to be enough!

Little R is happy with it, and it looks very cute, so I'm very pleased we persevered through the difficulties. 

I'm happy with the fabric choices too. I didn't have enough of the fabrics I'd used on our chairs to do a chair which completely matched, but I got some lovely foxy themed fat quarters from my good friend Mandy for my birthday. They go really well with the shades of green and brown I've used on our adult chairs, and bring in some orange, which features in our kitchen too. 

See? Little R's is more childish and colourful than ours, but they clearly belong together. 

Three beautiful kitchen chairs. Aah. Job well blagged. 

(But already, I'm dreading trying to fit the fourth cover on the next chair, when this Little Baby is big enough to require his or her own chair! I must invest in an uber-powerful stapler by then. Or a nail gun.)

Finishing my patchwork cushion cover

I've finally completed the project I started so long ago. Last time we saw it, it looked like this. All sewn up, but no cushion cover to sit on.

It took me quite a while to get round to visiting some charity shops on the hunt for an old knitted jumper. And when I did, it took me ages to decide on a colour. There was a lovely sage green jumper which would have done very nicely, but the other two cushions (the blooming flower cushion and the little granny squares cushion) on our sofa have green backs, so I chose something different. 

A week or maybe two ago, while Little R was napping, and Mum, Rachel and I were relaxing in beams of sunlight, I hacked apart the jumper, overlocked the edges and got pinning.

Then I had a delightful session of delicate hand-stitching. I felt very "couture" carefully stitching my neat and tidy invisible(ish) stitches. (We'd just been re-watching the final of The Great British Sewing Bee, which Mum had missed, so I had couture on the mind!)

I even took my stitching outside for a time. Ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps, of BLISS. Chatting to Mum (who was knitting), enjoying the sunshine and crafting happily. 

 

If the stitching on of the patchwork motif was couture, the making up of the cushion was a complete hash job. See, the jumper was a wee bit small, so I struggled to cut pieces the appropriate size with the pesky armholes in the way. It all had to be tugged and stretched to fit. The stitches went wonky, the corners pulled out of shape and one section is, unbelievable, inside out! No amount of overlocking could smarten up the truly scruffy inside. But no matter, people aren't going to be looking at the inside, are they?

They're going to be feasting their eyes on the scrumptious fabrics on the front... or perhaps the adorable little buttons holding the back closed. 

Maybe they'll be taking in the neat blanket stitching around the border.

Couture? Perhaps not. Cute and colourful? Abso-bally-lutely!

But for a picture of this gorgeous new cushion snuggled up on the sofa with our other blankets and cushions, you will have to wait. The sofa is a terrible mess at the moment. The covers really need washing, and I haven't had the time on a sunny day to get them stripped, washed and hung on the line to dry. I'll get round to it... one day!

Jolly Jean Patch #3

 I've done it! I've finally patched all my jeans. After reverse applique patch #1 and star and starburst patches, I decided to do a quicker method on the last pair, and just machine stich a patch over the top of these holes. 

I chose my three co-ordinating theme-of-green fabrics...

 ... I carefully ironed down the edges, mitring (Oooh yeah, get me! I know the lingo!) the corners...

 ... the hexagon patch was a little tricky, admittedly. Burnt fingers. 

Several days later I found the time to stitch them on, which was even more of a challenge. Ugh. Machine stitching inside a trouser leg. It's like trying to sew the bottom of a bucket. You can't stretch the fabric out straight, you can't see what you're doing and it pulls ALL the time. Quicker than hand-stitching, yes. Easier? No.


I persevered and managed to get both patches attached with my  contrasting thread - hot pink!

 A bit squiffily stitched on, it has to be said. Because of my tussle with the trouser leg there was one particularly wobbly bit...

 ... so I chose to place my hexagon bit over that bit. I hand-stitched it this morning - simple-pimple. 

I really like the pink stitching. I've not done contrast stitching on clothing before and certainly not in pink, but I love it!

Oh, I've accidentally angled the legs in this picture so the patches look straight. They actually sit at different angles, honestly. 

I'm enjoying wearing my other two pairs of patchy trews, so I'm looking forward to trying these (with a green or pink top, obviously!). But mostly I'm just RELIEVED that this job is done. Especially since I have new projects afoot, as a result of our trip to the Knitting and Stitching Show yesterday...

Patchwork Cushion Cover

 

 

My first birthday project! Hurray! While perusing my beautiful Cath Kidston 'Patch' book, I had immediately ear-marked the 'Dresden Plate' cushion project. It's true... I can't resist a cushion cover project! Yesterday evening, I collected together the gorgeous fabric I also got for my birthday and set to work (Ha ha - work! As if! This is PLAY!).

I carefully drew round and cut out my pattern pieces. 

Then I enjoyed stroking and caressing choosing my fabrics, to suit the colours in our lounge.

Then I pinned my first piece. I looked at it. I started sewing the edges down. I looked at it again. Then I realised my mistake and took it apart, then repinned it so the RIGHT SIDE would face out. Dweeb.

I had a soothing evening doing large tacking stitches, then tiny-weeny stitches to join the first two pieces together. I felt properly old-fashioned! (In a good way, not a corsets, lack of medical care and discrimination way!)

What NEAT stitching! By hand! By ME!

This afternoon, while Little R slumbered peacefully after his busy morning I lounged on the sofa, enjoying the view of gorgeous sunshine and fluffy white clouds, and sewing happily to myself. What absolute bliss. Yes, yes, yes, my cup was very much full. Not half full - full to the BRIM.

Once I'd got my twelve pieces all tacked and ready, I lay them down and spotted a bit of a problem. They don't fit. Too many pieces. Or, each piece just slightly too big, so that they can't squish comfortably together.

I had to remove one to make them tuck nicely together. Botherations. Not sure how that happened.

Anyway, this evening I have  finished stitching them all together. But I can't decide quite how to finish...

For a start, what colour and type of material should the main part of the cushion be? Cotton fabric or a woollen knit (another charity shop jumper might do)? I feel it needs to be a plain background, but what colour?

And should this fabulous cushion cover be for the last little cushion left uncovered...

... or one of the large ones?

Any thoughts, anyone?

Sewing Room Door Sign

So, it was my Mum's birthday this week and I was flicking through my Fabric Gifts book pondering what to make when I came upon this page...

Ah-ha! I thought to myself. I could do something like that. Like, not not exactly. See, Mum has this gorgous sewing room (she's taking full advantage of us three girls having moved out) and what it lacked was a lovely sign on the door. 

Before I got too excited, I tested my ability to write words with free embroidery, and was relieved to find it much easier than I'd thought!

Test complete, it was time to have a good rummage through my fabric stash. Ooh, I do like a good rummage through my fat quarters and scraps. 

I found a whole bunch of fabrics which co-ordinated nicely, and had a long play around with arrangements. I tried LOTS of different layouts. I knew I was getting close when I got this. But it still wasn't quite right...

THAT'S better!

A bit of careful snipping followed. But you know how hard it is to cut fabric with neat, right-angled corners. Especially considering the varying degrees of bluntness of all my scissors (Christmas list hint to my family! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge! Need scissor sharpeners!). So I ended up using my ironing thingy, which happens to have squares on it, and neatening up with my embroidery scissors. 

Then it was time for the complex bit - sewing them altogether in the right positions.

Zip, zip, zip with my little sewing machine.

And soon enough, I had a window of fabric, which I just had to sew the middle bit into. 

Next, I sketched on the words and (having seen this hint in Mollie Makes) fastened the patchwork fabric into a embroidery hoop, ready for go FREE with my embroidering.

Chugada, chugada, chugada. I traced over that first word SOOOO carefully. And it was beautiful...

On the front. On the back, not so much. Hmmm. Oh yes! Then I remembered the other part of that tip - put the embroidery hoop the opposite way round, so the fabric is flat to the bottom of the sewing machine. Silly me. Quick bit of unpicking (easy peasy since the stitches were so loosey goosey) and I had another go...

Nearly perfect this time... but the corner had folded over without me noticing.  Blast. A bit more unpicking. Only unpicked half the word, to release that corner. 

Right - time to finish this word off once and for all. Unfortunately, at this point, the sewing machine became over-stressed (possibly it was anxious about this free embroidery business - it was its first go) and refused to co-operate. It just snagged and tangled again... and again... and again! I must have tried, stopped and unpicked at least ten times. I was feeling just slightly harrassed, since I was trying to squeeze this in while Baby R slept, knowing that the rest of my week was chocablock and I wouldn't have time for another long sewing session.

Ok, I'll be honest. I was sobbing and begging the stupid machine to JUST WORK because I was SO SLEEP-DEPRIVED and WORKING TO A DEADLINE. It was a pathetic sight. Jolly good thing that no-one was there to witness it. Eventually I admitted defeat. At that point, I think I had more thread in the bin pot that actually on the fabric!

The next morning I had another go - patiently fiddled around with the tension settings, thread type, fabric type etc. Nope. It just did NOT want to do anything. So I packed up all the equipment and resources I'd need to finish the project...

...and brought it down to Mum's house today. Obviously, I didn't show her the half-finished gift. And just as obviously, when my machine saw Mum, it realised that she meant business and behaved itself impeccably. Little sod. 

However, this was a GOOD THING and I then kicked Mum out of the kitchen and set to work. 

Psst... how nice are these jugs on Mum's kitchen windowsill? Cute, eh? Oh... the crochet daffodils? Yes, I made those ^__^ And yes, in retrospect I should have steamed them. 

In very little time at all, all the words were in place. Hurrah!

I'd packed up a small selection of my buttons for embellishing...

... and chose a little flower for the i dot. I wish I'd brought down my miniature buttons - I could have done a two layer button thing.

Then I sketched out a cotton reel and carefully embroidered around the whole thing. Having finished, I stared at it for a while, feeling rather perplexed. Something wasn't quite right... Drat. I'd forgotten the top bit of wood, so instead of a cotton reel I'd managed to create a top hat! And I'd already done two lines of stitching which meant...

... and heck of a lot MORE unpicking. At this point, I'd been unpicking carefully for ten minutes. And there was still half left to go!

Another vast pile of thread!

Luckily, I managed not to mess up the scissors. Phew. They were hard, because I couldn't really see my pencil sketch on that dark blue fabric. 

All that remained was to stitch it onto some some denim, with wadding inside and... ta-da!!!

One happy Mummy with a beautiful door sign (which, craftily enough, we managed to attach to the door with double sided sticky tape). Genius!

I'm quite pleased with it! For my first bit of free embroidery I feel it's a good effort!

Plus... what excellent unpicking practise!

Big patchwork toy bag

So... this is a project which was begun quite some time ago. Mum got this lovely fabric for my birthday, and I decided to make a patchwork bag for Baby R's toys from it. I scoped out various different designs on Pinterest to get some inspiration, and got some "stiff but flexible" material to give it some strength.

It was after our day trip to Needham Market that I started with the making. We'd had a successful trip to an antique shop (Pipps Too - lovely little place), where I got this old cribbage board and Mum got a lovely little jug and an amazing spinning wheel for a good price. 

My fabrics looked so lovely laid out together...

...beautiful seaside images...

I spent some time playing around with the fabric and working out how to arrrange it. I decided to use the fabrics with large designs on for the long sides, and make a patchwork pattern with the other fabrics on the short ends. Lots of careful measuring and snipping. Measure twice, cut once. (Learnt that lesson one day to my chagrin when I cut a ready-made bathroom blind 10cm too short! That was a bummer - but luckily when we moved house the bathroom window here was much smaller, so we did get to use it in the end!)

After an afternoon of sewing and ironing this was the result - the outside of the bag all complete, with the lining tucked neatly into it (awkward manouvre that - took some wrestling to get it firmly pinned in). Unfortunately I didn't have any fabric to make the lining, so the project had to go on hold until I could get hold of some.

Having acquired some gingham fabric (another Cheap Shop purchase), I ran up the lining by myself, but then I'll admit I got impatient to get on with cute baby trousers, so again I tucked the project away to be finished at a later time. That later time came this afternoon, when, with Mum's help, I got the lining pinned in and stitched on. Then we made some straps for it...

...and ta-da!!

There's nothing inside it yet - see - take a peek!

I've put poppers on so the ends can be held together a bit more securely - helps it to sit up by itself.

Of course, it was too tempting to ask Baby R to try it out. He managed to sit up himself for all of half a second...

...but then he decided to have a little lie-down. It made quite a cosy little bed!

I'm very pleased with it. The gingham peeping over the edge is very cute. I plan to get some GIANT wooden or coconut buttons to stitch on the handles, where they are attached to the bag. That'll be the final perfect touch.

Hand-sewn cookbook cover

Finally, now that Christmas is over and done with, I can blog about the various Christmas presents I crafted this year. The one that took the longest and was trickiest was a sewing project for my littlest sister, Kirsty. My idea was to design and sew a cover for a blank book that she could store her favourite recipes in, since she is a bit of a baking princess. 

Unfortunately, at some time shortly before I commenced this sewing marathon, the presser foot fell off my sewing machine, meaning that the whole thing had to be done by hand. I'd always intended to do the embellishments and decorations by hand, but I had to do the patchworking, hems and seams ALL with just a needle and thread!

Anyways, I started by picking out some fabrics to patchwork the cover and sewing them together in a higgeldy piggeldy fashion:

Really higgeldy piggeldy, since it was all hand-stitched:

Just to be professional, I of course ironed all my seams flat!

Next, I drew a sketch of the front cover, then cut out each letter of the book title. These I pinned to coloured felt, making sure that I followed the pattern carefully. 

Then there was a lot of sewing. Much sewing. Some more felt cutting. A little bit of hysterics when, as usual, I forgot how to start off blanket stitch. And some more sewing. Sadly I forgot to photograph these stages. But here's the finished product!

The back:

And the insides, complete with little pockets to keep loose papers in:

   

Quite cute, don't you think?

Nursery fabric...it's finally arrived!

We have waited a very long time for our nursery fabric to arrive. We ordered it especially from America, because it was just the NICEST fabric and we thought it was worth paying the postage on it, to get the exact co-ordinating fabrics we wanted. We ordered it right at the start of the summer holidays, in the hopes that it’d arrive in time for us to get matching paint then paint the nursery before the end of the summer. Until that’s done, we can’t really go out and buy our nursery furniture. So everything was relying on that fabric arriving.

As a result, we became more and more despondent as the summer wore on and the fabric didn’t arrive. We assumed that it was just taking a long time to travel across the ocean. Eventually, llast week, we checked the progress of our parcel with our tracking number, and discovered, to our shock, that the parcel had been in Ipswich for three weeks!! It was awaiting the payment of a customs charge, but the automatic letter which was supposed to be sent to us never was. Very irritating. Yet more irritating when the delivery company, who I shall kindly refrain from naming, failed to deliver no fewer than THREE times. 

We were therefore becoming quite anxious when it still hadn’t arrived, as promised, by midday today. But happily, at a few minutes past twelve, a van drove down our street and I was out of the door like a shot! Witness the elation on Rachel’s face when she FINALLY got her hands on that parcel! (And by the way, have you EVER seen so many labels on one parcel?!)

She tore open the wrappings and we were so excited to finally see our fabric in the flesh...well...cotton: 

We ordered it from:

The lady who sent it sent a lovely letter too, because she used to live near to us and seeing our address had reminded her of her days courting her husband. She had even generously taken some money off the shipping and added some extra blue fabric. Very kind indeed!

And would you just look at all those beautiful co-ordinating colours and patterns!

This afternoon, we took the fabric on a trip to our local DIY store and got paint made up in the EXACT colour of the green elephant. Next weekend Rachel plans to get painting! Then the nursery will really be on the way! 

Of course, the real work will come during the October half term, when,  under the very close supervision of my mother I’ll be attempting to make the curtains (from the mustard zig-zag fabric, with a band of the red with dots) without removing any of my fingers. Or any other body parts, for that matter. She’s in charge of making the Roman blinds, cot quilt, bags, boxes and other accessories. It's going to look SOOOO pretty!

 

Patchwork Camera Strap Cover

I've finally got round to finishing my camera strap cover, which I started last week, before the insides fell out of my sewing machine. I got the instructions from my second to last edition of Mollie Makes:

So, I carefully looked through my huge selection of fat quarters and selected some colours that I thought went together nicely:

Next I had a lot of very careful measuring and cutting to do:

And soon enough, I had all my pieces laid out in front of me:

I set up my work station in the kitchen, ironed all my squares flat to make them easier to sew and then...the insides fell out of my sewing machine. So it was at this point that I had to stop:

However, I took my little machine down to Mum's last weekend and we worked out how to put the insides back into my machine. Thank heavens for Mum's who are also High School textiles teachers and ex-professional seamstresses, eh?

So today, this being the last day of the holidays that I have to myself, I decided to finish up. I'd sewed my squares together to make the triangle pieces while at Mum's, so my first step today was to sew them altogether, in a pretty pattern:

Next I attached my strip of triangles onto a slightly bigger strip of fleece and sewed down the sides. 

Then I pulled it through... and re-read the instructions to discover that I was supposed to have already sewed the ends up. Never mind, I managed to sew them up by working round the inside of the circle. Challenging, I'll admit, but it solved the problem.

And finally... ta-da!

It's not perfect - there are a few parts where I didn't leave enough seam allowance, so there are some small frays. But I'm proud nonetheless. Sewing isn't my strongest skill yet - I need more practise at it. 

I have now strung my strap cover onto the strap of my camera. Of course, I can't take a picture of the camera with the strap, but I managed to point the camera towards it's own strap as proof that it does in fact work:

Hats, chairs and bunnies

Yesterday I made a hat! As you do... well, as I do, anyway! There was a nice pattern in my Mollie Makes magazine which was supposed to be made with chunky wool, but it worked out quite nicely with some tweed wool I've had in the cupboard for ages. I'm supposed to be making a shrug with it, but the pattern confused me when I first started, so it's been an abandoned project for nearly a year now. 

Making my hat was a great chance for me to use my special bamboo circular needles set that Grandma got me for my birthday. They were brilliant. Easy peasy to assemble and comfortable to use. Love the feel of the bamboo.

Today Rachel's been on a course, so I've been trundling round the house getting jobs done. Did some school work, scrubbed out all the hutches very thoroughly, weeded the entire lawn (which took AGES because of the thousand or so tiny maple tree seedlings attempting to colonise the garden), gave the upcycled kitchen chairs their second coat of varnish, wrote in my diary, then finally screwed the newly patchworked chair seats to the finished chairs. 

Witness the end result!

How smart are they, eh? Ok, maybe smart is the wrong work. Kitch? Definitely funky and unique. I love them. 

Check out how they look in the actual kitchen:

I just wish I had enough scraps of the patchwork fabric left to make a little table cloth to match. I might see if I can wangle something tomorrow. 

Honey has demonstrated her appreciation of our embellishment of the bottom shelf, by choosing it as her new "throne". Rabbits always have a couple of spaces that they like to sit and today, Honey chose the bottom shelf. I think she likes the smooth texture and the fact that there's a little nook just the right size for her. Well, it was just the right size after she'd shoved the irritating ornament out of the way!

Putnum used to sit in the same way on our marble fireplace in the old house. Heck, that makes us sound dead wealthy. I don't think it was real marble. It wasn't even a real fireplace...it was boarded up with a pretend coal stove in it. But it had a lovely smooth mock-marble base and Putnum use to laze their for hours. Rabbits on slippery surfaces are hilarious, because whenever they scratch their ear or bunny roll they tend to slide off in a very undignified manner. Tee hee hee...

While I've been checking for spelling mistakes, Putnum has just claimed the bottom shelf as his own and had a good scent round. Obviously he was feeling left out.