London Baby Mei Tai

As my new nephew is in the market for a carrier for his holidays and I have nothing baby sized left in my collection I decided to put this together based on this pattern following a chance visit to the fabric shop in Bletchley.  I used navy needle cord (2M) and some London print cotton fabric (FQ) for the panel.

Fabric ready to go

Cutting the straps

Panels for the body

All done!  For safety the straps must be attached with a box junctions as per the instructions : 0 )

Butterfly Toiletries Bag

Super-fast construction using very lazy iron on hook and loop - a colourful little bag to hold hairbrush, lip gloss and nail files for the birthday girl.

Birthday Girl Scrappy Apron

I have a little girl that's going to be 8 later this week and she loves baking cakes.  I had just about enough scraps left from making her quilt to have a go at a very girlie apron for those fun and messy baking sessions.

I had to piece together the front as the scraps I had were small but hopefully it adds to the charm.  I had enough spot fabric for the lining and neck straps/ties.

I made a small pocket with another small scrap and lined it with the spot fabric.  Folded the top over to give the effect of binding.

Stitch pocket to front of apron.

Make some ties and a neck strap in the style of bias binding by ironing and then top sewing.

Sew the front and lining together (wrong sides facing) along all but the bottom edge.  Remember to include the neck strap and ties in the seams - these will be on the inside of the apron as you sew so that when right sides are out they will be in the right place!  Turn right sides out, fold, iron and hem the bottom edge and then top sew all round the edges on the right side for a nice finish.

Let's hope she likes it!

Costume for Greek Day at school

This project required a visit to Dunelm (which now boasts a coffee shop!) for the cheapest single white bed sheet they sold and 2 meters of 99p/meter curtain tie-back cord in a fetching shade of gold.  I also dug out a remnant of the sheet I used to back Grandma's Quilt from the scrap bag for a splash of colour!

Supplies at the ready!

For the average 10 year old boy you need a third of a single bed sheet for the toga.  Fold the sheet in half along the longest length (the fold will go over the shoulders and down the arms) and cut off a third of the sheet.

Fold this piece in half again along the longest side and chop out a rectangle to shape the arms and body then sew the edges you have just sut out to make the side and underarm seams and hem the sleeves as required. 

Draw and cut out a triangle for the neck opening about 10 inches across.  Zig-zag over the edges to stop from fraying.

That's the basic toga tunic finished!

Measure your child from shoulder to hip and sew a band of fabric twice this length into a sash to add some colour.

Add the tie-back cord as a belt and it's done!

Cath Kidston Scrappy Skirt

Following a bit of a lull in the sewing department the forthcoming birthday of a very special young lady who is going to be three got me in a creative mood again.  I had some rather girlie Cath Kidston scraps left over from Elisha's quilt so decided to try and fashion them into a skirt of sorts.  I used Nathan as a model for measurements as he was the person closest in size to the intended recipient so I knew I was aiming for waist around 20 inches and length around 14 inches.

First step was to make a panel template 2.5" wide at the top (0.25" seam allowance at each side) and 3.5" wide at the base with a depth of about 16" to allow for the fold over waist.

Then I cut out 12 panels from my stash - 2 more than needed for the 20" waist so the final item would have some gathering.

Then I arranged them into an aesthetically pleasing sequence and began sewing the long edges together.

Which produced a quarter doughnut shaped effect.

Samuel and I were multitasking on reading homework for the above steps...

I could have folded over the lower hem but decided to bind it with the selvage edge of one of the fabrics  had used to keep as much length as possible.

Starting to look like an actual skirt now...

Final step was to fold over the top hem by about an inch to make a place for the elastic to go, add the elastic and sew the last long side hem together, trapping the elastic in the final hem.  Here it is all finished.  Hope the Birthday Girl will like it!

Handbags at Half Term

So a half term Tuesday morning with my boys of three and ten and my daughter of seven and 3 of her friends, I decided that some structure might help keep things real.  We went for a make your own handbag workshop for the girls.  Samuel went for make your own phone cover and Nathan went for mostly colouring in and cutting out.  We went for super simple fleece fabric so hems were not an issues.  The girls made a paper pattern each and then drew round the pattern onto the fleece.

Nathan opted to mostly do colouring but chose pink fleece for his bag - all the girls went for blue.

The girls then cut out their fleece shapes and decorated them with fabric pens.

Samuel used a recycled T shirt to make a cover for his phone and then decorate it to his own personal design.

The girls then all had a go at turning the handle on the old Singer 66K to put their bags together before we attached a strap to each one and they all dashed off to play on the Wii!

How many sewing machines does one woman need?

I think that about four is the ideal number : 0 )

1916 Singer 99K

1918 Singer 66K

1950's Singer 185 electric

New Toyota with many fancy features

Birthday Quilt for Grandma

I've been to the Cath Kidston shop again!  Added hand prints of the children to this one using bondaweb.

Cath Kidston Quilt

I'm lucky enough to have a Cath Kidston outlet store just up the road from me so I used a bargain selection of fabrics for my first attempt at quilting.  It's a firm favourite with both my daughter and the dog.

Recycled Sari Mei Tai and Bag

This traditional Asian style baby carrier is fab for when little legs get tired.  This is toddler sized example has a fabric body of recycled Sari fabric and gold strap fabric from Dunelm.  The waist and shoulders are padded with fleece fabric.  There was enough fabric left over for a matching handbag too!

Boden inspired child's T-shirt

Boden at a fraction of the price!  This is a supermarket value white T-shirt with owl decoration using some quilting offcuts.  I used bondaweb to prevent fraying and to make it easier to build up the layers of the image.