November is nearly over, so it must be time for an update!
Sewing:
This has been a month of quite dull but very useful sewing. I had a sudden paranoid thought that if a winter vomiting bug hit I wouldn’t have enough spare bedding for Daisy’s bed. She used to be in a double bed (long story) but is now in a single, and I only had one set of bedding for it. I’ve been saying for ages that I’d cut down her old favourite duvet cover to make a single, and this month I finally did it. I also made a fitted sheet out of another old duvet cover that had a few random stains from fabric paint (absolutely impossible to remove, but I managed to avoid them by careful cutting) and I cut down her mattress protector too. I’m particularly proud of the way I utilised the print on the duvet cover to do this on the side of her mattress:
And as if all that wasn’t enough, I bought Gabriel his first proper duvet. It was a cotbed size with a dinky little pillow to match, and rather than buy readymade covers I decided to economise and again cut down an old duvet cover, carefully avoiding some random tears and bleach stains. He now has the cutest little bedding set! Continue reading “Craftysticks November update”
This quilt was about eighteen years in the making, I kid you not. Now it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out it was started way before Daisy was even a twinkle in her daddy’s eye. Originally it was intended to be a sofa throw for my parents, and it was my sister who started it. I think it’s fair to say she knew bugger all about quilting, and back then in the days of 56k dial up modems the internet was not as comprehensive a source of crafting knowledge as it is now.
So there were some odd choices made. A peculiar mix of quilting cottons and dressmaking fabrics, chosen purely for the colour and pattern. And Bek cut them out using pinking shears with a 1.5 cm seam allowances as that was all she’d ever sewn with. She ended up piecing about five rows, pressing seam allowances open and painstakingly making sure every square lined up perfectly. She’s that kind of person. A perfectionist through and through.
It’s fair to say it took her forever to get that far, and then Mum redecorated her living room in vibrant peach (why, Mum? Why?!) and the colours didn’t go any longer. She got me to batik her a few blue and peach sofa throws instead. Continue reading “A quilt for Daisy”
So, I was planning for my first proper post here to feature some glamorous outfit for me, or a cute one for Gabriel or Daisy, but instead it’s a rather twee peg apron. Do I care? Of course not, because I now own the best peg apron in the land 🙂
I also intended to take photos with our glorious new garden as a backdrop, using Andy’s DSLR (and in the spirit of our new co-habitation, I’m now considering it my DSLR), but neither of us know where the tripod or remote control for it are. Best guess: buried deep in the garage. So instead you get some decidedly shonky pics taken using the self-timer on my phone. Ah well. That’s real life in all its unvarnished glory for you.
Anyway, on with the sewing talk. You’ll see why I needed a new peg storage system when you look at the next picture:
Yep, that’s the old peg bag on the left. It was one of my first sewing projects when I took up in earnest about eight years ago, and I made it up as I was going along, using an old pair of jeans, a wire coat hanger and a short length of pre-made bias tape. It served its purpose, but the bias binding was pretty bloody awful. I don’t think they had handy YouTube tutorials for stuff like that back then. Or if they did, I didn’t know how to search for it.
This time around I decided an apron would be more functional, especially when dangling a baby off my hip. I found a free pattern and tutorial on Craftsy, and used up some printed fabric from my stash. It’s a linen curtain that I found in a charity shop years ago and always loved but never found a use for. It’s too stiff for clothing and possibly a little purple to go anywhere inside the home (lots of earth tones), but I still adore it. I teamed it up with some offcuts of a purple linen/cotton fabric I made a pair of self-drafted trousers from a few years back (and purged in my recent KonMarie decluttering binge because I never liked them on me). As luck would have it, it went PERFECTLY with the print.
The tutorial was easy to follow and would be suitable for a beginner. I did find one small error (On page 4 of pattern it says “Match the tie, wrong sides together” – that should be “right sides together”!). Other than that, the project blurb promised a hanging loop, but this wasn’t included in the tutorial and I didn’t realise this until the end, by which point it was too late to add it without having to unpick topstitching. Not a problem, though, as I don’t have any hooks to hang it from anyway.
The changes I made were to swap the ric-rac for home-made bias binding on the pocket edges. I’ve never been a fan of ric-rac and I thought this would give a more durable finish. I also sewed a small reinforcing triangle where the pocket top meets the side seam.
I did wonder if the waistband should be interfaced in the middle where the apron joins, but I’m glad I didn’t as it’s wonderfully comfortable without. The band is the perfect length and width to go round my body twice and still tie in a generous bow (as you can see in the dodgy, over-exposed picture below)
The only change I might still make is to sew another line of topstitching along where the apron joins the waistband, and perhaps either some bar tacks or a more decorative hand-embroidered stitch to reinforce at each end of the join. These places take a lot of strain as I have a huge amount of pegs to deal with all the nappies I’m washing these days. Oh, the life of a mother is so glamorous!
So, all in all I’m really happy with the peg apron and am contemplating making one for my mum too. And then I just need to think of a use for the rest of the patterned linen. Maybe an ironing board cover? Or a sewing machine cover?
Anyone else own a peg apron? And do you find it worth foregoing the glamour of a dressmaking project in favour of something functional you’ll end up using on a (pretty much) daily basis? This has got me pondering knitting my own dishcloths again…
This quilt was about eighteen years in the making, I kid you not. Now it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out it was started way before Daisy was even a twinkle in her daddy’s eye. Originally it was intended to be a sofa throw for my parents, and it was my sister who started it. I think it’s fair to say she knew bugger all about quilting, and back then in the days of 56k dial up modems the internet was not as comprehensive a source of crafting knowledge as it is now.
