Sunday, July 17, 2011

A productive Afternoon - sort of

So I finally managed to move the boxes and the spare queen mattress we are waiting to be collected that's in front of the sewing cupboard to get the machine and other bits out. Several trips back and forth to the dining table and deep hunting in the cupboard I have been unable to locate the box with my cotton reels and bobbins in it. I have 3 of 4 small boxes for sewing but that all important 4th one, no idea! I can't remember seeing it since we moved in... Another reason to clear the crap out of the office and get it on eBay! I had enough colours to choose from, not perfect matches but good enough so I powered ahead!


Laying one of Amelia's long sleeved tee's on the fabric I well and truly winged this. Not quite as flowy as I wanted it to be but on a smaller child it might be okay. The idea is a top for the Godesses in the school play. I spied the fabric in Lincraft and it is the colour they want and has a bit of sparkle in it but at $12.95 a metre it might be out of budget as I think I would need 9 metres to make the tops for the 12 girls... I could ask if Lincraft would cut us a deal but I will see what the other wardrobe ladies think of the fabric first.

Next on the list was Lucy's dress for her birthday... Should have been in Paris last week, I started it sometime last year, then we put the house on the market and that was the end of that. All I had to do was the zip, the sleeves, hem the sleeves and a bit of decoration on the front. An hour tops! It's from Simplicity's 3588 and I have done dress D in a size 8. Lucy is 9 weeks older than Amelia so I am expecting it to fit her next year. I made one for Amelia last year but it is in the lost suitcase...

 My reluctant model...

 'Okay, Amelia I have a photo of you looking silly, now can I have a nice one?'
 Getting the hang of it...
'The pattern says it has a swirly skirt, can you see if it does?' 'Yep mum it sure does! Can you make me one of these dresses please!'

All I have to do now is sew the zip top in on one side, the button decoration on the front (no idea where the buttons ended up so I might make a trip to Spotlight or Lincraft for some more) and pop it in the post!

In my op shop finds the other week was a nice long sleeved dark blue striped shirt for Stef, the shirt fits him nicely but the sleeves were too tight around the forearm so we decided to make it into a short sleeved shirt. The truth about my dear husbands wardrobe is that his mum made 99% of his shirts, a long time ago! He has a lot of shirts but a few are beginning to show signs of wear now around the neck and looking a bit grotty under the arms and need to be retired. Not wanting to make him shirts and he has a reluctance for spending money on himself, so I don't mind modifying $3 label shirts from Anglicare! So, weilding the rotary cutter and a carefully placed pin I removed the sleeves! You should have seen Amelia's eyes... the size of saucers! 'Mum, what have you done to Daddy's shirt?!!' I explained that he knew I was doing it and the sleeves didn't fit and that made it all okay, in her eyes. Sewed the seam and another little job done!

And what with the off cuts, well Derence (the Dalmation puppy Amelia has had at her side for the past 4 years) now has a night dress, I sewed an off cut into a frill around the cut sleeve and presto, a night dress. I love the simplistic imagination of a child.

Then I started on an apron for my very good, but don't see enough of, friend Miss K. I gave Miss K a teatowel for Xmas that was yellow and had a lemon hand printed on it with a great saying on it, she cried she was so touched with it! When in a queue in Spotlight many weeks ago buying some material to make some curtains for my laundry (the sun through that window of a morning makes walking down the kitchen of a morning impossible!) I spotted some fabric with lemons on it and decided to make her a real Stepford wife frilly half apron as a bit of a joke because Miss K is as far from a Stepford wife as you could possibly be! She will see the humour. I bought a metre of fabric (for $4 I think) and cut 3x 10cm wide lengths for the frill, 2x 10cm lengths for the ties and then the apron panel. I am fully winging this design, it's in my head and if it doesn't work out, no big deal! The machine is on the end of the table and it will stay there. I will be rewarding myself doing some of my BAS this week with some sewing treats.

Next on the list is the curtains, my polar fleece jacket that I cut out 5 years ago!!!! then some dresses for Amelia for summer and some quilt throws for out the back for spring evenings, the boys Christmas quilts aaaannnddd.... a busy few months ahead but I am determined to get some of these projects ticked off.

But before I can do anything more, I need to find that last box! You can't sew without cottons and if all else fails I will be replacing them and 10 or so bobbins!

And there's more!

 We have one for one of the school mums who wears a lot of black, nice and colourful!
 One for Grandma...
 And one for one of the ladies at Mathers in Castle Towers...
And one for the other lady in Mathers at Castle Towers!

Seriously, these are SO easy to make... a good evening project in front of the telly...

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

On a (knitting) Roll!

Well and truly... I am not a knitter, knitting bores me, it takes too long and you have to pay too much attention to it, you use the one colour for ages and whatever you are knitting seems to take forever to grow. My mother has tried, I even think my Grandmother has tried to convince me to keep it up. I love knitted things, I wish I could stick it out but I can't...

That was until I discovered a wonderful wool display at Lincraft with a video demo playing of how to use the product... The product - Elicia Wool. $9.95 a ball. You can pretty much only make a scarf. Scarves are easy, and boy this is quick! No chance of getting bored with this little project. 6 stitches (they say 5 but I have done 6), stocking stitch, 4 hours, done!

This was the first 2 balls of wool that came home, one for Amelia and one for me. 2 pairs of needles? Yep, Amelia thought she'd be able to cope with this sort of knitting...

So I 'cast on' and set about knitting... this was about 10 minutes in...
This is what the 'wool' looks like...
 And this is about 20 minutes in, it kept my attention because it grew so quickly...



This one is mine, it was the second one I did  A khaki colour, really pretty. This is a 5 stitch one and really long. Had loads of compliments about it!

Then there was one for Jess our much loved babysitter who loved it!

 One for my very good KNITTER friend Lisa C!! I almost felt embarrassed giving this to her as her knitting skills are sensational and she has whipped up a few beautiful gifts for me, she buys super expensive lush wool (this is acrylic) and tackles complicated patterns... but she loved it! I think... :-)

 One for Aunty Coral. A pale lavendar and white.

This is all Amelia's doing, we went back to Lincraft at Belrose and she went straight for the display while I was looking at books and picked out more balls of wool, as she put them into my basket she said 'this one is for Lisa, this one for Jess and this is for Aunty Coral. I'd prefer a pink for Aunty Coral but there isn't one bright enough for her' Who is this person??!

Then on Monday, filling in a few hours while Stef slept we popped into another Lincraft at Dee Why and wow, what a great selection they had! Another 5 balls later....



This is also for Aunty Coral, more of her pink apparently.

5 stitches takes me about 7 hours to knit, 6 stitches I can bang them out in 4. (Corals had 6, then 7 and 8 for a period of a few rows, then back to 7... Too funny but if I hadn't told you you wouldn't have known) I am going to try using a portion of this wool as part of the godesses costumes for the Tempest Shakespear play at school, Might have some convincing to do but I think it will work.

I have 3 more to do, one for one of the school mums - in red, one for Grandma - in a deep caramel/brown, and I have a black ball who's destination is unknown...

I hope to get the machine out soon, really soon, I am having serious withdrawals!