Category Archives: Sewing

Makin’ Stuff

Yup. Still here, still kicking. Still stitching (but shhh, it’s a secret, can’t tell yet), and today, making bibs.

Bibs-l

This post might have been titled ‘5-minute bibs’, had I not tried to sew while my ‘helpers’ were around. I didn’t think ’45-minute bibs’ was quite so catchy. Honestly… who tries to sew with a 4 year old and a toddler in the house and awake?!

I’ve been meaning to get around to making some bibs for Niamh since forever, as she is quite seriously the drooliest baby ever to walk the Earth. Really.

There have been bibs popping up in some of my favourite blogs lately, too. So when the machine got dragged out to finish off my exchange piece today, I pulled out a few cute cotton prints and some towelling, traced an existing bib of Niamh’s as a pattern, and (some time later) voila! – three cute new bibs. Niamh approves. Terrible photo though – sorry!

Sara Bear

Nope, I haven’t ‘gone over to the dark side’ :giggle: Not just yet, anyway. You know how people say everyone has a novel in them? Well, I don’t think I have a novel in me, but I do think I might have a quilt in me… somewhere. When and how it will choose to emerge, I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, that clue was a bit deceptive. I only used one of those fabrics in this project. I have plans for some of the others, and still more I bought ‘just because they’re pretty’. I have wanted to start building a bit of a craft fabric stash for a while, to entice me back into sewing.

And here she is. Out among the garlic chives and aubergines, enjoying the sunshine, showing off her candy pink Mary Janes – my weekend happy dance: Ms Sara Bear. (Or Sara Beara if, like Finn, you prefer.)

Sara Bear

The pattern is from the Put Together Book #1 (Kitty, Bunny & Bear) by the very clever Hillary Lang at Wee Wonderfuls. I’m pretty happy with how she turned out, though I didn’t get a nice curve on her ears (Finn, being the very literal boy he is, wanted to call her ‘Square-Ears Bear’!) The shoes are removable, and a good thing too, else Niamh would have chewed them off by now. She (Niamh) isn’t much into soft toys as comfort items, but she does seem to think Sara Bear is a pretty good plaything, so I think I have a winner 🙂

Hot and Colds

Thirty-eight degrees and I do not get along so well (that’s °C, aka 100°F). So this weekend has not been so fun. Three of them in a row!!! Yuk :yuk:

Yesterday was the worst. Hot days are even less fun when taking care of a sick and over-tired babe. Especially when feeling kind of sick yourself, and especially when the babe in question is also painfully cutting more teeth 🙁

We all came down with sniffles and sore throats over the last couple of days, probably courtesy of a certain pre-schooler. Getting a ‘cold’ in the middle of a blistering summer is really odd. The usual ‘rug up under a doona on the couch and drink chicken soup’ rule doesn’t apply. Instead all we want to do is lay about wearing as little as possible (!) and doing as little as possible.

But that was yesterday. Today, we have been much better. Niamh has returned to her favourite hot weather pastime – playing in the foot of the shower and getting thoroughly soaked. Finn has returned to… well actually, perhaps he’s not completely over it, he was super-cranky today. But we also fitted in some shopping (mostly me), some cleaning (mostly OtherHalf) and an unexpected visit from my little sister (yay!), all despite the continuing heat. Also, I made a little something. I tried to get pictures but the light was crappy so I’ll try again tomorrow. Here’s a little clue. It’s my latest colourful addiction:

Crafty Fabric Tower

Pretty, no?

My Machine And I

My sewing machine and I became reacquainted this weekend. It’s not like an old-friends-reunited kind of thing, nor do we have a love-hate relationship. My sewing machine and I have at times through my life merely tolerated one another for long enough for me to run off some simple crafty thing, or even try my hand at sewing my own clothes – sometimes with wearable results, sometimes notsomuch. I’ve given up on the clothes thing, at least for myself, though I do fully plan to try sewing up some children’s clothes when I have more time (ha!). But my latest little venture was into the world of patchwork. I give you… my first block:
TealBlock_

See, my mother has decided recently she’s going to take up another hobby… I’m quite sure it’s just another excuse to spend money like there’s no tomorrow :giggle: As luck would have it, we have a nice little quilting store not 5 minutes from here (actually, it’s awfully lucky there isn’t a different kind of needlework store 5 minutes from here, or my budget would be in serious danger). Anyway, while we were browsing in there the other day, I forget how it came about, but the proprietor of the store announced that, as a cross stitcher, I would never make a quilt. Hmmm. Odd way of drumming up business, that. Anyway, I decided to scramble up some various fabrics to make up a block or four, basically just to prove I could. And I can. And no, quilting is definitely not for me. Too much messing about with measurements, too much precision, definitely too much ironing (ick, ack, ptuey!) But hey, I can do it, so there, lady! I made four blocks – one more identical to this, one the same in pinks, and a random-ish block made up of leftover half-square triangles and whatnot. I doubt they’ll ever find a home in a quilt, so perhaps she was right after all. Though I did rather take a liking to these imperfect squares that I found – they seem more my style 😉
LibraryBag
I decided while the machine was out (since it is a fair ordeal to haul it out of the top shelf in my wardrobe), I would run up the drawstring bag Finn needs for borrowing books when he starts 3-year-old Kinder in a week’s time. Much less precision, much more fun, and I love this harlequin-y fabric?! This is 30x45cm as requested by Kinder – can’t wait to see the giant books he must be going to bring back with him!
Apart from that, the closest I got to stitching this weekend was also hauling out the overlocker to edge some various pieces of fabric for upcoming projects. I’ve finally decided on the fabric for my planned Lilly Conversion – Sapphire Sky from Silkweaver. Whether it will be my next new start though, I can’t say. Lots of my stash is screaming at me to be stitched, and I Just. Can’t. Decide!