Month: September 2010

Library Book Bag

Library Book Bag

I’ve been making this book bag for several months now, on and off. It was a request from my parents, to make them a nice sturdy bag that they could use to carry a little pile of hardbacks home from the library.

This is actually bag number two, as I somehow managed to get myself a bit confused with the measurements of the first one. For reasons I’m not quite clear on, it came out wide instead of tall. (No, I didn’t sew the pieces together the wrong way round. Honest.)

Thankfully I had enough fabric left over to make this second bag… and there’s still a piece big enough to make bag number three, just in case I’ve accidentally done something daft with this one as well!

A dress to match the ties.

Simplicity 2307

Okay, so I did have an ulterior motive for making those last two ties. This is the dress version of Simplicity 2307, the same as the fish blouse I made a little while ago. Once I’d cut out the hem band, sleeve bands and neck facing I had plenty of fabric left over, so a couple of ties seemed like the way to go.

This dress isn’t supposed to fasten at the neck, but I find it a little low cut for my liking. I plan to add a hook and eye, or a little button and a thread loop, and I thought that a matching tie would be the perfect finishing touch.

Hopefully it will also help to disguise the fact that I just can’t seem to get the neck facing to sit nice and flat. I had the same problem on the fish blouse, but thought that it was to do with having too many layers of interfacing. I didn’t interface the neck facing this time, and the back piece just doesn’t want to stay put. I need to double check the pattern piece, because it seems as though there’s just too much fabric there.

I’m also a little bit uncertain about the proportions of this pattern. With the hem band it comes down to my knees, which is fine, but there’s something about the length of the dress or the depth of the band that just isn’t quite right. Maybe the band needs to be a little less deep. Maybe the dress needs to be a couple of inches shorter. Maybe the band stands out too much because of the contrasting fabric. I’m not sure.

I think I need to wear this one a couple of times, before I decide what alterations I need to make to the next version.

Suddenly obsessed with ties.

McCalls 2447

Not a bow tie this time, but a tie nonetheless.

The pattern is McCalls 2447, cut to the shorter length.

Although I love the way it looks, I have to say that quilting cotton is really not the best material for making a tie. Because it clings to itself, it’s difficult to make a decent knot and to slide it into place. It also gets very crinkly where it’s been tied, and I don’t think anybody would appreciate having to iron their tie as well as their shirt!

So cool I made another one.

Bow Tie

Yep, it’s another bow tie. I couldn’t resist.

Exactly the same as the last one, the pattern is Kwik Sew 3183, and the fabric is “Sew What?” by Michael Miller.

Shaharazad

This is a little picture of “Shaharazad”, a mechanical organ owned by Boz Oram.

Today we went to Crofton Beam Engines with the Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers, to dance at their end of season gala. There were some vintage cars, a few different steam engines and this mechanical organ. (And the enormous beam engines, of course.)

It was very loud, but we stood and listened to it for ages, and I eventually plucked up the courage to be a little bit cheeky and ask Boz if I could have a look inside.

Oh my goodness, it was AWESOME.

Boz showed me all the cards of music, and how they fed through, and explained how he makes them (he makes them himself!) and I was gutted to have to run away after only a few minutes because it was time for me to play the recorder again.

It was absolutely mesmerising to watch the wheel turning and the holes in the cards slowly moving along – I was surprised how quickly I could read the holes, and understand what the music was going to do next.

When I run away and join the circus, I’m definitely going to have a mechanical organ. (And some earplugs. Very loud!)

I had an absolutely fabulous day. Apparently I’m even more of an Industrial Revolution nerd than I’d thought.

Bow ties are cool.

Bow Tie

This afternoon I made a bow tie, using Kwik Sew 3183. This is the self-tie version, and I looked at a lot of instructions for how to tie it, but these seemed the easiest to follow. It’s nowhere near as difficult as some of the instructions seemed to suggest.

The tie is supposed to be adjustable at the back, with a button and several buttonholes. As I don’t have an adjustable neck, I think I’ll probably just check the length against my shirts and then sew the two halves together. (Although the advantage of having a fastening at the back is that you only need to tie it once, and after that you can cheat.)

The most difficult part of the process was turning the pieces to the right side after sewing them. I do have a loop turner, but I can never seem to get the hang of it so I went with the time-honoured method of fiddling about with a pair of tweezers and my fingernails. I might use slightly lighter interfacing next time (this is medium weight on quilting cotton), to make things a bit easier.

I have lots of little pieces of fabric lying around the place that I was originally going to turn into belts. I think they might be heading rapidly towards becoming bow ties now!

Lace & Ribbon Choker

Lace & ribbon choker

I was going to write a tutorial for this, but I honestly can’t imagine how anybody could need one.

  1. Take a piece of lace that fits around your neck.
  2. Take a piece of ribbon three times as long as the lace, and narrow enough to fit through the holes.
  3. Thread ribbon through holes in lace.
  4. Add a pendant if you happen to have one lying around.
  5. Tie it around your neck.

Ta-daa!

Dr Seuss Dress?

It has to be said that I’m well known for making ridiculous dresses from quilting fabrics with completely inappropriate prints. So when I discovered that eQuilter were stocking Dr Seuss fabrics, my heart leapt!

There are seventeen different prints, but I think that these two are the most suitable least inappropriate best ones for making a dress.

The sketch above is Simplicity 2307, the same as the fish blouse I made the other week. The version with the hem band provides the perfect opportunity for using a novelty print fabric without the garment being too overwhelming or “cartoony”. I hope.

I have a couple of fabric combinations already lined up for this dress, so I’ll make a version with the hem band and see how it looks. Then I need to decide whether a thirty-seven-year-old woman should really leave the house wearing a dress with a Dr Seuss print.

(I think we all know that the answer’s yes.)

Off to Oxfam

Off to Oxfam Reworked

One of the dangers of working in a fabric shop is that you collect fabric. Lots of fabric.

Ideas, plus staff discount, equals a Shed full of fabric that I’m probably never going to use.

So, this is the ten carrier bags that Paul and I cleared out of the Shed last week, and took down to Oxfam Reworked.

Lyndsey Clark runs the new shop in the Harris Arcade. She and a team of volunteer designers take garments that are not suitable for sale in a regular Oxfam shop, and re-work them into unique pieces of clothing.

Hopefully Lyndsey can put all this fabric to better use than leaving it piled up in a Shed for years on end.

Colinette Cate Cardigan

Colinette Cate

I knitted this cardigan at record speed, so that I could wear it to a wedding back in June. The yarn is Rowan Polar, and it had a previous life as a tank top from Teva Durham’s Loop-D-Loop book. I love the colour, but I have to confess that I’m not a huge fan of the yarn itself. It has a halo of alpaca fluff that sheds all over the place, and you can see that it’s already gone very bobbly under the arms.

I do like the style of the cardigan, although I usually wear it untied as the knot is quite bulky. I also want to add a piece of ribbon across the back, to stop it from stretching and slipping off my shoulders. I’d like to either amend the pattern or maybe find one that’s already written for DK yarn, to make a lighter weight cardigan. I’m not sure I have the attention span to knit this style of cardigan in a lighter yarn though – the draped fronts would take forever!