Why do I make stuff?

Why do I make stuff? Because its fun!

But really that's not just it, the enjoyment of the act of making is a big part of it but I think its more than that. There are two main reasons why I like to make stuff...

The first of these is that I think as human beings most of us strive to learn new skills; whether that be in the workplace, at a sport, or in the home there is a desire to develop ones self. Making handmade is a great way to teach yourself something new. There are so many things out there that you can try at home, or in a class to satisfy this need. For me it tends to be sewing but I have recently taken up some ceramic classes and often try my hands at something new. The great thing as well is that even when you have learnt a skill there are always ways to improve, develop and evolve these talents.

The second I think is inherently linked to the first, and that is the massive sense of achievement and self satisfaction you get from the finished something handmade. This isn't always the case, sometimes we can be too critical of our own, work but generally speaking I personally get a great sense of joy from the knowledge that I made that myself. My favourite thing has always been finishing the face on a cuddly toy, it just brings the whole thing to life and genuinely makes me happy.

So I suppose the main reason I make stuff is self gratification, and do you know what I don't think there is anything bad in that. As long as it makes you happy and is not to the detriment of anyone else have at it!

I was inspired to write this post by watching the final of the GBSB. I just love watching it, but thats because sewing is my main hobby of interest. Having said that at the end of every series I get a sense that if these people can do it then so can I. That life is too short to not do what you enjoy and that you should always seek out your aspirations.

I suppose the next question is why do I blog about it? Honestly its because I want you to like it too! Its not just that though, I get a great deal of my inspiration from the internet, from other bloggers and pinterest mainly. I just sort of hope that by making an online diary of the things I have made that hopefully one day I will inspire someone else as much as I have been inspired myself. 

So that's why I make stuff. I would love to hear why you make stuff, are your reasons much the same, or do you have completely different reasons for your handmade hobby? Please do share x.

Sewing inspiration on a more personal front

 New fabrics, I need to take notes of Alex's faux pas cherry print matching on GBSB this week

I have been doing a bit of DIY this week but instead of posting about that I wanted to write something a bit more personal instead.

I'm not sure whether its the New Year, giving birth, thoughts of spring or the return of things like sewing bee but my drive to want to get some garment sewing done is really overwhelming at the moment. I am feeling so inspired and have so many ideas and things I want to make.

The issue I have is that I am feeling quiet down about my figure at the moment. I realise its only been 8 weeks since giving birth and I cant expect to be back to my old self immediately but I just don't feel overly comfortable in my own skin right now. I am doing everything I can now to try and get back to my old self again; the diet is on and I am snatching as much exercise as I can between naps.

More new fabrics, mostly knits, I love the chevron

 

Now I can cope with this, it's a fact of life, but it does hamper my sewing drive somewhat. The great thing about sewing clothes for yourself is so that you can have something which is a truly great fit. However, as the time I have to spare to do sewing is minimal now I really need to make the most of it. This means that I don't particularly want to sew clothes for my current shape, as its a shape I don't intend to be in for long, as a result sewing isn't really a productive use of my time. It's great to make stuff, but not if you put your heart and sole into something which ultimately turns out to be of no use as you can never wear it.

 Not completely selfish sewing, you can clearly see a baby pattern here :)

So, how am I challenging this inspiration that I can't put to any use? Well I'm stocking up my fabric and pattern stashes of course (I may be going a bit overboard!) so that once I am back to my fighting weight I can jump straight in at the deep end and starting making stuff ASAP. The problem is the more I buy the less decisive I get on what I actually want to sew! 

Can we class 90's grunge era as 'vintage' sewing? I hope so! I got this pattern from ebay showing its age by the celeb styles of Pheobe from Friends and Frasier's wife!

So I think you can see the theme of my inspiration is dresses, dresses and more dresses. I never used to wear them as being an extreme hourglass figure store bought dresses either fit in the bust/hips but drown my waist or fit in the waist and I bulge out of everywhere else. I am looking forward to tackling this later in the year to try and get some more dresses into my wardrobe. Sadly the girls are not any smaller after this adventure, which was not something I needed, so I am going to have to be brave and tackle all form of full bust adjustments head on. Hopefully once I conquer it there will be no stopping me.

On a side note about dresses I loved the fabric of Deborah's dress on GBSB this week. I need to put it on re-run so I can check the writing on the weft! Not sure its my style put it was a very pretty print.

Do you have any ways of channeling your inspiration when you can't make things when you wanted, or have you been inspired to do some sewing since the return of sewing bee? Tell me all about it. 

It's a Boy!

Yes, that's right, it looks like we will be having a little boy join our family at the end of the year. It's so strange, the whole thing feels a lot more real now that he is our son rather than just baby. So now I get to craft and shop with focus! Very exciting.

I have immediately cast on this adorable little jumper. It's actually something I intended to knit for my nephew, but I obviously didn't finish it, and now he is bigger than my knitting so at least I have a reason to start again (in a smaller size so it's quicker to complete!). The pattern is from they Rowan just baby book which I purchased a couple of years ago. As you can see I am knitting it in the exact same colour way, but the colours are just gorgeous for a boy.

I am already racking up my baby boy craft projects in my mind so hopefully we will be seeing a few more projects and a few less life updates. I did try to make a maternity skirt, but it just went monumentally wrong... Twice! So I gave up on that as a bad job and will have another crack at it next week. 

Have lovely weekend everybody whatever you are up too. 

Getting Some Baby Sewing Inspiration

Happy Friday! I am off out for dinner tonight (lack of kitchen) and Mocktails with friends so I am very much looking forward to it. 

The kitchen renovations appear to be going pretty well, they have already ripped it all out, plumbed, rewired and measured up half the cupboards. Hopefully we will have lovely new skimmed walls by tonight as well. I have to say though we are already fed up of the lack of kitchen and everything being in upheaval. I am also really not liking the fact I have lost the craft room to a make shift kitchen! its not good for my productivity.

So instead I have been purchasing an reading this new book from Lotta Jansdotter to get some inspiration for more baby makes. You are really not surprised are you. This book has some excellent ideas in it, my favourite being the rattles (what an excellent way to use up all those spare cat bells we get from the cat collars), the support pillow and the tag blanket. Though of course I can see me making many more of the things out of this book in the near future. You can get a look inside the book on the Amazon site to give you an idea of the types of projects in here but it looks like a great little book. I really can't wait to find out the sex of our little baby so I can start really planning some sewing. 

I hope you all have a fun weekend planned ahead, enjoy whatever you are doing, and I will see you on the other side. 

Leopard Prom Dress

Pregnant lady on a swing in a leopard print prom dress... Very dignified of course! 

So of course I changed my mind didn't I! After making the jade prom dress I decided it was too dark for a wedding and thought about going out and panic buying a new frock from the fabulous Frock. Though I know what I am like and the one dress I would have wanted was the leopard print poplin bombshell dress! So having already got 2 meters of the fabric and a pattern that still fits for now I decided I might as well just have a go at rush jobbing the thing myself last week and I successfully managed to make this dress in time for the wedding.

We had a fabulous time in Scotland seeing two of our friends getting married. What better way to spend a weekend than sharing two peoples really special day with them in the company of more really good friends! We all had a really great time (dispite my complete sober ness) and I am so thankful that we were invited along :) 

We visited Scotland twice in one day (due to our hotel actually being just the other side of the border), ate far too much food, played on the park, danced, sang and were generally very merry. All in all a great time was had by all. And despite this being the hardest occasion for not drinking I was at least glad to not have a hangover the next morning. So here's to many more weekends like this one.

On a less exciting note for now... They are ripping the kitchen out this morning... I am already fed up of. Noting gift being where it should be and tonight there will be even more chaos. I am sure it will be worth it in the end. Here is a picture of what it looked like this morning ( I hate that oven in the middle of the room!).

A little of Everything and Nothing at all

I really feel like all my blog posts should have a 'point' or a specific focus to them to make them as informative and interesting to read as possible, however I have come to realise that that can sometimes be quiet a tall task when also trying to keep up a regular schedule. Sometimes other things in life just get in the way and I either haven't had time to make something to tell you about, or I have had the time to make it and not enough daylight hours to take pictures to be able to show you. So rather than post nothing at all when you expect something from me I thought I would just tell you a bit about what's going on in Fox land.

As you know I am massively busy with all this craft fair malarkey. Its actually really nice to refocus on making things which I haven't made for such a long time, and remember how and why I enjoyed it (more on this later when there is some daylight in my life!). Its also really nice to try out some new ideas and get together with other crafty folk and see all their talent focused into some amazing things. I am really enjoying the process of this, but I am also really looking forward to being able to refocus on other things afterwards.

Mr Fox is ramping up to the last weeks of his dissertation so he really truly is head down in his laptop most of the time. It will be great when he finishes because I feel like we don't spend much time together in the week at the moment. Its not a major problem, just one of those things, but it will be nice to have him back again. It has meant I have had all the time in the world to focus on making things which is good. I am wondering how I am going to find time to make stuff once he has finished the dissertation as most of our other hobbies are actually 'together' hobbies. I think I might try to structure my time a bit and make some designated specific sewing time, otherwise I always feel really guilty when I go off and do something on my own. His favourite is that 'I'll be back in 10 mins' and 2 hours later I come back saying 'sorry, I got distracted and I just wanted to finish xxx' (you know how that goes right?). Do any of you have this kind of issue? I imagine there are many of you with small children to work around as well as husbands and work and everything else.

 

Photo from the Deer and Doe website

I have a sewing list as long as my arm. I have the Zinnia skirt on the go, the lady skater cut out ready to attempt the overlocker and I need to make a velvet circle skirt before it gets too warm to ever wear it. I have some spectacular fabric to match my new shoes which I want to make a dress out of to wear to a wedding in the summer, and I have just bought the Deer and Doe shorts pattern which I know I am not going to be able to resist for long. This is just the tip of the iceberg as well. How do you manage your sewing pile? Priority, whim and fancy, or do you actually make a queue system? I think I need some help on figuring this out!

I also got a fabulous new handbag. You may or may not be aware that Blizzard have released a new free to play game called Hearthstone. I am obsessed with this shit, and literally cannot wait for them to release it on IPad (its honestly not the only reason I wanted an IPad!). But of course if I am going to be able to truly portable play this I need to be able to carry the IPad about with me don't I, cue a NEED for a new handbag. I scoured the internets for days trying to find something big enough for this and all my other crap, with a zip so people can't whip it out from under me. I really couldn't find anything on the 'internet high street' at all, but eventually I stumbled across this Etsy Shop: Milloo. These things are gorgeous and exactly what I was looking for, and the bonus, he is in Greece so lovely EU shipping and no import tax, SCORE. I really wanted the Elessa bag in stripe canvas but he only had one with a yellow trim and you know it needed to be pink. So I emailed him and he very happily offered to make me a custom order which is now listed as an option to buy, yes my taste is awesome haha! Even with him custom making this it took less than 2 weeks to turn up and he provided excellent customer service, I can't recommend this shop enough, so thank you very much.

Photo copy write of Milloo on Etsy 

I think that's about it for now from me. I have a busy weekend planned with Kitchens and Friends and of course Mummy, but hopefully I will find some time in there to take some pictures for more bloggy goodness.

Looking to the Year Ahead:

Last year was full of its ups and downs. The biggest up was obviously being wed to my wonderful new husband. However we did suffer a number of losses in both our families, and what with that, the wedding planning, and the stresses of work it wasn't the easiest of years.

So with that in mind it's time to start the new year off with a clean slate, to look forward and to try to shape 2014 into something much better. I do love this time of year because it give's you the time to reflect and think about where you are headed. I know there is a lot of stigma about resolutions at this time of year, lots of grand gestures and empty promises, but I am determined not to go down this route. How to go about that? Well I think that setting some realistic achievable goals is probably the best way forward. So here are my resolutions for the year ahead:

1. To set up a regular blogging schedule, and to review this monthy to make sure that the content is frequent enough, but also good quality. I would rather be writing twice a week with good content than just quick posts with no depth.
2. Improve my dressmaking skills.
3. To make 5 items which I can actually wear.
4. To knit a jumper
5. To start thinking about Christmas early
6. And finally, to try and be a good wife. Now this isn't a very specific goal,but its the little things I want to concentrate on. Things like trying to clear up after myself, spend more 1 on 1 time with Mr Fox, and to remember that he has a stressful job and to try and be a bit more understanding when he comes home and is not in the best of moods.

They don't seem too scary right? The problem is I have just blogged them for the world to see so you will all know whether I managed to achieve these, or whether I threw them out the window in a rage come 31st January. However I think getting them out in the public eye is a good thing as it means that I can't just decide to not bother, just because I didn't actually tell anyone what they were. Do you have any resolutions which you would like to share with the group, get it out your system, you know it will feel good to tell someone. 

On that note I want to wish you all a Happy New Year... here is to hoping 2014 brings you just enough of the things which you really wanted.