Kitty Mini Tulips dress

Hello, its been a while. I'd like to say my lack of blogging has been down to very exciting things going on in my life, but truthfully its because they released a new Warcraft expansion, and well a girl has to get her priorities right! But enough of that, I'm back, I will try and get back on a weekly basis, but it might end up being bi-weekly if I am a bit more realistic with myself. 

So what has been going on? Well its been a busy summer, We have been to 3 weddings since I last blogged and sadly the aforementioned completely ruined my plans of sewing up dresses for these occasions (though I did wear my cherry print bettine to one of them). I did however manage to knock Master Fox up a suit which I really need to blog about. Sadly I haven't managed to get one decent picture of him in it yet. I might need to dress him up for no occasion soon just to try and get one. 

For those who follow me on instagram you will seen I have a shiny new sewing machine. Its a Janome TXL607 and it has 402 stitch options!!!!! yes 402! including letters and the ability to program it. That being said I am just most excited that it basically sews a button hole for me, no more manual 4 step button holes for this gal. Also it snips your thread for you, I'm pretty impressed with that. For information I got it from the lovely ladies at Sew Essential who kindly let me go visit them and let me have a play before buying. 

With that in mind I wanted to start off my reblogging by showing you my first make on this wizzy new machine which is a little girls dress made from another Puperita pattern. Its the Mini Tulips dress which is a reversible pinafore style dress with a button or snap fastening on the front of the dress.

This pattern, as always from Puperita, was a doddle to sew, and on my new machine I swear it took me longer to cut this dress out that it did to put it together (I certainly spent longer ironing than sewing). I am on a bit of a mission to clear out some of my fabric stash so am using up some of the smaller pieces of fabric to make up dresses, either for people I know or to pop in my Etsy shop. 

This particular dress has been made for one of Master Foxes little friends, who is one of the best dressed little girls I have ever met, can you have style envy of a 1 year old? So I am really pleased that something I have made will go into her glamorous wardrobe. 

The pink fabric is some left over chambray from one of my earlier makes, and the cats are some scraps I have had lying around for over a year now. I had thought about saving them to line one of my own dresses with, but honestly I cant see when I am going to make a dress in a colour similar to this that it would be a fitting lining. Plus I much prefer the idea that it is going to get worn and people are going to get to see it, rather than it just being me knowing that its there. 

I also scrounged the buttons out of my button collection. They aren't a perfect match, but I kind of like them, they are a dainty and a bit chintzy. Just take a look at that buttonhole too, it makes me happy how easy that was.

I'm definitely going to be knocking out a few more of these (I have 3 half cut already) so watch out. How do you use up your fabric scraps? I think I am going to start keeping a pile of squares though to see if I can (eventually) make a quilt from it all. So if anyone has any tips on that, size of squares to keep, basic patterns, where to start I will gladly listen to them.

Love at first stitch Brigitte scarf

My sister very kindly bought me a copy of Tilly Walnes love at first stitch book for my birthday. I have had a look at this book before and have been following Tilly since the very first sewing bee but haven't actually gotten round to getting a copy of the book yet so this was a brilliant present (I haven't put it down in the last week and made 3 fabric orders within 2 days of getting it!). The book starts off with the basics but does contain some lovely skirt and dress patterns which I like the look of and wouldn't mind trying and I'm actually quiet keen to try a blouse pattern seeing as I've never tried sewing tops before. What I actually really like about this book is the way the projects are laid out to gradually ease a new seamstress into home sewing. So each project gives you new tips and techniques to try. A good few of these I will have done before but I really like the idea of starting at the beginning of the book and working through the projects one by one to perfect my technique and hopefully pick up a few tricks and new skills along the way. It is also my intention to either try a new fabric type or alteration (or both) with each project (collars/plackets/piping etc) so I can hopefully expand my sewing repertoire. 

The first pattern in the book is the Brigitte scarf which is a long thin head scarf tied in a knot/bow around your head. Not a complicated make in the slightest but as I said above I'm going to start at the beginning, follow the instructions from the beginning and concentrate on making it well and as instructed. I chose to use a skull print polycotton which I had in my stash for this scarf. The fabric was sadly not wide enough for the pattern piece so I cut two lengths of the fabric and sewed them together on the bias in the same way as you would if you were making bias binging and then cut to size. 

The pattern was very easy as expected but I did pick up a little trick to pull out your corners with a pin from the outside, normally I would do this by shoving a knitting needle from the inside so hey, I did learn something new :). The nice thing about this project was it was super fast so I get to move onto the next one really quickly! 

Now my chances of actually wearing this type of head scarf are slim to none, despite quiet liking the print. However the good thing about having to cut two lengths was I was left with a piece which is just long enough to fit round my tiny head so I made a wired headband following the same instructions but adding a piece of wire inside and tacking it in place. I'm not going to do a guide for this, the Internet is littered with them so if you want one just go do a quick search. I do much prefer this and might actually get a bit of wear out of this one in the summer months. 

So what's next? I am going to cheat a little and not make the other scarf pattern in the book as I won't wear that either so next it's on to a pair of pj bottoms which is something I have never done before. I plan on using a cotton lawn as I have a lot of winter pjs already. This will be interesting as the last time I used a lawn it went horribly wrong and ended up in the bin! Here's hoping I can get a few more tips and make it go right this time.

I'm still a little anxious about starting to sew for myself again as I am still a lot bigger than I would like to be at this time post pregnancy. However I start back at work in a week or so, have no clothes that fit me and am really missing doing it, so what the heck. Whats the worst that can happen?

Snuggly Baby Circus Blanket

So I am trying to ignore the little blip in posting that happened in August, but the truth is we were just so incredibly busy I don't think we had one weekend where we weren't off somewhere or had plans to do something. But one of the incredible things we did was to go and visit some friends over in Denmark.

Having played warcraft for such a long time its not really surprising we have got to know some of the people we play with really well after all these years (don't worry i'm not off on a tangent here, it will eventually link in to the post I promise!). We have been saying we should get ourselves to Denmark for years now, and what with the baby now on the way, and a couple of our friends having a newborn of their very own we decided it was now or never really. So off we went over bank holiday weekend for a few days in Copenhagen.

It was great to see our friends and even better to see their new little man Jamie. The one thing I really loved was, that in Denmark, you can buy quilts for baby's and they wrap up their little baby's like a sausage to get them to sleep, its so cute! But in Denmark they do leave their baby's outdoors to nap, even in their cold winters so they do need to be kept nice and snuggly.

This made me really want to make a cute little quilt cover for our little man when he arrives. Whilst on our free day out in Copenhagen being tourists Chris actually spotted one of their fabric shops and let me go in for a wander. It was amazing, they had so many good quility fabrics, I could have easily filled a suitcase and spent a fortune. However, as I could only really buy a little bit, I decided some fabric to make this quilt would be perfect and I should buy something I have never seen in the UK or on the internet... roll up, roll up this adorable circus print cotton (rabbits with mustaches, I mean why wouldn't you!).

I have managed to find the fabric shop online since, but sadly I don't understand a word of it so its very difficult to navigate. But I also haven't managed to find this fabric on the internet anywhere, which is sad as there were some seals with mustaches too and I want to try and get my hands on some of this as an afterthought (so if anyone has any clues PLEASE let me know).

Anyway on to the making of the blanket:

So coming back to the UK it turns out you can't buy quilts for babies younger than one year! We obviously have different regulations over here. This meant I had to rethink the whole idea so instead I decided to just make a nice soft snuggly blanket. Its made to pram blanket size (there is a great link on mothercare which tells you the standard measurements). I purchased some lovely soft spotted white minky fabric from ebay and cut out a piece of minky, a piece of the thinnest tog quilting batting and a piece of the cotton fabric to just bigger than 70x90cm.

The placing of the three layers to make sure they turned right side out boggled my brain a bit, it goes like this:
Batting
Cotton (pattern facing up)
Minky (outside facing down)

Then pin, and I mean pin! all the way around and sew a 3/4 seam around all 4 edges making sure you leave a gap big enough to turn the whole thing the right way out. Using a walking foot will make sewing the three layers significantly easier, but if you don't have one you can managed without just make sure you pin really well, sew slowly and make sure the foot is not down too tightly.

Turn the blanket right side out, poke out your corners, iron, pin down your opening seam and then sew a nice neat line all the way around the outer edge to keep the layers together and make the whole thing look pretty and neat.

There is a much better tutorial here: iCraft Minky Blanket Tutorial

It turned out really great. It's neat, I love the colours and best of all its so soft and comfy. I can't wait to wrap our little winter bundle up in it for a cuddle!

Lastly, to finish off this mammoth post you can have a token picture of that famous street in Copenhagen! There