Fabric Storage Basket

Well, its Good Friday so I hope you are all planning to cram as much chocolate into your cake holes as possible over the next few days... I know I am!

So issue 2 of the new Simply Sewing Magazine turned up last week (it was a bit over a month and I eagerly anticipated its arrival!). It has a lot of cute little patterns in it, my favourites being the stuffed felt dinosaur which I am totally going to make, this fabric basket and a cute pintucked top. The pintucked top is however very similar to the free Colette sorbetto pattern though it does make a cute little variation and has some very nice dipped hems.

What I think I like most about this magazine though it that it contains loads of simple, yet lovely small makes. Things that don't require a huge amount of fabric or time and whats so perfect about this is that its totally a way of me sewing stuff out of the massive amounts of fabric I already have lying around doing nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, I am terrible at using fabric. I buy its because its pretty and then I fear using it for making something which turns out to be a huge failure, or something which I don't actually like. Well, time to get over that fear, I need to get using some of this stuff I'm hording!.

So this months issue came with a little floral tea towel and some patterns on how to best use the tea towel to make it into something else. These included a roll bag, a lunchbox, a pinny or cutlery roll. They are all very nice ideas but do you know what, non of them are practical to my life (and the idea here is to destash, not create stuff I don't need). So instead of making one of those I used the pattern in the magazine for this fabric storage basket and turned this tea towel into storage instead. 

The pattern called for some lining fabric as well so I used this teal and black fat quarter which I bought about 2 years ago from ebay. Its a lovely colour match and makes a very nice lining in my opinion. The nice thing about this basket is its also reversible. 

The pattern was really easy to follow, just a few straight lines and folds here and there and you have a basket. I did omit the interfacing as the free tea towel was pretty sturdy, it is a little floppy though so you might want to use it anyway. It doesn't fall over though so is perfectly servicable. Its now sat in the living room keeping my current knitting project in order instead of being strewn all over the side! perfect.

 

Have you been reading the new sewing mag? do you have any favourite patterns, or makes from it you want to show off? Please feel free to leave a linky below.

Happy Easter :)

Completed Norman

I actually knitted a whole jumper!

That might not sound too amazing to a lot of you, but I have actually never started and finished a jumper knitting project yet (and there are a lot on the half done pile!) so I am feeling very proud of myself right now.

Not too proud though, I started this jumper 9 months before my nephews 2nd birthday as part of his birthday gift. He is now 2 years and 11 months and I completed it this week! Oops! Safe to say its not going to fit him now, but at least I know I will have a little boy who will grow into it. I will just need to find a new knitting project for my nephew.

The pattern is from 'Just Baby' by Rowan and is called Norton, I'm not 100% sure I didn't pick this pattern because the child is so cute! I loved the colours though so knitted it in the exact same wool as the pattern. Its very boyish but still not dull and too babyish.

The pattern was really easy to follow and not actually too arduous to knit, I just put it down and didn't pick it back up again. I have got half a mind to knit it in a smaller size and some different colours now, but I think I should give some other baby patterns a go. I do like a baby knit though, they come together really quickly and I really think I have picked up a bit of the knitting bug now.

I really like the button panel on the front of this jumper. It was probably the most awkward part to knit up but it gives a nice little detail to the front and will make taking it on and off the little man really easy. 

Keep your eyes peeled for what will come next....

Do you have any really good baby knitting patterns you like to know? I would love to hear your recommendations.

Post Wedding Round Up: The Bridesmaids Dresses

Its that time of week again, and this week I am showing off.... The Bridesmaids.

How gorgeous do they look! These girls they are the absolute perfect mix of absolutely wonderful, and a little but nutty! We have my sister on the left, my friend Stevie in the middle who gets far too excited about everything, and Yvonne on the right who is just the right amount of good and bad influence on me (probably tipped on the bad side, but that's ok right!). They really did make my day, and I couldn't have got married without them, so thank you ladies xx.

The dresses were handmade by the talented ladies of at Frock in Nottingham. Rather than explain how they work myself, here is how they put it:

'Frock was born from a love of beautiful vintage dresses. We have a passion for vintage sewing patterns and enjoy experimenting with original patterns, adapting them and making them  relevant to the women of today. Women who want something unique and an alternative to todays mass produced throw away fashion.

At Frock we make our dresses by hand in small runs, this means that we are free to customise our dresses to suit and to play with the design, mixing up fabrics and design elements at will.

Although our dresses are inspired by vintage, we are not restricted to one era and like to embrace the fun and flirty best of all decades and give it our own twist.'

I really wanted the dresses to be something which they might choose to wear again at another occasion. I also wanted to be able to make them similar enough in style, but also allow my bridesmaids some room for freedom. This is why Frock were perfect, because not only do they do a made to measure service (at a reasonable price) it is also fully customizable. So we went through the fabric swatches book, picked a fabric, and then my Bridesmaids picked the style of dress from their patterns that they liked the most. I think this worked out well and I hope they were more comfortable in their dresses as they picked the fit. Frock then made up all three dresses to our specifications and I couldn't be happier with the result.

 

So I hope you like the dresses as much as I did, enough that I had to go and buy my own Frock frock! I was really pleased, as you can see above, at how well everything came together, from the shoes to the dresses to the bouquets. Not bad to say I am pretty sure I winged all this design stuff!

I am planning an exciting Monster Magic style festive tutorial for you at the weekend (when I actually have some daylight to photograph it) so check back on Sunday to take a look.