I could make that!

I am sure that anyone who can sew frequently sees garments being sold for exorbitant prices and thinks to themselves - I could make that!

Well - I am going to try and do a regular feature on that very thing. Each week (or as often as I find inspiration) - I will post an item of clothing available for purchase along with a pattern that would give you a similar version for a fraction of the price.

Fun right!

Want to play along? let me know and I'll set up a linky tool for next week.

But for now, last week I saw this *hot* little red number available at Ginger and Smart.

Ginger and Smart Dash Dress

One look and I saw the pattern in my head - McCalls 5845

McCalls 5845

It is listed on the McCalls website as being out of print (Boo Hoo - why do they do that!) - but hey you might be lucky at find it at you local pattern supplier/fabric store.

If you want to see it made up there are a number of reviews on Pattern Review.

Before you say - Ugh! External darts - What on earth were they thinking - take a deep breath and give it a try - they are a really cute feature!

I have made up this pattern in a Stretch Sateen and it sews up beautifully. I did make a muslin and had to take in the hip curve a little as well as drop the neckline about 1" - I think I could have taken it more. Sorry - I have zero pics of this one as they were all taken on someone else camera and being 8 months pregnant I can't go and try it on. But I promise that once it fits me again I will do a proper review!

Now I want to make it in red!

Gratitude with toddlers

Good manners and being considerate of others is something that I value highly and thus it is something that I want to instill in my children as being important.

The little H boy has developed a charming habit of saying "No Thanks" when he is asked questions sometimes.
It is actually pretty cute - for example - "Is it time to get out of the bath now H?" to a reply "No Thanks!".

I do wonder though how long it will last.

His Birthday Party on Sunday was an event that wouldn't have gone anywhere near as smoothly without the help and love of some of our family members and of course his (and our) friends who brought him some lovely gifts.

So yesterday I made him some colouring pages that we could turn into thank-you cards that he could send to all of his aunts and uncles and friends.

Download Here

We sat down yesterday afternoon with a brand new packet of *washable* felt tip pens and he scribbled away all over the colouring pages - I printed out as many as I needed plus a few more.

Being a 2 year old colouring is really just a mass of scribbles but that was kind of the look I was going for.

Then I cut out around each of the Thanks! messages leaving a small margin, and we glued these to a bought set of blank yellow cards.

 

I think that it is important for these cards to not look overly 'done' as they are supposed to be coming from a small child.

I hope that small practices like this which we can talk about and have fun with as he is growing up will help him to appreciate and value when other people do nice things for him.

If you decide to have a go yourself - I hope you have fun!

How do you show gratitude in your family?

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H Boy's 2nd Birthday

There is a reason that Valentines Day doesn't register very highly with me these days - that is because 2 Years ago this little boy came into our lives on V-Day eve.

 

So today we celebrated his 2nd birthday with a construction themed party. I will apologise in advance about the quality of the photos - I am unhappy with the performance of our new camera - especially outdoors.

I created some ambiance with some  construction tape from a local hardware store and printed off some construction site signage pictures from Seton.

I also sewed some of these together to make a bunting decoration.

There were Hard Hats and party favours -  little "Authorised Bulldozer Driver" ID tags for each of the kids, which I again made using the customised sign designer on the Seton website.

This is my heirloom to be handmade Happy Birthday banner. I began sewing this over a year ago in preparation for his 1st Birthday. It didn't get done in time for that and then it got shelved in the infamous UFO box. I vowed to finish it before his 2nd birthday. I am really happy with how it turned out and look forward to seeing it through many birthdays to come.

And the finishing touch - the Bulldozer Cake.

 

Not as complex as it looks - although I did use half a bottle of yellow food colouring and it still wasn't yellow enough. Licorice for the wheels and tracks and honeycomb for the dirt out front.

Happy birthday my little one!

More UFO work

I tend to do a lot of sewing at night as that is when I get a good few hours to myself where I can sew uninterrupted. Yesterday evening I went through the unfinished projects box properly and had a general tidy up of the sewing room.

It is one of those 'magical' spaces for the H boy as the inquisitive 2 year old that he is - because the door stays shut all the time - if I happen to leave it open by mistake he will find a way to get in there.

I don't really mind because most of the stuff is on high shelves or in boxes but if I have been sewing a lot there is often pins on the floor or the iron is still out etc etc. I have to try harder to leave things in a tidy state so if he does get in there I needn't worry so much.

Tonight I finished off the quilting on the unfinished quilt project, and I made a little 'sewing toolbelt' or sewing apron. The toolbelt is a project I have had cut out since before H boy was born also. It was one of those projects that got taken over by more interesting and exciting things. However, upon finishing it tonight I can see that I will use it all the time. My cutting table is the dining room table which is at the other end of the house to the sewing space. So I am continually leaving the rotary cutter, the pin cushion or the tape measure at the wrong end of the house. Now I have a little toolbelt I can carry then around with me!

Pics to come when I have daylight to take some!

The UFO pile is getting smaller!

Swaddled Baby Love

So - as promised - here is apic of my first finished quilting based project.

 

Despite the amount of swearing that went into getting it to the finished point I am quite pleased with how it turned out. 

The reason for so much swearing? I sewed the pieces together the wrong way no less than 5 times! I can barely believe it myself! I was having a serious case of baby brain that afternoon!

Then having never sewn on quilt binding before, I followed the instructions in the pattern book for sewing binding. It wasn't as hard as I had in my head that it was and I am a bit annoyed that I have never tried before. It has truly inspired me to go on a finish my other quilt project that has been sitting in the unfinished objects box for almost two years. 

So what is it you may ask? It is the "Swaddled Baby Love" project from the Anna Maria Horner book -  Handmade beginnings.

The idea is that it is a swaddling wrap for the sewn baby doll for an older sibling to be able to have their own 'baby' when the new baby comes along. This is a gift for H boy for when the new baby is born. 

The part that I can't get over is how satisfying is was to sew on that quilt binding!

Watch this space for the next UFO project!

Crazy Pregnancy Sewing

What on earth possesses us to become slightly insane and take on crazy projects when we are pregnant?

Last time I decided to make a quilt for the baby and hand quilt it - when I had never done anything like that before in my life.

That project is still sitting in the box of unfinished objects... I bought the wrong perle cotton for the hand quilting it seems and it turned into the most difficult thing in the world so I ditched it. The resurrection plan is undo all of the quilting done thus far and start over. That is in the pile for when I start maternity leave in 5 weeks and want to do not very much at all except sit on the couch.

There are a number of other things on the list of things to do in that time as well - as you might imagine! They include:

-Practice meditation and calm birthing affirmations
-Sew the remainder of my nursing nightgowns and hospital lounge PJ's
-Finish sewing the two pairs of baby pants that I started when my last baby was very small and by the time I had finished the first pair he had grown out of them.
- Work on some other UFO hand sewing projects
- Go and get my Serger lessons
- Swim
- make thank you notecards
-organise bag for hospital
- Oranise a 'present from the baby' for my big boy.

This last one is what I threw myself into last night. It looked simple enough - a toy 'Baby' with nappies (diapers) and a string quilted wrap for the 'baby'.

I dove into my scraps bin and found everything I would need, I made the baby doll last night, thinking I would finish the rest in H's sleep time today. Well it is now 11pm and I just finished pinning the binding to the quilted wrap.

I have decided that I am not a quilter - do I like the finished product - definitely - but I do not like the getting to the end part. I am going to blame the short freearm on my Sewing Machine and say that it has nothing at all to do with my lack of precision and my need for a finished product to admire. In my defense - my sewing machine does have an exceptionally short freearm and it can be difficult, even to sew  garments with.

But - apart from the hand sewing of the binding edge - it is done and it does look quite nice.

Binding is one thing that I have been scared of for some time now and while it could have been really bad  - it isn't it is just not perfect.

I will share pictures of the finished product tomorrow in the daylight.

In the meantime I think I will still go out and buy the H Boy a Zuzu pet as a present from  the baby. He is a boy after all - although I still think that the baby doll wrap will get some use.

The Heartly Tutorial

Valentines day is not that huge in Australia but there is nothing wring with spreading a little love! Inspired by the amount of Valentines day love floating around the blogosphere at the moment I came up with this cute framed wall hanging that is super easy!

So here you have it the:

The Heartly Tutorial! 

All you will need is your bucket of scrap fabrics, a rotary cutter and mat, a larger scrap of white fabric (I used some white on white patterned quilting cotton), a piece of pellon (a bit bigger than the mat of your frame), some vliesofix, about and hour and a half and a frame to put it in! 

Oh and if you want it to be the same size as mine - you will need the Heartly Template which you can find here.

1. First Grab your bucket of scrap fabrics and choose six  scraps that blend well together.

2.  Cut strips that measure approximately 2.5" x 8" from your 6 fabric scraps. I cut three strips from each fabric. Cut each of these strips in half lengthways so that they measure 2.5" x 4".

3. Sew your strips together - right sides facing - at the short ends.

4. Cut your sewn strips in half along the length of these strips. (In the direction of the arrows). you should end up with at least 12 skinny strips of pieced fabric.

5.  Arrange your strips so that they are staggered - see picture below - and are in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. Sew together along the long side using a 1/8 " seam allowance. Pressing in between each strip. Don't worry about being too neat.

6.  Take your heart template (you can use the same one I did here - or make up your own size.) and lay it on your pieced fabric.

7. Pin and cut out around this template. Then cut a heart shape of the Vliesofix from the same template. Iron your Vliesofix heart to the back of your pieced heart.

8.  Then Iron your heart shape to the middle of your piece of while (or plain colored) fabric.

9. Machine applique around the outside of your heart shape. My favorite is blanket stitch. Give it all a good press with the iron.

10.  Take the Mat Board from your frame and lay out your appliqued heart fabric like in the picture below. Once you have it nicely centered, use some sticky tape to secure the edges. You may need to trim your white fabric to get a good fit.

11. Take your Pellon and lay it down over the back of your heart fabric. Again - stick the edges down to secure. Place the Mat Board into your frame and secure the back of the frame with the fasteners.

12.  Hang your framed Heartly somewhere that reminds you that there is love in your house everyday!