And sew to bed

Hello again

I thought you might like to see this sewing project using a pattern from Love Patchwork & Quilting magazine, issue 28 which I thought would suit both my younger grand-daughters for a present, as I had made the coveralls for their siblings.

The pattern consists of two larger mice, two smaller mice and their bed.  I thought the mice might be tricky but not the bed - how wrong was I!!

I matched the mummy and daddy mice's ears to their baby son and daughter and they all have a little string tail!  I made the mice from felt and used matching fabric for the ears.  The mice were unbelievably easy and the instructions were very good.

However, the bed!!  Oh my word I could not get my head around the pattern.  I showed it to several sewing people but they were stumped, like me.  In the end I emailed them at Love Patchwork & Quilting and explained my problem.  They were very helpful and sent me a bit more detail.  Unfortunately I still couldn't get my head around it.  Eventually I took it with me to Sharon Gammon at WhoopsieDaisyDesigns to see if she could see what I was doing wrong.  It took Sharon quite a while, but she eventually managed it!  Hurray! and you can see the finished project.  

For the bed I made some little patchwork squares and quilted them for the front of the bed, which had some padding on it.  The pillow I made it from some white minky material I had in my stash and then padded it out with some toy wadding.  The rest of the bed is made up by doing some 'fabric origami' (hence my problems!  You use some cotton fabric for both the lining and the bed backing. 

I'm still not sure I can work it out again, but I shall make some notes to add to the instructions so I can do it again if necessary.  

I really do love it and I hope my grand-daughters will love it too.

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Children's coveralls

Hello

Today I'd like to show you some coveralls I made for my four grandsons.  I hope they will be ideal for them to paint, draw or even eat in.  

I made these using a pattern from Sharon Gammon, WhoopsieDaisyDesigns and fell in love with them.

I bought some Super Heroes cotton material from the Pumpkin Patch in Hailsham, East Sussex and lined it in plain yellow cotton with a green pocket.  

I cut out a character from the material and appliquéd it onto the pocket.

The back has two sets of ties one by the neck and one by the waist.

The second coverall I made using pirate material which I already had in my stash, on sale from Dunhelm Mills a couple of years ago!

This time I cut out the treasure chest and the pirates' galleon and appliquéd them onto the pocket before I put the pocket on the main fabric.

As you can see I lined it in red cotton and used plain blue cotton for the pocket.  

Again I put two sets of ties on the back.

These two will be winging their way to Australia together with a present for my grand-daughter, which I shall blog about soon.

I also made a spiderman one and a woodland one for my other two grandsons, but I forgot to take photos of them!  

My grandsons range from 16 months to 6 years old and I have made the same size for them all.  The beauty of this pattern is that it will fit all sizes around the neck and waist and all that changes is the length.  I must say it is quite long on my 16 month old grandson but he is probably likely to  make more mess than the others!  (possibly!)

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Artisan peg bag

Hello again

Today I would like to share with you another make, pattern and material from the clever Sharon from WhoopsieDaisyDesigns.  This is a design for a peg bag which you can hang round your neck, leaving your hands free to hang up the clothes.

This is the front which has two pockets at the front.  The pink spotted contrast marks the two pockets, one in front and one behind.  

This is the back of the bag.  I do love the cats on the material.  

I made this for my friend's  birthday, who loves cats.  She was very pleased with it, even though I had to explain to her what it was for!

These two pictures show in more detail the two pockets of the bag.  You can see there's plenty of room for pegs.

It doesn't have to be used for pegs, of course.  I think it would be just as useful for gardening or even for crafting.  Everything in one place.

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Little make-up bag

Hello

Today I'd like to show you a make-up bag I made using WhoopsieDaisy Designs at my sewing class near Horam.  I go every Monday morning and we have so much fun.  Sharon Gammon is such a good teacher.

The top of the bag (the pink bit) uses a material called faux leather, which I bought from Debbie Shore on the Crafters' Companion website.  It comes in various colours and I must admit I love using it.  I plan on using it to make some handbags soon, so watch this space.   The bottom part and the lining are made from Tilda fat quarters.  

The faux leather is really soft and feels just like leather.  It is also very easy to sew with as the back is just like normal fabric.  It can be ironed (but only on the wrong side) and treated just like ordinary cotton.

The bag has a zip and Sharon shows how easy it is to insert a zip into a bag.  The pleat in the bag, both inside and outside, allows you to put much more into the bag than you would think as it expands.  

I really enjoyed sewing this bag and I have already made a couple more, one of which my eldest grand-daughter 'snaffled' for her make-up!  

This one I made for my friend Sue and I think she was pleased with it; she certainly said she was!

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Yet another apron

Hello

Here are pictures of my third and last apron I made for Christmas presents.

This time I bought the material.  My daughter-in-law said that her sister loved 'vintage' style and I didn't have any appropriate material.  I bought the material from a shop in Horam, East Sussex (I'm afraid I don't know the name, we just call it the 'fabric shop in Horam').  

I used the same pattern from Sharon at Whoopsiedaisy but used one of the alternative options, using the heart shapes.  I added the frill around the heart bib as I wanted to make it more 'vintage'!!

She seemed tickled pink with the apron.  I do hope she like it!

I must say I probably won't be making any more aprons in the near future!!

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Beatrix Potter bunting

Hello

Thought I'd show you the latest present I made for my youngest grandson, Rory.

I bought the Beatrix Potter material at the Malvern Quilt show this Autumn and saw the material in pink, made up into a small cushion with piping round it.  So I bought a metre, planning on making the cushion for him.  I took it to Sharon at Whoopsiedaisy Designs for her to help me with the piping.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the cushion, which came out very well!!  I'll try and get one when I next see Rory.

However I had rather a lot of material left over and Sharon suggested I make some bunting and put Rory's name on it. As luck would have it, there were just enough letters left for me to cut out his name and some Beatrix Potter characters as well.

We decided to make the bunting in a semi curved flag - it gave more room to include the pictures.  I backed the bunting with pale blue flannelette and used pale blue cotton to make the string to hold the flags together.  

I made two flags on each end and put the initials in the middle.  

This flag mirrors the Peter Rabbit character Rory has painted on his nursery wall.

Because the two 'r's in Rory's name did not have any characters I could use as I have with the 'o' and the 'y' I backstitched by hand around the letter 'r'.  Then I machined the square onto the blue flannelette using a ziz-zag stitch.

I do love Jeremy Fisher so was very pleased to be able to include him  into the bunting.

I used the same Peter Rabbit character at the beginning and the end of the bunting as luckily there were two left in the material. 

I was very pleased with the result and everyone who saw it thought it was lovely too.

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Christmas presents I have made

Hello

First of all may I wish you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year.  Let's hope 2016 is a good one for us all.

Now that Christmas is over, one wonders what all the fuss was about.  How come it takes weeks in preparation and everything is over and done within one day?  At least I hope it was all worth while and you all had a brilliant time.

Every year my son's in-laws very kindly invite me over to spend Christmas with them all.  Although we do not give presents I feel I should make something as a thank you for their kindness. 

This year I decided to make aprons for the ladies, my son's mother-in-law, her mother and my daughter-in-law's sister.  You may remember I go to sewing classes with Whoopsiedaisy Designs on a Monday morning and Sharon had a super pattern for aprons.  Sharon has helped me with making them all and I was very pleased with them.

This is the first apron I made.  I already had the material and it seemed perfect for an older lady!  Lovely little teapots and cups and the pockets just matched up very well.

I also made the boxes to put the aprons in from Crafters Companion A3 card.

I think she was very pleased with it!  I hope so.

I'll post the other aprons in future blogs.

May I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.  I wonder what 2016 will bring us all.

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Cuddly Bear

Hello

Here's another Whoopsiedaisy Design that the talented Sharon Gammon has designed.  

My younger son and his wife were expecting their first baby last November and I wanted to make something to welcome my seventh grandchild (!) into the world.

Sharon designed this lovely bear with his snuggle blanket as well.  As we didn't know the sex of the baby I had to go for neutral colours and I was struggling to find neutral fabric that co-ordinated in the local fabric shops when lo and behold, Debbie Shore came on Create & Craft and had this matching fat quarters set,  There are six different fat quarters all in neutral colours.  Perfect!  I decided to do teddy in patchwork too but I could have done it all in one piece of fabric. He is stuffed with toy stuffing and is lovely and squidgy!

I also used Minkie fabric for the front of the ears, his little nose which is heart shaped and the bottoms of his feet.

The blanket is quite straight forward although it took a while to work out where to put the squares!  The picture makes the blanket look a bit creased, but I promise it wasn't.  It was lovely and smooth!  I sewed the blocks together and then put a border around it. I backed the quilt in the lovely 'bobbly' Minkie, which I got from the wonderful Pumpkin Patch in Hailsham, East Sussex and also brought it round to do the edges too.  I then quilted along the seams of each square, sewing right through to the backing.  Sharon is a expert at putting quilts together and she helped enormously, showing us every step of the way, with the binding and quilting which is not as easy as it looks!!

Here are the two together.  Don't they look smart?  My son and daughter-in-law were very pleased and I don't think they were being polite!  They had a little boy called Rory and the quilt and teddy sit proudly on his little crib!  Brilliant.  Thank you Sharon.

Thank you for looking.

Liz x

Christmas Crackers

Hello

These are some Christmas crackers I made at my sewing class.  Sharon from Whoopsiedaisy Designs gave us the patterns and they are very clever.  One assumes they are made using cardboard rolls but these do not.  One piece of the cracker fits inside the other one meaning you can put little toys, sweets, jewellery or anything small.  

I made six of them for my grandchildren for Christmas and popped little bits and pieces in there.  I thought they were a novel way of giving little presents.

This one is much bigger.  I would say its nearly three times the size of the smaller ones.  This one would be suitable to put on the table on Christmas Day as a centre piece.  This one uses much more fabric (obviously) and was a bit trickier to make.  Still it was worth the effort.

If you would like the pattern you need to contact Sharon on Facebook - look up Whoopsiedaisydesigns.

Thank you for looking.

Liz x