Cushions

Cushions are an important part of our household (as they should in every household) but in ours; as the feathers dissipate from our ageing but much loved Ikea sofa, we stick more cushions on top to compensate, when the kids are tired they head straight for a cushion and a throw (throws, another important part of our household), when they’re sick they’ll do nothing but lay on the sofa all day hugging a cushion and occasionally throwing up on them (I’m thinking Boy Lacer here), they’re dolls’ beds and racing cars, they’re basically important.

We had two much loved Cath Kidston cushions, what were a vibrant red rose print on a bright blue background, which when I initially brought them with a squeal of “I’m buying something from Cath Kidston!” delight (this was back in the days when there wasn’t a Cath Kidston store nearby), they well, clashed horribly with our beloved sofa and then somehow after a few days it was suddenly “Hey actually they really go!”. The kids loved them to pieces, literally, buttons fell off, threads came loose and the bright blue and vibrant red rose faded to a murky grey, so the covers had to go.

I brought some Amy Butler fabric a while back especially for the purpose, I’m now so over Cath Kidston now I’m spoilt with a store in town (not really, says she who’s been eyeing up the Cath Kidston boat fabric). I go to John Lewis and gently paw the towering pile of Amy Butler fabric instead, in between flicking through my Amy Butler book planning what I’ll make when I get beyond the cushion and massacring quilts stage. I had planned to make some envelope style cushions so that I could remove the cushion pads if I needed to (inevitably) wash the cushions but I discovered this afternoon that I hadn’t brought enough fabric, so I opted for a straight forward cushion, with me hand sewing the cushion opening shut. I’m not too worried about what I’ll do when the cushions get dirty, my new washing machine has quite a cool handwash function which so far (touch wood) hasn’t mangled any of the things I’ve put in there that basically I shouldn’t have.

Anyway here’s the cushions, excuse the bad photo, I finished them after the light went and I’m too impatient to wait till tomorrow to photograph them.

Girl Lacer has seen them and she really likes them, so that’s one of my main clients happy then!

Feel slightly sad that I have none of that wonderful fabric left in my stash now, good thing that I’ve recently brought some more Amy Butler fabric, this time for a planned pair of trousers and a dress, think I need to make a few simpler things first though!

Skulls ATC

Another ATC, this time the theme was skulls and I love Day of the Dead skulls. My original plan was to embroider them but when sketching out a design I decided to just keep them drawn. They were inspired by the lovely Day of the Dead skulls over at Lizmiera Etsy shop. The backing papers are from my favourite, Canon Creative Park, in their chiyogami section.

Boy Lacer liked these and called the bigger skull ‘big brother’ and the smaller skull ‘little sister’.

My first not particularly successful art quilt

I thought I’d try my hand at art quilts now I’ve done a lap quilt, ummm as it turns out lap quilts are easier. It was for a swap bot swap and the theme was cupcakes.

This was my original idea just before I ripped it up.

I was just about to finish hemming it and in this photo it actually looks better than the final quilt I did do, but you can’t see that in one corner of the original quilt it’s badly puckered. So I rescued the cupcake embroidery and did a far simpler design.

The cupcake has been appliqued on with a small bit of toy stuffing underneath to make it more 3D.

My first and last art quilt for a while.

Pig farms and pig flu

I don’t get on soap boxes much here but the recent outbreak of swine flu has raised one very interesting point that reminds me of the pig welfare programmes Jamie Oliver did a few months back. I’d recommend you watch this news report on the BBC news site which goes back to the village where they believe the swine flu outbreak started. The village is a short distance away from a large industrialised pig farm, something that has obviously been blighting the villagers existence for a long time and had been causing them health problems. The reporter then talks to a scientist who explains how susceptible pigs are to swine, avian and human flu and that in cramped conditions, they are just walking petri dishes for new viruses to form. You have to question how intelligent some humans are and  ask when are we going to learn that by treating the animals we farm inhumanely we ultimately sow the seeds for our own health problems? Off my soap box now.

PS For the record, me, personally I’m not too stressed about swine flu right now (although my sympathies go out to anyone affected by it), I think a lot of it is media over reporting with unhelpful comparisons to things like the 1918 pandemic where actually our health care system was completely different and also ignoring the fact that yes even ‘normal’ flu kills people, which the media seems to have forgotten. But what I do think is interesting, like I say, is how our own actions as a race, can create new variants of diseases that affect us.

Better late than never hobby horse

I had planned to make presents for Girl and Boy Lacer last Christmas and in Girl Lacer’s case, never got round to finishing it and in Boy Lacer’s case never started. However I had brought the material for both projects, so better late than never!

Boy Lacer’s present was a set of softie dinosaurs and I have made a start on them, finishing the T-Rex from Claire Garland’s Toys to Sew whilst on holiday. Girl Lacer’s present was a hobby horse from the same book and I’ve spent the afternoon finishing it off. It’s more of an ‘heavily inspired by’ than an exact copy of the hobby horse in the book as I guesstimated the pattern (grrhhh at books where you have to photocopy and enlarge patterns – in this case I couldn’t be bothered). I also used thinner wool for the hair, so a consequence of both actions my hobby horse looks a bit like it’s a lanky teenager and Girl Lacer thinks it looks ‘funny’, hmmmmm.

Dropping the probable

P-Day today, first paedtrician’s appointment since last September, ‘only’ four months late but never mind. I told Boy Lacer this morning he had a doctor’s appointment and he was all “I don’t want to go to doctors!” but I realised he was thinking of the cold stethoscope, lollipop sticks down the throat kind, so I go “It’s the doctor with the puzzles!”, to which Boy Lacer’s eyes lit up and he goes “Put shoes and socks on now!”, as in he wanted to go then and there.

We dropped Girl Lacer off at school and went the long way round to the hospital, via John Lewis in town to check out sewing machine feet. They told me it was best to order directly from Janome, as it’s quicker and they kindly gave me the number, so I ordered the part over the phone and I’m now paranoid that I’ve ordered the correct part. I know the foot is missing and that’s what I’ve ordered but I’m a bit worried now that more than just the foot is missing, if you know what I mean, as the woman on the end of the phone goes “Is it blah blah blah or blah blah blah?” and I go “It’s the foot, um you know the bit that goes on the fabric?”.

Anyway we then went onto the hospital (all this walking is being done in the rain by the way) and we still manage to get there a bit early, so me and Boy Lacer are in the waiting room chatting away (counting to ten and then backwards and then pretending to be rockets) and the doctor can hear us and she comes in and goes “My hasn’t your talking improved!” and it has. Unfortunately though as we discussed, his improved vocabulary is making other traits evident now, the talking about certain things constantly, one tracked stubbornness and the opinion that I know exactly what is going on in his head and then getting frustrated with me when I obviously don’t get it. Anyway, we discussed Boy Lacer’s strengths and weaknesses, his vocabulary is good now (although he still sounds ‘babyish’ as in he doesn’t yet talk as fluently as an average 3 year old), as are his analytical skills. He’s not good at socialising with other children except his sister (and Girl Lacer has done a lot of hard work with him, with a great deal of patience for them to be now playing as well as they do together, Boy Lacer does now initiate games with Girl Lacer sometimes) and he’s not good at ‘moving on from things’ i.e. he’s a stubborn little so and so with a well enforced one track mind. His physical problems weren’t really addressed (and they never are except by the physiotherapist funnily enough). Anyway the ‘probable’ has been dropped, which I knew they would, it would have been nice to have had a more definite diagnosis than ‘just’ asd though, as it’s a wide spectrum! I know it can be hard to diagnose a 3 year old that rigidly though, I still suspect it’s Asperger’s though and either dyspraxia or something completely separate, as in just hyperextension.

Anyway back home now and will be off out in the rain again in a minute to pick up Girl Lacer. My sewing machine foot will be in the post in the next few days and then I’ll know if I have a functioning sewing machine again or if another part is missing to and until then, argh I want to sew something!

Stressed crafter hits the fabric paint

Boy Lacer finally has his paediatrician’s appointment tomorrow (only four months late), where his diagnosis will be officially changed (currently it’s ‘ social communication disorder probable autistic spectrum’ because at the time of the last appointment seven months ago they had yet to do an assessment of Boy Lacer playing with other children, the assessment was actually done a few weeks after the appointment, we’ve just been waiting this long for the results). Ok much as all his therapists have been pussy footing around still using the words ‘probable’, ‘likely’ and ‘possible’, every single piece of paperwork we’ve had home has just listed Boy Lacer as straightforward asd, no probable, likely or possible about it. I excepted the autism diagnosis ages ago but there’s always the thought of ‘it could be something else’ or ‘they might not even know what it is’ sort of thing.

Anyway my plans for today was to do some sewing, I haven’t had the sewing machine out since before we went on holiday and I’ve been looking forward to do some more sewing for ages. I finally had another swapbot project to do (the problem with my swapbot habit is that I tend to collect a whole group of them, concentrate on them, get them all out and only then look for more projects and signing up to new projects means I have a bit of a wait before swap partners are assigned and I can’t start work till then), I had an art quilt to do (my first ever one). So I did the embroidery I wanted to do for it last night, cut the pieces this morning, got my sewing machine out of it’s new safe place in my wardrobe, set it up, got my first two pieces of fabric together, sat them on the machine and “Oh where’s the foot gone?”. It had fallen off somewhere and I knew it could have only have fallen off in the bedroom where it’s stored and although it’s now currently stored safely in the bottom of the wardrobe, for a while I didn’t have a particularly safe place to put it and I think that’s when it probably fell off. So I spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon looking for the foot and I couldn’t find it. I now have a very tidy bedroom, which is about the only bonus. My bedroom had been an organisational work in progress for about the last week anyway and I think I may have gathered up and thrown away the foot without realising it, earlier on this week, so I’ll need to get a new one now and I guarantee you when I get it I’ll find the old one. So my art quilt was on hold. So in crafting frustration I went window shopping on Etsy and nearly brought a huge pile of Japanese fabric, twice, but I controlled myself, actually it was quite a bargain load of Japanese fabric, from an Etsy shop actually based in Japan, they had some lovely green and blue prints and I do like my green and blue prints and the price of the fabric including shipping was cheaper than a lot of ‘nice’ fabrics that you get here. I want to make quilts for Girl and Boy Lacer, a fairy tale themed one for Girl Lacer and a forest themed one for Boy Lacer and Japanese fabrics are so nice and detailed, I can just imagine the kids (well Girl Lacer at least) having great fun looking at the different fabrics.

Anyway I had to craft something and with my sewing machine out of action I hit upon the idea of some fabric paint action. I luckily have quite a supply of Dylon fabric paint left over from Christmas costumes from um last Christmas and I have a supply of blank T-shirts. Add a book I’d brought a while ago, Stencil 101: Make Your Mark with 25 Reusable Stencils and Step-by-Step Instructions by Ed Roth and I had an easy to set up, instant gratification stress reliever. 

I had to stop in the end before I literally stencilled everything I owned, I do need some plain T-shirts as I’ve purchased two quite low cut dresses recently and unless I put a plain T-shirt under them I will quite literally cause traffic accidents or at least make a builder fall off his scaffolding (I sadly have a bra size Jordon would aspire to and it’s all natural). Anyway in the end I ran out of floor space in my bedroom studio, so this is where I had to stop.

All stencils from Ed Roth’s book (it’s great, you can just literally pull out the reusable stencil from the book and stencil straight away), the first one I did was the Planet of the Apes like ape, which I love, I think it came out really well, specially considering I was worried that trying to stencil on a slightly ribbed fabric was probably not the best of ideas. The next was the gangster car, which also came out really well and giving me excellent instant crafter gratification. Both of those T-shirts were for me, the next two were for Girl Lacer, the surprisingly punkish poodle (I chose the poodle because it was one of the most girlish stencils) with the turquoise paint proving that I can go beyond black, on the pink T-shirt. Then the final one was the owl, which is for a sleep T-shirt and considering it was the last stencil I did in this session, it went wrong, you can’t see the eyes. But all in all I am very pleased with the results, I love the graffiti, almost spray painted look, it makes cheap T-shirts look a lot more designery. I predict some more stenciling as soon as I can get my hands on some more plain T-shirts, I’m also seeing some stencilled bags on the horizon! I’d love to do some wall stencilling to but Mr. Lacer still thinks stencilling belongs in the 90s, but I’m getting sick to death of plain white walls!

On a final note, whilst downloading the T-shirt photo, I downloaded some recent photos from my garden that I took whilst hanging round on my front doorstep with Boy Lacer whilst waiting for Girl Lacer to get changed into her tap kit. You can see exactly how proud I am of the weeds in my garden here and here plus something that is actually meant to be there here and here.