Space pencil case

I am totally in love with this retro space fabric and I’ve only just dared cut into it (I brought it about a month ago, once again from my new favourite fabric shop Fabric Rehab – they don’t have any at the moment – cue *evil laughter* – goodies made from this fabric will be appearing in my not yet opened Etsy shop, but probably nearer Christmas, not that the shop is opening nearer Christmas, I’m still planning on opening this summer, Autumn at the latest, but I think this fabric would look good in more Christmas related gifts). Since buying the fabric I’ve seen an oil cloth version of it being using on kids’ aprons in a posh department store near me. Oh I’m fabric obsessed!

Anyway I cut into it to make a pencil case, I need some zip practice before cutting into my even more precious Rob Ryan Clothkits kit, that I got, oooh, last Christmas. I bodged it a little, in that I used my normal sewing machine foot, I’m not so totally over my sewing machine phobia, in that I’m nervous about changing the foot. In the end changing the foot would have been pointless anyway, as I realised I’d brought an invisible zipper and I would have had to have brought a special foot anyway, not that I think putting the zip in with the normal foot has done much harm, looking at it, I can’t see how much different it’d have looked if I’d done it properly.

Spring onions

I’ve been attempting to grow spring onions for two or three years now and up till now every single time has been thwarted by blinking pigeons, whose favourite activity, other than hanging round in gangs and eating my strawberries appears to be pulling up my spring onions. So this time when I sowed some pots I kept them in my ‘green house’ (which isn’t much of a ‘green house’ anymore, as it’s plastic wrapping is so ripped, will need to replace it at some point). The idea being, if they were in my green house the pigeons would have trouble getting them and it seems to have worked.

I should however maybe have thinned them out a bit! I had been working on the assumption that I didn’t need to thin, as I would crop when needed and that would act as thinning them out, but the pots were very crowded and it’s taken them ages to get even this (not very) big, however they have reached a just about eatable size now, so I’m going to  eat thin as I go. And even though they’re still minuscule, wow, they pack a punch! Very oniony for such little things, I guess at least partly because I’m eating them when freshly harvested, spring onions in the shops were probably more flavoursome straight after they were pulled up.

I love spring onions, they can be used in so many different things (today’s was sprinkled on cheese on toast) but don’t use them as much as I would like because they go off so quickly if you buy them from the supermarket. I have three pots of spring onions on the go at the moment, two planted in April and one last month, hopefully with a few more occasional sowings and if I bring them in maybe if it gets too cold, I’ll have a permanent ready supply of them!

Corsages

Second attempt at making the corsages from Homemade today; for a corsage swap on Swap-bot. My first attempt (here) turned out to be rosettes, as I thought at the time that I might have cut the circles to make up the corsage too small. So this time I cut out large circles, followed the instructions and it ended up too big I think, looking like a wind damaged chrysanthemum, where the petals won’t stay up properly. Luckily, although I needed to make only one corsage for swap-bot I had decided to make two, one for the swap, one for me, so I’ll have to have the wind damaged chrysanthemum and the second one, well, I kept it very simple, not cutting into the fabric, instead just scrunching the circles in the middle and I think it looks a lot nicer.

Wind damaged chrysanthemum and the 'simpler' corsage

Thank you bags

Thank you bags for Girl Lacer’s class teachers. She drew portraits of her three teachers and labelled them and I copied them onto fabric with back stitch and then sewed them onto gingham to make up some bags. The bags are not intentionally meant to be different sizes, I cut the fabric by eye, made the red one first and then the pink one and only then realised the pink one was significantly smaller than the first bag, I then thought blow it, I’ll make the third bag a really decent size!

Gingham was ‘interesting’ to work with, it’s as a cheap as chips, each bag probably cost about a quid each and I love the look and feel of gingham fabric, I like how it looks quite retro and how it feels quite soft and light, but it’s not the most forgiving of fabric if you have to unpick a seam! I think a dress or a top for Girl Lacer would be really nice in gingham (although not in her school uniform colours!) and possibly a top for me.

Having a sewing day, so will be probably back later with some more projects. Today is also this blog’s second birthday, happy birthday blog and a big thank you to everyone who reads it!