Military sandbox pants

Boy Lacer is going to be a soldier in his choir’s performance, he needed some green, khaki or camouflaged trousers, he didn’t have any, so I thought I’d make some. The pattern is from Oliver & S, the Sandbox Pants pattern (minus the back pockets as I didn’t have time) which I’ve had in my pattern collection for far too long and the fabric is from a seller on Ebay. I’ve had all week to make this and of course I left it to the last minute, it took me all yesterday afternoon to trace the pattern and cut out the fabric (tracing the pattern was a nightmare, I haven’t done any serious big sewing since moving back to our flat, I still miss our old temporary flat’s lovely large (compared to ours) table, I had to trace the pattern on our floor, even then the tracing paper was still shifting and I was making mistakes) and most of the day today to sew it. My actual craft space is in my bedroom but I deliberately moved into the living to do this, this is what I had to work with.

Space is getting to be the big hampering thing in my progress as a seamstress, being able to cut out pattern pieces accurately is crucial and I’m struggling to do that. However, having said all that, I’ve certainly been less accurate in other projects and at least my living room floor is now (thanks to the reorganisation that was part of the refurbishment) pretty much consistently clear. The actual trousers came together pretty well, watching them make trousers on The Great British Sewing Bee the other week certainly helped (these are only the second pair of trousers I’ve made).

I struggled with the waistband though, I needed to make a pair of button holes for the tie cord, this was the first time I’ve needed to make button holes since I got my new machine. Now my old machine used to be a nightmare for buttonholes, so I was very excited to get a machine that did automatic button holes, hmmm, I tried some on a piece of scrap fabric, would get half way through each button hole, then I’d get an error message, BL and the machine wouldn’t do anymore. Googling, I think BL stands for button lever and I found a couple of threads about having to pull it down but I couldn’t find anything about where exactly the button lever is and my instruction manual wasn’t exactly helpful. So if anyone knows anything about the BL error code when doing button holes using a Janome CXL301, I would love to hear from you because right now it’s putting me off making anything else with button holes (although Mr. Lacer the love says he’s going to have a look at my machine for me to). Anyway, back to the trousers, in the end I bodged the buttons holes, they don’t look great and are a bit too small but they do the job.

Oh and *slap wrist me* I should have double checked Boy Lacer’s height against the size as size 7 (he’s 7) is way too big for him. In fairness to me though, I noticed that size charts listed total height, not leg height and as total height goes, Boy Lacer is pretty average for a 7 year old, but it is all in his torso, his legs are a little on the short side, I’m not sure I could have judged the correct trouser size for him then on total height. Anyway, as long as they don’t fall down in the concert!

(Boy Lacer is now sitting next to me, questioning whether me giving his age and that he’s average size is good internet safety, I have him well trained – he’s just made me remove the name of the concert he’s in)

Poppy Treffry inspired washbag

I got this pattern from the Love Embroidery magazine, which is one of those craft bookazine type things, it’s meant to be machine freehand embroidery but I don’t have a darning foot for my machine and was a little daunted about getting the right one (I have a Janome machine and there seems to be two different darning feet, depending on what type of Janome you have and I wasn’t completely sure, but I think I’ve figured it out now, so I definitely want to try some machine freehand embroidery in the future). But for now this was hand embroidered. I made a mistake with the pattern and should have continued the bottle tops and the toothbrush head over the top of the applique and I made a mistake putting the bag together, hence the ribbon at the bottom hiding my mistake. But overall I’m pretty pleased with the bag. I’ve made plenty of drawstring bags in my time but none using this particular construction method and I think it’s pretty cool.

(You can also get the same pattern, apparently, in Poppy Treffry’s book Freehand Machine Embroidery)

Wind and Water purses

Embroidery patterns by SeptemberHouse.

Beanbag cushions

We used to have two very grotty floor cushions, we still have one actually but I’ve grabbed it off Boy Lacer’s bed and hidden it in my bedroom, he was quite attached to it but put it this way, ‘grotty’ was describing it nicely and it wasn’t the sort of cushion you could wash. So, with a spot of inspiration from some similar cushions in John Lewis, some spare fabric left over from making the kids’ curtains (which I still haven’t blogged about as I still haven’t hemmed them, even though they’re up) and some bean bag filler, I made these up. The embroidered labels are from the book S is for Stitch, which I’ve just reviewed over on Feeling Stitchy (head on over, there’s a competition!).

Easter Boxes

My kids eat too much chocolate at Easter and it never makes me particularly happy, after all I spend all year trying to make sure they don’t eat their body weight in the stuff and then twice a year (Christmas is also bad), I’m meant to give them free reign? Anyway, I know I can’t win on that one but this year I thought I’d tone down the amount of chocolate they were getting from us (grandparents are a law onto themselves). This decision came at a point anyway where I had to switch what sort of Easter eggs I was getting them, they’re too old for the little kiddy ones and I’m certainly not getting them full size ‘adult’ eggs, you know the sort of branded ones for Dairy Milk, Maltesers or whatever, as I definitely don’t like them eating what I term ‘grown up’ chocolate, as the portion sizes are too big (actually Maltesers aren’t that bad*, if they’re shared ….). So, anyway this year I got their chocolate from Marks and Spencer, it’s less obviously branded, has some nicely designed packaging and comes in a range of sizes, so I could buy smaller eggs. So I bought a small hen egg each, a tube of Jelly beans (after I succumbed to temptation in the queue in Smiths, WH Smith are getting increasingly annoying with their peddling of sweets and god knows what at the check out) and taking inspiration from Angry Chicken, I bought a few bags of various small chocolate eggs plus two little mini bunnies from M&S and made some ‘candy terrariums’.

Really I could have done with some bigger containers than the Kilner jars I used, as you can’t really see the rabbits in the middle but I liked how they kept the chocolate safe from the elements and I thought the kids would like a jar each of their own, as sometimes we have a family jar of sweets up on the shelf. I also thought it would encourage them to make the chocolate last longer. (I’m grabbing the jars back off them when they’ve finished with them).

To distinguish between jars I made a couple of embroidered tags, a vintage pattern for Boy Lacer and a free pattern from Lilipopo for Girl Lacer. They were embroidered on felt, I’m really pleased with how Boy Lacer’s turned out.

But no so much with Girl Lacer’s, I should have used white felt again but ran out.

The light’s also bad in these photos, I predict light is only going to be good some time in mid April (I hope).

Also in the boxes are a small present each; Girl Lacer was easy, a bubble writing book, she is obsessed with that at the moment, so should love it. Boy Lacer was harder, he’s always hard, as to be honest he’s not really happy with anything unless it’s electrical, but as he sometimes likes building thing in real life as well as on screen, I took a chance on some art straws, ah well if anything Girl Lacer will get her hands on them in 6 months time.

And finally I made them a softie each, well aware as I was working on them that a) I hadn’t made softies in a long time (the number of rookie mistakes I made with these!) and b) my kids really are getting too old, but it’s the thought that counts and I’m going to make the most of every last available opportunity to do things like that for them whilst there’s still a chance they might appreciate it. Unfortunately of my generation, in my immediate family, there aren’t many kids and certainly no babies anymore (actually there is one but I don’t really see the parents that much, if at all), so my small children crafting opportunities are non existant, will have to twiddle my thumbs for twenty odd years till I’m a grandma Anyway, the rabbit bodies were from an Aranzi Aranzo book but I changed the eyes and added the tummy detail.

(sneak peak of my new garden)

The rabbits were heavily inspired by my absolute Twitter favourite @MYSADCAT  , a cat with the most soulful, staring eyes.

*I read once, an interview with some master chocolatier and he said that of all the main stream branded chocolate, in his opinion Maltesers were the nicest, most ‘proper’ chocolate sweet, I could always see what he meant.

Dance Bag

Girl Lacer is chronically bad at loosing her dance kit, this time, as well as the actual kit, she also lost the bag it was in, so I made a new one, with a purplish colour theme, as pink is for sissys.

Unpacking / Fabric thoughts

Whereas January may have been one long joyous crafting / cooking bonanza, February is about unpacking now that we’re back in our actual flat. We’ve been back about a week and a half now, still unpacking. I tell you, if, when we move next time, which will be in approximately 2 years time, you can hold me to that, if I am ever tempted to write the word ‘stuff’ on a packing box again, I might as well just chuck it all out there and then. I can tell you that I am very mindful that when I pack belongings away in whichever nook and cranny I somehow find in this flat, if the next time I touch it is to put it in another packing box when we move again, well . . .

Anyway, the new flat (and it does feel new, even though we’ve lived here for 8 years now) is lovely; the bathroom is beautiful and the kitchen, well, it’s completely changed how we use it. Previously the kitchen was so cramped only one person could be in it at a time, now, thanks to significantly reducing the amount of units and their width on one side of our galley kitchen and installing a breakfast bar, the kids eat all their meals in there (and I often join them by standing up and eating with them). It’s light, bright and airy but I’ll gush more about it when the final bits and pieces are up (umm in the kitchen it’s just the clock thinking about it) and I can take some photos and write a blog post about it.

Anyway, back to the unpacking, I was unpacking my fabric yesterday, now I know I’ve mentioned many times on this blog that I have too much fabric but I think actually, from other blogs I read, that my stash isn’t that big, compared to some people’s, but I have too much fabric for this flat. I don’t know how anyone else divides their fabric but I always split my fabric into large metre+ pieces, pieces between roughly a fat quarter and a metre and scraps less than a fat quarter, I actually surprised myself yesterday that I managed to get all of my scraps into the two storage containers I’d bought for them, who’d have thought folding scraps neatly instead of just bunging them all in meant you could fit more in

(Containers from Tiger – the smaller container on the right is meant to be for buttons and zips etc for current projects but is currently stuffed with ‘stuff’ from the aforementioned ‘stuff’ boxes)

When sorting through the scraps yesterday I tried my best to be at least reasonably ruthless, by throwing out any scraps that were so small I couldn’t even get a single hexagon out of and I managed to throw out quite a bit that way, but some fabric, the last few tiny bits of precious fabric that I’ve adored and have featured in so many of the projects I’ve made over the years, that was hard and I’ll admit, some stayed. It made me think though, what separates those fabrics that I regularly return to, use bits of in just about everything I make if I can find the excuse, from the fabric that sits in my stash and when I look at it now I kinda wonder why on earth did I buy it? I don’t deliberately go out and buy ‘meh’ fabric. I think online fabric shopping has a little to answer for this, you can make a pretty good judgement call on whether you’re going to like a design based on a picture but sometimes you get the real thing in the post and the actual fabric the design is printed on doesn’t feel ‘right’ or the colours aren’t quite what you expected or the design not quite the size you thought. Buying packs of random designs where all you know is the theme or the colour, is also risky and I’ll admit I have some fabric in my collection that I absolutely loathe, that has come in that way but I can’t get rid of because ‘I paid good money for it’. But then again real world fabric stores don’t offer that much choice, at least near me. And then there’s the fabric that’s been bought for something specific, maybe to make a present for someone and consequently the fabric’s in colour tones I don’t normally feel comfortable with, I have some of that to left over from various projects that way. And then there’s the ‘filler’ fabric, bought because its tones complement a fabric I do love but the filler fabric was a compromise as there wasn’t much choice and consequently I don’t like it that much. And then there’s the impulse buys, the impulses that should have been squashed or the fabric given as gifts that doesn’t always work. Oh and the fabric bought for internet challenges, where I’m having to bend my taste into someone else’s criteria (one of the reasons why I’ve stopped doing those).

So I’ve covered the ‘don’t like’ but what makes me fall in love with a fabric? Well sometimes the impulses do work, I on a whim last year bought three small pieces of screen printed fabric someone had linked to on twitter, because the design reminded me of tiles, I love that fabric and small pieces of it (only small pieces, I’m eeking this stuff out!) is appearing in so much stuff I make and I know I’ll still be clinging to the last few centimetres in my scrap basket, years from now. Then there’s fabric that is just pure fabric lust from the word go, the V&A quilt range fabric definitely falls in that category, in fact a lot of the V&A repro fabrics do that for me (but conversely some are in my meh range).Then there’s the fabric that reminds me of specific things I’ve made that were firsts and/or successes or were used to make something special for someone I love.

There is nothing like packing up your belongings, moving out and then moving back, to a flat that’s still pretty much the same but in a way different, not just because of the building work but because you’ve wiped the slate clean, used the opportunity to say forget about the layers of the years we’ve lived here before, this is how we’re going to live now. We have always been perpetually short of storage but we’d answered that problem before by just buying more and more storage and I think the answer should maybe have been more about having less stuff / being more careful about what was being bought into the house. Living in our temporary flat last month made me realise the pleasure of bare walls and bare floor space, free from that extra bookshelf or that extra storage box (actually, we have an extra bookshelf on order, not totally practicing what I preach but we have got rid of storage elsewhere, the kitchen being the big example). So, this has all made me vow to be more careful about what I bring into the flat in the future and one of those things I will be bringing into the flat in the future, I know I will, will be fabric (but in the meanwhile I am sticking to my vow to significantly reduce my current stash within the next 6 months or if I don’t, giving the fabric away). So, here’s my fabric buying aims for the future -

• don’t buy fabric for specific projects unless I know I will use nearly all of it because although I may like the fabric for the specific project, I’m not necessarily going to want to use it for anything else
  
• stick within my colour and theme comfort zones, there’s a reason why a lot of my fabric pieces do match with each other, it’s because I have favourite colours and designs, buying something because it’s ‘different’ will mean it won’t go with anything else in my collection and chances are I won’t really love it anyway
• if my heart truly sings when I see a fabric (and I can afford it), buy it, chances are that will be a fabric I’ll get a lot of use and pleasure out of.