Little sewing projects - for sewing projects!

This month I have 3 little sewing projects to share. I made these to help me with my sewing projects...

A: Table top ironing mat - so I don't have to lug the ironing board to where I am sewing.

I have been meaning to make one for ages... I used up left over bits of fabric plus homemade “jelly roll” scraps. I bought 40cm of ordinary table protector (140cm wide) (cloth on one side and foam rubber on the other) from the local fabric store. I cut the this piece in half and placed them together (with foam rubber sides facing each other). The 2 pieces of white/black fabric were cut with a 1.5cm allowance all around the edge, and tacked around the edge with the protecter sandwiched inside.
With scraps of homemade jelly roll I made some binding and attached it to the edge. For the great information on binding go to Missouri Quilt Company YouTube tutorials. For binding look at this Ultimate Quilt Binding Tutorial.

Before I finished the binding, I made the tie for keeping the roll together when not in use. I took the left over binding, folded it half length ways and stitched up the edge, turned the long tube the right way round. The ends were finished off and the piece folded in half and stitched under the binding edge.

The final mat measures approx 70cmx40cm (27”x16”)

I do tend to use my cutting mat underneath, but have not felt excess heat on the table/cutting mat surface after iron on this mat.

B: Sew Tidy Pot – to try to keep down the mess I make on the floor with all the cotton ends and material snips.

This simple pot was made using Clarke and Clarke fabric.

C: Drawstring Sewing Bag – to keep all my tools together when working out in our studio, or in the house.

After making my Sew Tidy Pot, I kept using it to transport tools around the house or to friends houses and not for keeping the mess down. So in the end I designed a reversible drawstring bag with pockets to keep my tools tidy and enough space inside to hold patterns/cottons/small projects. When I am working on a project, I turn it so the tools are readily available (ie – can be found!). It also squashed down easily for transporting too.

Thanks for stopping by.

Stompy x

Summer Hats...

With Newbury bathing in this brilliant sunny weather, I was really glad I had made some sun hats for my daughters a few weeks back.

Using head measurements and an old hat, I came up with a flared bucket hat design.

The brown hat was very simple to make, cutting out 6 outer panels and a top and then the same in lining material. They are very economical on fabric too. This hat was finished with a decorative zigzag top stitch around the edge and a yoyo flower with glitter button (this is on a brooch pin and can be moved)

The blue stripy hat was a lot more fun though. Made from homemade jellyroll strips (using up my scraps again) I hoped this size would fit my youngest daughter who is 2. However when sewing 16 panels, even just being 1mm out made the hat a lot bigger than I hoped. Think more work is needed for this one. The hat is then lined with a light weight pink gingham.

I hope to make more hats, and add them to my Stompy's Craft range of gifts, but hat making has been curtailed as I have a sale coming up at the end of this month and I have to replenish my stocks.

Sale Details

Coffee, Cakes and Craft in aid of Macmillan Cancer Care

at Grove Village Hall, Oxfordshire OX12 7JY

on Saturday 27^th July at 2:00pm

Having fun with free motion sewing...

I'm not sure whether Pinterest is a good or bad thing – as I find that I want to try lots more crafts. I don't really have the time, and what will I do when my little one finishes having a short day time nap?

I justified trying free motion sewing as it helps with quilting and I could use up scraps making doodled images – well that's the theory.

 

So after a couple of practices I had a go of trying to doodle my little Petal Fairies that I draw for my daughters. The top one was my first attempt and then the second one was a lot better, but will be improved with more practice.

I used a medium to heavy calico cotton and with these pictures I used a wooden embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taught.
After stitching the characters, I then coloured in some parts with fabric pens.

Next time I sew one, I will use metallic thread for the wings – will post to let you know how I get on.

So then what to do with these little pictures, well I had some pink patchwork and green scraps leftover from the rag quilt, and as my littlest one loves bags, I made her little tote bag using the picture as the main panel.

 

Thanks for looking today.

stompy x

First Time Rag Quilt

 

One thing I have a lot of is scrappy bits of fabric, dating back many years (think there is some Laura Ashley fabric from 1975) and finding things to do with these scraps is always a challenge. I then stumbled across Rag Quilts on Pinterest.

As my littlest one will be moving in to a proper size bed soon, we need new bedding for her and thought that I would have a go at rag quilting.

I had quite a bit of pink and green scraps (to match her bedroom) – but did end up having to buy a few lengths of new fabric. (Sadly our town has recently lost our haberdashery/fabric store and the store that is “out of town” is stocked with Ends of Roll, so the choice isn't great). My best buy however was the backing fabric, which was a Double fitted sheet from our Sainsbury's supermarket during a 25% off sale. Note – not their basic range, that's way to thin.

So then started the quilting...

The quilt is 13x8 squares.

The squares with seam allowance were approx 18cmx18cm (7”x7”)

The wadding squares were approx 15cmx15cm (6”x6”)

 

Using a rotary cutter (absolutely essential) I cut about 60 pink patterned, 60 green patterned squares, 110 wadding squares, and accidentally well over 200 backing squares (using both the Sainsburys sheet and an old ripped sheet from the cupboard).

I sandwiched the squares (backing – wadding – patterned) pinning in two opposite corners.

Once the squares were pinned I started sewing the crosses. To make it quicker (and not to waste cotton) I sewed straight onto the next square so would end up with a “bunting like” length of half sewn squares. They were then snipped apart and then sewn in the other direction to finish the crosses.

The squares were then trimmed to size, this made lining up the seams so much easier.

Once I had decided on a pattern – the squares were sewn together (wrong sides facing).

I was surprised how little time this took – I was expecting a mammoth task. When I was making this I went down with a very nasty cold and throat infection so wasn't working at my usual capacity, but the sewing together only took me an evening to do.

The seams were then snipped whilst laying in bed (not the best idea as you get a lot of shedding of fibres at this stage – doh!).

My little one loves the end result – so does my other one – so it looks like I will be trying this technique of quilting again.....

Thank you for stopping by and looking - regards Stompy

More Fabric fun with the Silhouette SD

Again the Silhouette SD came to my rescue when making a named toy bag for my youngest daughter.

 

As with the owl wall hanging I used cheap iron on adhesive to stabilise the fabric and then cut out quite intricate and small pieces for the letters and image applique patches.

I reused lots of old fabric for this make, including some old roman blinds for the main fabric ( I had to turn it inside out to hide the horrible pattern) the patches are demin from old jeans and the lining is a mixture of fun fabric left over from making a girls dress and an old bed sheet.

It’s not the best shaped bag in the world, but it does what I intended it to do, and that is holds lots of toys (it can also carry a 20 month old, as Chloe decided that she would climb in too!)


Thanks for looking

Fabric fun with the Silhouette SD

When you don’t have much time to get things made, I love any tool that can speed jobs up.

After searching the internet on how ot use the silhouette to cut fabric, I was hoping not to have to pay out for the specialist materials that the sites were recommending. Especially as I had recently found my 18 month old daughter sitting on my silhouette cutting mat - adhesive side down - on our door mat.
So I experimented using a spray mount on the cutting mat (after scraping off the dirt) making sure that I masked off the edges.
To stabilise the fabric I used a cheap iron adhesive bought from my local haberdashery. The Silhouette cut the cotton fabric beautifully, there was just a few tiny areas that needed to be snipped with scissors.

The owls I cut were then used as aplique decoration on a wall hanging for my daughters bedroom.

I hope to post more Silhouette SD applique ideas in the next few blogs...

Thanks for looking

Wendy House Decorating

Just finished the wendy house today in time to get a blog post for June!

Having some large pieces of scrap timber hanging around the garden / garage, we decided a few years back, to build a play house for our daughter at the back of the garden where no plants would grow.

Made from old fence posts, some left over perspex, decking scrounged out of a neighbours skip and some new sheets of plywood we built a little house... which never quite got finished... so plants grew in under the roof.... bringing with it all the creepy crawlies little girls don’t like.

So this June, I finally got round to sealing the roof, and painting the internal walls with gloss paint. And with two little girls, we thought it would be nice to make the interior rather girly.

Excluding the blackboard paint the whole decorating cost came in at under £10.

To make the peg row - I reused some plastic handles from the girls bedroom and attached them to a scrap piece of 2"x1" timber which was covered in some in-expensive gingham.

The blackboard was made from an old picture frame that was taking up space in the garage, the print was taken out and the frame backing painted with blackboard paint.

The bunting was made from my husbands old work shirts and some gingham I had left over. See below for my tips on making quick bunting.

I made little covers for the wooden stools from old jeans and an old duvet that had spent the last few years in the cats basket (it was well washed before I used it!!)

One heart decoration was from jeans and shirt fabric, whilst the other I made by reusing some florist wire, which was covered in a mix of wire, wool and some cheap Pony beads that were crocheted together.

The butterflies and other decorations were purchased - all for less than £8.

Now it is a really cosy and great fun to play in.

Thanks for looking
Regards Stompy



Another Speed Sewing Saturday...

8 days before a "Mike the Knight" birthday party we get an invitation with the tag line Fancy Dress to Impress! My daughter didn’t not want to go as a knight or a Viking so we loosely settled on a Medieval Princess.

The next day in town I striked it lucky in the local Cancer Research Charity shop, where there was a beautiful Jayne Copeland dress - it needed a little repair - but was a bargin at £4. That was most of the costume sorted, all I would need to do would be to make a cape, and a head dress - job done!

To cut a long story short - by the Saturday morning the cape was mostly made. In the remaining 3 hours I had to finish the cape with brooch, make the headdress and make the card... all this after being up most of the night with a 4 year old with a fever!

The headdress took about 1 hour (with interruptions!)

This is how I made it...

• Take a wire coat hanger and remove the hook part.
• Bend it round into a hoop - a good loose fit as it will be padded out.
• Secure and cover all the wire in tape - I used gaffa tape.
• Wrap scrap cotton fabric around the hoop to pad out the head dress - I used 4 sleeves off my husbands old work shirts. The cuffs were removed and the sleeves cut into approximate 5cm strips.
• Cut strips out the cover fabric - I cut x2 10cm strips of the unused cloak fabric (the fabric was ~140cm wide).
• Turn and press a 2cm hem along one edge of each piece.
• Wrap the pressed fabric around the loop making sure that it is the pressed neaten edge showing.
• On the inside of the hoop hand stitch the edges to stop the fabric from moving and stitch the ends securely.
• Wrap the finished hoop in a contrasting ribbon - I used ~2m of 2.5cm wide gold organza ribbon knotting it at the back.
• On the inside of the hoop hand stitch the ribbon to stop it moving (I didn’t have time for this step and the ribbon had moved by the end of the party!)
• Add some netting decoration - I cut a 50cm piece of gold glitter netting - gathered it up by hand and secured it with the ribbon at the back of the head dress.

The brooch took about 20 minutes - but needed another 40 to dry.

 

This is how I made it...

• Cut 2 circles out of card - I used cereal boxes and the 2nd smallest Eyelet Circles Die (Spellbinders Nestabilities range)
• Coat each circle with gold embossing powder and heat - I used Papermania gold embossing powder (but this comes out quite dull and has tarnished on cards made in the past).
• Coat each circle with clear embossing powder for an extra glossy finish - I used Stampendous clear embossing powder.
• Glue both circles together - off setting the eyelet holes.
• Punch a hole in the centre and add a "glamorous" jewel button, glue to hold in place.
• Stick smaller gems or pearls into each of the eyelet holes around the edge.
• Coat the gems with a thin layer of a decorative dimensional adhesive - I used glossy accents.
• Leave to dry

My daughter was very happy with the costume - and best of all it survived 2 hours of running around Eddie Catz soft play!
Thank you for looking
Regards
Stompy xx

Extreme Easter Makes and tech bites back

Again - long time no blog posts.... this time it was because our home tech decided to go kaput big time. Firstly my much loved 9 year old olympus camera gave up, swiftly followed by the just as ancient (in tech terms) home pc. So we have spent our spare time (and my craft time) rescuing and reloading all our programmes and files on to a new family pc.

I did have to make time late on Easter saturday to make my two daughters an Easter present each, as we had forgotten to ask the Easter bunny to bring some appropriate gifts. So after drawing up a simple template and raiding my felt box, I sewed and glued two little bunny egg cosys - cute and sort of practical.

Glue used - PinFlair silicone glue

Flowers cut using Sizzix original flower die

For Easter Sunday sponge cupcakes were decorated by my daughter and nephew with chocolate butter icing nests and Cadbury mini eggs.

I also made little Cranberry Simnel cupcakes based on an old recipe from Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery book, with a nugget of marzipan baked inside - these were then topped off with marizpan flowers.

4oz Stork margarine
4oz light brown sugar
1 1/2 oz golden syrup
2 large eggs
6oz plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon mixed spice
11oz mixed currants, sultanas, cranberries
2oz marmalade
2-3tbsp milk

This was mixed together like an all in one, starting off with the eggs, sugar, flour, salt, spice and margarine in a bowl. All the other ingredients were placed in a food processor until the bulk of the fruit had been chopped up small (but not pureed). This mixture was then added to the bowl and beaten (with electric whisk) until all ingredients had been incorporated (but not over worked). The mixture was then spooned into 12 muffin cases, and a large hazel nut sized nugget of marizpan was poked into the centre of each cake.

The cakes were then baked for about 25 minutes in a preheated fan oven at 170 oC.

After being left to cool on a wire rack the tops were brushed with warm apricot jam and a marzipan flower and fluffy chick were added.
　

So all in all not too much crafting to write about - may be I’ll get more time next month....

Scrappage put together using Serif Craft Artist and my own Easter Digikit...