Hairdressing scissors pouch

My sister is a trainee hairdresser at night school and she has worked tremendously hard at this and passed her first year! I wanted to get her something to help but she had already bought all the books and equipment she needed, so when she asked me to make her something I jumped at the chance. She had found this, again on Pintrest, which is obviously for crochet hooks and asked it I could do something like that for her scissors so I set about a plan!



When I was at Fabritastic (see last post about fat quarters sales!) I picked up this great campervan fabric! Both my sister and I are beach bums and love all things beachy, campervany and scooters!


I decided I ought to put some wadding into it other wise when the sharp scissors were in they may stab her through the fabric. So I laid out the fabric and measure my sewing scissors across 4 times and added a bit more for good measure. I then added wadding on top for about two thirds of the length as I didn't want double wadding on the pocket. Then I measured the polka dot fabric to match the campervans.
I sewed three edges leaving the bottom where I was going to put the pocket and attached the lace into the seam as it was going round. I folded the pocket up to the level I wanted it then sewed four channels leaving gaps for her scissors.
I then zigzagged the bottom edge to seal it all up, though I wasn't very good at the (must practice zipzag!) and it looked a bit messy.

I then hand sewed on the button in the right place for the lace fastener.


And there you have it!

Then it was easter...

As you have probably guessed at the moment I'm mainly catching up on previously completed projects, so I made us a table runner for our easter table as we had all the family round (and some more pretend family that we love too)

I searched around for some Easter fabric but didn't have too much luck, so I went to Fabritaastic in Peterborough who were very helpful and were having a sale on fat quarters... I mean who can resist fat quarters!!

So what I did was I purchased 4 FQ's and 1m of cream fabric that I was going to use for the backing, along with 1m of wadding.

I cut the FQ's into 15cm Squares using my rotary cutter and cutting board so they were all the same and patch worked them all together into a random long pattern. Our table is very large as you can see so I just kept bringing it back to the table to see if it was long enough and added a few more rows on.

I then cut two strips of the cream and attached it to the blocks and the wadding by sewing round three sides. Leaving the middle to turn it right side in. I did this on both end and was left with a flap in the middle that I was hoping would be like a pillow case flap, though it looked weird!

So I ended up sewing all the way across the middle to join the two flaps together, It didn't matter so much to me as it was only for my and my table, but if I were to do it again I would make sure that the two piece of fabric match up and a square join so I can 'stich in the ditch' and make it look neater.

A slight aside from sewing - My singer sewing table!

Shortly after the last make I moved house, so I finally had a dedicated area for my crafting!

So I sourced on ebay this stand and restored it for use as a sewing table. Just thought I'd put a post up with all the different stages!
This is how it arrived

 
 
 

As you can see, caped in dirt! I got it for £20 on ebay and it had clearly just been in the garden for goodness knows how long!
















So we pressure washed it...



And re painted it black to keep the rusty bits at bay

Then my husband painted gold on the wording to make it look beautiful

Don't you think it looks great? I then attached an ikea table top to it and it's perfect! I'll take a picture when there isn't so much creativity going on in my craft room... aka mess!


 

Baby car seat blankets - How to!

My next adventure was spurred on by my very special pretend cousin being preggers! By pretend cousin I mean the kind of person you grow up with, who you call their parents Aunt and Uncle but when you turn about 7 and realise your not actually related it doesn't matter! When this lovely lady is 'Our Von' and whilst planning a wedding she has a lovely baby girl 'Our Syd'.

Von had found this car blanket on pintrest which looked really useful for keeping bub warm and toasty but not so easy to slip off in the car of pram. so I set about making it for this beautiful baby!

We didn't know what baby flavour Sydney was going to be so I was looking for neutral kind of fabrics. I found these in Krafty Kats in Huntingdon, If you have never been it's worth a journey, it a treasure trove of cake baking, sewing, knitting and papercrafts and you always find just what you need, and often a lot of what you don't need! I'm always there last on a Monday before guides trying to make a plan of what we can do that evening so I find them a saviour!

So I purchased
1m of animal fabric
1m of yellow gingham
1m of wadding (I used the expensive cotton kind because at the time I wasn't sure what I was looking for and I was worried since it was for a baby)

Below are the instructions I used though it won't matter if you deviate slightly.

• Put the two pieces of fabric spread of patterns facing each other. Fold them into quarters and cut around them to round the corners as below:

• Lay out the batting again on the floor in my case, and lay the rounded corner sandwich on to of the batting, keep the two patterns facing each other at the moment.
• put the sandwich to the batting and the cut the batting to match the shape of the other fabric.
• Keep everything pinned together and sew all the edges together, leaving one corner open.
• Turn the blanket right side in, so you have patterned fabric of both sides.
• Fold the blanket in half , then draw a straight line across the corner you haven't sewn up yet. Cut this line off then sew it up with a large zigzag stitch creating  a hood.
• You can zigzag all the way round the edge it you want to, to give it a nice finish though when I did I wished I hadn't as I made such a mess of it not keeping it straight! As you can see..
 
• Now you need to cut the gaps for the safety straps to go in. What I did was got Von to measure the distance between each strap and put the measurement roughly in the middle, what you could do if place it in the care seat and mark out where each strap needs to go. Then you need to sew a large rectangle around where you are going to make a hole so that it doesn't fray or run into being a huge hole! I then laid it on my cutting mat and made 3 straight lines within the squares I have made with my rotary cutter like below.

There you have it! NICE AND EASY

 

Hopefully you'll end up with a super cutie to be 'swaddled' in it like this!

I had to ask what swaddleing was... apparently its like wrapping the baby up in all the layers, like it the picture! ha ha.

As you can see this one is a little big just yet, but I'm fairly certain she'll grow into it!

 

Update - it's even good in a bouncy seat too, and it stops mummy getting annoyed at the blanket always slipping off or being kicked off!

 

 

Next stop wedding presents..

Now just to let you know being the best mans wife is more stressful than being the bride, and your the girl the bride has entrusted with making sure the boys turn up and look presentable.

 

This particular wedding was in TOWIE country so I was most excited to get the fake tan out, but then it was in February! So I spent the weekend folding pocket squares pinning button holes and driving boys around who had forgotten their shoes!

 

I digress, for his present my husband wanted something to give him to use on the day. On our wedding in August my husband was sweating a lot and their was a running joke that it was a good job the best man brought a hanky to wipe his brow before I arrived!

 

The present was then born from this idea.



For you brow from your bro on your wedding day

The things I learnt from this were:

• I need to regulate the gaps between words as these were a bit higgledy piggledy.
• There is something called 'stitch and tear' it you put it behind your fabric, or in my case hanky, it stops the embroidery looking so pulled and puckered and it just tears off where it isn't required once you have finished.
• People pay at lot of money for a personalised hanky online so I set up an etsy store! RoodlesRunique etsy store

 

A complete novice who is addicted to Pintrest

So I get a fancy sewing machine for Christmas and I'm DESPERATE to use it on as much as I can! So I go around Pintrest (which is a habit I gained whilst trying to plan my wedding last August) trying to find easy looking things to try and re-create before a really know what I am doing.

I found these which to me looked like two squares with rice in, perfect!

These were from Sugarbeecrafts but I thought I knew better!

 

My friend had recently started an outdoorsy job and it was January so I thought these would be perfect for Mim and off I went. Mims not a florally kind of person so I thought I would make them plain and put her name on them as my clever machine does letters and numbers!

 

These are my attempt...

 

As you can see not quite as good! The things I learnt from this project t that might help you are as below:

• as I was putting an embroidered section I should have done that first then cut the squares around it as mine were off centre as I wasn't sure how big the word would come out
• I sewed these then cut them with my pinking shears which I think gave them a nice edge but I could probably top stich them now I know what to do
• you don't need much rice, at all! and definitely use a funnel if you have one or you will be fighting for the raw rice from your puppy like me!
• be very careful where you leave the gap to put your rice and how you then fasten it after. I suppose top stitching will resolve this issue as it gives a neater finish.
• funky fabric is always better!

I hope this helped someone I may get round to making round two of these before Christmas I'm sure!