It's a bugs life...

I found this beautiful bugs fabric on ebay whilst hunting for something else and I knew immediately it would be perfect for my friend at works daughter, who is bugs mad!

I bought and let her parent chose which pattern I used from few free ones on Pintrest. The pattern they chose is the one in the picture to the left, if you click on the picture it will take you to the sewyourtv.com website too which the pattern and instructions if you want to make it yourself, please take what i'm about to say into consideration if you do want to.

This dress is not really for beginners, the concept would be great for beginners but the pattern is just pure awful. For example the front pattern peice is about 7 cm's longer than any of the other prices for no reason that I can tell, as I ended up slicing the excess off. Also there is no pattern piece for the bodice lining so I hacked it using the front and back pieces put together overlapping enough for seam allowances. I used bias binding around the arm holes as there was no was I could get the bodice lining to turn right way out once I has sewn this. I also didn't use the pattern piece for the skirt as the pieces didn't seem to fit together right, so I just used a straight rectangle and used my new gathering foot to make the ruffles. (ps gathering foots! genius!)
Once I had gifted this dress also, she couldn't get it over her head! Now, not having a 3 year old of my own and never having owned one I wasn't really sure how big her head was going to be, but I remember looking and thinking wow kids have small heads! Apparently not that small! So I have now had to slice down the back and create a button panel so she could wear it!

Anyway enough about the failures of this dress I does look super cute! The frills on the sleeves are a great stash buster, do you remember the turquoise from my simplicity dress and my Victoria jacket toil? I tried to french seam all the bits that had to be inside and I have done the skirt seam on the outside so it didn't irritate her, and the sash covers it nicely.

I'm going to retrace my pattern pieces into what needs to be used next time so that I can make another because once it's finished it is lovely, it's just a lot of brain work to get to that point.

My Project for the Refashioners 2016 challenge

What a great idea to reuse jeans in this way! I don't know about you but I had load's of jeans in my house desperate for re-use! I flitted around my ideas but finally decided on a bardot style off the shoulder top.

I looked around on pintrest and found Fabric Godmothers tutorial and thought this was a great starting point.

I started by making the darker jeans one big piece of fabric, mostly because at the beginning I was going to make a dress but I didn't have a big enough piece. This piece then became the top frill of my bardot top.

I then made sure I had enough of the lighter jeans. Now this pair of jeans were bought with 'designer' fraying already put in, which just got bigger and bigger of a hole! So I had to repair these holes before I could use it as the main bodice to my top and not expose myself too much! Once that was done I cut two rectangles one 40cm deep and one 20cm deep.

I used the jeans hem for the bottom of the bodice and I zigzagged in contracting cream thread for the frill which I think gives it a nice finish. One I had made two tubes of fabric, I attached them using the wonderful tutorial above.
I only had thick elastic in, and I'm impatient to wait to go to a shop, so I pushed that through the frill's tube opening I had made. Whilst we are on the subject of threading elastic through.. there HAS to be an easier way to do this?! this is what took me most of the time!tip and tricks most welcome please!

When I first put this top on my husband laughed at my soo much as I had tried it on over my t-shirt and put the frills on top of my shoulders like a vest top, once I rearranged it looked much better (shame about my tan lines though!)

There are so many great adaptations of using jeans to make something else so please check out the hashtag #therefashioners2016 and #jeanius and see what everyone has been making. I love how everyone has used it so different and I especially love the negative space removing the pocket gives you like on my shoulder details.

Daisy Dress, from Simply sewing mag

I made this beautiful dress for our Christmas present to go see Phantom of the Opera (amazing by the way!)

It was a perfectly timed free pattern from the Simply Sewing magazine.

I used some vintage cotton fabric my grandmother had in her stash. It still had the label on it saying the cost of £2.80!! The total outfit cost me about £3 as I only had to buy the zips and the thread, my kind of outfit!

I traced out the size I needed and cut it all out and put it all together in just a few hours and it has so few pieces. Perfect for me as I hate the tracing out stage!

I really struggled in putting the facing around the neck area though. I sewed it all on then I couldn't turn it back the right way out. I had to unpick the shoulders and re sew them afterwards which left them a little frayed but now I know what to do next time.

I love the part circle skirt of this dress as its a perfect shape for me. And is really flattering. The fold on the neckline adds a beautiful touch and the dress would look even better in a plain fabric I think.

Beautiful dress which is perfect for work, Simply Sewing mag even included my version on their website!

The wedding gift.. the final touches!

I then just had to bias bind the edges! I went with blue on Grandmas recommendation (check out the first post about the quilt about having boys under it!). I bought 9 meters of this extra wide binding as I though wide gave me more error space and a meter for mess up!

I sewed the back edge all the way done about 1/4" from the edge of the quilt making sure the rest of the binding was pointing towards the rest of the quilt. You can sort of see at the bottom of this picture how it is sticking out at the bottom, this is because I then brought the binding over my first stitch and clipped it on the front. This way you can only see one set of top stitched (in theory).

These clips were a god send, free with Simply Sewing mag! It saved it faffing around with pins and I could just slide the clip down! I then sewed all the way down and folder the corners over keeping the binding all one piece.


I made this panel for the back of the quilt with same ribbon from our wedding and some bits I bought which I thought gave it a great gift tag!





There we have it one finished quilt! Which she loved by the way :) Boy am I glad of that!!

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!