King Charles the first costume

Thursday 31st May was the Diamond Jubilee tea party at my sons primary school, where the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, come to mention it so did the staff and helpers!! They were lucky enough to have it outside, although it did become a little blowy. But secretly I was quite pleased as my sons costume was made of fleece and if the glorious sunshine had lasted he would of been sweltering!!!

I started making this costume in plenty of time, starting with the breeches which did not take long to make a pattern, cut and sew.

I started by making this pattern for the breeches before cutting, pinning and whizzing it along the machine.

I did not want to spend any money on this costume, hence using a roll of fleece I have had for about 8 years sat waiting to be used! I attached a front panel to a t shirt which was the same colour to save myself a bit of work. I then drew out where I wanted to add some detail.

Ribbon tacked on ready for hand sewing! At this point I was unsure if I would ever finish in time as it was probably over a week since my initial completion of the breeches! I knew time was against me and it did not help knowing that the majority of sewing now on was to be by hand.

I had to make a pattern for the arms, then cut  the fleece, before dividing into 3 section on each and making another pattern for the fabric I was inserting!! I had a skirt I bought years ago which I cut the lining from and it was a perfect colour match to the ribbon. I was really very lucky I was able to use up some of my stash.

This fabric was slippery to work with, and very time consuming! I had to cut 12 panel in total (6 for each arm) and then pin each one to the fleece before sewing by hand. You can see inside and outside photographs above.

This picture was my inspiration, I am so glad I bought this king and queens book for our son years ago. I would of loved to have made a replica of this, but I ended up leaving it to the last minute and had to go for basic detail but still copying the main features/shapes as the original.

When I finally finished the main construction of the sleeves I decided to go along the seams of the arms on the sewing machine as it was getting late the night before the party. Then I had to attach the sleeves to the t shirt by hand, and was really pleased with the finish of them.

The morning of the party looking the part with a mustache/beard and wig. I was really pleased how well the sleeves worked, as I had not measured my templates against him at all, and was just guessing. I was sewing away thinking I hope these actually fit around his wrists and not be too short or too long.

Also very pleased with the shape of the breeches, they also had a line of matching ribbon running down the side.
 

Here he is stopping for a quick photo shoot along the way! So there we go, another costume to add to the collection. I think I am all jubilee'd out already!!

How to occupy a child on a car journey? (not like this is the answer!)

On Friday evening we were driving to my husbands parents for the weekend and were hoping the little lady would either sleep early on in the day if she needed to, or not at all and hopefully drop off in the car. As you have guessed this did not go to plan and she gave into sleep in the afternoon, therefore I needed to think of a new idea to keep her occupied on the journey as she is not interested in the growing pile of toys, books, hats and other random bits and pieces she has in the car.

So as soon as she dropt off I had to rack my brains to think of something, then remembered the travel naughts and crosses game which my friend Paula made for her son -

 http://cards-by-paula.blog.co.uk/

And decided to make a velcro scene for her to play with, I then realised time was against me as I had to try and make this before packing for the weekend and making a start on the little ones tea so she was fed before we left. I had planned to do a A4 size scene with various shapes but knew I would not have time due to doing it all by hand.

I started by stitching the velcro onto the back of some felt.

I then put a piece of felt on top and stitched the shapes in thread, securing the two pieces of felt together before trimming around.

 This is how the back looks.

 I got carried away making clouds not realising just how little time I had to make the other ones.

 A cute little hedgehog which is a favourite of mine!

I was disappointed that I only had enough time to make these and that I could not make a large woodland scene as I had planned, hence just having a strip of velcro to play with them on.

Although it was not as big as planned, I was still pleased that I had made this in the little time I had, and actually felt this could hold the key to a stress free journey!! I decided I would not give it her straight away, I waited until she began to get a but grouchy before handing it over. She was intrigued by it to begin with, and took the shapes off and inspected them before sticking them back on. Then she decided to take them all off again and scatter them around the car!! That lasted all of what? 5 minutes!!

I plan to make more of these in varying sizes and themes, so watch this space!!

Before you Leave

On Friday 18th May I was invited to a private view party of 'Before you leave', which was fab and had a great atmosphere!!! This pop up group show was part of site festival 2012 in Stroud, with an eclectic mix of work by Lorraine Robbins, Jo Fry, Abigail Fallis, Julie Howe, Tamzin Malleson, Colin Glen, Polly Glen, Micha Leese, Tam Ingles, Simon Nobel, Manuel Huertas, Oliver Marsden, Ralph Macartney. Every piece of work was completely different yet complemented one another. The exhibition was curated very well and used the space which was a goods shed extremely well.

This is a small piece of work I purchased by Jo Fry which I will have to find a special home for in the new house.

My lovely table and chairs!

I simply cannot wait to share a photo of the table and chairs we have recently purchased ready for our new house! I cannot wait to set up my little sewing area on it, aswell as an eating area of course!!

This lovely table and chairs has been refurbished by the fabulous Lindsay at

http://www.creativechic.co.uk/

Be sure to have a look at her website, not only does she refurbish furniture but also offers a sourcing service. Creative Chic offer a sanding service, hand painting or professional spraying service, and are absolutely fantastic to deal with. Since purchasing this we have also had another item refurbished and cannot wait until we can start using both items!!

Confuzzled!

This is the little ladies confuzzled face! It seems to be a favourite expression of hers at the moment, It may have something to do with the reaction she gets when she makes this face!

After having another sort out I ended up with huge bags full of outgrown clothes which I plan to do something with. I am planning to make a quilt with the 'favourite' clothes. I am sure I am not the only one who had lots of baby clothes, but certain ones became a favourite and often appeared in lots of photographs and almost became part of their personality! Those will form a memory quilt, and the rest will probably form some other kind of quilt.

Our daughter is 21 months now, so you can imagine how long some of these clothes have been waiting for me to put them to use, and the trouble is I keep thinking 'well I may aswell wait until the next lot have been outgrown and use those aswell' and so it goes on!! I plan to make a start with these as soon as possible, my main drive being they make take up less space once they are in the form of a quilt! Hopefully it will not be too long before I post with a finished item.

Can you tell what it is yet??

Here is a snippet of my latest project, Can anyone guess what it is yet?? (and no the answer is not very time consuming!! which of course it is). I really enjoy hand sewing, especially whilst I am catching up with some television in the evenings.

When I have not been sewing I have been thinking about my bookshelves, then I decided it was no good just thinking about them, so started looking at them all with great interest! Trying to put off the task in hand!!! 

Then I decided it was time to write a list of all my books which I STILL have not read, due to constantly buying books, I sometimes buy duplicates. Yes I have too many to keep track off. I used to keep a list of various authors and kept a note of the books I had but the list of authors grew and and the list stopped. I was thinking of the best way to complete this task, and was going to take every single book off its shelf and put them into author alphabetical order, then organise them into publishing date before writing them all down. But of course that was not really an option with a little girl running around all day who is fascinated with books as it is. There was no way they would stop in their order for any longer than possibly 2 minutes??

So I stood at each book shelf, writing each book down in the order they were stacked, which for most of them was in no order at all! Once I had 6 A4 sides of titles I then got my little notebook and divided it into 26 sections before writing each letter of the alphabet throughout. Then I got to work writing each book in the correct section. Yes the method was quite backwards and took some time, but now I have the little book in my handbag, and have already used it to assist buying some more books!!!

I soon realised after doing this that it was quite a pointless exercise as I am not supposed to be buying anymore books!!! I have been looking into buying a kindle (was quite an alien idea at first!!!) and thought it is probably best I read all my paperbacks first.

Pretty patterns

I was checking through my daughters current clothing (I do this on a regular basis to see if she is ready to go into the next size up, but at 20 months she is still in 6-9 months at the moment!) and before putting it all away I decided to take some photos as I felt quite inspired by some of the fabrics. I had not realised until now just how many items she had that were either spots or stripes!