The 'blue language' dress

, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

Pattern: one of the dress variations from Sew U – Home Stretch
Fabric: A very slinky knit from John Lewis (sorry can’t remember what it’s actually made out of)
Wear again?: Yes I’ve worn it for a day out shopping and also into work – I can see myself getting quite a bit of use out of it.
A while back I posted a query in the forum about getting a serger – thanks to everyone who replied, you were all very helpful. I finally got mine for Christmas, but then it sat in it’s box for a good two months glowering at me whilst I worked up the courage to actually try and work the thing. I finally got myself a copy of Sew U – Home Stretch by Wendy Mullan which is a really great introduction to sewing with stretch and decided to tackle this dress with some lovely navy sodalite blue/white striped jersey fabric I picked up half price in John Lewis (oh how I wish I’d just bought the whole end of the roll – would make a lovely top).
Anyway back to the ‘blue language’ dress – so called due to the amount of swearing that ensued during it’s making. This should have been a really simple make – no closures of any kind, and a very well written and easy to follow pattern (I really would recommend the book to anyone new to knit/stretch fabrics), however I still managed to muck it up! First I cut out the first piece of the pattern then wondered why it looked so small – then I remembered that there is no seam allowance given on the Sew U patterns, so I had to go back and re-trace all the pattern pieces and add on a seam allowance. Cutting (always my least favourite part anyway) was a bit difficult what with trying not to stretch the fabric whilst I laid it out and then trying to match up the stripes. Anyway I got them cut out and put them to one side until I got the time to sew them up.
A window of opportunity presented itself when I had to take the day off work as my youngest was sick with a cold. Despite being fairly bouncy when she got up, by 10:30 she was tucked up in bed and asleep. I decided to tackle the dress – but was constantly expecting her to wake up any minute, big mistake! I should never work under pressure – it definitely does something bad to my concentration. I started by sewing up one side of the shoulders then added the binding round the neckline and sewed up the shoulder – then I looked at what I’d done. I could have sworn I had the two right sides together when I pinned it but there staring me in the face was a bodice with a front inside out and back piece the right way round. Much swearing and unpicking ensued before I finally sewed it back the right way round. Then I sewed the first sleeve on – inside out! Had I not learned my lesson? At this point I decided to back away from the garment and leave it until I was in a somewhat less scatty brained mode. Another day, another attempt and it all finally came together without any more schoolboy errors. I was surprised to find on trying it on that it’s actually quite wearable, despite all the unpicking and re-sewing that went on.

Autumn inspirations

P1020521, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

The soft purples, greens and yellows of the heather form a wonderful colour pallette for the Autumn season. I think I will keep my eye out for fabrics matching this pallette for my upcoming Autumn wardrobe.

The View From Here - The Ring of Brodgar

P1020522, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

These stones have stood here for nigh on 5000 years - part of a neolithic site believed to be linked to worship located on the Orkney mainland. Also to be found close to this site is Maes Howe - a neolithic burial tomb (vandalised by those naughty vikings and covered in rune grafitti inside) and a new finding - the Ness of Brodgar - reported to be a 'Neolithic Cathederal for the whole of Scotland': http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/nessofbrodgar/
The view from here is stunning - so much more mystical and evocative than the overcrowed, wire-fenced Stonehenge with it's views of the busy A3.

Knight in training

Knight in training, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

The view from here

View from Warwick castle turret, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

Took big C up to Warwick castle yesterday to make up for his trip with the holiday club there being cancelled (never was there such a disappointed boy).

Much fun was had by him doing archery, knight school, talking to dragons and generally watching knights knock each other about on the battle field. I enjoyed the views from the parapet - Warwick looks like a very pretty town from up here, unfortunately I didn't have the time to see the rest of it.

At the Shalleys - New Brighton

Album 2 murraypage 009a, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

And these were our ones...

At the Shalleys 3

P1020346, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

And somewhere to put your feet up with a good book.

At the Shalleys 2

P1020348, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

Another peek inside the Southbank one - everything you need for a cuppa.

Shalley interior

P1020347, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

Ah those were the days!

Photographed at the Southbank.

Down at the Shalleys 1

P1020333, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

Another pic from the Southbank - this time the shalleys along the water front (sorry but they are shalleys NOT beach huts to me and always will be). These reminded me of the one we had in New Brighton as kids (sadly no more). We will be making a big move back there (very) shortly. It makes me wonder what memories my kids will make of the area. New Brighton is undergoing a redevelopment on the waterfront at the moment - not all to the good it has to be said (whoever thought of plonking a warehouse shaped Morrisons on the waterfront needs drowing in the briny), but at least the Lido will be returning. Who knows - maybe the council could be persuaded to bring back the shalleys some day?

All the fun of the fair

P1020350, a photo by Cloth cat on Flickr.

Love this old fashioned helta-skelta - seen at the Vintage at Southbank fair last week. Would have loved to have a nose round all the vintage stalls too, but with two small children in tow it wasn't to be - maybe next year I'll have to sneak down on my own!

For Japan

As I'm sure many people have been, I have been horrified watching the effects of the earthquake and it's aftermath on the people of Japan since Friday. It seems especially close to me as I have familiy over there, but really it should not matter whether I know someone there or not - the human toll is still the same. It is a strange effect of the human mind that somehow when we hear of disasters affecting 10's of thousands of people that it can seem much more distant and unreal than if we hear the story of one person. I would therefore urge people to do this - forget about the headlines of 10,000 plus people missing for a minute and imagine. Imagine a family who's house has been washed away, they do not know the whereabouts of all their friends and family, they have lost all your possessions, food and shelter are scarce, there are warnings about radiation leakage. They are frightened and have no idea what the future will hold for them and if there ever will be a normal again.

Please help those in Japan by donating either to the Red Cross:
http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal

or to Shelterbox: http://www.shelterbox.org/

Both these charities are on the ground in Japan trying to help the survivors. Your donation will be very gratefully recieved and will be put to good use.

Thankyou.

Hello Kitty!

It was little C's second birthday this weekend and at the moment she is totally obsessed with Hello Kitty. Not sure quite what came over me, but I decided that along with all the rest of the organising I had to do for the birthday party I would make a batch of Hello Kitty fairy cakes. At first I had an idea that I'd just ice them on (thank goodness I didn't go down that route), but then I found a hello kitty cookie cutter online and decided to go the fondant route instead (still rather time consuming, but at least it stood half a chance of actually looking like the kitty herself). In the end, the cakes were fairly easy if rather time consuming. I started by rolling out the fondant icing and cutting out the kitty heads:

Then I did the whiskers with black writing icing and rolled balls of black fondant to make the eyes which I then stuck on with the writing icing. This was a little bit messy and I ended up getting some gum arabic to make up into a paste to stick the rest of the decorations on. The eyes ended up a bit too close together compared to real Kitty so if I were to do these again I'd start with the nose next time I think and work my way from there.



The bows were made by rolling red fondant and then using a pizza wheel to cut thin strips which were then cut to about 1" pieces. I folded the two ends to the middle, squashed them down then pinched in the sides to give a bow shape. After sticking them on with the gum arabic they were left to dry over night. In the morning I made the fairy cakes and iced them with buttercream icing then just stuck the kitty heads straight on to that. I made 24 of them in total - by the time I was half way through I was starting to curse myself for the idea!




As well as the fairy cakes I also made a hello kitty birthday cake:


This was made with butter cream icing, writing icing for the outline and fondant icing with pigment powder for the flowers.

Snow Fun

P1010120
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Snowman

P1010116
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Now sadly missing - all that's left are the buttons and the carrot.

Snow fun

P1010110
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

You're not supposed to eat the snowmans nose.

Happy Halloween!

Mwahhhaaah! Happy Halloween to all you spooks out there. Yet again it's been a while since I posted, but at least I have been making something. If I'd had my thinking cap on I'd have taken some photos as I was doing it, but this Halloween mask is really sooo simple to make it I think you can do without them. First take a rectangle of grey felt long enough and wide enough to fit round your eyes (you could measure this, but really you'll get a good enough result by guesstimating). Then take a square of medium weight iron on interfacing the same size as the felt and iron it on to the back. Next iron on some bondaweb onto the front followed by the spiderweb lace (cover with a tea towel when ironing this on). Then you just need to draw your mask shape on to the back of the interfacing and cut out (you may want to practice and make up a paper template first). To get the right positioning for the eyes I put my glasses down on the back of the mask and marked round them. If you don't wear glasses then you could try holding on to your face the wrong way round (interfacing outwards) and marking the points for the outer corners of your eyes that way. It's a good idea to cut one eye first then fold the mask in half and draw round the cut out for the second eye to ensure that they're positioned symmetrically. Now you just need to sew on some elastic (measure it round your head from one side of the mask to the other and remember to make it a little shorter so it isn't loose). Here's how the finished mask looks without spookyvision:


Looking back to my halloween photos from last year shows just what a difference a year makes. Two have grown and one (me) has shrunk. I don't know why I haven't got round to blogging about it, but since March this year I've been doing weight watchers and finally reached my goal weight last Tuesday having lost 2st 11.5 lb - quite a chunk of me really. If you're struggling to visualise just how much that is (and I can never quite get my head round it) it's basically as much as the young skeleton in this years picture - don't think I'd fancy carrying round one of him all day now, but I was!

New word

New word
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Slowly and surely new words are starting to emerge. Mama, dada and brother have been around for a while now. The latests two are:


knee (as in 'I want to sit on your' or just 'knee, knee, knee' in lottalingo.
no - I think I'm going to be hearing a lot of this last one.

Flower Garden Bag

Flower Garden Bag
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Don't seem to get much time for crafting at the moment, but did manage to make a small handbag for one of my friends daughters last month. These a quite an easy make and they're a good way to use up the jelly roll strips I bought a while back and have been wondering what to do with (though could just curse myself for not getting a coordinating fabric from the same range - now discontinued - to use for the lining. Just goes to show you really should bag that fabric while you can even if you don't know what you're going to use it for (ahem).

Quite shocking to see that the last time that I blogged was Easter - not very good going. I've had to switch comments on to moderation now after that last post was deluged with spam comments in chinese (?) script.

Happy Easter

089
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Happy Easter everybody! Trying to avoid too much chocolate for the little ones this year (especially as I'm weight watching at the moment so watching other people eat piles of chocolate is torture), so I though I'd have another go at one of the projects from Poppy Treffry's book, this time the egg cozies. I am sooo pleased with the way they turned out - I'd never have thought I had it in me to draw something like these little chicks with the sewing machine, but it was really quite easy once I'd followed the picture. I tend to be the sort of person that normally buys craft books, pours through them then never makes any of the projects inside, but this book really has me itching to make all the items inside it. Well done Poppy for a fabulous book!