Week 20, aka something for Mum

So glad I picked this fabric up when I did, way ahead of Mother's Day. It give me plenty of time to do the hand hemming, and the colours are perfect for Mum. Flowers and swirls of vibrant and subtle blues, with a splash of purples and sprinkling of reds and greens.
Fabric: Tessuti Italian digitally printed Wool Georgette. 1.4m square
Method: I knew from sewing my dress with this fabric (same print, different colourway) that it frays exceedingly easily. I did a double fold narrow hem. After cutting off the selvedges I sewed a line of straight stitching about 5mm from the raw edges. I used this as the fold line to press the first fold, trying to get the line of stitching just inside the fold. The second fold I didn't bother to press, I held it in place by hand as I hand stitched, catching just a few threads on the body of the scarf and running the needle inside the fold to the next stitch point.

Week 19, aka huff and puff

 
Some projects take a long time for no good reason.
This is one of those.
I bought the yarn back in 2011 at one of the annual craft expos here in Melbourne: Hoooked Zpagetti- Tshirt fabric yarn manufactured from garment industry waste. Better in my book than some of the other Tshirt fabric yarns now on the market which are presumably made from perfectly good fabric. And yarn minus the tedious steps of gathering (ideally from op shops or otherwise waste garments) and cutting your own fabric. But not without the tedious step of knitting it on 15mm size needles.
The plan was a pouf although during the knitting process I reserved judgement about whether I'd actually make a pouf. The "pattern" I was "following" was just a big rectangle (if you can really call that a pattern, and therefore actually be following it). If it didn't succeed as a pouf I figured I'd just fold it in half and seam it and call it a floor cushion.
I'm not entirely sure that it succeeds (certainly it doesn't have the same well rounded shape as the pattern picture), but everyone else around here likes it, so big and squishy pouf it shall remain (for the time being at least).
Personally I'm just glad I finally got myself to pull it out of the knitting basket and  finish seaming it (and securing dropped stitches) and stuffing it (with a carefully folded and rolled old queen sized doona),  because now there's room in the basket for some other projects...
More details on Ravelry.

Week 18, aka softly, softly.

I'm not a pink person.
But my daughter is.
A friend offered me an adult coat project, using some divinely soft pink wool cashmere coating and floral quilting cotton lining, that she had abandoned.
Knowing that A would need a new coat this winter I couldn't say no.
And I'm delighted with the results.
It's soft, and pink and pretty. A loves it (wearing it and also just holding it when she doesn't need to wear it) and I enjoyed finding time to make it, to pull apart my friend's half finished project, to trace the pattern and fiddle with the materials to make it work, to make bias binding, to work the top stitching by hand and to visit Buttonmania for the all important selection of buttons.
 
The only bit I didn't enjoy was making the buttonholes. My sewing machine got all glitchy on me and the supposedly easy process of making 7 buttonholes exactly the same was not the plain sailing it should have been. The machine is now off getting serviced and will hopefully be running like a dream again for Craft Camp at the end of this month...

Pattern: Style S  from "Cute Girls Clothes" (although I refer to it as Apron Girl) by Akiko Mano. A little pattern tweaking to give the collar a rounded front edge, and made with a full lining, although I didn't seam the facing to the lining out of pattern drafting laziness. Instead the body and sleeve linings match the outer pieces, and held together as one when attaching the sleeve cuff, collar and front facing.
Size: 100cm.
Fabric: Recycled from a friend's project. Pale warm pink wool/cashmere coating with Michael Miller quilting cotton floral print lining (one print for the body and another for the sleeves and bias binding).
Made: over a three week period (and finished during Kids Clothes Week!)

Week 17, aka a little bag

Another little project on the side.
This time a gift, which has safely made it to it's destination, accompanying the little golden doilies on their way back to Lisa.
Such a pleasure, and so satisfying to make, in many ways.

Pattern: the same self drafted simple hand bag pattern that I used for the School Carnival.
Fabrics: Some kimono fabric scraps that I picked up on a craft camp in 2008, foundation pieced onto a recycled cotton sheet, lined with linen from a second hand skirt, and finished off with some simple running stitch embroidery. 

Week 15, aka a little bear

I think the trick to finishing a craft project each week is having multiple things on the go, in various stages of progress. At the moment I'm collecting materials for a big project, I have a couple of patterns awaiting sticking and tracing ready for cutting out, a few things cut out and marked up ready to sew (lets not discuss how long some of them have been ready to sew), one project well and truly underway, and then this little project kind of happened on the side.
A while ago C lots one of his soft toys. The unimaginatively named "Favourite Teddy", a very simple little Ikea teddy. Which of course, is no longer available. We had talked about making a "New Favourite Teddy" a few times, C designing and me sewing, which is how this Panda teddy came about.
The original wasn't a Panda, but C had seen Kung Fu Panda and that's what he wanted to make. So, over the course of a few days, he drew, we discussed the size and shaping, we re-drew, I traced off the pattern pieces, we rummaged in the scrap basket (coming up with some lovely black coating and awful white acrylic felt). Then I cut and sewed and turned, C helped with the stuffing, and I finished off the simple embroidered face.
The new Favourite has slept with C each night since, although my heart melted a little today when he told me that even though we'd made a new teddy to replace Favourite it didn't really replace him. I guess there's only so much that handcraft can achieve.

Week 14, aka Cherry Pips.

Some finished knitwear this week, and my sewing mojo recovered, partly due to the change in seasons (read: desperate need for new seasonally appropriate clothes right now), the act of writing out my sewing to do list (read: scaring myself), and knit night (read: a chance to relax and unwind and get life in perspective and be inspired by like-minded friends).

I started this eyelet cardigan for A back in Spring. I picked a generous size, didn't swatch (shock!), and thoroughly enjoyed knitting it (just enough interest with the eyelets, but not too complicated for commute knitting). I may at some stage have to re-knit the neck ribbing as I completely forgot to change needle sizes for that. It ended up with 3/4 sleeves, being as I'd bought the yarn with no specific project in mind. Which is fine, as I think it will be a handy garment through to next summer. It took me a few days to get A to try it on (even with the carefully selected pink vintage buttons from Buttonmania), but she seemed to enjoy wearing it when she finally did.



Pattern, Yarn, etc: Over on Ravelry.

Week 13, aka Easter edition

Just some little seasonal felt projects this week.
Realising there was no way I'd get two large velveteen bunnies sewn in time for Easter I opted for something smaller and quicker- buying one felt bunny from a local Steiner craft group and making one myself, accessorised with woolly scarves.
And for our little Easter tree (aka a few gum tree branches we collected at the park) some felt mini bunting- 3cm triangles of felt sewn together by machine, colours to coordinate with the clever Russian shrink-wrap egg decorations that we used on our blown eggs this year.
The bunnies and decorations went down well with the kids, as did some chocolate egg hunting.
Now to get back into garment making mode, as the seasons seem to have suddenly changed, and we're all in need of some cooler weather clothing.