Shoe Pockets

My instructions to the daughters upon entering the house are "Shoes off! Slippers on!" or, a variation on that theme - "Wellies off! Slippers on!" My instructions to the daughters upon exiting the house are "Slippers in the Shoe Pockets! Shoes on!" These are usually bellowed, on the basis that upon entering, there are wafts of hard-earned warm air pouring out the front door and so I want them to hotfoot it in that door pronto and slam the door shut; and upon exiting, we are probably not far off running late.

I was being driven mad by the fact that, despite having this being a nice roomy house, it has an oddly narrow and under-equipped hallway, with no porch and thus nowhere for the throwing off of the vast number of garments we are requiring in this inclement weather (my favourite being those lovely -6 degrees days - ah, the frozen toes, ah the rosy nose...hm.). As a consequence, there was no order, and I could never find anything and it was driving me round the bend.

So, I made the Shoe Pockets, and also A New Rule. Or rather two - No. 1 is that these daughters shall possess no more than a sum total of 3 pairs of footwear each - slippers, wellies, shoes. That's it. If their shoes don't match what they're

wearing, hard cheese. Rule No.2 is that there will always be one pair of foot things on their feet, and two pairs in their shoe pockets. Things must live, on pain of death, in the Shoe Pockets. But what about when they're in bed, I can hear you saying - ah well, they have the Shoe Box upstairs, where they put their slippers, so they're ready for the morning. I don't make them wear their slippers in bed. Or in the bath or anything. Not that there is anything wrong with that - I once wore my wellies to bed I loved them so much. (This is when I was a child, I might add).

There is only one thing which scuppers this very sensible set of rules to help keep the blasted hallway tidy and that is the thing known as Their Father. Their Father whooshes in the door with the daughters in a whirlwind of chaos and smarties, and shoes get flung willy-nilly and you can't find their slippers and there's half a pair of wellies in the car and the other half up someone's sleeve and coats beflung on sofas and shoes in the fireplace and oh, well, it all goes pear-shaped. Instead of pair-shaped.

Heart of the Matter

Ok, so you've seen a million of these things before, but, well, isn't it nice? You might be interested to know that this is Vanessa Arbuthnott fabric; the heart is made from swatches I sent off for when trying to choose curtain fabric. Her fabrics are rustic and wholesome - I love them. In the end of course I baulked at the prices and went for my good old fabric favourite, the Fabric Warehouse in Uxbridge, which is one of those dribblingly good places full to the rafters with enormous rolls of material. My mother nearly became pinned under said rolls several times when we were pulling them out to have a look. Luckily I'm a pack-horse me, and was happily lumping great cylinders of fabric about all over the place, and causing havoc in the aisles unravelling them to check repeats.

Now, am I alone in feeling slightly guilty when I use sample swatches for a homemade thing? Is that a bit naughty? Perhaps if I sell this heart for, say £18.50 in a boutique in Marylebone High Street, that would be a little out of order, and so I shall promise to pay Vanessa fifty pee or something, in commission. No, hang on. I think I had to pay for the samples...

I take it back. I'll keep the fifty pee, thank you very much.

I made the heart as a prototype, with the vague idea of making ten of them as Christmas presents for Isla's preschool teachers. Two-year old Hetty sat next to me at the sewing machine playing with quilting safety pins (yes, I know - but she was right there; if she'd stabbed herself I was right on hand to administer first-aid. Stop fussing. I wasn't letting her play with scissors. Or pins. Although I did yesterday. How else am I going to get these things done? They don't want something safe to play with do they?). However, after an entire morning spent doing it, it became apparent that making ten was not exactly feasible, so this one sits prettily atop the mirror over the fireplace in the living-room.

It reeked of lavender, clary sage and peppermint essential oils, which I stupidly drenched the stuffing in before putting it in the heart, so that I got it all over my hands and gave myself a fragrance overdose. Then I had to sew up the heart and put the ribbon on, and so Hetty and I sat in a fug of stink for far longer than is, I am certain, advisable, although I don't have an aromatherapy qualification. We must have smelled like a Camden Market joss-stick stall going to collect Isla from preschool.

The preschool teachers all got a tin of chocolate eclairs each instead, in case you were wondering. Not remotely home-made, but probably a good deal tastier.

Tie died

Ok, guess what this was?!

The bemused husband was requested to dig me out some old ties that he doesn't wear, or that he's thrown custard down or something (which reminds me of a quote from Isla when aged three - "When I'm a lady, I'll eat ratatouille. When I'm a baby like Hetty, I'll like ratatouille. With custard." Okay then....sometimes I have whole conversations with the daughters which make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Another more recent one, from Hetty, aged two and a third began - "What do you want to be when you grow up, Hetty?" and Hetty, after a little think, replied "I'm going to eat tiny little sausages. I'm not a dirty lady." Er, right then. Right you are.)

This little project is a sit-in-the-evening one, quite quick, and rather pleasing - it's from Cythia Treen and Karen Phillipi's Last Minute Fabric Gifts, as is the white flower sitting with the bag.
Who'd have thought it, eh? A little bag made from an old tie. My plan to conquer the birthday world with homemade gifts is setting off nicely, if somewhat falteringly. There was a large amount of oh-bugger-I've-sewn-the-damn-thing-to-itself mutterings whilst I sat there. Now, as you can imagine the bag is rather silken. Nice for lipsticks, or maybe even an ipod thingy. Hands up who wants one of those for their birthday because that's gone in the To Give Someone For Their Birthday box, sadly sans ipod thingy, although I'm sure I could dig out a revolting old lipstick from somewhere. Anyone?

Bean sewing

Well. My first child's present is finished - my friend's daughter 1 year old Evie is to be the proud recipient of a bag o' beanbags, so she can learn how to walk about with them on her head, and lob them across the room and fight over them with her sister; all very important things a 1-year old must master. I am rather pleased with the bag. Not so much with the beanbags. Answers on a postcard please to win an old cotton reel, those who can spot the oops-right-sides-facing gaffe, my valiant attempts to zig-zaggedly conceal and transform not quite having worked...
Now then. I don't know how I made the bag. I started off with 4 squares of fabric - 2 red and 2 stripey, and had in mind some vague idea of the bag being all neat and lined with the stripey; so I layered them all up and sewed and then turned it inside out and then did something else and turned it back again and before I knew it I somehow had a very neat bag with the seams all completely hidden away, somehow, I don't quite, how did I, what? I shall have to ask The Oracle, my mother Shelagh, who is the Knower of All Things Craft. She'll say - oh for goodness sake, it's a Hidden Double-Sided Uppercut Gahooty Lining, that's all, and I'll be like - eh? And she'll say, right, if you want your lining and you want your seams hidden you line up your pieces so...and then when they're sewn they'll be like this....see? And I'll say, no, I don't see and she'll say oh for goodness sake. And we'll be wrestling with bits of fabric and I'll be going, no, still don't see. You're going to have to show me with stitches in and everything coz I cannot for the life of me see how that flat things turns itself into a bag. No spatial awareness see, Mum.
What is becoming clear with my crafting is that I bumble through each project with my tongue sticking out earnestly and somehow end up somewhere - the results are often quite good, but if I want to perfect them I should be improving through practice. So I shall jolly well have to work out how that bag did that to itself, and then at what point I should (have) done the ribbony bit, and where on earth in God's name I would put those nice EVIE letters to start with if I wanted them to end up in the right place on the outside of the bag - I mean, blimey, this requires more maths and geometry and stuff, and I've only just got over coming seriously a-cropper with that quilt maths. Still, if I want to be able to 'run up' a beanbag (as opposed to a beanpole which would be a whole different thing) then I need to have my methods honed.
And once I have consulted Said Oracle, I will do some lovely instructions and stick 'em up here, ok? We can all become seamly bag ladies.

Little Biro Peep

Where do they go? I mean, really, this is the kind of stuff we really need studies on - pens - where? Where? It's not like the husband takes them, because he has an almost pathological allergy to writing. I am a List-Maker; he says Just Tell Me. And unless the girls have developed stilt-like capacities, it is usually not them either, although they do love a biro of course, being two and a half and three and two thirds. Ooh Mummy's pen, ooh a blank wall.....
Anyway, so my point is, pens do disappear and they do need herding, or they will go a-wandering and get themselves all lost and then need shepherding back to the flock, to somewhat overdo the collective nouns.
So off I went to my box of scraps, and dug out some old bit of jean, and some lovely red scraps; cut them into pointy shapes, and sewed them very roughly together to make a rectangle. Then tidied it a bit with some seams, put a back on it, and sewed running stitch at inch-long intervals to make pen pockets. This has been hammered onto my newly created corkboard and although a good shepherdess would have counted them in and out of their pen, ahem, pens - I do believe at a glance that they are more or less staying put.

Striptease

Not that I really believe in New Year's Resolutions, depsite my having used capital letters, but this year, I have decided to make all gifts. Start now, said my sister, grimly, right now. Of course, this is all in an effort to save money and avoid funding dodgy places with poor environmental and ethical records with my (husband's) well-earned wonga, but I have defaulted already in purchasing two lovely makey books - Amy Butler's 'In Stitches' and 'Last-minute Fabric Gifts' by Cynthia Treen and Karen Phillipi, from that place which sacks its workers if they have more than 6 days off and whose CEO made them all show their bottoms in a giant moonie, calculated to offset any criticism said company received.
I seem to have digressed -
A n y w a y...so I have already started making things, and will keep a record of them here. I have already sewn a couple of things to my trousers, and spent a not inconsiderable amount of time with the husband trying to work out how to make my quilt a golden rectangle. 1:168, should you be wondering, but try to do your maths first, rather than starting out with 985" of pieced together strips and then figuring out how many lengths to cut them into. You know, just in case you ever do that. Don't, is my advice. If you're wondering why the devil on seven horses a person could possibly want to end up with something that could go twice round your house and once round the gasworks, then you'll find the recipe in Rosemary Wilkinson's Quick Quilts in a Weekend. Go, go! Get stripping.