Packing Charm

My Spoonflower fabric is back!
I can't remember if I've told you about Spoonflower before, but it is a fantastic idea - you can be designer of your own fabric. You upload your picture to the website, order your fabric, and bob's your uncle, two weeks later it arrives on your doorstep!
Of course, I was too shy to design something, and let's face it, I'd have had to read 28 books, flick through 39 magazines, draw 82 sketches, spend a fortune on absolutely necessary watercolours or pastels or expensive designer's felt tip pens in order to create my design, and then muse over it, have a few artistic crises of confidence, one or two small breakdowns, and once finished I'd have had to leave it a while, brew it a little, stir it up, let it steep, all much like a cup of tea, and it would have taken me 47 weeks.
And anyway, it was a bit more which came first, the chicken or the egg than that. It wasn't so much that I wanted to design some fabric; it was more that I saw something Isla had drawn and was so struck by it that I felt I wanted to use it for something. I didn't know what, but I stuck it in my pinboard for keeps. Then up popped Spoonflower via my bloggy wanderings one evening, and that, I thought, is it.
And here it is! Isla drew this on that Crayola Colorwonder paper, and I think this makes for brilliant colours - it's the turquoise that clinches it.
It is, quite clearly, a submarine, people. So she very solemnly informed me. You can see her original next to the fabric...Now I just have to decide what to do with it - it's a fat quarter, which is a quarter of a yard, but cut in a way that enables quilters to get maximum shapes out of it. Or, you know, something like that. Anyway - now I will have to wade through my books to decide what to make - something for Isla? For me? Use it with other fabrics in a big project? A small one? Beanbags? Pencil roll? Something new and as yet undreamt of?
For goodness sake. Help me out will you please, you crafty people out there - patterns for a very cool fat quarter please! Leave your comments below. Inspire me. Or it will take another 47 weeks. Seriously, I'm that lacking in ideas.
These little lovelies however, came with a purpose in mind - they are a tiny charm pack, which is a great lazy devil's way to buy fabric - lots of little squares already cut for you - they are going to become a newborn baby I was cuddling the other day's quilt. I will probably tile them diagonally with turquoise plains inbetween for contrast. Or red. Or orange. Or both. Or something. With a really bright jolly border. I think it will be a little play mat for him to sit on.
See what I did there?
He's a newborn. Right now he just sucks on boobs and poos and wees and doesn't sleep at night and cries and stuff. Not much sitting. But he will do, when he's um, like, 6 months or something...!
Well, these quilts do take time, now, don't they.
This morning for example, instead of making things with fabric, I was pulling Virginia Creeper off a shed prior to its dismemberment for relocation to a more loving home, and analysing paving slabs and discussing greenhouse bases. Then I was diagnosing scanner problems with a printer manufacturer. Then I was cooking bolognese sauce.
It all just gets in the way of the fabric porn doesn't it?
But just to keep you going for the evening, look at these gorgeous puppies - Kaffe Fassett reds, ooooh....now astonishingly, I think I do know what to do with these and that is a big summer picnic rug, nothing bonkers, because as you have probably gathered, I'm really no great quilter. But I will square up some pieces, stitch them together, and shove a waterproof backing on it. Wouldn't that be lovely for sitting on in the summer, with a nice drink of something summery like er, an iced coffee or a, um, a, blimey, I can't even remember what one drinks in the summer.
Let's just say a nice cup of tea then, because I will drink tea in all temperatures, if you could just bring me out a cup please. Lovely.
Come join me on the lawn for the fabric porn!

No Guilt Quilting

Now, can you see, if you look very carefully, a sewing machine in there? Good grief. I thought I'd share the progress of my quilt with you and as you can see I have finished the piecing together and am now sewing together the three layers - the pieceing, the wadding (the big fat mashed potato stuff) and the backing.

That curious looking lump in the picture of the quilt here is, of course, a toy combine harvester, in case you were wondering. Ah, the scourge of many a quilter.
Now like a complete loon, I have of course gone great guns at this and determined to make a very large quilt, instead of starting nice and small with a lap quilt, and now have an enormous great cloud of stuff to try and sew through. Seriously. It's a wrestling match. There were things flying off the table as the great lumpen mass of quilt whoomphed into things, quite impervious to its massive bulk. Of course if I'd tidied my sewing basket off the table first I wouldn't have had to pick up its entire contents from where it bestrew itself in all directions on the floor. Now would I. It's like an iceberg, this quilt; it just slowly barges into everything in its path. Only it's a bit softer, I suppose. More like a giant marshmallow man like that one in Ghostbusters. It's one heck of a monster to steer through a sewing machine I tell you. Anyway, that's where it's at.
Now maybe you're wondering who this will be a present for? Well, forget it. This will have taken me about a thousand hours by the time it's finished. No way. Hands off. This is going on my sofa, thank you. Which isn't very gift-minded now is it?

You see, I thought I'd throw something fabricky up here in case you like nothing better than a nice spot of fabric to look at in a blog post, because my present making has ground to a slight halt. I was in the middle of a gift last night which required a zip.
A 7 inch zip.
7 inches.
Not 17 inches, no.
So the 17 inch zip I tried (and obviously failed) to sew into it was, you know, just a little overlong. So, that gift's on hold until I learn how to a) read instructions through properly before buying the makings and b) go and buy another zip.
Not to mention the fact that Isla will be big fat 4 soon, and so we were making her birthday party invitations. Now, can I just explain something, because many people say to me, very admiringly, oh how do you find the time, mine were just bought from Tescos, what lovely home-made invitations...
Well, I say to you, I'm not really being very yummy mummy, I am in fact being selfish with my time. I quite like efficiencies, and making your own invitations doubles up on loads of things. Firstly, it's a lovely bit of re-use. All the bits and bobs used on these cards (pipe cleaners, cake cases, fabric, glitter, tissue paper) were dug out of our Old Chinese Takeaway Craft Cartons. Secondly, I get major Good Mother points for doing kitchen table craft activity, thus imbuing in my children a sense of imagination, thrift, the joyous act of making for giving, plus the ability to learn and repeat construction process, spatial awareness engendering, um, teamwork, errr, um, determination to achieve a goal, er, target-driven reward enculturing and er, you know, other really important things they'll need before they're 4.
But mainly, it means I don't have to do it in the evenings! I can do what I want to do in the evenings! Party planning? You're joking aren't you? I don't think so. Sewing, eating, reading, sitting mindlessly in front of the gogglebox craving a pudding? Yes please. So there! You see. Not really such a good mummy after all.

Drum Roll for the Pencil Roll

Well. For once I am not going to be self-deprecating. After the Duffin the Mule Debacle, I have excelled myself. I am, in short, quite brilliant. Sure, this time I went careering off in the polar opposite direction and spent longer preparing for this project than I did making it, by about a million degrees. I read the instructions in Last Minute Patchwork +Quilted Gifts about 14 times. Then a couple more times just to be on the safe side. And then, just to ensure I'd understood, I wrote them out and added drawings and measurements and little notes

Yes. I did as I was told like a good girl, and well. Will you just have a look at this...
It's a pencil roll isn't it? Quite undeniably, and recognisably a pencil roll. With pens in too. 24 pens and pencils all tucked in snug. I'd have loved one of these when I was little.
Yes, no doubt about it - I'm quite astonishingly pleased with myself.
Truth be told it wasn't really that difficult, but then neither was Duffin the Mule, so it just goes to show that if you follow the instructions while you're still learning the results will be better. It was the same with the tea-cosy. I copied those instructions out too, and also did a lot of unpicking and re-measuring. Measure twice, cut once and all that. I also (and here was a stroke of forward-thinking genius) cut two of each strip so I can make another pencil roll in double quick time for another birthday. Oh aren't I just so clever?
Now, don't let me lull you into a false sense of my expertise here - there was a good bit of swearing, and a lot of head-scratching. How the devil I managed to muddle up my colour strips when I thought I'd lain them out and then immediately pinned them together in their right order I really don't know, but I did get in a terrible muddle. There was a lot of "What the...how did that...now hang on, why's that there....didn't I...where's the...which one's this?" going on. Had to unpick a load of stitching and get all the pens and pencils out again and lay out all my colour strips on the floor again to work out which one was meant to go where.

What I like about it is the colours, and the origins of the fabric, which are from all sorts of things: a bit of the border from the living-room curtains, lots of bits of the fabrics sent to me by Elizabeth, including the Woody one (can you see him? Can you see the other ones? This is like a gentle fluffy treasure hunt), old bits of soft furnishings fabric from a bag of remnants bought in Teddington, the bathroom window fabric, bits from Mum's stash I've stolen, leftover bits from my quilt, Isla's curtains in this house and the old one, an old pillowcase, an old Size 6 skirt given to me as a present by my old flatmate in Crouch End when I was a (clearly skinnier) Twenty-Something, an old ball gown my mother made me from my university days, a Husband's old tie and some I just have no idea about.
This will be a present for my goddaughter's sister, who is big fat 3, so just the right age and level of developmental obsessiveness to like sorting out pencils and pens into their rightful pockets. Once I'd finished this, the daughters helped me put them all in, and were of course exceedingly pernickety about it. Critical too. I am spared no quarter, fat or otherwise, by these daughters.
"Er, Mummy, that one isn't the right colour."
"Mummy, this pen doesn't quite fit in here."
"Oh dear, this one should be darker."
"I don't like this fabric, it's horrible isn't it?"
Yeah, thanks for that girls. The other day Hester told her father he had lots of spots, and once Isla told me my boobies looked 'tired'. Yes, one of the benefits of having children is how nice it is to be brought back down to Earth after moments of sinful pride. Just in case I was getting a bit too big for my boots or something. Although I am exceedingly clever, so there.

Cosy up

In all the excitement of the febrile virus-ridden daughter and her visit to hospital, I entirely forgot to photograph my latest fabric incarnation - a tea-cosy, for my sister, whose birthday was on Thursday. Her birthday did not go quite according to plan, because over she came to spend the day with us, going to musical singing groups and swanning round the garden drinking copious amounts of tea, and instead found herself babysitting Niece no.1 whilst Niece/Goddaughter was chucking her guts up in her mother's loving arms in A&E. However, they had a lovely afternoon making muffins, which greeted me on my return, and were most welcome. At least we'd managed to give her the tea-cosy before the hospital dash, and once home she betook herself to her camera for an on-site shoot, where she rummaged in her cupboards and found, of all things, Foxes Party Rings, which match the tea-cosy beautifully. This is not good, because now she will have to eat them every time she uses the tea-cosy, because they match so well, and she will become as fat as a biscuit barrel.
This was a very nice thing to make - from Sewing In No Time by Emma Hardy. It was my first time sewing through wadding, the stuff they put in a quilt, and it was a nice mushy, fluffy, experience. A bit like eating mashed potato.
You may notice the purple fabric is distinctly bonkers. Very slightly, and a little alarmingly 80's ish. Isn't it? Not quite sure I like it, but it's a good piece of thrift and re-use because it came from a charity shop, a great swathe of the stuff, looking for a home for a whopping great £2.50. So now bits of it will crop up in all sorts of future projects, hidden at the sides, or on the inside, or lurking round the back, like a fugitive.
If you'd like some, please ask me - I'll happily cut out some fat quarters to send to people!

Anyway, enough of that - on to the Gift Horse Competition Winners!

After much consideration we have decided that my first attempt at a hobby horse made from a sock is to be called...(drum roll please)....Duffin the Mule! I think I actually snorted out loud when I read it. Very funny...this was suggested by Gareth and Petra, so congratulations - you have won him!

And out of the hat for the pretty fabric hearts was, well, first my Dad, who is disqualified for being rude, secondly my sister, who had already been given one for her birthday anyway, and thirdly Sam! Hoorah! May a few lonely doorknobs in your home be heartened by them.

So Sam and Petra/Gareth Combo, your prizes will be on their way to you in a post van soon. Enjoy!

You Can Lead a Horse to Water...

...but what do I do to get them to drink?!

Only 3 Comments on the Gift Horse Giveaway. And many thanks to those lovely folks too, because they've very funny. Apart from my father, who is funny, but very rude to his daughter, so he's in detention and out of the running for the lovely fabric hearts prize. But the rest of you, well really. Where's your competitive edge, all of you, hm?!

So here it is, for one season only....an extension to the Gift Horse Giveaway!

I didn't get round to writing this up yesterday, because I had to spend the large part of yesterday with a rotavirus attacked two-and-a-half year old in hospital, so for sympathy for Hetty, will you all please make your Comments known! (She's rallied, by the way, but wear gas masks if you're in our neck of the woods, is my suggestion. What a bug.)

Don't be shy, look at the fabric gifts I've made specially for the winner of the competition to name the poor creature. Aren't they nice? Hang 'em on your door handles. Drop lavender oil on 'em and shove in with your knickers. Hang them on shabby chic hooks. Ah, the possibilities! There will be 3 of them in your prize.

So, trot over here and enter and the hobby horse or the hearts could be yours!

Gift Horse Giveaway

So, after reading the Gift Horse saga, who'd like to win Diastrous Dobbin then?! I shall tart him up nicely for you, fix his ribbon rein, hoover off the remaining fluff, put some perfume on, beautiful.

There are two chances to win here:

1: If you'd like to give the poor creature a name but you don't want to give him house-room, just suggest a name under Comments below this post. There will be a lovely fabric prize for the winner! Not sure what yet, but I'll make you something nice from my stash of fabrics.

2: If you'd like to give him a name AND win him for your little one, or a child you wish to humiliate in some way, then suggest a name under Comments below and also write GIDDY UP NEDDY to bring him on home.

3. Come to think of it, you might want him AND the lovely fabric prize, so in that case, write me a tutorial on how to write competitions, coz it's a minefield out there! If you want both, just write something really idiot proof so that amoebas understand which hat to put you into.

I and the daughters will be the judges for the names, and we'll pick a winner out of a hat for Neddy. I'll post anywhere if you're not nearby enough for me to drop off. Anywhere. Bahrain, New Zealand, America, Slovenia, anywhere. We welcome you all!

Announcing on Friday 13th, which is nice and witchy. Good Luck!

Gift Horse

But don't look this one too closely in the mouth. Really. This doleful dobbin is very nearly an unmitigated disaster. It's a horrific horse. A night mare. Horsey horsey not hot to trot, let me tell you.

It's all entirely my fault. I bought a nice hobby horse tutorial from a seller on Etsy (if you're checking that out, check out the British equivalent, Folksy too) and since I appear to be a little too big for my boots, I just changed things here and there. I didn't get the right materials, thinking I could make do with some stuffing from an old cushion instead of plush fleecy toy stuffing; used a Husband's Old Ski Sock instead of purchasing a new large Man's Sock; thought I'd dispense entirely with some parts of the instructions and just wing it.

And ended up right in the manure.

One of the first things you do is make the mane. Brilliantly, the tutorial says wind lots of wool round a rectangular piece of cardboard and then very sensibly stick a piece of masking tape over it. Ingenious - holds it gently in place when you peel the wool away from the cardboard. Stays there while you sew some stitching right through it - is then all neatly perforated by said stitching so you can tear off one side of the masking tape after you've easily inserted your nice, staying-together, neat and tidy mane into the sock and sewn in place. What a clever lady, the tutorial writer. She really thought it through so people like me would find it nice and easy.

But did I?

No.

Why?

Because I didn't follow the instructions, did I.

I couldn't find any masking tape. (In my local ironmonger, the person behind the counter looked at me blankly when I asked for masking tape. Shrugged. Shook head; almost said, never heard of it. Not being funny, but is that an unusual thing to expect to find in an ironmongers, hm?)

Gross Error No.1.

I blithely slipped my nicely-wound-round-wool off its cardboard and carried it gently like a wedding veil over to the sewing machine, whereupon it all rebelled in its full loopiness and boinged around and hooked itself onto things and unravelled and got caught on the foot and the dogs and the needle, and other daftly named sewing machine parts, and I was a-cursin' and a-swearin' like a particularly foul-mouthed medieval stable lad.

Eventually I tamed it enough to sew through it, and stuff it into the sock. It took me 15 minutes. Would have taken approximately one and a half had I followed the instructions. And actually it looked ok.

You can see the stitching, and the blue bits of his mane sit a bit weirdly only on one side of it, but you know, it's, well, it's a mane.

Gross Error. No.2.

In the ironmongers I had been able to purchase the broom handle. We trundled into the garage with our toolkits (I with a real one, the daughters with toy ones) and began to saw it in half. Sawing is great fun when you're two and a half or three and three quarters or thirty five and a half, and nobody's fingers got cut off. We did however saw the broom handle in half.

Which made it too short. You'd think I'd have checked the tutorial measurements first wouldn't you...

Did I?

Course not.

So then we raided the garage for a far less attractive old beaten up and battered but perfectly useable broom, which I sawed to pieces. Very ugly it is. And now totally unuseable as a broom unless I masking-tape the old broom-head to the new, completely wasted half length broom handles and make a back-breaking short broom for heaven only knows what.

And now:

Gross Error No.3.

From the garage I also dragged a huge and revolting old cushion, thinking to use its stuffing to stuff my Husband's Old Ski Sock horse, and herein lies our greatest mistake.

It's not nice fleecy stuff; it contained nasty old tiny chewed-up bits of greasy pink and yellow foam, shredded into tiny flyaway, static laden bits of fluffy foaminess, which stuck to absolutely everything in sight. They crawled everywhere and stuck to your hand and clothes and your eyelashes and it was like some massive comedy foam raspberry trifle with custard had been calcified and shot from a cannon. Blasted to smithereens all over my dining room.

In a very short space of time Dobbin was smothered in fluff. If he'd had nostrils yet he'd have been a-snortin' and a-puffin' and whinnying for air.

Isla ran off to get a brush from the Doll's Dressing Toys Box (we have been making labels with our new laminator....mmm....laminators....) and then ran off to get the hoover so we could try and kind of fluff off the trifle and then hoover it up. Previous Ski-Sock Owner came in, thinking we were hoovering the house nice and tidy for him to enjoy of a Saturday morning; took one look, and quickly retreated. So there we were trying to hoover fluff off a sock. We even changed to the Upholstery Head. Made no difference.

Then in a rare moment of genius we all availed ourselves of some sticky tape and wrapped it round our hands and spent, I am not joking, twenty five minutes patting and peeling and patting and peeling and pat and peel and pat and peel. All over him, to remove the fluff. It worked, I have to say. Eventually. For photography's sake I have left some for you to see. Now imagine this all over the poor creature -

At this point, their Father took the girls off to do something less toxic involving outdoor space and climbing, or something, and I was left attaching buttons and trying to sew a smile onto poor beaten Dobbin's chops, which I did whilst watching a programme on Darwin.

Not far removed from the single cell amoebas plopping onto the beach, me, I was thinking.

Although I suppose I can claim use of tools, though wielded no better than a chimpanzee, who can delicately handle sticks with far more aplomb than I can broom handles, that's for sure.

Anyway, having somewhat maligned poor Neddy, I think it's time we found him a name and a home don't you think? He is too prototypean to give as a present, but he has a certain surf dude quality, and his too-long fringe falls teenage-like over one eye, and his ears are way too big and flop a bit...but still, he does need love and attention.

I shall announce a giveaway in the next post! So, stay posted, if you want to win him, you lucky, lucky readers.

Button it

I seem to be doing rather well from charity shops lately - one of my most very favourite purchases being a humungous overdose of buttons.  There were millions of them, all sorted into jars, and I waltzed in (that's not really true; I actually stumbled in, tripping over daughters and their idiot mittens, which were hanging out of their coat sleeves and betangling themselves amongst us, as we wrestled with market day meat and cakes and fruit and veg.  Every Thursday I do this - go to the charity shop severely overburdened with my goods and chattels and wonder why I didn't go there first...)... a n y w a y, in I went and grabbed 5 jars containing buttons labelled at (let's face it, a rather steep) 5p per button, and negotiated with the ladies over the counter for a fair price for the lot.  There was a lot of very dainty "Well, hm.  How about you tell us what you'd like to pay..." "No, really, how about you suggest a price?" "Well, erm, what do you think is reasonable?" "Well I was wondering whether it would be at all possible for me to pay, say, um, do you think a tenner is about right at all, orrr...?"

"Exactly what I was going to say!" beamed the lady happily.

This is not like the olden days, in my life of work, the one where I got money at the end of the month, which was nice (this is called a Job, or sometimes a Career).  In those days I was selling media space in magazines, and the negotiations were not quite so, how to put it, polite....

And without wishing to boast, I'd have snorted in the face of that offer and said, you're 'avin' a giraffe arncha, have you seen the quality of these 'ere buttons, they're a bargain at twice the price.  

I'm sorry.  I don't know what that was.  I neither spoke with a Cockney accent nor ever had a conversation remotely like that one when I was in media sales.  It was the mention of the market fruit and veg.  It must have tipped me over the edge.  Guv'nor.