Bunting for our Sewing Room

Recently, we had a big shelf put up by my friends dad and as soon as it was up, we both looked at it and thought the same thing - bunting! That's what it needs to prettify it (not sure if that's even a word but you know what I mean!). So yesterday we both rummaged through our fabric collections and looked for anything that was pink or purple. We then laid all the materials next to each other and worked out firstly, which ones didn't 'belong' then secondly, which order the ones left were going in! We already calculated out how many flags we needed....9....and we'd already worked out how we wanted the bunting to be made. We've seen all sorts of ways to make bunting but we used the two triangles of material sewn together method, turned the right way round, then top stitched all the way round. We then added the bias binding folded in half with the flags inserted in the middle. When we put the bunting up, we both went - aaaaawwwww and smiled - we both really like it which is just as well as we'll be looking at it for years! Hope you like it too!

Lined mini tote bag

We bought this lovely material a few weeks ago and wondered quite what we'd end up making with it....well here it is! We made a mini lined tote bag which sports an inside pocket. The handles were made out of some wide cream webbing that we'd bought for something else but just happened to go with this material too! When we were on holiday in Cornwall, we both bought a little jute bag each which is of a similar size and we've found it so useful, we wanted to create something as beautiful as it is practical. The maritime theme outer fabric is fairly thick but we wanted to line it with calico to add to it's quality feel-appeal! Then we added a pocket to the inside too, as I've got an oilcloth bag I bought and I've found the inner pocket great for putting your mobile in for quick answering. How annoying it is when you can hear it ringing but you can't quite put your hands on it...and you end up scrabbling around and just as you find it, it rings off!

As usual we learnt a lot making these bags. Our sewing day is never complete without a fair share of stitch unpicking! Hilarious too, was when I realised my sewing machine wasn't too happy and the needle didn't seem to be quite central. But you know me, perserverence is my middle name! I soldiered on and on, taking care to take the 1mm lean to the right of the needle into account when trying to sew on the lines we'd marked out! Eventually I thought, I really have to figure out what was wrong. My friend said maybe I'd had it on zig-zag before and it hadn't re-adjusted itself properly? Hmmm. Tried swapping between straight stitch and zig-zag....hmmm, still not sorted. Then I remembered how the other day when I tried to do zig-zag applique, the machine really couldn't cope....I'd thought my machine was giving up the ghost! Then in that very moment....it was like a blinding flash! I'd changed the needle over to a denim one, then I changed it back to a standard needle.....yes you guessed it....I'd not put the needle in straight! How it sewed at, all is anyones guess! Oh how we laughed and laughed! Every cloud though....I won't be making that mistake in a hurry!

Notebook with applique seal

I made this today! It's a special request from a good friend of mine. She asked me to make something with a seal on for her relative who specialises in seals! Yes, the animal kind! She hasn't seen it yet but i really hope she likes it. It is re-usable when the A6 notebook is full, so hopefully it will be treasured for some time!

Designer Doggy Doo Bags

Had a spare hour this morning and wanted to have a go at making a poo bag holder! Strange desire to have on a sunday morning I know! These are like little pyramids tea bags in shape and once i got my head around making them, they were quite simple to run up. I felt quite confident with adding the zips after my practice on the zippy pouches the other day - didn't even feel the need to pin the zips in place this time. ( I could say I just zipped along but that would make you all groan!) I currently only possess 4" red zips, so I had to take that into account when I made these this time. I have just ordered some brown zips though because I want to make some of these with our pawprint material. Both being dog owners ourselves we think the tiny pawprint design will appeal to other fellow pet owners too - and their pampered pooches! Lets face it, with the dog hair and muddy pawprints, what's the point of having a dog if you can't pamper them and love them to death?! And of course, buy all sorts of accessories for them! (Well, the accessories are for us owners really but it makes us feel better to say Fido needs it!)

We've ordered some small caribiners to attach to the ribbon on these poo bags - that way they can easily be attached to the belt loop on jeans etc. At 4" from corner to corner, these little handy bags will take a roll of doggy poo bags, as well as your house keys and in my case (sensitive nose!), a few tissues! Thought we could call them Designer Doggy Doo Bags - lol!

Doggy Doo Bags, little purses etc

Zippy pouches

We managed to get some 4" zips quite cheaply, so we decided to try our hand at some small zippy pouches. Getting our head around how to make them was taxing enough but not half as taxing as sewing them was for our poor sewing machines! We wanted them to ooze quality, so we used medium weight iron-on interfacing on both the outer fabric and the inner lining fabric too. We also wanted the zip to have fabric 'stops' at both ends to give a better overall appearance. As usual, we learnt a lot making these! We'd never sewn with a zipper foot before! I even had to look in my sewing machine's handbook to find out what said foot looked like! We were a bit nervous about sewing with the zipper foot but it was a doddle....fortunately!

The sewing machines had great difficulty sewing through all the layers and the zip. Even with a denim needle, the machines protested! We ended up having to slightly move the fabric under the foot to find a spot where the needle would agree to go through all the layers. A few expletives, raised blood pressure and a lot of manual turning of the handwheel later and hey presto, paddy averted! We had to hand finish the pouches by ladder stitching the lining but we couldn't see anyway round that! 

Sail boat with bunting notebook cover

Father's Day is fast approaching and I wanted to make something for my dad that was practical and good looking! So I whipped up this notebook cover this morning - I hope he likes it. It's only an A6 size book but i managed to co-ordinate all my blue materials, using the same patterned material for the bunting and the boat. The cover is re-usable and should fit any A6 book in the future. It took me about an hour to rustle this up but now I have the templates, I think this can be improved upon!

Pegbag with freemotion washing line

This is our first attempt at a fully lined peg bag. We're very happy with it but we think we can improve on it, here and there. We think that we could add the word PEGS at the top with free-motion embroidery. We also think the bottom of the bag should be a little deeper than it currently is to accomodate more pegs. It is made out of thick cotton drill, as heavyweight as canvas - it did fray more than we expected. We recycled an old pair of jeans in the process too which was a bonus! We also think that using the same colour material for the blanket on the line as the inner visible lining...was a bad idea. We think the eye tricks you into thinking you can see the lining through the blanket!

Bed for Mojo

If you’re following this blog you will know that we have taken in an abandoned cat called Mojo. He’s still with the people that rescued him but will soon come to live with my friend; this week in fact. So he had to have a handmade bed! We came up with the design and thought we could run it up in no time – how wrong we were!

The bed is made up of two layers of fleece sandwiched with some fairly thick, natural felted cotton wadding. This bed-sandwich is then edged with some wide bias binding. The letters are cut out of felt and free-motioned onto the paw print material.

We’d never attached bias binding like this before so it was a learning curve….a very STEEP one at that! We reckon we spent more time unpicking it, than we did actually sewing it! Suffice to say we are not ones to give in – though in all honesty we could have cheerfully chopped it up into tiny pieces more than once! We even discussed the satisfaction of taking a match to it! But we persevered and we’re so glad we did.

We discovered, after much research and patience, that there are several tricks to attaching bias binding. Firstly we drew a line all the way round where the edge of the bias binding should be – and we did this on both sides! Then we sewed one edge of the bias binding in position, through all the layers, making sure to keep the edge of the tape exactly on the line. Once one side was done, we did the same the other side, making sure the edge was exactly on the line. And hey presto!

Other things of note? No need to pin the bias binding to the material. It’s much easier to just match the bias binding edge to your drawn line as you go. In our first attempt to attach the bias binding we pinned it all in position and tried to sew through all the layers. This led to a very wonky edge, and in some places the bias binding was wider on one side than the other etc even though we thought we’d pinned it together evenly. Pinning was also very hard work (and bent many pins!) as in effect, you had to pin through 5 layers! The other thing we learnt, was that if you attach bondaweb to the back of felt, when you peel the backing paper off and try and attach the felt to your material with the iron….it doesn’t work! We figure that this is probably because the felt absorbs the glue? NO amount of heat from the iron would fuse the felt to the material. We got round the problem by using fabric glue to glue the felt letters on….worked a treat! We then allowed time for the glue to dry before we stitched them on with free-motion embroidery.
We love the cat bed…lets hope Mojo loves it too!

Baby bibs

Some friends of mine recently had a baby and this inspired me to make something as a present for them. My baby bibs were born! They are terry towelling on one side and cotton patterned material on the other. The navy blue with white spots ones were my first. They're really simple to make: two pieces sewn together, turned the right way and top stitched all the way round. The trick is to remember to leave enough of a gap to turn the material the right way round! ALso, on the firt bibs i made I hand sewed the large poppers on, which obviously added a fair bit of time to the project. Then I came across the idea of plastic poppers which come in all colours (I have talked about these in the Sewing Insight section) - which saved loads of time and actually look fab as well as being functional!

Charity key rings

We’ve been very busy recently making key rings for the charity – Lonely Pawz. Lonely Pawz is a Cornish charity that rescues stray and abandoned small animals. We decided to try and raise some money for them after they rescued a little 6 week old kitten, called Mojo - he was found taped up in a cardboard box and left out for the bin men. Mojo is coming to live with my friend and this is our way of helping them cover the costs of looking after him.



As you can see we’ve made lots of key rings with a variety of materials. They are interfaced and there is wadding in-between, so in effect they are quilted and fairly stiff, which we think adds to the quality of them. Interestingly when they’ve been turned the right way round, we had to use a free motion embroidery foot because if we tried to use a normal straight stitch foot, it jammed at the corners with all the layers and then the material wouldn’t feed either. The poor foot thought it was trying to scale the Alps!

Sailboat keyring

I had a few hours spare this afternoon, so sat down and thought ‘what can I make?’ So I came up with a new design for a key ring, a little sailing boat. Thought this was quite appropriate as we are hosting the sailing events for the 2012 Olympics here in my home town. I needed the design to be simple enough to free-motion as the size of the key rings is quite small – just 5x5cms!

I hope you like the overall colour scheme. I had great fun making four of these!

Sewn using both straight and free-motion