I HO, I HO, a shirring we will go!

Friend: "Can you do shirring on your machine?"
Me: "Do what?"

I had absolutely no idea what my friend was going on about but now I do!  She gave me a metre of material, a reel of black elastic thread and an explanation!  I had absolutely no idea what my friend was going on about but with a little research later, I now do! 

All the info I found about shirring pointed to the following tips to achieve a good result:

1) Hand wind the bobbin with the elastic thread, without stretching it.
2) Use normal thread on the top.
3) Lower the tension on the machine.
4) Increase the stitch length.
5) Sew slowly and smooth the material as you go.
6) Sew the lines about 1cm apart.
7) Tie the ends of the elastic off at each end.
8) The finer the material the better the result.

The elastic thread doesn't come in many colours (my friend gave me black) but this doesn't matter as you won't see it on the front of the work. I lowered the tension by one and increased the stitch length by one.  I couldn't choose the material as my friend had decided this material was ideal for the skirt she wanted it to become!  Hand winding the bobbin was easy and one full bobbin did 4 metres of sewing.  Smoothing the material wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.  Once you'd shirred a few lines, you kind of develop a rhythm of your own!

The length of material was 148cm at the start.  After shirring, it was about 62cm.  They say in books that you need three times the amount of material to make a shirred item.  Ours is not quite 3x but I reckon that's probably because the material is not that thin and so it probably didn't gather as much as it would have.

We live and learn!

Misfit Moose with heart!

Yesterday we had a day finishing off those jobs that were half started. I can definitely recommend it, it's good for the soul! Now let me see, what exactly did we end up finishing. Well, we made another Jolly Sole, this time in yellow. We had some checked hearts that we'd appliqued smaller red hearts on the front. We never quite liked them, so we added a loopy ribbon around the smaller hearts and now we love them! We had some lavender hearts that people had said they couldn't smell the lavender in them. So we unpicked a bit of the seam, took the stuffing out, along with the little pouch we'd placed in there with lavender in. Then we filled them with loads of lavender via our newly acquired little silicone funnel (really cute it is!). Then obviously we sewed the gap closed. Think we did about 8 of them. Then we finished making the moose from the misfits book. Then we assembled the two Christmas reindeer's that we'd made a few weeks ago. So all in all, we achieved loads.

 

 

 

The reason behind this finishing off day? Well, we've got a little project that we so desperately want to get started on. A project of entire selfish indulgence! What is it I hear you ask? Watch this space!

A Jolly Sole with label!

We were flicking through magazines at the supermarket, as we do every week - as we like all things crafty we look at everything from knitting magazines, card making to sewing and baking! We came across this idea of a fish hanging decoration called the Jolly Sole. Well the idea struck an immediate cord with me as one of my friends cooks fish every saturday. A while back I was on holiday with him and his wife and he dutifully cooked fish for dinner. But when I realised he was cooking fish, I said "well, I quite like fish but not if it's got eyes staring back at me from the plate!". We had a little chuckle about it and he seemed unphased by my request! When the dinner arrived, we laughed so hard we nearly fell off our chairs! He had gone to all the trouble of making a little pastry shroud to cover the eyes of the fish - how thoughtful! So this idea of Jolly Sole and a fish with eyes, appealed to my sense of humour, and as I'm making it as part of his birthday pressie, I hope it will appeal to his sense of humour too! Now we didn't buy the magazine (and as we looked at so many, we can't even tell you which magazine it was in this month) because we didn't like anything else in the magazine.

Having got home we researched Dover Soles. Then half from memory and half from our heads, we came up with this.  We made our first prototype shape, which we stuffed lightly with polyester toy stuffing and top stitched but it didn't look right. Looked more like a normal fish. Determined to come up with something better, I took to my paper and pencil. I kept making the body fatter and fatter until it actually looked more like a Dover Sole than an eel! 

This fish is blue and white checks on the front and a solid blue for the back. We've used cotton batting inside this one, which looks better too. We altered the fish tail by texturing it with solid sewn lines which aren't on the original in the magazine. We think they add to it's character. We also wanted to include the words Jolly Sole on our piece somewhere. First, I thought about free-motioning the words on. Then we thought about embroidering them on. Neither options quite did it for me! What I thought might look good was a label of some sort. Hmmmm? Much pondering ensued!

Eureka! A little label hanging from ribbon at the bottom of the fish! Neat idea but with two problems! Firstly, I'd already made the fish and topstitched it, so any ribbon to be hung from the bottom would require very careful unpicking and re-sewing. Secondly, how do I get the writing on the label? Now here's a neat little idea for you! Firstly, get your friend who is way better at delicately unpicking small stitches without leaving large holes in the surrounding material! Result! Secondly, make your own labels using your computer, printer, herringbone tape, some t-shirt transfer sheets from Lidl and an iron! Yes really!

Here's what you do. Firstly, type the words into a Word document using whatever font you like. Print them out onto a sheet of normal paper to check that you have the right size writing to fit onto your chosen tape. We used 15mm cream herringbone tape. Once you're happy with it, then put a sheet of the transfer paper in your printer. BEFORE you tell it to print, remember that the writing has to be printed as a mirror image. I can do this with my Epson (but I'm not sure if all printers can?) in my page properties of my printer by simply ticking the box that says Mirror Image. The writing needs to be reversed, so how ever you do that, make sure your writing is back to front! Hit print! Now all you need to do is to cut a rectangular shape around your lettering. Place the transfer writing side down on your herringbone tape, so that the checked backing paper is facing upwards. With an iron on a low setting, place the iron on the backing paper for a few seconds at a time. Now you don't want to overcook it as it were coz you'll end up melting the writing and it'll go all blurry! So steady as she goes! You'll know it's fused coz it will have stuck to the tape. Now, peel off the backing paper and hey presto - a cute little label with the writing the right way round!

Now, we needed our label to be stiff and not floppy! More thinking ensued! Then another eureka moment! We have some hessian strapping that is a few inches wide and that is quite stiff so we thought it might do the job. We also felt it matched in with the sea theme of the fish too which was a bonus! So we now wrapped the tape label around a piece of the hessian strap and stitched around it with the same blue cotton that the fish was done in. Hey presto, cute little label! Hope this Jolly Sole makes my friend's husband smile!

 

Coasters for men!

I have two birthday's coming up and both of them are for chaps! Men are notoriously difficult to buy presents for, aren't they! I wanted to make a coaster for them that was both classy and one that they wouldn't be afraid to have on their work desks! Both are lovers of what I call 'posh coffee' (cafetiere!) so this material with the coffee bean effect on it was perfect for the job. The back of the coaster is a solid black. The wadding we used is cotton batting (though as it was a remnant, we have no idea whether it has polyester in it at all too!). I managed to make the two coasters in around an hour and a half from start to finish, so I was pleased with that.

 

Whilst I was sewing, every now and again the sewing machine was making a thud thud noise. I worked out that it was probably the needle hitting the metal plate. I should've changed the needle straight away but because it wasn't doing it all the time, I thought it couldn't be a bent needle. A little later it did it again. This time I did change the needle which solved the problem instantly! When I laid the old needle on the table it looked perfectly straight. So now we've come to the conclusion that the needle was probably blunt. I have read somewhere that they recommend that you change the needle every time you start a new project. One website even suggested you change it every 10 hours of sewing etc. Maybe it's coz I'm a northerner, or maybe I'm just tight but it just seems wrong to change it until it's broke! Mental note to self....if it thuds....it's broke!

Mini Wronky's!

Just for a bit of fun we made these! They are a mini version of the sock creature called Wronky, from the book Stupid Creatures. These two were made from children's socks, hence they are smaller than our previous one. The eyes are a tad too large really but we only have the one size of wobbly eyes, so they had to do! We managed to do most of the sewing on the machine still, though it was a little trickier than the larger version! The only limbs we had to hand sew on were their little armies!

As for the actual socks...well now, there's a tale! We went to a shop the other day and we came across a little box of paradise! It was a box that was full of individual pairs of socks, all marked up at 20p a pair! We were so excited rummaging through - at 20p a pair it would be rude not to! We pulled out all the socks with a different coloured heel and toe. There were stripy ones, spotty ones, ones with flowers on....etc etc. Gosh knows what the staff must've thought when we turned up at the till with 25 pairs of socks! They probably thought we'd got quads or summit! We felt like the cats that got the cream!

The book recommends using a pair of socks to make the creatures. I am still collecting odd socks from people and do fully intend to recycle them into creatures of some description. The only trouble with recycling socks is that people tend to hang onto their socks until they have large holes in the bottom of them, and as I need the toe and heel intact, recycling them is a little more tricky! Technically I'd have to transplant a heel into the worn sock first. Like I say, not impossible, it just requires a little more effort first!

There are more sock creatures in the book that I can't wait to make. The only dilemma's are: which pair of socks and which creature to make next - pure heaven!

Our reindeer have had a baby!

Remember our reindeer that we made from the Crafts Beautiful magazine? They've had a baby! 

Isn't he cute?! We named him Bluedolf! His mum is 10 inches tall, yet he is just a dinky 4.5 inches tall. All we did is scaled the pattern down and used a smaller stitch length so we wouldn't lose the definition on the curves. The feet were too small to sew by machine, so they had to be hand-stitched into position. The antlers for Bluedolf were only a single layer as we thought that doing them double like the original, would make them too bulky on his delicate head! We are in love with him, he's so adorable!

And will he have any brothers and sisters anytime soon? Watch this space!

Birthday pressie - walking foot!

Those of you that know me will realise the irony in the title of this blog post! Having snapped the anterior talofibular ligament in my right ankle, I now have to wear a leg/ankle brace for the rest of my life. So had I got a true walking foot for my birthday, it would have been nothing short of a miracle!

However, I did get a walking foot for my Janome - lucky, lucky me! I had read about them and how they are good for quilting etc, coz they ensure that the top material is moved at the same speed as the bottom material. We had noticed that although you can line up two materials exactly at the beginning, by the time you reach the end, they are a few millimetres out. That might not sound much but as we've discovered, when you're quilting pieces together, a few millimetres can mean a huge difference - the joins either line up or they don't!

The walking foot was very easy to fit and isn't too noisy in operation either. It also comes with a quilting guide - a thin metal rod with an angled 'leg' (for want of a better word!) - that simply slots into a hole on the walking foot. This will come into it's own when we have to sew parallel lines.

Birthday pressie - Cath Kidston DIY bag

I was very lucky to receive a box set of Cath Kidston books for my birthday this year. The set contains the books, Stitch, Patch and Sew, as well as all the material to make your own shoulder bag. Naturally, I couldn't wait to make it! You didn't even have to cut the pieces out, they were already done for you!

The material used is cotton duck and it feels quite hard wearing - though quite why it is called duck I don't know! Quackers if you ask me! (Good ole Wikipedia: Cotton Duck, is from the Dutch word 'doek' which means linen canvas.)

The bag still took me three hours to make in total, though about 45mins of that was trying to turn a piece of material the right way out! I shall explain! You had to make a button loop, otherwise known as rouleau loop. A rouleau loop (and I quote) is a narrow flexible tube made from a bias strip of fabric. Sounds simple doesn't it? And essentially it is simple, that is until I tried to turn it the right way. The book suggests you use tapestry thread fastened at one end, then you thread the needle through the tube, gradually turning it the right way as you go. Well I used button thread, as that is infinitely stronger - haven't managed to snap it yet, no matter how much wellie I give it! Even though I made my rouleau loop about 5mm wide (as opposed to the 3mm suggested in the book), I still couldn't turn it through. So frustrating it was - all I ended up with was a frayed end and a frazzled brain! I don't think it helped as the material was quite stiff. In the end, I conceded defeat and decided to make a loop out of a flowery polycotton instead....where there's a will, there's a way!

The bag is lovely but I fear it is a little too small for me! I like to carry everything with me, including the kitchen sink - must be my age!

Golf bag strap

Just to prove we like turning our hands to anything and everything, even if we're not quite sure how to do it! As you know recently we had a go at making our own bespoke dog collars, which we were so enthused about. When we showed my friends dad he immediately said....that'd be just perfect for my golf bag, can you make me one? We said of course we could, and then we both scratched our heads and thought, hmmm, now what do we do!

We studied the golf bag, took measurements, then looked at the bracket that the strap would have to fit through. Once we'd worked out what the function of the strap was (to hold the golf bag securely onto the golf trolley) and then worked out what we needed. Then it was just a case of sourcing the materials as it were!
  
So off we went round the internet to see if we could get a good buy. We already knew what size hardware we needed to make dog collars (20mm buckles, D-ring, slide adjuster) and we worked out that the golf bag strap ought to be the next size up, 25mm. After what seemed like an age, we sourced all that we needed from a company called Lyndas Horsewear. We even managed to order the 25mm black webbing with reflective stitching for the golf strap itself. So as soon as the parcel arrived we couldn't wait to whiz up two golf straps.

And here they are, doing there job!

 

 

 

And the owner is very pleased with his new designer straps!

Placemat or table centrepiece

We were really excited to be making this placemat, again not because we needed one, just because we liked them! We'd already decided that it wouldn't be a placemat but more of a centrepiece for the table. When you read the instructions it seemed quite easy to make and should only take 2 hours from start to finish.

We'd carefully chosen our fabrics with a little help from our favourite material shop, Paulines Patchwork. MIne is the burgundy one and my friend's is blue/green. We learnt that if you place the materials on top of each other, the rotary cutter will easily power it's way through the lot. We had four materials on top of each other and it sliced through it like a hot knife through butter! I have read somewhere that it can do at least nine materials.....and we already know it can do fingers too!

The pattern from the book Quilting in No Time, gives a 1cm seam allowance on all it's templates. Normally i sew with the edge of the machine foot to the edge of the material but that only gives you about a 6mm seam allowance. So we invested in a magnetic seam guide that attaches itself to metal plate, Yes the metal plate already has graduations on it that are marked in metric and imperial but I found it very hard to keep the edge of the material on the right mark! This seam guide made it miles easier and once attached, it is very firmly stuck so there is no fear of it moving position. Already it has earnt it's place in my sewing life and at just £3, it is definitely £3 well spent.

As we were making these, we had a few problems. Firstly, the size that was given for the back piece that would have interfacing on, was very conservative! We should have waited until we'd completed the quilted front before we cut out the back. But because the book gave exact measurements for it, we'd cut it out and added the interfacing before we even started sewing. We thought we were being organised but it actually created problems later when the quilted panel didn't quite fit on the back panel! We also cut out the centre circles to the exact size given in the book. As it turned out, the circles were slightly too small and barely covered the centre hole in the quilted panel! In hindsight, we should have measured our 'holes' before we cut the circles out. We also think if we made any more, we'd add the centre circle to the quilted panel BEFORE adding the back piece. I think coz we are novices at sewing, we follow the pattern to the letter, even when we don't think it's quite right. We need to trust ourselves a bit more me thinks!

Racehorse misfit

Here's my racehorse misfit. 

His head is from an old red jumper and his body from an old navy blue sweatshirt. The mane and tail I knitted using loop stitch. Having never done the stitch before I had to resort to my reference book, The Knitter's Bible by Claire Compton. Fortunately it has lots of pictures in it, so I managed to grasp the idea fairly quickly. I had to take a deep breath when it came to cutting the actual loops to give him straight hair as opposed to a curly sheep-like mop! Wonder if his streamlined locks will help him win a few races? Let's hope so!