April...ing

Hello, as we are halfway through April I thought I would join in with an 'ing' post I see Jo  and Christina  have already done thiers so go on over and take a look if you haven't already.  Here goes...

Sewing Fixing, repairing and using up all sorts of offcuts.  I am very aware at the moment of making the most of all my supplies and while I always try to be green with my making it is even more relevant  at the moment. My son needed new boxer shorts and had left a number of pairs at his girlfriends flat, obviously at the moment with restricted movement there hasn't really been any shopping going on other than for food.  I unpicked an old pair and have made him a set of new ones, he says the fit is really good and while I  did order the wrong elastic ( it is too narrow) I am very pleased with these.  They will be great in future for using up pieces of soft jersey, so I can see many more pairs on the horizon and what a useful way to use up scraps.

The bottom pair here I used the original elastic from the old pair and that is what I thought I had ordered, I obviously clicked the wider one and then when I was messing around choosing other colours it must have reset without my noticing, never mind he says they still hold up well.  I have a dress and t-shirt in that flowery fabric so I had my use out of that!  I have also has dresses out of the wardrobe that were not being worn for whatever reason and made minor alterations, altered sleeves, shoulders and general revamping so they will now get more wear.

I needed a couple of new cushions for my bed for when I am reading as the ones I have on there have looped detail and each time I wash them a bit more comes off? This is spoiling the look so in true scrap busting style I got out my scrap bag and decided on making more Japanese windmill patchwork.  I love this design and I  have made it before, I like to keep a bit of regularity to the pattern so it does require a certain amount of each fabric but it could be done completely random if you  want to use up lots of very small bits. So that I have a pair for my bed I need to now make another one but obviously I don't have any of the same fabrics left so I do have other scraps in similar colourways so I will try to make the other cushion as close as I can in terms of shades and hopefully it will go.

The scraps used here are some gifted, charity shop pillow case, old shirts and left over craft fabric, the back is charity shop duvet fabric as I will not go to all the trouble of the design on the back that you never see.

So as I mentioned I like to have some sort of order to the pattern so I lay my pieces out first but it could be totally random.

I have re-edged and redone the quilting on my sofa throw as it was coming apart at the edge and also some of my quilting was a bit bunched.  I have to say it took me ages to unpick the old sewing and I really must take more care in future, but as I have time on my hands I really enjoyed hand stitching through  it all again.

The pink stripy fabric used for the border is Paul Smith shirting, a small amount left over from a long time ago, cut into strips and stitched together.  I think it goes really well.

Reading now I did start The Silence of the Girls but I could not get on with it, I did try honest but it was just not for me so I have gone back to my bookshelf and picked up War and Peace again.  If ever there was a time to crack on with that one!   I got bored once before but have gone back to the start and I am giving it another go, the main problem with it I think is that the text is so small, it doesn't make for ease of reading.

Also loving keeping up with all your blogs, it is a good way to feel connected at the moment when we are all so socially distanced.

Watching the Nest, I enjoyed this series and there are not many real time shows we watch on the tv any more apart from Homeland which is also a favourite.  Also onto the second series now of My Brilliant Friend (in Italian) we are having to wait for each episode now though as we have caught up so no more binge watching, how impatient we have become due to on demand tv!

Growing flowers in my greenhouse, I finally got some compost but I am unsure as to the quality of it, it does not look as good as my homemade compost it is just a pity I didn't have more ready.  I perhaps need to dig to the back but I am somewhat put off by the million creatures that come out at me! So there are about eighty plants in the greenhouse if they all take, here's hoping.  Only a few little shoots popping up so far.

Loving seeing the garden coming back to life without any help, there are quite a few things that just take care of themselves.  All I had to do was just weed around a few things to give them space and they are bursting to life now that we have had a bit of sunshine.

I will not bore you with photo's of every tree and plant but it is just good to see a bit of colour, the bushes behind the fence have filled in green so quickly this last week.

Keeping to something of a routine, I am doing about an hour of Spanish a day on Doulingo, a couple of short pilates sessions with Robin Long on YouTube, a dog walk, some craft and some bible reading.  I make a note in my journal what sessions I have done, passages I have read and so on, I think that keeping variety throughout the day is good.  I always do home cooking everyday so no change there but it is less rushed.  The school I work for is concentrated to one school site at the moment, we are on  a rota and I am not due in for another 2 weeks.  There are only a small number of children in school (the children of key workers) so that is why  they only have a few staff working each week.  In a little while I need to go and do the strange weekly shop, with the queueing in the car park, necessary but eerie I have to say.

Appreciating all we have, the work done by others for our benefit and the many ways we can still stay connected at this time.

Stay safe. 

 

Kimono Style Dress

Now  this last couple of days I have had a few false starts, to begin with I have cut a few things out that did not inspire me ( sometimes the fabric really is everything and the ideas I had seen were not working with my offcuts!). Then of course there is fabric I have loved on other bags but when I tried to use too much of it at once I went right off it and that is this one...

Now don't worry it will be saved but this was just not doing it for me all in the same fabric, it will be paired with something calming at a later date.  For now it is safely back in the drawer.  It didn't help that I had a migraine all day yesterday and felt very sick so maybe I'm not fully recovered and the fabric is just too shouty!

I did settle on cutting out this simple sew pattern again however as I have made it before and though it is simple it just looks so good on.  There wasn't quite enough fabric so I have had to make it slimmer and shorter but it still works, leggings or tights under this one unless I am on the back garden.

It just ties around with the belt may times so you get a nice fit, ideally don't use a fabric that wrinkles much due to all the tying, this fabric is perfect.  The very long belt ties are stitched into the waist at the sides,  I opted to make them slimmer this time for a bit of variation.

 As you can see it is a blouse that I have lengthened, the last time I did it I made it much longer but I had more fabric that time.  If you want to see my last version of this it is here simple sew dress

When  I make something like this I am always amazed how well something so simple can look on, I am sorry there is no photo of me in I finished just as I was about to put the dinner out  so quickly tried it then ran down to dish up.  Do any of you sew while doing other things?   I am usually ok but there has been the odd time I have burnt the roast potatoes.

There has been a message from Minerva saying my fabric is on the way so I can get on and make more boxer shorts when that arrives, of course  there are a few pieces in there for me too, just bits and I have no idea what for?

Keep busy everyone, back soon.

Grateful Drawing

We have just come in from clapping for carers and we all have so much to be grateful for don't we, I know some more than others but still it is good to remind ourselves of the things that matter.  I had this lovely journal page saved and this evening was the ideal time to recreate it with a few thankful thoughts of my own.  You can see the original here on on Elvie studio I wouldn't want to take credit for the design I simply copied it but I thought it was so pretty.  I used my Derwent colouring pencils and fine tip pens, it would have been good if I could have made some of the colours a bit bolder.
  A friend of mine that  I just sent a photo to told me it would look great on a cushion, something to think about?

It is A4 size  I might just brighten the blue background a little and keep it near my sewing machine.

The fabulous thing about going through all the ideas I have saved is that I also keep finding all the blogs to go with them, then adding more ideas.  I will never reach the end of my to make list but that is ok as there will always be something to do. 

I added another book to my tablet earlier it is called The Silence of the Girls, it is another from my amazon wish list but I got it from the library so that is great.  I will let you know if it is any good. Just a short post today  as I am mainly trying to keep myself on target with my making this week.  

Take care everyone.