Summer Days

Hello everyone I hope you are enjoying the summer, we are trying to make the best of being at home.  My husband had two holiday days last week so we went to Chatsworth gardens on Friday.  It was hot so we left the dogs at home with my son, we did see a few dogs being pulled around exhausted and they did not look happy so I think we made the right decision.   The gardens are beautiful and I am glad we had a look but we both agreed that the estate is so large that next time we will pay to park and explore the wider area but not pay for the gardens now that we have seen them. 

We took a picnic and I am glad we did as I remember when we visited at Christmas there was not a great deal for me to eat.  We found a nice spot near some ducks on a bench and had our lunch there.

There were people swimming in the river and really making the most of the good weather, there were also families with children playing on the waterfall steps.  We thought it was nice that they let them do this as some places would have come and told them to stop in this world of health and safety gone mad.  At the first sign of anyone having fun there is usually someone with a clipboard ready to put a stop to it. 

 I was about to add another image but I have tried three times and this new set up keeps changing my font to blue and underlined no matter how many times I change it back or try to remove the underline!  I am losing my patience with it.

I have just been weeding the garden, this took me a lot longer than I thought it would, I also had a go at taking some hydrangea cuttings while I was out there.  There are now three in pots, I followed the instructions as I read them online so now it is just a case of waiting to see what happens. 

There has been some bag making this past week and I have also added a make up bag, I thought I would do some smaller items for my Esty shop as sometimes people may not want a bigger gift.  I have to say that I end up taking quite a bit of time on the little things too as I end up faffing about with fabric!    The bag I made I used a panel I created some time ago called cathedral window, it has been sitting waiting for the right project.

There I am going to say goodbye for today as this new set up keeps playing up!  I may have to change to a different platform if this nonsense continues as I have tried every tool at the top and it will not behave.   Have a good week everyone.

Burda Summer Dress

I spent yesterday making a summer dress from the July issue of Burda, it was the only thing that really grabbed my eye in that issue but that may not have been helped by the over use of pastel colours in a lot of the styling throughout  the magazine.  These are not my favourite colours to wear so I suppose any garments made in those colours would not naturally attract me, also I found a lot of the styles in this particular issue a bit boxy. 

So for the dress, it was nice to make up once the original pattern was traced off.  As usual I went off and did a few things my own way I do find the instructions to be a bit vague which is just as well as I rarely follow them anyway but that could be problematic if you are uncertain about what you are doing. 

For the neck I chose to use ribbon rather than the suggested cord and I also shortened the dress before adding the bottom frill as I thought it would be a bit long for me otherwise.   There was lots of pinning while on the mannequin as that gave me a better idea about the gathers and also if the fit was looking ok. 

I will share a few pictures here but I am saving the rest for the Minerva post...

Overall this is a very loose fitting dress so any sizing issues I may have had with some of the other magazine patterns would  not really apply here.  I think it would be a great dress for all sizes and abilities.  The most time consuming part was arranging the gathers evenly at the shoulders, wrists and hem.

How is everyone else on blogger finding this new layout?  I am uncertain whether to revert back to the original format but is that me just being resistant to change?  I think it is when you are used to just quickly doing things a set way then someone comes along and changes everything, it just takes longer. 

Here is my fabric set up in my new room, that is a bit different too as I still need to cut out downstairs as that is where the table is and the other day I  kept forgetting things upstairs. It will take some adjusting.

 It is so much brighter up here I have to say, the computer is there as I was listening to a podcast and I know that is not a very practical place to put it but I wanted to be able to reach to forward through all the adverts!

We don't have any holidays booked so this week we are having a meal out and then hopefully a bike ride on Friday.  My husband has spaced out a few holiday days so we can make use of them that way, I have seen a few people have still ventures abroad but I don't think I would be able to relax wondering about quarantine on arriving home.  There are a few interesting properties here in the UK we have seen for rent maybe October time, we will wait and see what happens first.

Have a relaxing week everyone whatever you are up to. 

 

A New Sewing Space

I am quite excited that I now have a new space to sew in, as I mentioned a few weeks ago my oldest son has moved out which was a bit strange I have to say. He is however visiting every weekend so so we are still seeing a lot of him, as this was my first week off I got cracking with the sorting and clearing, I ordered a skip, cleaned out the now spare room and set about painting it. As it had been blue it took five coats of paint cover it all in white as it had been blue before, I wanted it a nice bright space for when I am sewing.

At the weekend my husband bought a piece of furniture board and some wood and built me a long desk for both my machines, this gives me a nice area to work on and he also ordered some LED lights that are under the overhead cupboard.  I have the say the lights are very good, They have a remote with different settings and are nice and bright on the main setting.  You can tell a man was in charge of this bit as I would have just stuck a lamp on the table next to me and that wouldn't have been as good!   So in this case the boys with their toys bit worked out well as I am very impressed with the lights.

The room does still need a few bits of finishing off, I need a blind for the window as it will be a bit open in winter with the lights on and it will also keep in heat.  A new rug possibly as the carpet isn't great I have down a heavy throw in this image below, possibly a few pictures but I don't want to spoil the bright white look of the room.

 The overhead cupboards were already in the room and I  decided to leave them, where the desk is my sons bed was fitted against that wall previously.  I am sure the lighting is going to be much better in here than in my sewing corner that I have used for the past eleven years.  Even today on a dark rainy day the light is good.

This past week I have also been sewing although not yet in my new room as it is only just finished.  I made a new bag...

So that was one of my jobs for the week as I realised I hadn't listed a new bag for a few weeks, then I made a top from a simple sew pattern.  Now I will share this another day mainly because I don't have a still of it but what I do have is a video of the process.  Now I have sent that for someone to take a look at and I am still highly self conscious about the whole being filmed bit but I have done it so we will see.  My husband said it is ok so maybe I am over critical but nobody likes to see or hear themselves do they?    I will get some photographs of the top and post another day.

My sewing job for today is to make a dress from the July Burda issue , I know I was not as productive as I was with the June issue but there were not as many things that jumped out at me.  I did  like this dress so I have been waiting for the fabric and the time to do it, so now for a bit of tracing off.

 This fabric is fun in the image on the magazine but if you follow their links to fabric it is very expensive, so I have gone for this floral design.

Well I hope you are all keeping safe, enjoying the snippets of summer that we get here in the UK and managing to get some creating done.  I have noticed among the blogs that I follow that we all seem to be on a bit of a go slow at the moment, I am sure many of you may be on your summer holidays. We are staying here with a few day trips out, bye for now.