knitting, baking, sewing

Over the weekend, I reminded Joanna how to knit. I say "reminded" because I know I taught her as child so I'm not teaching her so much as reminding her. She got on really well. Here's the scarf she started - she's got a wee bit to go before it'll go around her neck, methinks! :oD



Then I did some baking - chocolate chip cookies. Very yummy!



And yesterday I made (yet another) blouse. When I find a pattern I like which fits me, I'll make it in every available fabric! LOL



Tonight, Singers restarts after the summer holidays. I wonder if we'll be starting any Christmas carols tonight? Christmas carols in August? Whatever next??

from the sewing room window - 29th August

more jammies

I made some more jammies for Douglas today. I was looking through my fabric for something fun to make them with and this phone box pattern jumped out at me. I got it about 2 years ago and, other than cutting one phone box out last week for another project (which I forgot to photograph!), it's remained uncut and unused.

So, here's another fun pair of jammies for Douglas - again he declined to model them for my blog. Spoilsport! :oD



The photo looks a bit strange - must be the camera compensating for the fading light. Or maybe it's just a bad photographer blaming her camera - again! :oD

a bit of a tasty disaster :oD

I decided to bake a cake today that I'd seen on the telly the other night. It's a lemon yoghurt cake.

I did butter the inside of my bundt tin as advised in the recipe but the top of the cake got stuck inside so maybe I didn't butter it enough? Who knows?

This is how it turned out.



It doesn't look any better from this angle ...



... or close up.



The one saving grace? It tastes FABULOUS!! :oD

After I made the flop of a cake, I decided to make myself a new oven glove. Thankfully it turned out much better than the cake - although I don't think it would taste as good! LOL

from the sewing room window - 23 August

skirt and jammies

I've been teaching Joanna how to sew and we finished the skirt yesterday. I think it looks amazing.



I love this photo - shows off the skirt and Joanna beautifully! :o)



This afternoon I decided to make Douglas some new jammies. Funnily enough, he declined my request for him to model them for my blog! ;o)

back to dressmaking

I had cut this blouse out before I started on the wedding quilt so, before I'm allowed to do anything else, I have to make what's already cut out. Right? Mum would be proud! :oD

Anyway, here's the blouse:



The material is a spotty polycotton which I bought in the sales. Not in a fabric shop but in the supermarket! It was a sheet! Honestly. I don't know why I've never thought of using sheets before. Even at full price, they're much cheaper than anything our local fabric shop sells and you get a lot of fabric in even a single sheet. And the pattern is way cooler than anything the local fabric shop sells as well! I just love those spots!!

All I need to do now is make the buttonholes and attach some buttons. I made some buttons out of the fabric using one of 4 of the colours of spots on each button ...



... but I'm really not so sure I want to use them. To me they look like a bad fried egg - the lime green one - or like eyes. Kinda creepy having eyes looking out from the front of my blouse!

Note to self - don't show the top of the sewing table in a photo. Cover it up with something first! :oD

the wedding quilt - the very last bit

Today I got the quilt off in the post but, before I did that, I had one last thing to add to it - the label. I had read something online that you could print on to fabric on an "ordinary" home printer so I wanted to have a go and see how it looked.

I first of all typed out what I wanted the label to say and then printed that on to paper just to make sure the size was right, was there enough room for me to fold over to sew it on and so on.

Then I used double-sided sellotape to stick a piece of the cream fabric I'd used for the sashings and bindings on to a piece of ordinary paper - the stuff I would normally print on. I only taped it on at the top so that, if the fabric got itself in a tangle, it wouldn't - hopefully - get caught in the printer. It worked beautifully!

I then decided to iron the printing on the fabric to set the ink - I don't know if it needed to be set but I did it anyway and nothing dire happened. I then ran the printing under a tap to see if the dye would run. Nope - it stayed put.

I then left the fabric on the countertop wet and went to the dentist. When I came back the ink was exactly where it should be - no running or blotching or anything like that.

So, off upstairs to carefully hand-sew it on to the back of the quilt.



Can't see it very well? Here it is closer. I chose the font because it's so close to my handwriting, it almost looks like I wrote the label. I LOVE it!

from the sewing room window - 18 August

finished - the wedding quilt

I am soooooooo happy with the way the wedding quilt has turned out. I could stand and look at it for hours.





Douglas stood on a chair to get a view from above. He didn't quite get the whole quilt in the photo but, hey, it still looks fab.



I'm going to call this one "It's not perfect but it is special." - not just because the quilt is anything but perfect. I would like to advise the just-about-to-get-weds: "Don't expect your marriage to be perfect but it will be special - and it will keep you warm!" :o)