sunrise ~ sunset 13 February

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 10 hours and 46 minutes (28 minutes more than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 9 hours and 28 minutes (31 minutes more than last week)

sewing room makeover

Douglas and I headed to Ikea yesterday where, amongst other things, we bought some Billy bookcases for my sewing room. Let me take you through the process so you can see how it all looks.

Here's how the sewing room looked before:

First of all I moved the chest of drawers over to the window.

Which left this gap over by the door.

Whilst Douglas got to work building up the bookcases in our bedroom ...

... I got to work taking the crates and other stuff out of the sewing room:

And moving the fabric off the shelves and on to the table.

Soon we had all 5 bookcases built up ...

... and then shelved ...

And then I set about loading the shelves.

I just dumped the fabric on each of the shelves so I need to spend some time tidying it but O. M. G. I *love* it!

The best bit was what Douglas said - "It actually makes it look like you don't have masses of material" - which I'm taking to mean I need some more! :oD

the sleeves, a skirt, a wee bag and a cake

Well, I've finished the blouse and, thankfully, managed to get the sleeves to fit me. It took some amount of jiggery-pokery but at least it worked. First of all, here's the original sleeve showing that it really didn't fit me.

And, here's the finished blouse on the dummy. You'll just have to take my word for it that the sleeves fit me. (I really need to pad her out a bit in the boobular area. She's nowhere as rounded as I am! :oD)

I made myself a skirt today and I couldn't be more pleased with it. I took the instructions from the "Sew What Skirts" book and drew up my own pattern.

I actually had to take it in a bit which I was ridiculously chuffed about! It's not a great photo but the skirt is made of denim.

Yesterday I made another pyramid bag.

And the inside:

And finally, I didn't make this. Joanna did. (The tray it's sitting on is 17" long so you can get an idea of the size.)

She made it for Douglas's birthday (yesterday). Isn't it cool? It blew me away when I saw it. Great job, Jo. And happy birthday (again) for yesterday, Douglas. :o)

sunrise ~ sunset 6 February

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 10 hours and 18 minutes (26 minutes more than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 8 hours and 57 minutes (29 minutes more than last week)

drat, drat and double drat

Well, as I posted the other day, the body of the blouse fitted really well but ... Yep, you've guessed it. When I put the sleeves in, they were too tight and it just made the whole blouse unwearable.

The pattern gave a size chart for biceps and the "average" arm would finish at 17". I measured my biceps - over the top of my cardigan so, therefore, I was actually adding size to my arms - and they measured 15". So, you'd think that at least 2" would be fine as movement space. Wouldn't you? Apparently not.

So, I unpicked the sleeves, added bits in the the front and back of them to make them wider, lowered the armhole on the body section and re-attached them. They do fit better but I thought I'd like them to be a wee bitty wider still so I spent this afternoon messing with the sleeve pattern, consulting various books and articles as to how to add more ease in. I copied the pattern, slashed it open, re-aligned bits, re-positioned other bits and really thought I'd cracked it.

But. You knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you? And I bet you know what I'm going to say next, don't you? Yep. It didn't work. When I went to pin the new sleeve into the blouse, it was now too big and it won't fit the gap. It matches above the notches but there's far too much fabric below the notches. *sigh*

I walked away from it this afternoon but I'm determined I'm not going to let this beat me. I really want to get back into sewing my own clothes so I need to be able to make sleeves that fit me. I WILL get this right. I will. I will. I will!!!

Okay, enough of that. Here's something that always makes me laugh. I suspect that after the battles I'm having with sleeves, I might well be the one in four!!

glutton for punishment?

Well, yet again, I'm attempting to make myself a blouse that fits. I'm really hopeful with this one because I've read reviews on patternreview.com and they're all pretty favourable. Here's the pattern I'm using:

So far, I've got the body sewn together and it does fit me ... so far. Long term readers might remember the black blouse I made last year which fitted me beautifully in the body but, as soon as I added the sleeves, it didn't fit me any more.

But I'm trying to think positively about this one for various reasons. Firstly, the pattern is for larger ladies - that would be me. It also comes with instructions of how to adapt the sleeves for ladies with "big biceps" - that would be me. It also has fronts for ladies with bigger boobular areas - that would be me.

So, hopefully, I'll be showing off a blouse in the next few days that actually fits me. And, if it does, I'm thinking it'll be the start of a spree of blouse making. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here. Let's just wait and see if the sleeve adding doesn't spoil everything!

sunrise ~ sunset 30 January

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 9 hours and 52 minutes (25 minutes more than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 8 hours and 28 minutes (27 minutes more than last week)

sticky gingerbread

I made this on New Year's Day and forgot to blog about it. Needless to say it's long gone. I need to make more because the photos make me want to make it - and eat it - all over again. :o)

sticky gingerbread

12 oz plain flour
2 level tsp ground ginger
2 level tsp ground cinnamon
8 oz butter
8 oz soft brown sugar
4 oz syrup
4 oz treacle
½ pint warm milk (1 min in m/wave)
2 level tsp bicarb of soda
2 eggs - beaten

Heat the oven to 160ºC/325ºF/GM3.

1. Grease and line a deep baking tray (eg a roasting tin) measuring approx 8" x 11". Hold the paper to the edges of the tray with mini bulldog clips. (I learnt that from watching Martha Stewart on the telly over the Christmas period. It's a genius idea which works really well. The paper no longer falls into the cake mix!)
2. Sieve flour and spices into a large bowl.
3. Melt the sugar, syrup, butter and treacle in a large saucepan.
4. Pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients and stir to combine.
5. Mix the warm milk with the bicarb and stir into the flour mixture.
6. Stir in the eggs.
As you can see the mixture is very wet. It's meant to be!

7. Pour into the baking tray.

8. Bake for 1 hour until a skewer pushed into the gingerbread comes out clean.

9. Cool. Cut into either big squares or slices.

Eat spread with butter or sprinkled with caster sugar.

It allegedly improves with keeping but mine never gets a chance to improve as it's always eaten really quickly.

a few finishes to report

I realised that I hadn't shown a few things that I've made recently so this post should bring me up to speed on those things.

First, here's the lil twister mini quilt which I finally finished the binding of the other day.

Next, a couple of pincushions I made for Joanna. One side:

The other side:

Next I got out the various pieces of ribbon which Joanna had given me for Christmas or I had bought and made new watchstraps with them.

Then I was playing around making a dresden plate pattern and this is how the wee bits looked as I was ironing them. They look like mini ties! :oD

Next I put them together into the plate pattern:

Next I put the plate on a piece of denim and made it into a bag.

Inside the bag are a couple of pockets - one for my iPhone and one for the obligatory carrier bag so I can help save the planet. I also covered a piece of hard cardboard with the lining fabric to make the bottom of the bag more rigid. It's in the bag in this photo but not the next photo which is why the turquoise stripes don't look the same in the two pics!

And, I added a wee hanger where I hang my keys. Saves a lot of scrabbling about searching in the bottom of the bag for them.

Needless to say, that photo has the usual stray thread in it that I never see when I take the photos! :oD

And lastly, here's a wee dumpling bag which I made today - free pattern and tutorial here.

I'd made one of these before and was disappointed at how flimsy it was even with the fabric interfaced so, in this one, I used wadding instead of interfacing and it's turned out much better. Here's the inside:

And the ribbons I threaded through the zip end to make it easier to pull.

Okay, that's me up to date again - I think!

Happy Burns Night to all my fellow Scots out there! :o)

sunrise ~ sunset 23 January

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 9 hours and 27 minutes (20 minutes more than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 8 hours and 1 minute (24 minutes more than last week)