Although I was silent in December I was very busy with crafts.  I wasn’t able to go home for the holidays and so in between the many phone calls from friends and family I kept myself occupied sewing and playing with paper.  Christmas decorations, a couple of scarves (shocking, I know, for a non-knitter), presents for my nephew and Gran and even a skirt for me were all started and finished.

Since being very little Christmas has always brought out the crafter in me; many of my early sewing attempts were felt decorations and this year I made a felt Christmas pud for our tree.  I also turned a Bravissimo paper bag into eight purple and green flower-things and making them gave me so much pleasure that I’m now a little obsessed with origami.  Reading blogs gave me many ideas for decorations but I loved the fun of the candy cane reindeer by Cindylouh.

I also bought the wooden decoration of a girl playing the harp to celebrate finally getting my harp reconditioned and in London.  I’m very excited but teaching myself how to play it again (after an absence of 9 years) is, erm, unsurprisingly a struggle.

Also every Christmas I tend to get a little jealous of knitters.  I love the idea of knitting cosy scarves and gloves and hats but knitting and I do not get along.  However this year I managed to at least adapt a couple of scarves.  When visiting Avoca in November I saw scarves lined with pretty cotton and fell in love with one (but my hints fell on R’s deaf ears and it was too luxurious to buy for myself).  However, the idea was snuggled into my brain and out of it came two presents that I was very happy with.  The scarves were from M&S and I used fine Liberty fabric in my stash for the lining.

One lesson I learnt a little too late was that scarves in the same range but in different colours may not, for who knows why, be the same size!

As I wasn’t going home over the holiday I wanted to make something for my Gran so that she knew that even though I wasn’t there I was thinking about her.  I made her a patchwork cushion in purple and owl fabrics because she loves both of those.  It was the first patchwork I’ve done since high school (and my mum claims she got at least half of that B+) and it has given me the confidence to work up a couple of other projects, plus I’m one step closer to having the confidence to make a quilt.

I may be late to the party but I wanted to share my glee at finding Spoonflower.com.  Well, ok, I didn’t find them, I read about the company in Stitch* and then visited their website this morning whilst I was procrastinating.  I love the idea of having fabric made just for me and of making something that is truly a one-off.

Now, I am not a designer.  I was asked by my teacher to stop taking art class at school when I was 13.  It’s one of those things I remember quite clearly, he said that I wasn’t my sister and that I was talented at things other than art.  He was right and I took it cheerfully but it probably holds me back more than it should when I want to try craft experiments.  Ah well, that probably helps my bank balance so it’s not bad thing really.  Anyway, the point to this story here is that I don’t think I will have the courage to send in a design to Spoonflower in the near future but I feel excited knowing that the company is there.

In other news (and because a post without pictures is a little dull) I bought some blue potatoes last week.  Uncooked they look quite purple.

Once boiled they looked a little grey but they were very tasty, very fluffy and buttery.

R insisted that we mashed the rest and I think that was less successful; yes, they still tasted yummy but the mash was a pale purple-grey colour that I found, unsurprisingly, unappealing.  R still thought they were cool but then he eats army ration packs on his weekends so what does he know about food

*I love the layout and ideas in Stitch but I feel a little jaded about trying any more of the projects after a disastrous attempt at making the skirt on the front cover.  I read and re-read the instructions and, as usual, not all of them made sense but I figured they would once I was making the skirt.  Oh dear no, it could be me but I think some of the instructions are missing.  Ever the masochist, I have bought some new fabric to have a second attempt because the shape of the skirt does look so great but this time I know I need to add my own luck with it.

R whisked me away to Dublin for a relaxing weekend and although it is colder than at home the sun is shining and there’s clear blue sky (rather than the snow and rain of home). Ireland is very active in its social and environmental policy making, for example a couple of years ago they banned free plastic carrier bags in the shops.  So people either buy carrier bags at the checkout or bring in reusable bags.  Apparently although there was uproar at first most people have adapted smoothly to the ban.

Like many people I am trying to reduce adding to my pile of plastic shopping bags.  I have a variety of reusable shopping bags but inevitably they are rarely with me when I need them.  I saw this tutorial and thought that if I kept a neatly folded bag in my handbag and messenger bag then I might be more successful.

The bags have a pocket on the outside with velcro on the outside of the top of the pocket and on the inside of the bottom of the pocket to keep the bag neatly folded.  I’ve made two so far, one as part of a swap and the other as part of N’s birthday present.  At some point I will make a few for myself. The bag rather large (big enough to do a reasonable week’s shop) so I’ve used a thin canvas in the second bag and it still folds up well.

In the second bag I also added a zip to the pocket to make it more secure for holding keys/wallet etc.  I “borrowed” the second bag when I was caught out bagless in the supermarket and hadn’t yet posted the present and I was pleasantly suprised at how much it held and how comfortable it is to carry.

Last weekend I was fed-up with work and needed to do some craft so I made a friend a wallet for her birthday using Sew Christine’s tutorial.  I love the fabric I used in this project.  When choosing the fabric I took a couple of combinations to R and asked his opinion.  At first he was very decided that my safe option (the turtle fabric with the light blue spotty I used in my robot messenger bag)  was the best but then he emphatically decided that the riskier option was the only option.  i love that the spots go in the other direction inside the purse.

In this project I finally got around to using the Lamifix that I bought at this year’s Festival of Quilts.  I thought that if I made the outside of the wallet plastic then the wallet would be more durable.   The lamifix was pretty easy to use to get reasonable results although I think I need a little more practice.  I’m not sure I’d want to use it on large projects or ones where there is a lot of turning inside out though because once it gets creased you can’t get the lines out.

A few months ago I signed up to swap-bot, a website that facilitates swaps.  I liked the idea of using my fabric remnants to make things for other people and the excitement of waiting for unknown parcels arriving in the post.  When I was umm-ing and ah-ing about signing up I asked my boyfriend to dissuade me from joining some swap groups and the best argument he came up with was that I might get gangrene and then my legs would fall off, so I took the risk.  So far things are going well.  I haven’t lost a foot, never mind an ankle and two swaps in my partners have both liked their packages.

(I had planned to take photos of the packages I’d recieved to put alongside the pictures of the things I’d sent, but I whilst I took pictures before I posted my packages I haven’t had time to photo the things sent to me, sorry.)

The first swap I signed up for was a handmade eyemask swap.  My assigned partner’s favourite colour was green and she described her garden in her profile.  So from that I made her a mask from a green patterned cotton for the outer fabric, soft blue/green jersey (cut from a long sleeve t-shirt I refashioned) for the eye side and stuffed with cotton batting and dried lavender flowers.  I felt that I was taking a wee bit of a risk with the lavender, some people love it whilst others hate it, but my partner loves her garden so I thought it was a risk worth making.  As it turned out she liked the lavender lots.

I hadn’t really used elastic tape before that so that was my ‘new thing’ in this project.  I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out but looking back at it I wonder if I should have quilted the three layers together, although maybe that would have been a faff due to the lavender flowers.

The second swap was all about zips.  The idea was to make a zippy bag/purse and fill it with 4 things for the sewing room.  My assigned partner liked blue and chocolate brown, and black and white, ribbons and buttons. From that I decided to make a box, zippy bag (as much for my own amusement because I hadn’t made one before).  I used this tutorial for the box-bag, it was lots of fun to do and I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.  However I wanted to line the bag and that wasn’t included in the tutorial.  I used the blue and white spotty fabric that I used in my robot bag but my brain couldn’t handle how to make the box with a perfect lining so I ended up treating the outer and lining as one and pinking the insides where necessary (sorry for the lack of internal pictures).

I filled the bag with a big chocolate coloured button, a roll of blue and brown ribbon, a packet of cute pins (with coloured stars, moons etc. on the tops) and I made a needled book and a small pincushion (because I’m coming to the conclusion that one can never have too many pincushions).

Whilst I’m rambling I’d like to mention a work related thingy.  I’m mentioning work because of the aesthetic pleasure one aspect of my job gives me.  I study the influenza virus and one way I do this is by growing airway cultures that model and mimic the cells in our respiratory tracts.  To push dust and mucus and pesky microbes away from the lungs, and up and out, the trachea is lined with cells whose top surface is lined with cilia; little fingers that beat in time and direction pushing everything away from the lungs.  I love watching these cultures under the microscope.  They remind me of sea anemone in rock pools.  Watching the cultures always makes me smile (and I have a dance to mimics the cilia that tends to make others giggle, albeit at my expense).  I wish I had a movie to show you.  But still, I love the image of sea anemone lining my trachea, beating away to keep my lungs clean.

Crumbs, I’m feeling very pleased with myself. This weekend, whilst watching the Olympic track cycling (Go Chris, Go Brad, Go Vicky), I made a new apron. I used Sew Liberated’s Emmeline Apron pattern and fabric from Makower’s Hungry Caterpillar range. I love the fabric and the pattern was lots of fun. I learnt how to make and used bias binding and how to make my ladder stitch neater.

Please note the strawberries, somehow the overall cuteness is helping me cope with their presence.

In other news, I skipped work and went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC on Friday. Katie and Liz have both made eloquent posts about it. Surprisingly, considering my current reputation, I didn’t buy lots of fabric, just some very cute fat quarters. I did buy various bits of kit though, such as a small cutting mat and ruler, inkjet printer fabric and some iron on plastic called Lamifix, all of which I’m very eager to start playing with.

I think the favourite stall for most of us was The Button Company who were selling some very cute Japanese fabrics including the green version of the robot fabric I used to make my messenger bag. I got chatting about the fabric to one of the ladies running the stall and showed her my bag; oh crumbs, there was lots of fondling of the fabric and cooing at the bag. The lady was pleased with how the fabric had softened up. When we went back to the stall later in the day (to buy pretty ribbons and lovely wool felt) I was called the “robot bag lady” and the bag was shown about and fondled all over again, it was lots of fun. I was grinning from ear to ear.

Katie asked me to make a post about the embroidery I did when I was an undergrad in Edinburgh.

I made this pencil case for my mum. At that time I didn’t have a sewing machine so the pencil case and bag below was hand stitched and very rough. To be honest, the construction of the pencil case and the bag was very much secondary and the embroidery was where I found the fun. There was a shop a couple of doors down from the flat and when I was glum I would spend ages looking at the embroidery threads and choosing which ones to spend my beer tokens on.

I have no idea where I found the patience for all of those French knots.

Oh dear, my stash really is getting monstrous (and it will only get worse, what with the Festival of Quilts this week). Anyway, whilst hunting for a UK seller of the Makower collection of The Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric I finally found a quilt shop in London. The summer opening hours for Tikki Quilt & Patchwork in Kew Gardens are rather limited (well, right now it is closed until August 25th) but I managed to rush through work and squeeze in a visit 10 minutes before it shut.

They have a good selection of Kaffe Fassett, Rowan, Makower and FreeSpirit fabrics, all at a reasonable price (around £9.00 per metre). The staff were friendly and helpful, both working on patchwork projects whilst I browsed. There’s a workshop in the back and they run classes and sewing groups periodically.

I couldn’t help myself, I bought some fat quarters for a small project for my Nan and the summer heat/imminent holiday forced be to buy a fat quarter set of some of Heather Ross’s Lightning Bugs and Other Mysteries collection (although I didn’t have time to use it before I headed for the beach). Oh, and I also couldn’t resist buying some Denyse Schmidt for a summer skirt.

I’ve just come back from a relaxing and energising holiday in France. The holiday was much needed. In the preceding two weeks I had to run my most important experiment of my year, the stakes were high and the hours were random. My small rebellion against working two weekends in a row was to make a dress during what remained of my weekend, which may seem rather nuts but I wanted to do something for me. Why I chose to make my first ever dress (when I’ve been putting it off and procrastinating for the last two years) I have no idea.

I bought an “easy-to-sew” Simplicity pattern (4119) because I liked the overall shape (of the least frilly option) and it only required 1.5 m of fabric. The first lesson I have learnt is that when choosing patterns construction details, such as pleats, are very important. The construction went ok, considering. I tried to make adjustments as I went along; I shortened the shoulder straps and brought in the side seams of the skirt because it was just too tent-like (the pleats at the front made me look somewhat pregnant). I also brought in the back seam when I inserted the zip. I did make a bit of a mess of attaching the bodice to the skirt and had to unpick and redo most of it, but never mind.

For fabric I decided (with some reservations) to use the Robert Kaufman Oriental Cats that I’d picked up in Derbyshire, initially for a fun, floaty skirt. I think I’m happy with the fabric choice, I was worried that the fabric would be too cute and that the dress would make me look about 12. The fabric was rather fussy to cut/piece together, especially with my lack of experience but I’m pleased with the overall result.

About this time last year I bought a very cute wallet in Toronto. It survived until Christmas before I’d used it to death. I tried to design my own wallet but it was a spectacular disaster (there was embroidery, I was not happy). So I started using a simple coin purse that N had bought in India for me. Last week I killed that. So I went hunting for a wallet tutorial online.

Happily I found Sew Christine’s tutorial and worked my way through it last night.

Her instructions are clear and the construction is simple and compact. There’s a zipped-up coin compartment, two slots for cards and a roomy pocket for notes and receipts. I added a magnetic snap (which I struggled with a wee bit because it had to be placed so close to the seam) instead of the velcro fasting. I used some blackcurrant fabric for the outside with the hope that the darker fabric will take longer to get grubby whilst I scrabble around the bottom of my bag. I’m pleased with how the wallet turned out; I really hope it survives a wee while and I that I don’t destroy it within a few months.