Christmas Checked Dress

This is Big Sis's sewing project; finished, in true home sewing style, with a tight deadline, late nights, and sewing in pyjamas the morning of the wearing.

She has been asking for sewing lessons because lots of her friends are signed up for local classes. Given that I just have to spend the time and effort to show her the ropes, I thought I had better get on and do just that. I committed to sewing with her for an hour on Fridays and Sundays.

She decided she wanted a red checked dress in time for Christmas. We shopped for the fabric online and got a lovely soft flannel. She decided to use the wrong side out because it was unbrushed and she liked the cleaner lines of the pattern. She was not terribly impressed with using the same pattern as always, The Party Dress from The Cottage Mama, perhaps because she wanted cap sleeves. I wasn't about to go and trace and cut out a whole new pattern bodice block, but I did find a BurdaStyle pattern with sleeves so I traced the sleeve and the armscye from that to use over the block.

We spent a long lesson with the fabric laid out, working out grainlines and nap and cutting out with the rotary cutter. She was pretty bored. Then she moved the deadline up by 3 weeks to wear in time for the school Christmas Fair. From then on, we kept her role to sewing up and I was in charge of repairs, cutting and pinning.

The sleeves were a bit small, I re-did the seams with a 5mm allowance, but she doesn't have much room in them. The bodice was too short for her so we added the waistband. For future reference, it needs to come down by about 10cm. I cut the skirt at a length of 62cm, but hemmed about 15cm of it away.

Her sewing was excellent. With almost no practice, she sewed straight lines and got the fabric moving through the machine well. The second and third seams she ever sewed were putting the sleeves in. That is not easy to do and they went in perfectly. I was so proud of her.

Festival of Faux Fur – Doll outfit

Well, the dolls are certainly ready for some cold weather. The elves have been crafting a flurry of faux fur accessories for them, and they will be ready and waiting under the tree on Christmas morning.

First up, two winter hats. Released by Pleasant Company, the creator of American Girl, and still available deep within the bowels of Google, Samantha’s Pretty Clothes pattern collection includes a winter hat in the style of a tam / beret. I’ve had this white fur for years, buying it in a rash promise to make Santa hats for the children. It came out to trim the doll’sbaking aprons last year, but otherwise has sat around unused. I learned my lessons though and didn’t cut this with a rotary cutter – which slices through the fur pile in a horrible way. Instead, I drew the pattern on to the back with chalk and then snipped out - only the backing - with embroidery scissors. This keeps the fur intact and actually makes very little mess. I even had a remnant of white satin which my mother had bought the children as fun scraps. This went into the lining of the hats. I didn’t follow the pattern instructions exactly, I couldn’t figure out how to make a channel for the elastic without sewing through the fur pile so I sewed the elastic loop to the seam allowance and then turned and closed by hand.

The Samantha hat was a bit larger and shallower than I was imagining. I wanted more of a Russian style fur hat, so I improvised another one with a smaller diameter and a deeper crown (9cm). It came out a little large, but since the dolls aren’t doing any strenuous activity, I think I got away with it.

The cape is my favourite part of this whole outfit. It was ridiculously quick and easy. No seam finishing, no lining, no hem. Just cut it out, two side seams, front hem closed by hand, attach the ribbon to the neckline and cut the bottom hem evenly. I used the cape I made for Halloween as a template, but shortened the length to 20 cm. It would also be cute even shorter. I think I’d better make another one about 15cm long. I left it unlined because I didn’t want it slipping around on the dolls shoulders. They don’t need the warmth, or the comfort, of a lining. The ribbon makes the whole thing ultra-luxe. I was hunting in my ribbon stash for a black one, but then came across this white grosgrain with gold edging. It arrived last year as part of the gorgeous wrapping that Kirsten at Wrapsody did for us last Christmas.  Amazing!

Finally, the skirt: This pink babycord was a pair of toddler knickers matching a dress. My kids never wore knickers over their nappies. I trained them to be ladylike as young as possible, and not show their knickers. (Kidding! I just couldn’t be bothered peeling off even more layers with every nappy change.) But, for some reason, I kept the pants. After my successful refashion of a summer pair, I had these in mind for a winter pair, with white accent. This pair took some time because the elastic was sewn to the casing, not in a channel, so it meant lots, and lots, of unpicking. But it was worth it: the waistband went back into the skirt, one leg into the hat, and the other leg into a ballet bun. Once something is on my sewing table, I feel a compulsion to keep going until I have used up every last scrap. I added the white ribbon to hide the top of the fur trim, which doesn’t work well when turned over and is really ugly if left raw.

I tried to use another pattern from the clothing set, gaiters, but they just looked like yeti feet so I abandoned them. I might try cutting the pile shorter, because... furry boots!

I think the elves might be in trouble if they only supply one snowy outfit so I have one more week to make a vest, some boots and maybe a navy skirt. Probably another cape too. That is in addition to the summer outfits coming up and the school uniform that I think would be so much fun. Those elves better stop loafing on the sofa with their crochet every evening.

 

Afmæli Christmas Jumper, in January

I have no idea how to pronounce this, but I was able to make it!

The pattern is Afmæli from Istex, the Icelandic wool manufacturer. I used the yarn it was written for, Létt-Lopi, ordered from Iceland.

Although it is not perfect, I am delighted with this jumper. I love the vibrancy of the colours, I love how warm it is and I really love how accomplished I feel as a knitter, having done all that colour work - with no ripping out!  Whoo hoo!

The down side is that, I am sorry to say, I made the sleeves too short. I made the child size, 10-12 years. The measurements were the same as the ladies small and I liked the pattern better, so I went with it. No modifications, apart from going up a needle size, which is normal for me. The small sizing is my own fault, rather than a problem with the pattern. I should have carried on for another 7cm in the sleeves, and perhaps a few more centimeters in the body. I'm a bit worried about washing it, any shrinkage will be the end of this fitting me. You can really see the short length in this photo of the back.

I do have this weird riding-up through the front yoke effect. I am not sure if this is common with this kind of jumper. There is no difference between the front and the back neckline. With no scooping out of the front neckline, it seems to be pooling in my upper chest. Maybe I just have really hunched shoulders, but I suspect it is because there is not quite enough ease through the underarms. My own fault, again.

I love the fact that this yarn really did come to me from Iceland. I have wanted to visit this fascinating country for ages, but I fear that this might be the closest I will get. The yarn is really light and incredibly warm. I bet it is extremely good at repelling water, but I haven't put that property to the test. It is really scratchy though. It is not soft to handle and I have to wear it with a turtleneck underneath. I don't want it touching my skin anywhere, and I really would not recommend this yarn for children. However, it is affordable, the balls are a generous amount, and the colour choice is huge. I used way less than the pattern called for, which is nice change from running out before the end, as I often do. There was even a tiny bit of Icelandic grass that I pulled out of the fibres as I went along! 

Check out my floats! I used to be in awe of colour work floats and did not ever believe that my knitting would be neat enough for innards photos. It just goes to show that practice really does make perfect!

The total cost, including shipping from Iceland, was £23.13. You wouldn't even get an Acrylic jumper on sale for that.

And here I am, 15 months later, wearing it in the Lake District:

Christmas Pudding Canapes

These pudding canapés are so easy and so effective. A perfect addition to a Christmas cocktail party, or to serve instead of a traditional pudding.

To make, I just bought an ordinary ready-to-heat pudding. It shouldn't be deluxe. In fact, the cheaper ones work better for forming into balls. I broke it up into chunks in a mixing bowl, added a few generous splashes of brandy (ok, and a few more), chopped glacé cherries. Chopped walnuts would be great too. Mix together with hands and then squish chunks of the mixture together, and roll into balls. Drizzle with melted white chocolate and top with a tiny chunk of glacé cherry.

Serve to your guests, smug in the knowledge that the wow factor is high and the effort is low!

Christmas Cards

This was incredibly difficult to photograph. The background is mirror-like shiny gold paper and it reflected all the flash, plus the photographer!

The letters are individually cut out of glitter paper and glued over a length of twine. I didn't have a scalpel to cut out the centre holes of the A and the Rs. The stars are punched from a novelty punch that I bought in Canada this summer.

Christmas Booties

A novelty knit from the yarn attached to a magazine.

I almost didn't bother but there is always a baby in the tummy in my family and including them in the Christmas gift giving is fun, so I went ahead and knitted these up.

Bonus: I've never tried socks before so these were a great sock-trial. I quite enjoyed it, the little heel was fun and I even used the proper Kitchener stitch for binding off the second one.

The pattern is actually very poor. The cuff is knitted separately and then seamed on to the sock. Really, it should be incorporated into the design. Perhaps they were trying to make it easy for beginners. The cuffs curled up completely and because they are acrylic, blocking made no difference. Once they were sewn on, the curl flattened slightly, but not much. I don't know of a satisfactory fix for that, other than knitting with wool.

Regardless, the baby is being included in our Christmas celebrations. 

Merry Christmas!

Knitted Christmas Tree Decorations

These Julekuler were the perfect way to try my hand at stranded colour knitting. 

They are small enough that it feels like making a sample, and they come together quickly, but you actually have a result at the end.

I bought some polystyrene craft balls to stuff them with. I like how they give a perfectly round shape, which toy stuffing just would not achieve. My gauge ended up being right for the 7mm size.

The pattern I started with is called Balls Up! Ravelry link here. I ended up drafting or modifying designs to fit the number of stitches. There are loads more I want to make. I like the red backgrounds better, on the white there is more likelihood of the darker yarn showing from underneath.

Merry Christmas! X

Angel Dress

 
My big girl isn't going to want to dress like this for too much longer, so it is lovely for me that she loves dresses like this.

She admired this fabric at the Isle of Wight so I got 3 meters. I knew it would make adorable children's dresses and now that I've worked with it, I've seen that it is very versatile. I could easily wear a summer top in this. Maybe 3/4 sleeves, or a cute Sorbetto. It needs lining or underlining but it is lovely and soft and hangs well. 

The school nativity play was just the deadline I needed to get on and actually make the dress I was planning. Luckily she has been cast as an angel. I've left the dress really long, almost floor length, and I will shorten it after the play to a more suitable dress length.

I used the trusty Cottage Mama Party Dress as my pattern block. The pattern came up pretty small in the chest and length. She has grown fast, so I have now re-drafted a bodice block for her current 6-7 yr size. The pattern length is the reason there is a cummerbund around the dress. I'm pretending it's a design feature. Actually, now that she is bigger, a plain bodice would look overly large in a plain-ish fabric such as this so I do like the feature that the band adds. I can see a lot of puckering in the pictures so it could have done with some lightweight interfacing. I top stitched over the band as well as around the armholes and neckline.

I'm getting better at installing invisible zips. I am so pleased I splashed out invested in an invisible zip foot for my machine. It is truly worth it. I almost got the two sides to line up evenly, I only had to take a little nibble out of the back neckline afterwards.

As I knew I would after my last post, I steeled myself for lots of skirt unpicking and reduced the skirt circumference by half. It is now 140cm around, which is one width of the fabric. I'm so pleased I did. The fabric is so delicate and light that less really is more with this dress. Plus, in white, with that fullness of skirt, there was a real danger in her being mistaken for a 6 year old bride, instead of an angel!

I used up the last of my plain white cotton for the lining and planned ahead at Mood with an array of invisible zips.
Fabric:<£5
Lining: stash
Zip: $1 
Total: about £5.50

Christmas Gift Bags

How about these as an alternative to wrapping paper?

 

I've been thinking about the idea of fabric gift bags ever since I saw SouleMama's a few years ago. The ultimate reusable gift wrap.

Christmas fabric is so cute. I love the gold paint, it really brings it to life. You can get about 4 bags from one meter of fabric. Mine are sewn with the drawstring on the long edge but you could save some ribbon length by putting it on the short edge. I French-seamed the side seams, left 14cm open at the top, sewed a little seam in there, folded over and seamed the channel for the ribbon.

 

Papercraft Christmas Cards

Forgive the terrible iPad photo (see my shadow?), this is the only photo I took of our 2012 masterpieces. If I'd had a blog at that time, I would have felt justified in taking many more photos, with my nice camera.

We had a lot of fun making these cards.

I bought these supplies:
1. Set of blank cards with envelopes
2. Pack of A4 Christmas papers
3. Bottle of PVC glue
4. Tub of red glitter
5. Scraps of yarn
6. Scraps of cardboard
7. Scraps of aluminium foil
8. Letter stamp set and ink pad (red)
9. Confetti shapes

There are loads of supplies that you probably already have around the house: ribbon, wrapping paper, beads, sequins and cotton wool would all be great additions to the supplies above.

Then we set to work cutting and sticking. I got some inspiration from papercraft websites (I'm afraid I forget which). The tree and the squares definitely did not spring from my own imagination. Here's a rundown of each card:

Red Star, Noel
I started with the red star, Noel card. I drew the outline in pencil on the card, then went over the line with glue. Then I sprinkled the glitter all over the entire card and poured it away (saving for later, of course) to reveal the glitter stuck to the glue. Very simple but very effective.

Present
Next up, I tackled the present. Layering the papers is a great way to get a better looking finish on the cards. This is two rectangles of complimenting papers, slightly different sizes. The smaller one is stuck on top of the larger one. More glitter-over-glue makes the ribbon and bow.

Snowflake
The kids really enjoyed making snowflakes. We folded sheets of paper in half, and half again, then cut sections away, leaving the centre point intact. When you unfold it, you have a magic snowflake. For contrast, I stuck it over a large red section. These would be great to make out of aluminium foil and stick on a turquoise or blue background. Maybe this year, we will do all foil shapes.

Baubles
Now we're getting on to my favourites. These looked great. I used different circles I had around the house: a glass, inside of a sticky tape roll; to cut different size circles from the papers. I glued a line of scrap red yarn for the string and made a glitter bow on top. Buying a set of papers, rather than individual sheets was perfect for this because I could use the same design in different colourways and keep the whole thing looking co-ordinated.

Fireplace
This was really fun. We cut out a tiny stocking shape, plus a large rectangle for the background and two strips for the sides. Then I pulled apart the layers of a piece of corrugated cardboard for the mantlepiece. I peeled the three layers of cardboard away from each other and used the flat side but stuck it wrong side out so you could see the lines where the glue was. I fancied it looked like a grain in the wood.

Christmas Trees
These were made from strips of paper laid in rows with the edges trimmed to make a triangle shape. Cardboard was the perfect tree trunk and I cut a scrap of foil into a star shape for the top of the tree.

Squares
This was a total scrap-buster but looked really special. Some of the papers had quite juvenile pictures on them and I didn't want to use them in other cards, but they worked really well here. I cut out some of the stuffed animal pictures, plus a tiny star, tree and circles. Then arranged them on the tiny squares. Some of the squares I left without a shape, if they already had pictures on them. There are loads of variations that you could do with this basic layout and once all the tiny pieces are nicely cut and arranged side by side, it makes a really cute card.

We had to mark our handiwork as handmade so I bought a set of letter stamps and a red inkpad. We arranged the letters to say "Made by Cathy and E..." and stamped this on the back of each card. I didn't get a picture but it looked really cute.

I weighed all the cards down under some heavy books for a few days (the paper ones, not the glitter) because they were curling up quite a bit. I think it worked - you'll have to ask my family in Australia how they looked on arrival.

The final touch was confetti inside the cards and we also glued one snowflake shaped confetti to the outside of the envelope.

Gingerbread House Birthday Cake

Yes, I know it is not Christmas but if the 6 yo wants a Gingerbread House for her birthday, then that is what the lady gets!

Even without the festive cheer, I did have fun making this.  I like to give myself about 3 days to make a gingerbread house to allow for overnight chilling of the mixture and another night for setting of the icing, then decorating on the 3^rd day.

I used this gingerbread recipe from Butter Hearts Sugar, and a lot of her decorating ideas too.  I devised my own template from merging lots of internet browsing of other’s templates.  I used a Woman’s Weekly recipe for the royal icing, and, yes, I use real egg whites instead of meringue powder.  It doesn’t come out as smooth and glossy as the powder but, here in the UK, I have only found the powder available by mail order and it is pretty expensive.

I went a bit mad buying sweets for this cake.  You can't see most of them because I filled the inside, like a treasure chest.  On impulse, I also bought a can of this silver spray glitter, not knowing quite how I might use it.  But, once I started, I couldn't stop and I ended up spraying (and re-spraying!) all the walls and roof silver.  It helped to hide my uneven mixing and baking on the finished surfaces.  The red roof tiles are string candy, cut into smaller lengths and fastened only at each end with the loops hanging loose.  I loved the idea of making heart shapes from candy canes so I saved some from Christmas and also used them for the windowsills.  I always run out of patience when I am piping icing so I didn’t make the edges as pretty as most other cakes, I just stuck silver balls along the mortar lines instead.

E was very pleased with her cake, it was what she ordered after all.  Putting the candles along the ridgepole was fun and added more height and drama.  They would also look cute planted in the garden.   

Bonus: it was so easy to serve, just break off a chunk and grab a handful of candy.