Round Pink Cushion

I know that two cushion cover posts, and nothing else, in the last year does not make for exciting blogging. It is not exciting sewing either. We moved house a year ago and even though I have a space that I could turn into a dedicated sewing space, I have hardly sewn at all. That is partly because I feel I can't really indulge my hobbies when there are other things I should be doing, and partly because the creative part of my mind is kept occupied with interiors where it used to be fed by sewing. Let me assure you that interiors is a way more expensive hobby than sewing, and the stakes feel waaay higher because you can't just turn your mistakes into something else or donate it if you don't like it.

One of my new favourite blogs is interiors blog, Mad About the House.  Recently, she posted about the "Wes Anderson effect", essentially, the next iteration of Art Deco which sees our interior styles moving into pastels and round shapes.

While this look isn't really my thing, I do think it is fun and pretty, and a throw cushion is a great way to give a nod to a trend, show peeps that I'm in da club, if you will!

So my shopping fingers hopped on to eBay and got half a meter of pale pink velvet and a cushion pad. I got an 18" pad, but I wish I'd got the 16". I cut an 18" circle and gave it a 1cm seam allowance, I could have used 1.5cm and made it puffier too. (It's not a great pad, a bit mishapen, but not the end of the world).

I had some self cover buttons, left over from one of my very first sewing projects. They are plastic rather than metal, so I'm a bit worried about them breaking under the strain of the button tufting, but I couldn't manage to pull it that tight anyway.

I used fishing line for the tufting, and an yarn darning needle. Then I sewed up the gap which I'd stuffed the pad into and done!

Costs:
  Fabric: eBay, £5.95
  Thread: stash, £0.00
  Cushion pad: eBay, £3.72
  Buttons: stash, £0.00
Total: £9.67

Throw Cushion Covers

We are selling our flat and I needed some cushions for the sofa. This was the only feedback the estate agent gave: "It's too neutral, can you go to Habitat and buy some throw pillows?"

It turns out that throw pillows at Habitat are really expensive. And I didn't particularly like what they had at the time. But I had charity shops on my side, in the countryside they tend to stock throw cushions. I chose two based on their size and the colour of their zips. I should have been a bit more choosy about the cushion pad too, one of them is not great. I got two cushions for £3. (I got three more for £8, but I didn't upcycle them.)

Before

I knew I had some solid pink quilting cotton that I'd bought but never got around to using, and decided that this would match pink flowers, giving the room a bit of a lift. Being a plain, and a quilting cotton, I also knew that I would need to add piping to get it looking smart.

I used 4mm piping cord and 1 inch bias binding. I should have made 1.5 inch binding as this would have given me a bigger seam allowance. Some of the corners are not wash proof. I made the whole thing with my zip foot: measured existing cushion covers; unpicked zip; added binding to front, attached zip to front, attached zip to back, attached back to front. I didn't finish the seam allowances. If I wash them, I'll have to do this beforehand.

I know why I would never go on Sewing Bee, the first cushion took me about 3 hours. The second one was quicker, and I was truly grateful that I didn't have a third one in the pipeline.

But they look nice on the sofa, and I am sure they will be the difference between selling the flat or not! Afterwards, they are going to look very nice on the garden chairs.

Costs:
  Cushions: Charity shop furniture warehouse, £3
  Fabric: Knitting & Stitching Show 2015, £7.90
  Piping Cord: not sure
Total: £10.90 for two

Happy New Year... Tablecloth

Pretty simple, but a black linen tablecloth is one that I have wanted for a while. Black looks elegant and glamorous and doesn't show the marks.

I have a long rectangular table that is over 2 meters in length. I got 3 meters of black linen from Amazon and have about 50cm left over. The width wasn't quite wide enough to hide the edges of my table protector so I added a border of black cotton to the edges. The border is 5.25 inches wide but doubled over and topstitched down. I got a bit tired of mitred corners so I didn't get around to making the four matching napkins, but I got this on the table in time for New Years Eve.

Happy New Year!

Costs:

  Linen: 3m, Amazon, £21.54

  Cotton: 2 yards, Southern Fabrics, £14.41

  Thread: used previously, £0.00

Total: £35.95

24 Mitred Corners

...aka 6 napkins.

My mother in law gave me this fabric for Christmas, suggesting napkins would be nice.

The fabric really is lovely. I don't know what it is, but it is thicker and softer than any other quilting cotton I have used before. A non-white napkin should also make sense for every day dining, showing less marks and laundering easily.

Taking the hint that our table manners need some work, I ate my pride and made the napkins (geddit?). I did sneak a little bit of fabric for a top secret project, so I only had enough for six rectangular napkins. The 1.2m gave me napkin dimensions of 46 x 37cm

My corners are not perfect, but I did try hard to get them nice. There was way more ironing than sewing in this project. But once I got into a rhythm, they were pretty quick.

They look lovely with my Moda fabric tablecloth. 

Here's to elegant family meals.

Blue Shirt Quilt

Well, a quilt block.

I finally did it! I took a pile of old shirts...

...cut them up and sorted them into colour values...

...then started a quilt!

M has more work clothing than it is possible for anyone to have. What can I say, the man loves to wear a suit. But his shirts do show wear, particularly around the collar and cuffs, so he has regular culls. He is down to 15 business shirts now. Maybe 18. He won't tell me.

I wasn't really getting on with using them up in regular sewing. I am allergic to toiles, I used a few bits for facings on dresses and linings for baskets and hats, but made no real dent in the ever-growing pile. Plus, there is a lot of fabric in one mens shirt. I only used two sleeves to make this block - it's going to be a king size quilt!

I learned a thing or two about a new (to me) concept called "colour value". Basically it means that every fabric has a hue and is darker or lighter than another fabric that it is paired with. The sorted pile of shirts is arranged by colour value with the darkest at the bottom and the lightest on top. The check is actually an outlier so I put it outside the white. 

I took the sorted pile and divided it in half, the lightest together and the darkest together. That is how I paired my fabrics. The lightest of the lights will be paired with the lightest of the darks and so on. While I love how the darkest blue pops with white, I am trying to keep the whole effect muted, or "low volume".

I admired this low volume quilt and decided to use the quilt block pattern for my quilt. I like how she has used the same two fabrics for one block and then reversed them for another block. That's what I'm planning for this. By using the same block pattern, I'm hoping that the quilt won't look like too much of a mis-mash (of old shirts).

I'm very pleased with the Ohio Star Pattern. While I have no affinity whatsoever with Ohio, quilting is an extremely popular sport in America so I don't mind a bit of American in my quilting endeavours.

Now it's time for me to carry on and make 19 more, then joining, a border, then batting, quilting, and binding. What about the backing? I might make a jelly roll stripe backing from the rest of the shirts. 2016 is shaping up to be the year of the WIP.

Granny Square Blankets

I bought this lovely DK cotton when I first got into crochet and it was time to use it up. Some doll beds were coming for Christmas, so it was nice to give something handmade to go with them.

I decided to start a Granny Square and carry on in alternating stripes until I ran out of yarn. I did the two concurrently so that they would match, and be about the same size. I like that they are almost the same, but not identical.  I had 6 colours of the cotton and I also added a scrap of bamboo that toned well. I left out a lime green, so I had turquoise, light blue, hot pink, cream, mid pink and lilac. I used the cream for the border in a fan stitch.

I've decided that, as much as I love creating Granny Squares, I don't love the bitty look of them. After much Ravelry browsing, I have decided that the best way to make them work is to repeat the same colour for at least two rows, if not three, and to ideally use colours in the same tones. I think this makes them look more coherent. 

Blankets are delivered, so I'm retiring from Granny Squares. For now.

Icelandic Hot Water Bottle Cover

A perfect stash buster from my Icelandic yarn used for my pullover last winter. The nasty rubber of my hot water bottle, and the even nastier shade of pink, needed covering. This yarn is pretty scratchy to wear so something that touches only my feet is ideal.

I modified the pattern, All You Need, to incorporate the pattern from the Aefmaeli yoke. (Ravelry notes here) I used the small flowers at the top, with the red petals, and modified the black zig zags to go over fewer rows. Despite knitting with almost no tension in the yarn - I don't even hold the yarn - my floats are still very tight. It makes the pattern stretch out in an un-pretty way. You can see it quite clearly in the white sections.

I decided where to start the pattern by just putting the bottle in every now and then. I figured I wanted it to start when I was about half way up. I could have gone a little higher. I didn't want to break into a new ball of black so one quarter of the top zig zag border has no points. I was trying to use up the red - I can see more use for the black and white shades in any future projects.

I probably should have sized down a needle for the rib neck. It is quite loose and floppy. But the bottle fits in easily, and it is lovely and cosy to use.

Jack O Lanterns 2015

Rope Bowls

Inspired by SouleMama's rope baskets, I ordered some cotton rope and sewed up these bowls.

They are a quick and pretty easy craft project, perfect for instant gratification. Case in point: this rope arrived in the post yesterday evening, and here I am 24 hours later posting a finished project.

I ordered 4mm thick cotton cord because my sewing machine is a basic model and not suitable for denim. It handled this thickness fine, but I found it a little frustrating. Firstly, the lovely rope coils are squashed, and almost entirely flattened out of being by the stitches; and secondly, because as the bowl grows larger it gets quite floppy. A 6mm rope would be nicer. And sew up quicker!

I got unbleached rope because I wasn't planning to dye it and I like it looking more rustic. My home also has cream decor, not pure white.

I used white cotton thread and a stitch length set at 2, with a zig zag setting two notches less than the widest setting (yes, that is a scientific description of my zig zag settings!) It was harder than I realised to get the needle catching both sides of the coils. There are a lot of places that have air holes between the coils. I also had to do a LOT of lifting the presser foot and pivoting. This would be much faster with a machine with a needle up/down setting and a more automated presser foot. But I found the pivoting essential if I wanted to get a good size base to the bowl. If I pivot, I can make relatively flat coils, as soon as I let the machine run, I find the coils to curl upwards really fast.

Witness the first try, the smallest bowl. I curled the end around a few times and figured out which way  I needed to hold it to get the loose rope to join, then just went for it. It turned into a half sphere very quickly! Diameter is 6cm, height 3cm and the base is completely rounded. I think it might have to go into the dolls' picnic set.

Second bowl is my favourite, it feels the right size for this amount of rigidity. It is firm and stable and holds its shape when picked up. It is 13.5cm diameter, and 4cm high. There is a certain amount of shaping you can do to make it taller or flatter, but it mainly holds on to the right shape.

The final bowl was a test of a few things, I wanted to see how much rope they really used, and I timed myself to see how long these really took. The bowl took me 45 minutes, and this was the slowest one by far. I pivoted manually for pretty much the entire time, aside from the last 3-4 coils when I just let it run. 18 cm by 6cm, depending on how much you squash the base down.

I'm pleased I gave it a go, but I will have to put these into rotation, and find them useful, before I go making up hundreds.

Supplies:
20 meters cotton cording: £4.60
1 large spool cotton thread: £0.40
Total: £5.00 for 3

Granny Square Doll Blanket

After my first crochet class, I came home and cast on (hooked on?) for more granny squares. I don't normally buy acrylic yarn, but this seemed like the right yarn for this sort of project. I added the pink, green and turquoise to my stash, plus worked in some scraps from other projects. 

My class gave me enough information to be able to go away and figure out some other techniques for myself. For example, I figured out the joining method, with help from the internets, and joined these using a slip stitch on the right side. I would like to try this in a contrast yarn some time. The edging scallop is made from a set of single and double stitches: single, 3x double, single.

My squares are a bit uneven, I guess my tension is off, plus some of the scraps are different weights. I'm not too bothered about the waviness, it's fine for a practice project and blocking is not going to work in acrylic.

I'm looking forward to using up many of my scraps in such a fun way.

Happy Halloween!

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

M's Halloween Pumpkins

This is Mr Cathy's one and only crafty activity. He does it extremely well, don't you think?

Cabled Cushion Cover

Now that Autumn is here, I could finally find it in myself to finish off this knitted cushion cover. I started in March but knit homewares did not seem right in summer so I put it aside and pursued other projects. Now that the evenings are drawing in, and the weather is chilly, this cushion looks so fat and cosy, it is just inviting me to join it on the sofa, knitting needles in hand...

I made a plan to cover our existing sofa cushions. We have had four of these really blah cushions forever. They are fine, they are neutral, they do the job, they blend in and are (mostly) inoffensive; but they are boring. So I decided to knit at least one new cover. Start with one and see how you go, right?

The yarn is Sirdar Denim Sport Aran which I got on sale. I was planning to make myself an Aran fisherman's jumper but I've not had great success with pieced garments for myself so I don't feel like I am really ready to do it justice. This seemed like the right project for showing off it's good qualities. I love having such a neutral shade in my stash and it is a great yarn too. It is soft enough to use for baby blankets and I really like the uneven texture: it gives stitch definition, but is kind to flaws. I can machine wash it and it's very inexpensive.

When I was searching for a pattern on Ravelry, I didn't see any with the sort of cabling that I wanted. So I used the cable design from a poncho instead. (The Ravelry pattern search really is phenomenal.) My notes on how I converted the pattern are here. If I make another one (and I hope I do), I think I'll go for a less elaborate cable and use a lot of rope twists instead, maybe with ribbing on the back. The back of this one is mostly stocking stitch, with a few bands of seed stitch breaking it up along the way.

Instead of attaching a fastening method, or sewing the cushion into the cover, I machine sewed the cover to the zip of the existing cushion cover. That way, I can take out the cushion pad if I need to launder the cover(s) and it is far neater than anything I could achieve.

Now, where's my glass of wine and my knitting?

Mosaic Mirror

E made this mosaic mirror at a party.

They stuck the mosaic tiles to an Ikea mirror.  She says they were upside down with the flat side out.  They were told not to stick them too close together.  The party co-ordinator grouted them afterwards with plaster of Paris.

Fabric Bunting

This bunting (a.k.a. garland, pennants) is very sentimental to me.  It marks my official re-entry into sewing.  I was inspired to buy a (very cheap) sewing machine, shopped online for fabric and bias binding and did some web research for construction inspiration.

Bunting is pretty much an English/British institution and it is so, so popular.  With the Queen's Jubilee and the London Olympics, 2012 was the year of bunting.  But everything available in the shops is either made of paper or plastic and none of it is more than 10 flags long.  If you can even find fabric, it is really expensive.

That's not to say that my string came out cheap, I probably paid about £35 for fabric, binding and shipping (not counting tools like pinking shears and tailor's chalk) and it took me a month of evenings to cut out and sew it up.  But I do have over 30m of the cutest bunting ever!

I made it for a 5th birthday which we were hosting at a venue.  Pink, pink and more pink was in demand.  We were using a pretty drab conference room with nasty curtains and lots of veneer panelling, so it need some dressing.  The bunting fit around 3 entire walls of the room with only the doors to the garden not covered.  We were lucky that the venue were really relaxed about us hanging things.  In fact, they had a pinboard rail mounted high up for this purpose.  (These things are worth checking before you spend a month sewing 30m of bunting but I didn't and was just lucky.)  The party room pictures are still pretty blah so I've posted a different picture taken when we hung the bunting at home for the actual birthday day.  Since then, it has also decorated other party venues including a local cafe, our garden and a booth at the school fair.  (It went to a friend's wedding but it was a bit too pink for their taste.)

I cut myself a cardboard template for the flags, they are 20cm wide at the top and 25cm long.  I traced around the template with tailor's chalk and then cut out the flags with pinking shears.  A rotary cutter with ruler would have made this part of the job faster.  I then sewed the two long sides, trimmed the corner, turned right side out and poked out the corners with a knitting needle before pressing flat.  (Actually, I pressed the seams flat inside first and then pressed the outside.)

Since I was making double sided flags, I got about 4-5 flags out of .5m of fabric.  Single sided works fine and you get twice as many flags with about half the work. You could also use a cheaper, plain fabric for the backs of the flags and save the prints for the front.  I wanted it to be double-sided so I could hang it through the centre of a room. 

I chose polycotton from Online Fabrics because they had a great range of prints and they sold by the .5m so I could get more prints into the string.

I sewed each flag to the binding at intervals of 10cm.  Tip: fold the next flag in 1/2 and you have the distance between each space.  I have to confess that the zig-zag stitch idea wasn't mine.  During my research, I came across Sew Sweet Violet on Etsy.  If you want to buy some gorgeous fabric bunting, buy from her.  The running zig-zag is very forgiving when you sew out of alignment and the contrast thread adds extra interest to the string.  The binding gets folded in half and the raw edge of the flag attached inside.  I didn't press the binding in half before I pinned but you would need to with very fine binding.  Actually, sewing tape, ribbon, or strips cut on the straight grain would probably be a more practical string for the bunting, bias tape stretches more and curves away as you sew.  Violet also does the most gorgeous ends on her bunting.  Needless to say, I did not make padded shapes to dangle from the ends, but I should have.

After I made the length I needed for the party (ie, filled a whole roll of binding), I went to town and appliqued their names on a string each.  I had to buy heavier, quilting weight cotton for this, applied spray starch and also used a sheet of tissue paper to stop the stitches from forming a tunnel.  The final applique still has a bit of puckering around the letters, but it is not too noticable when it is hung up.  

I drew the letters freehand with chalk and cut them out on scraps from the main string.  Then I made up each flag in the same way as before.  I added one flag at each end in the same fabric as the letters.

I did another bunting project for the aforementioned wedding and my friend did a superb job sourcing all kinds of odds and ends of free fabric for her flags.  I ended up working with a book of curtain/upholstery samples, men's shirts, pajama bottoms and a floral top from the charity shop.  It was fun seeing it all come together on the day.