The end of another year....

It's been just over a year since I started blogging here and a year ago today I finished my first dress, Burda 7739. I know I've not been the most frequent blogger or sewer but despite it all I've still accomplished the following:

4 dresses from scratch
3 refashions - a dress, a dress into a top and a pair of jeans into a skirt
2 customised t-shirts
3 skirts
2 hats
4 snoods
1 Dalek

I don't think that's too bad, do you? I've had time to make much more but not really had the motivation or the need for any more clothes in my wardrobe! I started the year on a sewing rampage and that's since changed to all knitting and barely any sewing thanks to knitting being far more portable and easier to pick up and put down so I can do a little at a time when I have a spare moment. I'm really enjoying it at the moment and I have to go with what I enjoy!

Christmas

Was it good for you? I had a lovely time with my family and it's all over far too quickly, as usual! Prior to Christmas I did a little bit of crafting, a while back I said I wanted to make some Christmas crackers and I accomplished that goal, they were so sparkly!!

You'll also notice some Christmas place mats, they were mum's creation! Apparently it's been her dream to make some quilted Christmas place mats so off we went to Fabric Land and bought ourselves everything we needed to make some! They were very quick to make, my mum isn't very good at 'random' stitching and it required some random patterns for the quilting so I sat down and whizzed them round on the sewing machine to make the quilted effect and she did the rest! They're reversible and though these photos don't show the quilting very well you can see the different fabrics used.

Mum was really proud of herself and pleased with them, but threatened anyone who spilled anything on them on Christmas day so we were all on our best behaviour!!

Then for Christmas day I received a few lovely crafty gifts! My aunt made me this cute little needle book, apparently the button is around 60 years old!

She also got me the SINGER Complete photo guide to sewing which will definitely come in handy!

My mum got me a knitting gift, a month or so ago we were in Hobbycraft and on the mannequin was a lovely jumper made of the softest wool and I loved it but I was intimidated by it as I've never made a jumper before! Well for Christmas my mum had bought me the pattern and the wool for me to make it, apparently it's an easy knit so if I can knit a Dalek then I can knit this jumper! It's Sirdar 9493, I've had a look over the pattern and it's not too difficult so I'll update you with my progress.

The final comment is regarding Derek the Dalek, no-one even realised I'd knitted him myself until I pointed it out which was great news and he's now proudly on display in our lounge!!

My excuse for not blogging.... Meet Derek!

Derek is a Dr Who Dalek, just in case you don't recognise it, and he's been my most challenging knitting project to date! I didn't think I'd be able to do it because it involved a lot of techniques I've never done before such as I-cord and making bobbles but I managed it and he doesn't look too shabby!! He's my dad's Christmas present and I've been working hard on him for the past month with the . My dad is one of those people who's impossible to buy presents for so when I saw this pattern on Ravelry I knew it would be perfect! It's been slow progress, mainly because there's only so many bobbles I can do in one go before I want to kill myself, and partly because I kept stopping to play with him half way through knitting, I'm a bit sad to give him away actually, he's so cute! When I'm suitably recovered I might knit myself my own one, maybe a special pink dalek!

I'm so proud of him and of myself for managing to knit more than hats/scarves/gloves! On that note I'll leave you with one more (blurry) picture of me blowing kisses at Derek...

Creating some Christmas sparkle!

I mentioned in my previous post that I had bought a plain lace dress to wear over the Christmas period but that I wanted to sparkle it up a bit, well it's definitely more sparkly now and a lot quicker than I thought! I managed to get an enormous pack of sequins in poundland, for (you guessed it) £1 which brings total cost of the dress to £15 which is pretty bargainous I think!

I've gone for a scattering of sequins all over with a more concentrated area of sequins around the bottom of the dress and a line of sequins around the edge of each sleeve. There are probably a good 150 - 200 sequins on there but that won't be that clear from the photos as you can only really see the sequins that the light was shining on at the time. I haven't done anything with the back yet and am undecided about whether to leave it plain or whether to add sequins to it. I'm also not sure whether I should do the same with the hem at the bottom of the dress as I've done with the sleeve cuffs. What do you think?

Anyway, here are some pictures for you!

Knitting epiphanies - When the wrong way turns out to be the best way

My reading week was spent knitting a load of snoods over the reading week for a craft fair my auntie was doing, I figured they're popular now and people are more likely to buy them (and they did), I just have one left. Here are some of them, note that they are smaller than my snood which is enormous and sit more closely round the neck which is much better!

I love the cabling on them and they were nice and quick to make!! The purple one is still left over though, one lady must have tried it on a million times but didn't buy it :-(

Anyway, I've since moved on to bigger and more challenging things, I've decided to start my most complicated knitting pattern to date, I'm knitting a Dr Who Dalek!! I'm so excited by this project and it's not at all repetitive, it requires a lot of concentration so it's more fun to knit than other things however it involves a lot of techniques I've never used before. I'm using double knit wool and 4mm needles but I think it's still going to be enormous, we'll see...

Knitting this dalek has caused me to have an epiphany, an epiphany related to knitting bobbles! My Dalek pattern has a lot of 'mb' in it, or 'make bobble' and I've never had the need to make bobbles up until this point. So I did what I always do, read up on it, watched you tube videos and followed the instructions on the pattern but my bobbles didn't really look like bobbles and they definitely didn't look like the bobbles on the pattern writer's Dalek. In fact every bobble seemed to look different! So I kept trying and today I came to it and was merrily knitting away at my bobble when I realised that I'd knitted my bobble wrong! I'd knitted where I was supposed to be purling and I changed back to the original coloured wool/yarn a little later than I was meant to. Swearing away at myself I feared the worst and went to look at what I'd done, and what had I done? I appeared to have made a perfect bobble, one which looked like the ones in the pictures! So to check it wasn't a fluke I used my new 'method' for the next bobble and that bobble looked perfect too. So I made a note on the pattern and decided to use my new technique for bobble making instead of the original instructions. Now, I am a person who tends to follow instructions religiously, when I'm cooking, when I'm crafting, when I'm putting together furniture... because I panic that if I don't it's all going to go wrong! So what was my epiphany? Sometimes, just because one way is meant to be the right way it doesn't necessarily mean it's the only way. And sometimes mistakes are a blessing because they open your eyes to a new way of doing things. And finally, just because it's the 'right' way it doesn't always mean that it's the best way. So if you stumble across something which makes your life a lot easier then don't be afraid to go with it because one size doesn't always fit all!

I'm sure I'll be back soon reporting on how my Dalek is doing! I also have another project in the pipeline, I bought a dress today from Asda for Christmas parties and I had wanted a dress with a bit of sparkle but this dress doesn't have any (however it looked good and was too much of a bargain to pass up)! Never fear, I plan to get myself some sequins and sew them onto my dress to make it a bit more sparkly and original! I'll definitely be back with pics.

Snood in the hood

Ok so officially cheesiest blog title ever, but my snood is finished! Put it on the minute I finished and am loving it, used one skein of cheap wool for it so price wise worked out about £2.50 in price, cheaper than Primark! Excuse rubbish lighting, my uni room is incredibly badly lit!

It's a bit massive but it means it can be folded and I can wrap it around a bit for wearing under my coat for extra snuggliness :-)

What's in my head? A rundown...

I haven't blogged for a while and that's because there's nothing going on which lends itself to one post on a particular subject, and also because I've been wrapped up in a university essay! So instead I'm just going to write everything down that's going through my head (craft related of course!) just so you can all see what lies ahead.

Snoods: These are EVERYWHERE at the moment. Karen knitted herself one and Jane sneakily got her mum to knit her one! My friend bought one in Primark the other day for £5 and while she was trying it out I was wondering whether I could make one for cheaper. The decision was ultimately 'of course I can'! So I picked up some chunky wool that would go well with the colour of my coat (which is a plum colour so some colours might clash!) and have just started knitting myself one in a simple 2x2 ribbing.

As an aside, me and my friend can't agree, is snood pronounced with the 'oo' sounding like in food or like in hood? I was arguing for it being more like the oo in hood, so I say 'snud' and she says 'snoooood'. Haha.

Christmas presents: It's looming, I even went to the turning on of the Christmas lights in my city the other day (and there were lots of freebies and free wine on offer which makes a poor student very happy!) so I'm aware I need to get thinking about pressies. Last year I bought my mum a cake stand because she was insistent that she wanted one, however since I bought it for her it's never had any cake on it and spends it's life as more of a posh fruit bowl! So I've decided that I'm going to make her some Christmas cupcakes (in the style of mini Christmas cakes) so that she can actually put her cake stand to good use! I might also make her a dress, but am still a bit undecided about that.
For my dad, I want to make him my own version of a sweetie selection box. So I'm going to find a plastic toolbox or tupperware with lots of little compartments and fill it with his favourite sweets.
My brothers probably won't appreciate anything I make so I'll probably have to shell out for something for them as they're of an age where designer labels are the most important thing ever!
My housemates also want to do a Secret Santa and they've decided that we should try and make our gifts handmade where possible, this was decided on the same day I gave one housemate her knitted hat for her birthday so I think I may have swayed this idea! So it sounds like there'll be a lot of sewing and knitting going on in the next two months!

Other Christmassy stuff: I've decided I want to have a go at making my own Christmas crackers. I saw the snaps in Hobbycraft and thought I could have a lot of fun making my own and personalising them for my family members! However my mum usually has a specific colour scheme for the table at Christmas so I need to find out what that is before I get started! Toilet roll tube collecting starts now! ;-)

Sewing: I go home for reading week on Thursday which means I'll finally be reunited with my sewing machine and will be able to make the skirt I've been wanting to make for the past month! You see I bought this skirt from Topshop (well I bought it for 1/3 of the price off eBay!):

 

However, when it arrived it was a lot shorter than I would have liked so I sold it on eBay for the same price I bought it at and decided I'd make my own longer length version (though probably not identical to this) since it's an easy make! At first I was unsure about the colour and what I'd wear it with but I'm now at the point where I have so many outfits planned around this skirt that I need to have my own version! I haven't found any fabric yet so I'm just hoping I can find the right fabric in the right colour, fingers crossed for me please!
I'm also going on a night out so I might be making myself a dress/outfit for that too, but I'll keep you posted!

Other bits and bobs: I found these amazing Monkey Cop Cosies on Ravelry but I'm struggling with knitting the ears!

The first one I knitted was a bit pointy so I thought maybe I'd make a cat instead but the second one wasn't pointy and so far every ear I've knitted has looked different which is very frustrating so I've put the project to one side for now!

On another note...

I had been thinking about starting another blog. I've always loved blogging and creating websites ever since I was a teenager when I ended up making some quite successful websites without even trying! My mum's a driving instructor and I designed her website and somehow managed to optimise it so that she is the number 1 listing when you type in any search terms related to learning to drive in our area, which is something I'm quite proud of! So I was thinking that since I don't always have lots to say on here then maybe I should start a different blog which I could use more frequently. However having thought about it some more I think I'm just going to put more focus onto this blog and expand my horizons a little bit and make this blog more about general craft rather than just sewing. I'll keep the name but it gives me more opportunity to blog!

You see, I may not be sewing a lot at the moment but craft is always on my mind or I'm always doing something craft related, whether it's researching presents I can make, making craft items/knitting/sewing, looking at items in craft shops, checking out knitting patterns, reading magazines, going to craft fairs... the list goes on! So I figure that if I can put all those thoughts that are going round in my head into my blog then this blog will be much more interesting, more frequently updated and more fun for everyone involved. I hope none of my followers will mind if I broaden my horizons a bit but I feel that I will enjoy my blog much more if I do!

A copycat hat for my housemate

On Thursday evening I jokingly said to my housemate (who was on the sofa wearing her anorak, a scarf, socks and a blanket) that I was going to make her a hat because she was always cold, and she replied, 'Go on then, I'll wear it!' It was her birthday the next day (yesterday) so I decided on a whim to actually do it, so I made a trip to buy wool and finally managed to locate some circular needles in size chunky (ie. 9mm) and I spent my whole afternoon knitting! The ultimate procrastination when I should be working on a case study for university but I'm a slow knitter.It's the same hat as I made for myself last week but this one I knitted using the magic loop method (first time ever knitting in the round and I had to use magic loop because my needles were too long!) which was fine once I got into it though I did have a few slip ups along the way I managed to rectify them and all was fine! I chose this hat because rather than going for a trendy beret I wanted to go for a novel but warm hat that I knew I could knit quickly! Put it on to take a quick pic for you all before wrapping it up:

She's a brunette so the turquoisey-green suits her way better than it suits me and luckily for me she loved it!

Hats and hats and hats and hats

Have I ever told you I love hats? Well, I do. And I'm a hat person, which means that when me and my mum are out shopping she can plonk pretty much any hat on my head and it will suit me. Wedding hats, floppy hats, beanie hats, trapper hats, I just seem to have a head for hats, which I'm quite grateful for because there are some people in this world who will just never suit a hat. I look forward to the day where I'm old enough to successfully pull off a wide brimmed wedding hat without looking like I'm playing dress up. But for the time being my favourite type of hat is the novelty version, take this example as my favourite:

Yep, it's a panda, but I think I can pull off a silly hat!

Since I started knitting I've been desperate to make a hat but I've been putting it off because I wanted to make a chunky hat and haven't been able to find circular needles or double point needles in a big enough size. Yesterday afternoon I was bored, I'd bought a knitting magazine so I was motivated to knit and I wanted to knit something chunky, unlike the wrist warmers which I've been working on for forever, so I decided to screw knitting in the round and just make the hat flat and seam it using a skein of Sirdar Big Softie that I had hanging around. I based it on this pattern from ravelry, it's so easy but instant gratification was what I needed! So I knitted it up really quickly and then seamed it today. At first I went without the pom pom but I decided I needed a bit of sillyness to make it more 'me' so I made myself a pom pom for it. And here we have it, a bright and silly warm hat, perfect for bonfire night!

Two skirts in two days!

Ok so I promised more sewing and then I got a summer job where I was working mad shifts (and really not enjoying the job either unfortunately, not due to the people but the way the company treated their staff was abysmal!) so more sewing didn't happen. I go back to university tomorrow and I've managed to get myself a weekend job at a very well known department store with a strict dress code! I needed more office wear and skirts which are on the knee or below (I barely own any skirts and the ones I do fall above the knee) so had been hunting round the shops but everything either fit really badly, was awful fabric or was really expensive! So I decided to put my sewing skills to use now I've left my job and went to the fabric shop and picked up some fabric which was a black polyester/viscose/elastane mix - which is what stores like Warehouse and Oasis use for their expensive workwear! I bought 1.7m because the pattern I was using said I needed 1.7m for the longer version - I was only expecting to make one skirt but with a bit of creativity I ended up with two! Click to read on to see what I came up with!

I have an award!

Tillyflops has nominated me for the versatile blogger award:

Thank you Tillyflops! I both love it and hate it when I get nominated for an award because I struggle to think of seven blogs to pass the award onto and having looked at my feed most of the blogs I love have already had the award recently! Plus since I've only returned to the blogosphere in the last week I'm very limited with the blogs that I read so I don't actually know of seven to nominate! So I'm nominating three (I hope that's ok) two of which I know have already had the award recently so you two, (Hayley and Ashley) feel free to side step doing this all again and just be happy to receive it :)

I've chosen these three bloggers because I feel that they all really are versatile. They not only blog about sewing but also about other crafty ventures and they make a wide variety of things which I think makes them very versatile!
1. Rachel from Love to Stitch
2. Hayley from Hayley goes handmade
3. Ashley from Jellybean's odds and ends
Congratulations all!

Now the other thing is to share seven things about myself. I've shared seven in the past for another award so I'll try and think of some new ones!
1. I've just started to become a tea drinker. I've never really got into drinking tea in the past so I'm having to make an active effort to make myself cups but I know when I go on placement I'm going to be expected to make tea and drink tea as a social thing and I got a bit fed up of everyone being visibly horrified that I don't drink tea so I've started... and I quite like it actually!
2. I help out at the local girl guide group. I was involved in Guiding from the age of 5-16 and then crossed over to Scouting for a little while then had a massive break when I worked full-time. Now I'm back helping at the Guide group near my university!
3. My Myers Briggs personality profile is ISFJ (Introverted, sensing, feeling, judging) and if you read the details of this profile it's me to a tee! I like socialising but need more time to myself than the average person (and quite enjoy doing things on my own), I'm good at working other people out, I live to help people and want a job where I can make a difference but I tend to be rubbish at saying no and have a tendency to get walked over!
4. I was born on the 13th (not a Friday though) but I'm not unlucky :) And when I got to university it turned out my housemate has the same birthday as me, she's the only person I've ever met with my birthday!
5. I'm short sighted and have had to wear glasses since I turned 20. Everyone says they suit me but since I discovered contact lenses I'm a complete addict and wear them more often than I should!
6. I've only been vaguely drunk once in the past year, which is an awful record for a university student but I just don't enjoy drinking and would rather eat chocolate or cake!
7. I absolutely hated my name when I was younger and wished I had a different one, but now I'm quite happy with it!

Do you wear good shoes?

It's Friday night and here I am pondering about shoes. I know this isn't really sewing related other than you need to be wearing shoes in order to show off your lovely handmade items to the outside world, but I'm going to blog about it anyway!

The reason shoes are on my mind is because I went out to buy some shoes for my new job yesterday. I had originally planned to wear a pair of black trainers that I already had but was informed that I wasn't allowed to wear trainers and having worked in a hospital wearing ballet pumps and ending up with all sorts of things on my feet or soaked into my shoes I decided I'd need to buy a new pair. This new pair would need to be of the sensible, boring variety, they would need to cover the top of my foot (to protect my foot from said undesirable fluids), they would need to be comfortable (I'm going to be on my feet a lot), they would need to be black (have I ever mentioned that I hate black shoes? Not sure why, I just do, I much prefer colourful) and they would have to fit into my student budget. I did a bit of googling first to see what types of shoes came recommended by nurses and found out about the Clarks unstructured range which came very highly recommended and about Hotter shoes. I decided that because the summer sales are on now is a good time to go and buy new shoes from these places which are outside of my normal budget, so off I went!

My sewing mojo is back... big time!

Since I've rediscovered my blog I've also rediscovered other sewing blogs and have been catching up on all the lovely things that have been made, particularly lovely dresses, as well all know they're my favourite! Now I have major sewing envy and am desperate to get started on my next dress but there's one problem... all my sewing stuff is 150 miles away! I took it all home last weekend as I've been slowly emptying out my room so there isn't much left to take home next week and since my sewing machine is a bit of a hefter (I'm pondering buying a lighter one) it's gone home. So for the time being I'll just have to daydream about what I'm going to do! It's only the beginning of July and I feel like making summery dresses but really summer will pass very quickly so maybe I need to make dresses which will fit all seasons!

Being a student has really helped me curb my spending on clothes. In fact I've bought barely any clothes other the past six months, I did buy a dress from River Island but it was £19.99 and I'd earned £15 of vouchers from a survey website which I had planned to use on treating myself so I but them towards the dress and so it only cost me £4.99! I also bought another dress in H&M but that was also under £15. That's about it! And because I'm not constantly adding new clothes to my wardrobe I find that I'm rediscovering old clothes that I'd stopped wearing and am appreciating my new clothes more and wearing them more frequently than I would have done before. When I used to spend loads of money on clothes I would buy new things and then stop wearing the old stuff and inevitably it would all end up on Ebay. I've also really found that I just don't like anything in the shops enough to part with my money, it seems rare that I find anything I like anymore and even Primark haven't been able to tempt me with anything this year. My mum always says that their clothes look like they're made out of the wrong fabric for the garment and recently I can sort of see what she means, some of their fabric choices are very odd - the fabric isn't the right weight for the garment or the prints are just awful. There's the odd gem but I'm coming across them less and less these days.  Further to this, there are so many rumours going around about high street shops going bust and the sheer amount of clothing that seems to be in the sales at the moment suggests that not as much is being sold as usual so it might be quite handy to be able to turn to DIY dressmaking if all my favourite shops disappear!

So all in all I'm quite looking forward to making myself some things that I actually like!

Hello all!

Well it's been a while hasn't it? I've been such a busy bee, I've had a lot of university work to do, been desperately hunting for a job, broke and for the past four weeks I've been on placement in a primary school which has been very tiring, but the children are so cute! So as I forecasted that has left little time or money for sewing! However, I have found a job (as a Home Care Assistant - I think I'm brave but hopefully it'll be good experience for me) which I start in a couple of weeks and I finish university for the summer next week! My shifts at work will either be early (6/7am - 2pm) or late (4pm - 10pm) so hopefully I'll be able to fit some sewing in since I still have some fabric to use and soon I should have money to buy more!

Just recently I've been doing a bit of knitting to keep me busy when I have time over the weekends as it's more portable than sewing and requires less equipment! I've started on some fingerless gloves/hand warmers and I've made one of them, just one more to go! The wool only cost me £1.99 and is a bit 'colourful' but I wanted something interesting ;-) If I had known I could make gloves this easily and cheaply I wouldn't have spent so much money on them in accessorize! I'm only a beginner at knitting so it's a really easy pattern but I love the stitch. Here's a picture of the glove that I've made:

It was made using this pattern on Ravelry (which is an amazing website in itself)!

p.s - I wore my heart print dress for the first time in a while the other day now it's warm enough to have it fully on display and not hidden under a cardigan and a lady came up to me and told me that she'd been admiring it and how much she loved it! I love a compliment, especially when I made the item in question myself :)

An explanation

I'm sorry to say that the whole thing has gone out of the window, including me-made march! March has turned out to be completely hectic and so it's all gone to pot, hence the lack of updates. I've been ill, I've had so much university work to do which is taking up every second of my time and it became apparent that I'd entered me-made march with the hope that I could get some more garments made so I didn't get bored of my wardrobe, which hasn't happened due to my hectic schedule and so the wearing of me-made items every day has ceased to happen! I'm sorry to anyone that I've disappointed and I'm a bit disappointed in myself but sometimes life gets in the way. Obviously I'm still wearing my me-made items, just not every day because I just don't have enough items to give me the versatile wardrobe I need for the temperamental english weather and my mad life!

So, at the moment I'm going to be taking a break from sewing and blogging, for various reasons:
1) My mad workload. I just don't have the time to sit down and sew at the moment.
2) Money issues. Money is really tight at the moment and I can't afford to buy the fabric that I need for garments that I'd actually wear, and it seems a bit pointless making dresses out of awful fabric because that's all I can afford!
3) Body issues. I'm trying to lose weight, and I don't want to spend time and money making clothing that is (hopefully) not going to fit in a couple of months.

So I'm putting things on hold for the moment and once some of the above issues are sorted out, I'm sure I'll be back to sewing! I hope you all understand!