Held hostage by my teen

The last day of the school holidays and I expected Thea to spend the day glued to the TV or the Playstation.

(sniggers evily) - that is of course after I made her help me this morning. We had a pantry clean up and brought in all the jars of jam and chutney from the barn and stacked them in the new spaces we created inside, cleaned all the shelves down and reordered everything, then scrubbed the floor clean around the gas cooker.

After all that when she sloped off to her room I did not expect to see her again until this evening when she normally starts demanding pizza or chips or some such teen food.

So you could have knocked me over with a feather when she turned up at the door of the studio and asked whether I would stop sewing and spend some time with her watching a film or something.

In the end she set up the laptop in the studio - well I did have the fire lit and she discovered my biscuit stash - and we had a lovely afternoon watching box set DVDs, giggling, eating junk food and I still managed to get quite a bit of my cross stitch done - did you guess what it is yet? - you can just make it out in the photo.

You also just see the bag I had started to make when she trotted up, but the machine was too noisy to run over the DVD so I have that to look forward to tomorrow!

I love grey wet Mondays...

... but only when they are a Bank Holiday - like today in France.

Hi Ho Hi Ho - its off to my studio I go!

I have had a lovely day shut away from the grey cold miserable Monday in the studio with my little fire lit, my little kettle bubbling away and a sneaky stash of biscuits.

Cut up one of the 50p bargains that I bought in the UK at the car boot sales to make a bag for sale on Etsy and I have great plans for the off cuts too.

I hope it is just as horrid tomorrow because then I won't feel as guilty spending the day holed up in the studio again.

Even better, Ferguson has finally got over his fears and spent the day lounging around on the comfy chair in the studio with me.

Friday the 13th - chill out day in the studio.

Not being a suspicious kind of person Friday the 13th does not really affect how I organise my day, but this stinking head cold that is persisting had a great influence on me instead. I decided as the weather has been a little chilly and I was not feeling so good still to spend the day catching up on things in the studio instead.

I started by lighting my little fire. This lovely little enamelled fire is not really big enough to warm the room effectively in winter when temperatures drop to -16°C (daytime temperatures), but it is quite adequate to take the chill off a room in spring and autumn. Now I know that in August we are strictly speaking in the height of summer, but my temperature gauge was only registering 15°C in the studio and I have a desperate need to keep my Lemsip levels high so I lit the fire anyway, just for an hour to warm the place up so I could be comfy for the day and to boil the kettle.

It also occured to me that the photos on my blog are a bit of a lie. They only show the studio as it was when first finished. So I took a couple that tell the real story.  (and even that is a bit of a lie because I tidied up recently and now you can see the floor and some of the worktables which were buried just a couple of days ago!)

So from left to right is my ideas board which is actually an old picture frame that I have strung some wire across and use little mini pegs to attach things to, my Christmas pressie the stereo and mp3 player, the comfy armchair and book for when things get too much, the cutting table I stole from Brendan back in June with the big mirror underneath that I have not worked out how to hang up yet, then there is the lovely 'POSH' rug that my mum sent for the dog for his Christmas bed a couple of years ago, and shelving holding just some of the material I have to play with.

Then continuing around the room, just visible on the left is the table with the iron on, a chair I tried to shabby chic paint effect but looks really naff, a pine bed shelf that I found in the sales and made Bren fix to the wall, a tapestry frame covered in work in progress items, a chinese folding screen with pockets full of sewing magazines and patterns, then my Ikea tables that I work on, luckily the other 3 boxes of old clothes are hidden from sight.

The floor is concrete but a lovely friend gave me the rug so at least my little tootsies stay warm, and you can just see Molly posing in the nude on the right.  360° tour of the studio.

The brick built end is actually a bread oven, which is what my studio used to be.

The oven was shared historically by 5 houses, who would stoke the fire up and bake their bread every other day or so.  The fire would be lit in the oven (behind the black door) and allowed to burn fiercely until all the brickwork was hot, the dough would be left to proof underneath in the hollow space.  Once the oven was at baking temperature, the dough would be moved out of the way and the fire would be shovelled into the hollow and left to go out basically (it is just a niche with no flue there), and the bread would be put into the oven.  It is quite a big oven, 1 metre x just over a metre, so lots of loaves would bake at the same time.  It had not been used for a long time, and in fact we used to store our wood and coal in there until Brendan installed his death saw in the barn and we moved our wood next to that.  When the bread oven  was empty I could finally see how large it was and how it made a perfect den, originally intended for Thea, but I took first dibs at moving in.

Despite making a mess of the pattern cutting yesterday I thought I would continue with my table cloth tunic top as if nothing else it would be good practise, so I whizzed up the hems with the machine and made a couple of straps in the same contrast fabric as I used for the interfacing on the front and finished the top.

  Unfortunately the cutting error means it is unlikely to fit me, will have to see if I can convice Thea to wear it....

On the plus side the tablecoth is large enough to have another couple of attempts at this pattern.

Wardrobe refashion frenzy - converting skirts to tops Part 2

Stained Skirt to Vest Top 

I managed to get a big red stain on this skirt - no idea how, it may have been red wine or it could just as easily have been cherry juices from my jam making or even beetroot juice, anyway the end result was one ruined skirt - and a hand made skirt in some lovely old retro fabric at that.  Well there was no way I was going to take that lying down, so out came the scissors and another refashion was born.

First I removed the waistband and put it to one side.  As this skirt is made from scraps and I don't have any more of the material around, every square inch is required.

For the armholes I copied the curve from another pattern onto some publicity paper.

I then pinned the skirt together from the removed waistband along the side seams to the approximate depth of the armholes, drew the curve onto the material and cut through the double thickness of the material.

Once the armholes had been cut out, I unpinned the material, opened it out and pinned a small hem to finish, this was then whizzed into place with straight stitches on the sewing machine.

As the neck line front and back was now a raw edge, and with no material to spare I used a couple of rectangles of contrasting cotton to create a neck piece into which I could tuck the raw edges and give a nice finish to make the top look like a top rather than a skirt with two holes cut in it.

To start, I pinned the contrast material to the necklines, right sides to right sides.  The skirt material has some horizontal pattern lines so I just used one of those as the base line to follow.

Once pinned in place I basted the raw edges together.

Then with the use of the hot iron, I folded in the raw edges at the sides then tucked under to create a hem across the front and back to create a block of contrast material that I could then topstitch in place, but not until I had the straps in place.

To create the straps, I unpicked the old waistband, then refolded the raw edges in, fixed in place with the hot iron, and ran a line of topstitching down the length.

I then pushed the end of the straps into the sides of the contrast material at the back, then put on the top to find the right length for the straps.

I marked the correct length with a pin, and evened them up once I had removed the top, so that both straps were an identical length.

Here's the clever bit - remember that pin, don't remove it, just reposition it so that both straps are at the correct equal length, snip the remainder of the strap away leaving a tail just a couple of centimetre long, then feed the tail into the contrast border until you hit the pin, then secure the tail inside the border with a pin until time to stitch.  Neat and easy, much easier than trying to measure the straps once they are looped from front to back.

With the straps in place, I topstitched all the way around the contrast material in straight stitch, reversing over the places where the straps feed into the front and back corners.

Now with the main body of the top finished I just had to do something about the stain on the front.  Using the bits of armhole I had cut out, I fashioned a pocket, with a top band from the same contrast material.  I stitched the band, right sides together at the top of the pocket, then folded a hem in much the same way as for the necklines.

I just zig-zag stitched around the raw edge of the pocket, then pinned it in position, and folded the raw edge in, then top stitched the pocket into place.

Not a very good photo I know, but it is the finished article, ready to wear.

One Hour Sarong Refashion

A couple of years ago I bought a lovely purple top, and then managed to ruin it with some bleach; but the crochet neckline was far too nice to waste so it has been knocking around for a while waiting for a refashion plan.

Well in amongst the latest offerings via my mum's local car boot was this lovely light chiffony sarong in a paler shade of purple, match made in heaven.

So, I folded the sarong in two length wise, and pinned the neckline to the centre of the fold.

Then I cut out the centre of the neck, and ran a zig zag basting stitch all the way around the neckline with it opened up.


To secure the neckline fully, I went back and machine sewed all the way around, on a medium zig zag size, and the smallest straight stitch setting to create a solid block of stitching along the neckline.

This serves to secure the light chiffony material without it fraying to the crocheted cotton of the neckline without it pulling and is a good way of attaching unevenly edged materials together.

The remainder of the neckline was then pinned into place and I ran a line of straight stitches all the way around it to stop it from moving it around.

One floaty summery cover up top in less than one hour.

Tuesday - smocking / shirring tutorial - summer dress from a sarong.

Some time ago I bought a bargain piece of material on ebay.

Digression :- Got to love ebay and those buyers who don't try to rip you off for postage abroad. Just because I live in France I have not had all my brain cells removed and I KNOW one paperback book does not cost £15.00 to post!

Anyway back on track - this is the material.  It is hard to tell from the photo, but it is various shades of blue in a tie-dye style with sequin stars and dots.

It was a rectangular piece, 115 cm x 149 cm, in a nice light viscose but thick enough not to need lining for decency.

The first thing I did was hem all the edges to prevent fraying. Then I joined the 115cm sides to each other sewing about three quarters of the way down from the edge that will be at the bust line, leaving the last quarter open for a split on the legs.

Left with a tube, too big to wear as is even with a couple of shoulder straps, I decided to have a go at creating a smock (shirred) top to this dress.

I am sewing all of the smock section on my trusty sewing machine - the first time I have ever tried this.

Thread your machine as normal with a strong poly cotton thread, but not too thick.  Then take your bobbin and some thin elastic (I stole mine out of my jewelry making kit, it is normally used for beading bracelets).

Hand wind the elastic around the bobbin taking care not to pull and create any tension in the elastic.  I had to wind the bobbin about 4 times in total to finish the smocking, each bobbin did about 3 rows of stitching.

I opened  back the seam and used some pins to mark the spacing between each row of stitching.

To sew the smocking you will be sewing on the right side of the fabric, so that your thread shows and not the elastic.

Remember to reverse back over the start and end of each row in order to secure the elastic otherwise it will just pull straight out as soon as you tension it.

Then start sewing.  The first row is the easiest, as the material stays flat as your run around the full diameter of your 'tube'.

As you move down to the next row, you will need to pull the material out flat as you go around, don't let the material bunch up with the elastic.

 Sew several full rows around the top of the tube extending approximately 15 cms from the top hem line.  This creates a shorter smock effect top with an empire line dress falling below.  If you are graced with a more forgiving figure then you can continue smocking for another 15 cms to create a skirt that falls from the waist.

Now I think it is time to try it on, mix myself a cocktail and relax by the pool.

Take that Gok Wan!