Craft is in the air....

Well hello July! As I write this I have had to move my laptop from my lap to the arm of my sofa as it was making me boiling. I hate to complain but it is times like these where I wish I didn't work 9-5 so I could enjoy this hot weather rather than sweltering in a 30 degree lab all day (its always good when the air con is pumping out hot air!). 

Anyway, these last few weeks have been pretty productive for me.

1. I finally blocked my Northmoor Lock shawl

I cannot wait for it to cool down so that I can actually wear it. 

2. As some of you may know I've been doing a little bit of hand embroidery and made this for my Dad for Father's Day. Try as I might I just could not get that front wheel completely round but in the end thought 'sod it' and left it as it was. Sorry Dad!

3. I've been working on a ripple blanket!

Here is my first week ofrogress. I did succumb to mild crochet wrist last week so progress is going a bit slower now but I'll get back on it next week I'm sure. I've never done a ripply before and quickly found out why its so popular- its addictive!

4. Last but definitely not least, CRAFTELICIOUS IS BACK OPEN!! This is an amazing craft haven for anyone into pretty much anything. Decoupatch, pottery painting, mixed media arts, crochet. You name it you can do it here! 

You can read about my visit doing some decoupatch here, but I dropped by almost weekly to do some crochet, drink copious amounts of tea and chat to Safina, the owner of this fabulous business and fellow crochet addict. 

Check out their opening times over on their Facebook page. 

That's it for now (I think..........)

SSxx

Spring embroidery

I'd better get this post in quick before we are in the throes of summer (not being overly optimistic, it is the UK). 

I went on a hand embroidery course in April with the hugely talented Pixiecraft. You can see the hoop I embroidered in this post here. I felt as if sewing could easily take over from the crochet in my life so I have limited myself to sewing one hoop per season. Here is my Spring hoop, and the second piece of hand embroidery I have ever really done!

The backsticth lettering took me AGES, but I patiently kept at it and even undid the odd stitch if I wasn't happy with it. I love the little bee and I loved sewing the running stitch train (is that what you would call it?!)

The flower petals and the leaves are satin stitch. I could really see improvement from petal to petal, but it often got to the point where I was tiring out and my stitches got a bit worse again! 

I can't wait to get going with my summer hoop, I'm thinking buckets, spades, sand, shells, although I'm not sure I'm good enough for that yet! Hopefully I'll have something to show you before 'summer' is out!

SSxx

Life right now

As some of you may have gleaned from Facebook I'm in the the midst of a revision nightmare. I have 5 exams over Monday and Tuesday and am definitely not loving it. Roll on Tuesday afternoon when I can relax and have a drink. 

This is my dining room table right now.....coffee, tea, papers, nail varnish (for when I'm really procrastinating), phone (for the odd Google search, and yes, more procrastination) and most excitedly, the newly vegetarian Party Rings! These are my favourite biscuits by far and they have just made them vegetarian :-)

On another (much better) note I went to a hand embroidery workshop this afternoon to have a bit of a break from the science and did this! I'm thrilled with it! The workshop was run by the hugely talented Katy of Pixiecraft. Check out her work and be amazed.

Early night and back to work tomorrow. See you on the other side. 

SSx

#CraftBlogClub- February Challenge!

I only came across #CraftBlogClub when I joined the Twitter-sphere late January (I'm a bit slow on the uptake technology wise!). Started by Emma at Frugally Peachy it is a sociable network for all craft bloggers including a weekly twitter networking chat (using the hashtag CraftBlogClub of course!). Each month Emma sets a challenge, with this month's challenge being "I Re-Love You". This challenge is laid out here on Emma's blog but to sum it up you find something you once loved but has gone out of favour for whatever reason and change it in some way to make it used again. When I first saw it I couldn't wait to give it a go....what to do however??? 

I don't have masses of DIY experience, nor do I have masses of materials or equipment. What I did have however was a dress that just doesn't 'fit right'. I was on the look-out for a denim dress for ages when I came across this one in a high-street store. What more I had a voucher for said store so purchasing it was a no-brainer. I tried it on in the shop.....seemed ok.....wore it a couple of times and realized it had major problems! Well, two major problems. 

Can you see what I mean?

PROBLEM 1:

The back is a lot longer than the front so when I wear it the front is a few inches above my knees, with the back being almost knee-height. This meant that it hung really badly and the extra couple of inches on the back really dragged it down.

It has an open back secured by two small buttons. 

PROBLEM 2: 

The button loops are bigger than the buttons. Cue every time you move they undo. Pretty embarrassing if you are out!

SOLUTION(S):

My up-cycle isn't as drastic as some of the others as I really like the dress the way it is (minus the two major problems of course). I like how it is plain and simple, how it can be dressed down or jazzed up with a colourful brooch.

First step was sorting out those pesky button holes. As I can get the dress on and off over my head without undoing the buttons anyway I just sewed the button loop closed around the button. Now there is no way they can come undone again! Sorted. Now for the trickier part....

I think that the real problem with this dress is that it was made poorly in the first place. I'm no dressmaking expert but I can see that the fabric has been a bit distorted by the central seam, and that the fabric is not lying flat at the hem. I recently saw a Great British Sewing Bee video online teaching you so take up jeans whilst retaining the original hem so decided to use this method on the back of the dress. Having pinned up the back to the required height (bit tricky as the fabric wasn't straight either!) I machine-sewed very close to the original hem. I then folded the hem back down, pressed and cut off the excess fabric using pinking shears to prevent fraying. 

Here is what the seam looks like from the wrong-side...

You can just make out my row of stitching here

A picture of the right side. You can only just see the new line of stitching just above the original orange stitching.

........and here it is!

I'm pretty pleased with this. It is a massive improvement from before. The hem is still not entirely straight as I can see a bit of the back hem poking out on the right hand side. However this is not noticible when I tried it on. 

RESULT:

This dress now hangs nicely and I no longer risk exposing myself when the buttons decide to pop un-done! I will definitely be wearing this dress more regularly. I wish I had done this sooner as these small changes have really made a difference. 

I can now officially announce that I Re-Love this dress!

I will be sharing this post here on frugallypeachy.co.uk so please check out everyone else's projects. Also check out Emma's blog as it is fab and one of my new favourites! Apologies for a lack of pictures of me in the dress I had no-one to take them today, and also apologies for being so late on this challenge- you know how it is!

Take care,

SS xx

Work In Progress Wednesday........and I've completed something!

Afternoon! Can you remember when I started this? It's a cross stitch for my sister, Rose. I had to keep quiet about it as it was for her Birthday and I've got myself in hot water before for posting presents which the recipient then saw (luckily she was good about it!). It went in the post yesterday though so I think I'm safe.

A couple of you guessed it was a heart....pretty close.....but no, it's a rose!

I actually missed her birthday as it took me so long to make. Far far longer than I ever anticipated....I even had to take it on holiday. I'm really pleased with it though- I think it was worth the time and effort.

I wanted to display it somehow so decided to use the embroidery hoop. I'd seen some fab crochet-decorated embroidery hoops in Simply Crochet Issue 14 and thought I'd give it a go.

I chose a couple of DK yarns....a pink and a sparkly white

....white on the inside with a pink trim.......only thing is I didn't like it. Not one bit. It was too big, too frilly and just wrong. Wrong for the cross stitch and not my sister at all. It would be totally fine for another project, just not this one.

The white was too much, as was the size. In the end I went with a simple picot edging using the pink.

.....and I really loved it. It also looked great hung up :-)

What do you think? I'm really pleased with it, and I really hope my sister likes it too!

SSxx

Joining in with Ginny for the first time in an age........

WIP Wednesday

Afternoon!

I hope you are all well. Thanks so much for your fantastic responses to my owl decoration earlier in the week. I heard from my cousin and she loved it so am very pleased. I have kept the pattern (thought parts of it may be floating around the living room) so may even make some more!

I have been trying something that I haven't done since I was about 8.....counted cross-stitch! When I was going through my sewing box a few weeks ago I actually came across some of the cross-stitch I did around that time, which was very bizarre (my sewing box is currently buried under mounds of fabric and wool, otherwise I would have taken a pic).

I found the pattern online via 'Sew' magazine as part of their valentines collection. I won't go into too much detail as to what it is as it will be another present. Here it is so far....

So far I have just completed one half of the chequerboard edging. Can you spot the mistake though? Here's a close-up:

I'm 4 rows short on the right hand side and I can't for the life of me work out where I went wrong. So, I have decided to start filling in the other green of the edging, being extra careful with counting til I can see where I missed a couple of rows out. Please please please let it be near the top!

Unfortunately you may not get to see this finished for a few more weeks as I will only post the finished item after I have given the gift (I've got myself in trouble with that before!)

Sharing along with Ginny today to see everyone else's WIPs

SSxx

P.S I don't have a printer so am doing this from my computer screen- quite glad I haven't made more mistakes than these!

Twit-Twooo!

Introducing my latest sewing project........Owly! I made this for my cousin's Birthday using fabric left over from the cupcake cushion. What do you think?

Owl Decoration by SallyStrawberry

And some close-ups:

I loved making this although making and cutting out the patterns was very fiddly as its quite small and I kept on loosing bits!

Hope you are having a great day :-)

SS xx

Sew and so

Hiya!

Sooooo, as I may have already mentioned....a couple of times......I GOT A SEWING MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS- thanks so much Pete and Nanny!!! As you may guess, I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS!!!!

I always loved machine sewing and have got a GCSE in textiles, but since I moved out of my parents house I haven't had access to a sewing machine. No, don't get me wrong, when I did have access to a machine it wasn't like I was using it all the time (quite the opposite really!), but since I have become craft obsessed a sewing machine seemed like the next step forwards. Additionally, as I have wrist problems from crochet I thought it would be a great way to satisfy my need to create whilst giving my wrists a break!

I have booked myself on a dress-making course in March (going to learn how to make a vintage-style shift dress and I can't wait!) but in the meanwhile I have just been messing about a bit and trying out new things which I hope to share with you.

My first sewing project was an idea I came across whilst thinking what to do for my youngest sister's 19th Birthday at the end of the month. When she passed her A-Levels I made her some cupcake bunting, so I thought something along those lines. I didn't want to start off with anything too small and fiddly and after some deliberation decided to try out a cushion. 

After a quick Google and Pinterest search I couldn't find anything similar to the design I had in mind so I had to go it alone and draw up a pattern.

Bring on the grease-proof paper!

The fabric choice was easy once I had got over the awe of the huge variety of fabrics available in Abakans

I like patterns and am not afraid to mix and match so it will be the brown spotty cotton for the cake part, the starry fabric (oh, I do love this) for the icing part and pale pink for the backing. I also purchased some medium-weight wadding as I had visions for making the front of the cushion quilted. 

I used fusible webbing to stick the topping onto the bottom of the cake which worked a lot better than expected. Then, with the wadding on the reverse I used a shell-like stitch to go around the bottom edge of the 'icing' using pale pink cotton. I then zigzag stitched some lines on the base to give more texture before sewing around the entire cupcake shape.

I then sewed the backing on, right sides together, turned back out the right way and stuffed!

Voila! The cherry is a quilted flat circle in red cotton with some free-hand machine embroidery. 

 So, here it is!

Cute Cupcake Cushion by SallyStrawberry

I hope she loves it as much as I loved making it! Whilst I am thrilled that it came out so well for my first attempt at sewing in years I am going to play with the shape a bit and try and give it more of a 'muffin top'. Wish me luck!

Heading over to Handmade Harbour today for the first time in 2014!

Much love,

SS xx