It has been a long time...

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry for neglecting you. I have many many many excuses, mainly centering around the fact that our key board has been without the letter "C" or "X" for an awfully long time now and typing is a bit of a pain, so I was putting it off. I have now given up waiting for it being fixed and decided to jump back in without a proper key board and with lots of messing about to get those 2 pesky letters to appear on screen! Writing about crafting without a working "C" is its own special kind of fun ;)

During my time away I have also had a little bit of crafting trouble, because I tried something a little too ambitious for my sewing machine this summer and hurt it. Thankfully it is now back in action thanks to the lovely people at Sewing Machines Direct. Suffice to say that I wont try making my own caravan curtains ever again!

So what have I made since my last post? Well, lots of things!

There were the teacher gifts for my 2 biggest girl's teachers and teaching assistants.  Turns out that for only 2 children it was actually a lot of gifts!  They all had a hand made tote bag.

These were the last things I sewed before hurting my poor machine. But of course that doesn't mean that I didn't make anything. I just reverted back to my first craft: crochet! In many ways I crochet is my favourite craft. What other craft can be done one handed with a sleeping toddler on your lap?! Or while sat in the car on a long drive?

The first thing I made took me almost all summer: a cardigan for my middle daughter. I used a free pattern by Drops Design.  It was easy to follow if you read it correctly of course. I didn't, which meant I ended up having to do each sleeve twice before I had 2 equal sleeves! My daughter loves it, because it's red and her favourite colour.

Next I made a "Road Trip Scarf"  designed by Zooty Owl as a quick inbetweeny project to recharge my batteries after the slightly more complicated than expected cardi. It crocheted up quickly and easily and is gorgeous.  I think I may add some beads to the flowers one day too.

And finally today I finished my ripple blanket. I posted earlier about starting it and here is the finished product in all its glory. It's made of the left over yarn from another blanket I made last year and I had over ordered by such a ridiculous amount that I still have 4 balls of yarn left over!

Already betting lots of love from the little ones :)

So that's it, my dear blog and my dear readers: everything I have made up until now.  I already have a few more projects lined up, but what to chose?  Do I make a new dress with that absolutely gorgeous autumnal fabric for the youngest or do I make her a little hat first or shall I make that "Elsa" cape for my Frozen mad middle girl?  And I have a CAL lined up too that starts in November.  So many things, so little time! I will let you know what project won.

Until then, happy crafting!

Love

B x

Another school dress.

Another school dress.

 This post has been a long one coming.  Lots and lots and lots of procrastinating going on on the crafty front!

After making one school dress, I needed to make another one.  This time I was going to follow a pattern, because inventing my own pattern was just a little too much for a novice sewer like myself.  I chose a pattern for an A-line dress from the Girls Style Book by Yoshiko Tsukiori and H.H.  I have been used to downloadable patterns and the instructions in this book were daunting.  At first they seemed sparse, but once I got used to it, they were easy enough to follow.  The one thing that was very annoying with this book was that I had to keep referring to instructions for certain steps in patterns on other pages.  

Another issue I had was the gingham fabric.  It is fairly thin, frays easily, has a stretch to it that the other cotton I have been working with doesn't have and discolours when pressed.  It really put me off working with it ever again and next year my daughter will be in shop bought dresses I think.

Because of all of this was a bit more daunting than the nice picture instructions I was used to, I kept putting off starting this, until it became really really urgent, because summer term is here!

I got there in the end though and this is the result.  I am pretty happy with this and know it will fit my daughter beautifully.  The fact it has no buttons makes it much easier for her to put on and take off as well.

So here it is... 

Elasticated neck with a ribbon tie.  Puffy sleeves.

Pockets.  

Oh and a little update about the other dress.  Apparently the pockets are in a bad place and my daughter is refusing to wear it.  After all that hard work!  Another reason to go shop bought next year I think.

That's all for me now.  Next should be a skirt for myself.  I'm a bit more excited about that project and it comes with a huuuuge instruction manual, so I am sure that will be finished in no time.

Love

B x

Crochet, crochet, crochet,...

Hello everyone,

You may have been wondering where on earth my blog posts have gone to.  It has indeed gone a little quiet here in Belgina's world.  A visit to my parents back in Belgium and the Easter holidays meant that I have had a break in sewing and somehow I haven't managed to pick it back up.  That doesn't mean I haven't been crafting though!  Crochet has been the word this month!

I am working on 2 things.  First I am still rippling.  That will take me quite a while yet, I think.

Second I am also working on an "Owl Obsession" blanket.  I am making it single size though, instead of the baby size of the pattern and have worked out I'll need 35 owls.  I have 13 so far...

I also have a few more sewing  bits planned.  I have cut out the fabric for another summer dress for the little one, but I haven't got round to digging the sewing machine out again.  I also want to make a summer dress for myself.  I have the pattern and fabric, I just need to pluck up the courage and go for it!

I had hoped that blogging would spur me on to crack on with things a bit more, but it doesn't seem to be working very well at the moment ;)

Anyway, almost bedtime.

See you soon with more.

Love

B

The Owly Skirt - part 2

As you may remember, quite a while ago I wrote a blog post called: Owly Skirt- part 1 and you may have been wondering if a part two were ever to happen.  Well, today is the day!

I had made an owly skirt for the tiny one.  I was not 100% happy with it, hence the part 1.  I had planned to tidy up the waist band a little and add some trim.  I have done part of that.  The waistband is only untidy on the inside, so I figured it would be too much effort to redo.  But I did really want to add trim to the skirt to make the different layers stand out a little better.  So I bought some bright pink bias binding and sewed it to the bottom.  Looking back, I think plain pink ribbon would have been better; the bias-binding is a touch heavy.  But anyway, here it is.  Finally completely finished!

An owly skirt.  Tadaaaah!

And look.  Proper decent pictures taken outdoors for once!

Love

B

The Saga of the Experimental School Dress - Part 2

Well, I've done it!  The dress is finished!  Perfect, it is not, but I am pleased with it and it fits little miss.

In my last post I finished with a dress that had sleeves and pretty trim around the button stand down the front.  I still had to:

Add trim to the neckline...

DONE!

Add trim to sleeves...

DONE!

Add buttonholes, buttons and pockets...

DONE!

And I wanted to liven it up a bit and made a pretty fabric flower.

Tadaaaaah! A finished A-line button down school dress with pockets, sleeves and everything!

Next time: Emma's Pokemon skirt.

Love 

B

The Saga of the Experimental School Dress - part 1

My second daughter is on the large side and has a little bit of an awkward shape, with a sticky out tummy and a curved back.  This means that finding clothes that fit her properly is a bit of a struggle.  Summer school dresses, you know, the gingham ones, are especially hard.  They are often drop waist or cut on the waist, while my daughter needs A-line or empire line.  So I decided to make her one.
Of course I found it pretty much impossible to find a suitable pattern, because all the A-line dresses are for small children, and my daughter is young, but big and tall and needs older girl dresses. Soooooo, I decided to copy a dress that she has that does fit and make it in the green gingham of her school uniform.

Right...

Easy peasy, right?

Well, I started off OK by collecting a selection of "Dresses That Fit".

The Dresses That Fit.

I traced, cut the traced bit in half and put it on the fold to get a symmetrical dress.  I actually cut two exactly the same pieces and then pinned them and put them on my daughter to find out how much lower the neck line has to be at the front.

Like so.

Then I realised that this is not stretchy material and she wont get the dress over her head.  I contemplated a zip, but have no zipper foot.  I considered a few buttons at the top, but that requires a bodice and skirt and I wanted A-line.  So I then had a sudden flash of inspiration and cut the front piece in half and decided to make it button down; all the way down.  I fashioned button stands (or whatever you call the bit where I will put the buttons) from 2 strips of fabric that I put some fusable interfacing on. And attached them bias binding style.  The result was shoddy.  So shoddy in fact that I couldn't bear to take a picture.  I needed to hide the mismatched squares.  Then I had another flash of inspiration: trim!  Lacy trim!  That will hide any wonky seams and mismatching squares.  So I went to buy several meters of the stuff and the end result is this.  I managed to have a fat and thin side, but once the buttons are done up, no one will notice.  I hope anyway...

The lacy trim pinned on.  Looking good!

Hmmmm, uneven edges...

So next were the sleeves.  I have never, EVER, put in sleeves.  I copied the pattern of a random other sleeve on a child dress pattern I have.  Got my Great British Sewing Bee book out and had a little read on how to ease the shoulders of a sleeve.  Then I pinned it all together and went for it.  The gathers may not be in the same place in each sleeve, but I'm pretty proud of these sleeves!  They fit!  They look like actual sleeves!

An actual sleeve!

Now the dress looks like this.  I need to make some bias binding to trim the neckline and sleeves, hem the dress and put in the button holes and buttons.  My daughter has also requested pockets, so I will also make a couple of those.  I may even make a little applique of some sorts to liven the dress up a little, you never know...

The dress as it is now.

So watch this space for the bit announcement of the finished Experimental School Dress!

Love

B

I'm rippling, rippling away.

Last year I spent over half a year making my mother-in-law's Christmas present: a flower and granny square blanket.  This one:

Because the pattern asked for real wool and it would cost me near enough £200 in just the yarn, I had substituted the wool for acrylic.  I made a rooky mistake by ordering the exact same amount, totally not taking into account that acrylic is much lighter than wool and so I ended up with a huge pile of left over yarn. 

This much!

I have decided to tackle it and have started on the Attic24 ripple blanket.  I'm making the stripes wider than hers and may even do irregular stripes considering I have more of some colours than others.  I am aiming for a single bed sized blanket to keep on the sofa to snuggle under in the evenings.  At the moment we have scruffy fleecy Ikea things that really don't look all that nice.  It will take me many weeks to finish, because I'm also trying to make a summer uniform dress for my middle daughter (more in another post some time), but keep your eyes peeled for my tadaaah post!

It's definitely growing!