Mish Mash

It's been a busy old week.

Two of my colleagues are American and they decided to hold a party at work to celebrate Obama's inauguration. They were bringing in masses of food - all on an American theme - so a few of us thought we would help them out by baking some stuff ourselves. It's a pity we didn't coordinate - we all brought in blueberry muffins.

I also baked raspberry and white chocolate muffins...



...and chocolate and banana. (They were lovely, even if I do say so myself).



I've finished "Thomas the Tank Engine" - cheating on the face by sewing on googly eyes. I bought three bags of the things - because I wasn't sure which size would be be best - and the BF opened all of them before I could check. So, I can't take them back and now have enough googly eyes to last me a life time.

So, here are James and the Fat Controller on the front...



...with Thomas himself on the back.



Now, I'm on with a baby blanket for a friend. She's expecting a baby in the late Summer so I should have time to do it, but she doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl. I'm going for a brightly coloured neutral approach. It's going to be bounded at the top and bottom by rainbow garter stitch strips, and I'm going to do a range of different squares. This first yellow one is done in moss stitch.

Nefertiti

My Mam has rediscovered tapestry and decided to make herself some cushions... well, she'd do the tapestry and she asked me, very nicely, if I would sew them up. This all sounded very straightforward and I thought I could get these rattled off this afternoon. You may be already suspecting that things did not go quite according to plan.

It started off so well, but I ended up doing a lot of swearing at Darth Sewing Machine.

So, my Mam is going with an Egyptian theme - Nefertiti and Tutenkhamun.

I thought it would be a good idea to get rid of the excess tapestry backing and thought that folding under would create a piece of fabric that was too bulky to sew.



Therefore I stitched the cushion to a piece of cotton lining and then trimmed it. The next stage being to attach the piping braid.



Disaster! Look at the state of this. The tapestry backing is sticking out between the piping and the design. It looked rubbish, so I had to remove the piping and have a rethink... which then meant that the tapestry was in danger of unravelling itself. Bollocks.



The solution, though a less than brilliant one, was to do what I should have done in the first place. I used the material I bought for the cushion-back to tape the edges, and it actually looks ok.



I decided not to add the piping, for two reasons - it was going to make the cushion look to busy and, the fabric was getting too thick.

As it was, the zip took some sewing. With the thick tapestry attached to the cotton lining, plus the fabric tape to protect the edges, this had become a very chunky piece of material and sewing the zip showed that this was becoming to much for Darth. It snapped my heaviest needle.



I managed just to sew the zip but when it came to attaching the cushion back... things didn't go well. Two snapped needles later and I gave up, facing the inevitable - I was going to have to hand sew the two pieces of fabric together, to make the actual cushion.



And, here we have the finished product, finally.



I have to make Tutenkhamun's cushion this week as I'm going to see my Mam on Friday and I suspect she might quite like to have her cushions then.

Avast!

The BF casually announced the other day that I could either make him another jumper like the one I've just given him for Christmas, or I could make him a cardigan. "Maybe one with a zip?", I suggested, thinking "he's already got slippers and he's only 34".

"That sounds good," he said... so I started hunting around and have decided to make 'Avast' (www.knitty.com). It's plain enough for even the BF's taste with a little cable detail that won't offend him too much.



Next, the yarn... I decided to try out New Lanark yarns, and I ordered a stash of "Donegal Silk Tweed (DK)" in Cobalt. It's 90% wool and 10% silk and at £1.95 a ball, I thought: "Bargain".



It arrived today. It's darker than appeared on screen, but that's one of those things. It's also a lot rougher than I expected. I'm hoping it will knit up softer than the individual strands feel because, together when squishing, they do feel very soft. Also, blocking might help and the BF will be wearing it over T-shirts. In addition, I wasn't sure about the last jumper and he loved that. Can you smell the reassurance I'm giving myself?

Thomas, well James the Engine, actually

Stage 2 of the Thomas the Tank Engine cardigan. Here's James and I've made a heap big mistake.



No, it's not the absence of his face. I'll add that once I've blocked it.

See the big patch of white next to James. I thought that was supposed to be steam. Oh, no. It's supposed to be grassy hills. I'm assuming that the designers thought that the pattern would be clearer if they shaded the green bits in white and just wrote a big "G" on the section.

That was supposed to be a good idea?

Oh, well, I'm doing the "workman blaming his tools" tantrum aren't I?

Red Dress (Part 2)

I resumed my attempts to clobber together a frock on Sunday. It's still not quite finished, with a few seams requiring further sewing, a shoulder seam nowhere near as tight as it should be - there's a fold over the actual sewn seam - and a zip to be inserted.

The sewing started off simply. Having prepared the skirts pieces, i.e. cut them out, all I needed to do was sew in the pleats and then sew them together. Straightforward? Well, yes, it should have been. If the two back pieces are supposed to go together like this... "> <", why did I end up nearly sewing them like this , "< <"? Because I sewed a pleat on the wrong side of one of the pieces. So my neat sewing had to be pulled out of this...



...leaving the fabric looking like this...



...but, thankfully, I have a new best friend in the iron, so it ended up looking like this.



...And here's the nearly finished dress... looking remarkably like a red bin bag.



I think it will look better once I get the zip in - the big gaping opening at the back does not add to the overall impression.

Thomas the Tank Engine

I'm hoping to finish the red dress today, but I'm doing this as a 'mini break' from making this Thomas the Tank Engine cardigan for my nephew Thomas. (The SIL and BIL didn't think through the naming implications of this one. Their best friend's son is called... Ivor).

I enjoy knitting Intarsia and this is a very simple and fun knit.

Red Dress

I decided to do some sewing this weekend so I am in the middle of a dress. (I signed up to a dress making class which I'm just not enjoying as much as the soft furnishing class I went to. It's just not grabbing me the same way and I think I prefer my learning to be more structured than "just tell me what you need to know". I don't know what I need to know!)

So, we have a nice simple pattern... which I'll show when I've finished so we can see the side-by-side of what it's supposed to look like compared with what it actually does look like. I bought the linen from Abakhans for the bargain price of £7.83. It's a very forgiving fabric which is fortunate as Darth Sewing Machine and I have been having a few differences of opinion. The iron, meanwhile, has been great which is just as well as I hate ironing and dressmaking makes ironing an essential component of construction. (What was I thinking?)



Above, the pieces all cut out, waiting for the instruction details to be sewn on (for wear to sew the darts, etc).



Above - the bodice assembled: lining and outer pieces.

Below - the front of the skirt, draped over the ironing board.



Below: Skirt front pinned to the bodice for storage, overnight.



Yes, I've taken over the living room.