Africa Day

Miss M has been studying Africa this term ( a very large and general topic!) and one day the school wanted the kids to get into character and dress up as ANYTHING African.  I knew this was coming and back in the summer we were in Claires Accessories and saw a lion headband and mask so I knew we had to have it.

I had a plan that I would get some yellow/brown leggings & t-shirt, add a bit of fur and a tail and we'd be set.  So off I went to find my supplies and first thing I found was a yellow polo shirt for 50p!  Bargain, having that! So then I was looking for matching leggings but of course do you think I could find some? No! Then inspiration struck, I've got a pattern for leggings and at 50p a shirt I could get a couple more and make leggings!

So I cut the pattern out, even though I'd got the biggest t-shirt they had there wasn't quite enough fabric for the full length of the leggings so I improvised with the fur!

I sew a few inches of fur to the bottom of the leggings before sewing the seams, I also made a tail from some of the scrap fabric and stuffed it and sewed it onto the t-shirt.

Miss M in character!

Please ignore Miss C bored expression in the background, she wasn't interested in Miss M costume until I told her she will be wearing it in 3 years time!  Hey, if the school can recycle the syllabus I can recycle the costume!!!

I shall be linking up with all these lovely link parties this week

Advent Calender Sew Along #1 - I must be crazy!

So last weekend I was going through my bogs and I came to Homemade by Jill and saw that she has started an Advent Calender Sew Along so of course I decided in the middle of November that I NEEDED to make a new advent calender!  You know how it is, we see something on a blog and our life will never be satisfied if we don't make it as well!  So off I went to the fabric shop to get some nice white felt, I already had coloured felt and embroidery silks so I've been off and away.   So a week later, this is where I am, 

• I've got 2 squares left to make
• a tree to cut out
• all the squares and tree to be sewn onto the background
• some sort of hanging mechanism to be organised
• Ornaments to be designed and made

Add to this the usual Christmas shopping, cooking & preparation for 10 guests for the Christmas period (staying!) and both my kids birthdays in Dec (including a really exciting intricate Harry Potter party) and you can see that I'm beginning to think I've bitten off more than I can chew!!!!  I'm not going to be able to make all the ornaments before Dec starts but as long as I can finish them the night before I should be ok.......

Check out the Flickr group for more lovely calenders but don't blame me if you fall in love and feel you have to make one, its a bit too late now!

Spooooooookkkkkkeeeeeee!

We had family staying with us this weekend so we had our Halloween Party on the Saturday night rather than Sunday, means kids can go trick-or-treating tonight!  Compared to our American cousins we do hardly anything for Halloween but as a family we like to have a party and eat disgusting food and get dressed up!  Here's what we did this year......

Dead Flies in the cupcakes

Cauldron of crisps!

Pepperoni pumpkins

even the gerbils cage was decorated!

Worms in a bun were really disgusting!

Miss M getting into character

Pink and Purple Delight!

I fancied a nice autumn/winter skirt in corduroy so I trotted off to the fabric shop the other day and bought myself a couple of metres of rich purple corduroy. 

Using my tried-and-tested-self-drafted-a-line-skirt-pattern I made my skirt.  This was a lot more exciting than it sounds, mainly because I got to use my new overlocker and finish off the seams neatly!  Ok so its a simple skirt and there are only 2 seams but work with me here, I was excited!!  First garment I've made with overlocked (is that a word?!) seams after a few goes playing with it!  It's ever so lovely! 

So I had envisaged doing some reverse applique on this skirt, I didn't have an exact idea in my mind, maybe some sort of leaf pattern on the bottom.  I started sketching out a few ideas and decided to go for a kinda-circular-leaf-sunflower-affair.  I trawled through the scrap bag to find something suitable until I came across a pink knit dress that used to belong to Miss M.  I had put it in the scrap bag intending to copy it to make her a new larger one as she had outgrown it and despite Miss C getting all the cast offs she didn't need another dress.  Now this dress has been in the 'to-do' pile for about 9 months so I got realistic and decided that my need was greater than hers attacked it with the rotary cutter!  There are loads of different tutorials and posts about how to do reverse-applique and I guess there isn't a right or wrong way, as each project is different, but basically I followed Lil Blue Boos instructions.  The most nerve-wracking part was cutting the corduroy fabric as there's no going back once you've done that, I was afraid I would cut through to the pink knit underneath but I managed it (all the way through that stage I kept singing First Cut Is The Deepest)! 

So now I just added a bit of pink bias binding to finish the waist and hemmed it and done.  I know its not the most exciting or original skirt in the world but I love it as it was all my idea although I was probably channelling Boden when I thought of it!  So what do you think?  Funky, smiley, friendly, comfortable, unique and fun are my thoughts!

I shall be linking up with all these lovely link parties this week

 





 

P.S. It also means I can strike another thing off my to-do list in the sidebar!  Result!

MIA!

Ok so I know I've been gone for ages, I know its taken me a long time to get anything made but here we are at last!  Drumroll please...........
I made a banner!  Whoohoo!  We do a Halloween party for the kids and each year we gather a little more Halloween decor, usually plastic spiders and the like so I decided that it needed to be fabric.... and I HAD to buy some Halloween cotton. Searched around and found Robert Kaufman Eerie Alley so that and a bit of black twill and orange thread and we have a banner.

Ok I know its not the most amazing creation in the world of crafty blogs but I'm back!  I also have bought some purple corduroy to make a skirt for myself (maybe with a bit of reverse applique if I can find a suitable fabric from my stash to contrast it), a lion costume for Miss M for school (need to get some fun fur!) and a little business venture for a friend.  I also made some curtains for our study which I decorated the other week which ended up having to be hand sewn as the fabric was too thick for to do a blind hem on my machine!  Took ages but done now!  I want to decorate Miss Ms bedroom and make her curtains, pillows, duvet etc but I think I'll wait til after Christmas as there is enough to be doing without making life more difficult!!!!