When I was sewing the original hopscotch I sewed the numbers on the backing in a big hurry and made a real botch job of it. I found the bulk of the fabric too much to deal with and needed to break the job down into little peices. So I unpicked the numbers off the backing fabric then cut the backing fabric into 6 35cm lots and 2 50cm lots (or thereabouts). Making sure I had the 2 wider fabrics for the end numbers (1 and 10) I set about and trimmed the squares a little to neaten them up, with my new best friend combo, the rotary cutter and cutting board, and got to work...
Using a gazillion pins this time in an effort to keep things where they were supposed to be (I am sure in school and when Mum was teaching me how to sew we were told to something stitch - baste or stocking?? - big wide stitches thet held everything in place and were removed once you had sewn the article with a sewing maching... I then saw these as an easy no effort way out of using little stitches and later realised they wouldn't hold the hems of skirts and trousers up too well...) I digress! So we methodically set about putting the number squares on the backing fabric making sure they were centred and set the machine to work. Amelia got the camera while the sewing was happening... luckily I ducked!
We ran out of cotton, of course, about 3 squares from the end so Amelia went next door and came back with my neighbour and a big box of cotton reels in all manner of glorious colours!
''Oh what a delightful collection of cottons!",
"yes" said my neighbour "mum warehouses Gutteman cotton!!!"
*glee* How about that! Handy or what?
10 numbers sewn on and we are done! Then we pinned right sides
tog
ether, making sure the numbers were up the right way and sewed each panel together in order and tah dah (again...)Sewing laid on the floor is an open invitation for a certain almost 4 y/o to lay on, practice swimming on and declare me the best mother ever and her favourite game in the world is hopscotch! We have to add here that Amelia can't hop very well and has no idea how to play hopscotch but this will soon put an end to that little drama!
And then I noticed, with all my care about getting the numbers in the right order and up the right way, the backing fabric pattern doesn't repeat itself exactly across the width of the fabric. This will bug me and you will have to look super close to notice it but, numbers 1,2 and 3 are unpicked AGAIN ready to be resewn AGAIN and THEN we can get on to putting the batting in and finishing this project off!
A job for this morning, Amelia permitting!
Went to the shops this morning and was going to grab felt to make one of these but had no idea how much I needed.. damn. Maybe next week! I'll have to try your suggestions too.
ReplyDelete