Birthday Cushions

We have 2 little girls birthdays this month, Alyssa my Goddaughter is turning 3 and Jemma, one of Stef's friends daughters, is turning 2.

Alyssa has another gift coming as well as the cushion and Jemma no doubt will have something added to the cushion gift. We are on a bit of a budget and with the sewing machine taking up residence at the end of the dining room table for the past few weeks I have been on a bit of a roll making things. Spurred on by the prospect of a BIG parcel arriving from America filled with delicious fabric I have numerous projects to complete before I can get started on the patterns and fabric that will arrive!

I bought the pink gingham (Spotlight home decorating section, massive 2. something meters wide sheeting) with the intention of making a single duvet cover Amelia got for Christmas into a double to fit the duvet on her king single bed. The width of fabric I purchase was cut wonky. And when I made the cut I needed by my measurements and looked closer at the gingham the print was wonky on the selvege edge so I have ended up with 2 bits of material the wrong width and not able to do anything with them, so I bought the plain pink. The duvet cover is almost done with some jiggery poker and something that started out as a simple pattern idea but husband got involved made it incredibly complicated and my measurements are stuffed and with the happenings in the street (smoke alarm across the street going off for 10 days now) and being pretty wrecked on the overtired front I decided to put that to one side.

Sewing 2 square things was about my limit today and 'should' be easy!

The letters I used Vlisofix on (cut the J out the wrong way to begin with but that was easily fixed) then used a stitch around the letter, sewed them to the plain square and the plain square to the front of the pillow. The back was 2 bits of material that I put a clean seam on one edge and that is where the slip opens to pop the pillow in. I toyed with the idea of cutting an old dacron pillow in half and stitching that to be the cushion insert but remembered I bought some white calico in the Spotlight 'buy the bolt' sale last week and had a bag of stuffing in the cupboard buried from years ago, et Viola! 2 cushions made to fit the covers!

Now I will say that I was in a hurry to take pictures today and the front of the pillows looks a little wet from where I have dabbed the fabric pen to remove the ink, probably should take better photos but the to do list is already a little long...

Layer Skirt

Last night my friend Lisa and I were salivating over fabric and patterns till almost the wee small hours of the morning and she sent me the link for this lovely little skirt.

Bored rigid this afternoon because it was hot, I am tired and Amelia had ticked me off no end this morning I decided to give the skirt a go. I have had some assorted purple/mauve fabric put to one side with the idea of making a summer dress or another Oliver+S skirt but threw caution to the wind.

Sadly I got a big caught up in the layers and wanted to add 2 more but forgetting Amelia is only 115cm tall (only!!) I had to leave 2 layers off and take a few cm's off the top layer but it is done and looks great! Amelia loves it and can't wait till the morning to wear it, could be another story when the sun comes up but... I might have prefered more gathers, if I make this again I will probably play with the layer length a bit.

2 skirts for 2 pre-teen girls

The family of our flower girl have been very generous to us in many ways over the years and being that the only have one child, a tall daughter, we get a lot of hand me downs. I know this is out of the kindness of their hearts and they don't expect anything in return but I still feel bad that we gain and they get nothing, so, I asked if K would like a skirt in return for her donations.

I made an Oliver +S skirt initially but then thought I would get brave and make somehting with a pattern!

Once again Amelia and I headed to Spotlight and searched books, short listed a few patterns and settled on this one (mainly because it was the only one in stock!). We did skirt D.

Fabrics purchased, we headed home and sadly it has takne me many weeks to sew something that uninterrupted essentially would have taken an hour from cutting the pattern to final press.

So the Oliver+S skirt was whipped up in a thrice but no photo was taken. And these are the the 2 skirts I made, one for K and one for my niece G. K's is the 3 colour skirt, G's is the stripey one. Both size 10 but I think, even though both girls aare very tall, they will be miles too long!

Gift for JB

My very good friend, lets call her JB, has just purchased a house and has done a substantial amount of minor improvements to the house, mainly outdoors. One of which has been to add a massive 72 square meter pergola out the back. We went shopping one Sunday and found a gorgeous 10 seater wooden table and chair set and she did a deal with a bbq, heater and some cushions for the chairs.

Really stuck for something to buy her for Christmas I decided to make her a table cloth and runner and, you guessed it, placemats! I was on a bit of a role and this was pre reports of disintergration. So, Amelia and I set off to Spotlight once again with measurements in hands and returned triumphant and set about cutting and pinning and sewing.














So we have a massive table cloth, the runner and the placmats. I really like the placemats, my own design! JB was thrilled with her haul, very proud indeed as was I that something so simple could give such joy.

We went to JB's for dinner a few weekends ago to Christen the table and the cloth, and in true Sarah style I think I was the first person to dollop a drip of Nacho sauce on the cloth!!

Christmas sewing

Wow, what a long time since a post and there has been a lot of sewing action!

So, Christmas... I had some grande idea of making placemats as gifts and table runners. I managed to make 10 placemats for Christmas Day which sadly some of them partially disintergrated on their first wash... And the lovely stars on the sheer material in the runners melted away as well. Quite disheartening. But here are some images anyway.


Pretty huh?











I made most of the runners with borders and mostly rectangular or square depending on the table they were destined for.

With the set back of the disintergration I have decided to start my Xmas sewing a lot earlier this year AND pre-wash the fabric this time :-) I managed to score some beautiful fabrics from Spotlight in the 50% off sale so will set about making even more beautiful things for this year (that wont fall apart!).

A long plane trip

A friend of mine is about to embark on a 24 hour non stop plane trip to the UK with her almost 2 y/o in tow. Inspired by this on my friends blog a week or so ago I instantly thought that something like it would work for this little boy. Technically the cars are for 3 yrs plus but he isn't a 'things in the mouth' kid and will be with his mum 24/7 so I am sure it will be fine.



So there are 5 little pockets for cars at the bottom on the lft and a big pocket that some little board books I bought today fit nicely in. I decided not to put any buttons or clips on it opting for a quick tuck to keep it altoghter. And in case you are wondering... the black bits between the circles are BRIDGES over the WATER! Get creative with the thoughts people!

Mine is nowhere as nice as Lisa's but for something thrown together with no pattern and not even a car to measure things it didn't come up too bad! I think it will do the job nicely and if it survives the journey and gets trashed, all well and good, job done! And thank you dear husband for donating one of your 'not worn anymore and have about a gazillion of them' faded black tee-shirts. I needed something for the road :-)

Hopscotch on its way to France & MORE skirts!

Amelia declared once her Hopscotch was made that yes, her cousin Lucy *would* like one too and it has been a work in progress forever! In fact it has been so long I missed surface post to Europe!

But, the machine has worked overtime today and 'tis complete. Now, yes, it does only go up to 8 but the hopscotch I remember playing in England only goes up to 8 so this one stops at 8. I did think of verifying it with my cousin but that would involve telling her what Lucy was going to get for Christmas and giving her the opportunity to say no!

So here we are

And on the back we used blue with stars.

It has grown on me but I really feel the numbers look better as light felt. Happy it is done and I hope Lucy will get loads of use out of it when she is at their holiday house particularly over winter and in Paris. Being easy to transport I hope it will go back and forth on the TGV with them!

And I am on a bit of a roll with the Oliver+S lazy days skirts. I have quite a bit of the stripey material left over and I have no idea why I have so much ribbon for the hopscotch so I sort of really followed the pattern this time and made this for a good friends little girl. The daughter has really dark olive skin, I think she will be able to carry the strength of these colours off really well.

And so my other friend won't be left out (yes sad, I only have 2 friends!) I made one for her little girl too! The 3 of us are hitting the markets at Flemington at some ridiculous hour Saturday morning to gather supplies for a family fun day fundraiser for the pre-school on Sunday, these will be good things to take the girls minds off the time we will be up!