Apples for teacher

I have not made many home made gifts this year but here are the few that I have done.

As well as Christmas on the horizon this is Little I's last week at her nursery before she starts primary school after Christmas.

I know I will cry when she has her last day, I cried when her brother left the same nursery! (Maybe I can blame it on hormones.) It feels like the end of a special time and even more so because after Christmas everything will change again. (I am not great with change, can you tell?)

We are very fortunate that our local nursery provision for 3 - 5 year olds is an outstanding Reggio based nursery where she has had an amazing time. Her brother also went there so we feel connected. He still remarks that he feels it is unfair that he cannot spend time there. I have to prise him out somedays when he comes to collect his sister as he quickly gets busy working with magnets or lights and mirrors.

So we have been making some leaving presents for the nursery teachers. It is hard to think what to make, they do get lots of tins of biscuits and chocolates at this time of year. There is an unspoken tradition there of giving a picture or storybook when you leave so it is a present to the nursery. We are doing that but also made some personal gifts.

We made a fabric covered journal for her headteacher. Little I drew on some calico and then I tortuously sewed it into a cover for an A5 notebook. It was quite quick to sew up but was a bit fiddly to insert the book at the end. The cover is fully lined with some scrap William Morris fabric, I tried unsuccessfully to get a picture of this.

Then I knitted a scarf for her main teacher. The variagated yarn is ribbon-like rather than wool. I bought it four years ago and can only remember that it was italian and from a lovely knitting shop. I trimmed the ends with some velvet ribbon. As the yarn is graduated in colours I decided to keep the actual knitting simple and plain to hopefully show off the colour changes. The embarassing truth here is that I bought the yarn four years ago when T was due to leave the nursery with the intention of making the self same teacher a scarf. Needless to say I ran out of time and never did make it. During my November declutter I emptied and sorted my knitting supplies and found this yarn. I decided it was too good to waste. The fact that I actually did make it this time means maybe I have become better at time management?

A recent obsession with Little I has been drawing her teacher's picture. I keep finding these pictures. She recently started drawing them on fabric with some fabric felt pens. I took a small one and sewed it up, filled with some wadding and added a brooch pin to the back as an extra present for her main teacher.

Finally T was set to work on saturday....her made this coaster for his class teacher from Ikea Pyssla beads. This is his teacher's first year of teaching so we decided she probably doesn't have a large enough collection of child-made gifts yet. He decided upon the pattern himself. I think it is reminiscent of a granny square. At age he can sit and do this kind of fine motor skills task (though not for too long) while his little sister tried for about ten minutes to copy him but then ended up having much more fun running her hands through the beads, spilling them everywhere to the point where I had to take her into another room.

That's about it apart from bulbs in a pot for the lady who provides snacks at the nursery...a very, very important person in Little I's world for the past year. Oh no, I mustn't cry on friday, I try and remember I am British, we don't do that kind of thing...do we?

More sewing for others

I have been doing a fair amount of sewing but no blogging recently. I have several items almost finished to share but most recently I have been doing more sewing for others:

A birthday tee shirt for Little I's friend whose favourite colour is green and a bag for her to keep treasures in.

The teeshirt I did at the last minute, well an hour before the party. A new sewing shop opened near me and I really wanted to like it. I live in a sewing shop desert. The owner was lovely and helpful BUT she sold me fusible interfacing that was ironable-fusible on one side when I had asked for fusible on 2 sides- bondaweb type stuff. Eeeek.

I didn't have time to go back and change it before the party, and so I just used the interfacing for the tee shirt applique. I think it is going to fray more now though than it would have done with the double sided stuff.

The new shop is five minutes drive from my house, located on the edge of a small industrial estate, and has loads of patterns and fabrics and a bit of haberdashery. There were lots of useful lining fabric (I bought some grey for a skirt I am in the middle of making) and some pretty floral cottons (didn't buy any, thinking of the stash I already have). There was quite a bit of fabric that was not my kind of taste but which made Little I gasp and say things like
" Ooohh, look shiny rainbow, glittery,stars material...ooohh pink princesses material....! " (Can you imagine a world styled by four year old girls?)

I did buy a length of fake suede in emerald green and some brown fake suede off cuts. Don't worry, this is not the latest FESA wardrobe plan. Nor am I going to the Birmingham Bloggers meet up in fancy dress. I'm making T a Robin Hood costume for friday night's cub camp. We googled Robin Hood costumes (found a strange flickr group devoted to men who like to dress up as Robin Hood, let's just not go any further) and found a simple one that met with T's approval (he is not keen on dressing up) so I am spending my sewing time making it now. It is basically a tunic to wear over his normal khaki green trousers - no way this boy would wear green tights! But I have had a request for a pointy hat as well.

We only had one week's notice about the costume which is a little short don't you think?? T is very excited as this one night and one day camp is his first cub camp. I can't believe he is old enough and brave enough to go. I may cry into my cocoa on friday night - this is my just desserts as before I had children I used to be so unsentimental and laugh at soft-hearted parents.

After a an enforced break due to our computer giving up the ghost I am back online - yippee! W have been having lots of fun here with these stickers from the Tate Gallery shop

I bought them for my son's age 7 birthday.

They consist of lots of components for building robots or machines, including some really tiny bolts and rusty looking wheels.. Here you can see the first machine that T built on his window.

The unexpected thing about them is how much his little sister (age almost three) likes then, "Come on" she says" Let's play little robots" and off we go, me sticking them on the wall, her barking out commands, "Make car, make house, need eyebrows" in that bossy way that almost three year olds have.

When not following my leader and sticking robot stickers on walls I have been struggling with a seemingly simple dress pattern, Simplicity 3835 - I made the top version of this recently as described in the last post and it was a breeze to make. Then emboldened by this I decided to make a dress using my hoarded Amy Butler fabric and using the 3835 version with a neckband and back zip. Somehow I am so cack handed that this went very wrong - the first neckband was too high and too tight for my liking - so I cut a longer one and also made it narrower so the neckline was lower - I put the zip in - didn't like it - took it out. I still found the neck too tight and my gathering was so awful that the fabric lay in a bunchy messy way in the front, so this morning I took the second neckband off, took out the gathering stitches, sewed up the back seam, and put elastic in as I did for the top. Phew...this was much better - I will post pics when I have hemmed this beauty. I am determined to finish this dress and have it as a wearable item - not a screwed up, crumpled abandoned project. However, this has brought home to me that fact that if only I had made a toile first....ah yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing! I did think about it but decided not too - okay, now I vow that the next new pattern I try, I will do a toile first! Sometimes I have to learn things the hard way for them to really resonate and stick in my brain! I was glad this morning to start making a simple wrap dress for my little daughter (AKA She who must be obeyed) - no gathering, no zips, aahh, nice and simple. Will post more about that later too - it is using my fabric from Zoe's fabric swap.

It has made me think - I was trying to slowly sew more complicated things, trying to build and learn new skills - but am I too clumsy to do any thing more complicated than elasticated necklines? I hope not.

This totally unrelated photo shows what we did a couple of weekends ago - T came home from school saying he had homework to make a mask of a character from The Gruffalo, "Don't you want to be an owl?" I said, envisioning a simple owl/feather mask, a few choice bits of felt...however he wanted to make a fox mask so here it is - made out of cardboard and super glue, painted and varnished with PVA. He could just about see through the eyeholes!

Stash Bustin Messenger Bag

In the interests of stash-bustin I made this bag for my son from some denim fabric I bought at a market several years ago and from the beach fabric I wrote about in an earlier post. I cut and appliqued some of the fish and a shark from the beach fabric and used bondaweb and stitching to attach them to the front flap. There are also two little fish on the back of the bag.

I lined it with the beach fabric and lined the strap as well with the beach fabric so there are glimpses of colours as you use the bag. I really enjoyed the construction of this bag and working out how to fit it all together. The denim got really tough to sew through on bits like the straps as it is thick material in just one layer, let alone three, and I had to finish off the sewing by hand as it was a bit too much for my poor old sewing machine.

I had thought initially about making bags from the beach fabric by itself but I am glad I stopped and thought a bit, did some sketches and decided to do it this way as I think it is always good to try something a bit different. I do tend to rush into new projects and I am trying to alter that way of working, taking a bit more time to think things through and sketch first. Making this has reminded me a lot of when I was about 17 and used to make lots of bags on my mum's sewing machine. AAAhhhh, nostalgia.

My son has requested several times that I use the rest of this beach fabric for a duvet cover so what can I do but oblige??