Where to begin...

2010 went blindingly fast or maybe it just feels that way because the end of the year always feels like such a rush. My 2 little cheeky monkeys are growing so fast. Little Sir is walking now and babbling away trying to talk, and Little Lady is so independant, choosing her own clothes, brushing her own teeth and washing herself at bathtime. "Mummy, I do it!" They're both so clever and observant. I often wonder if I was like this at their age.

Craft-wise the end of 2010 saw me very busy sewing christmas presents. Normally I'd just buy something for my neice and nephew but this year I wanted to do something from the heart that I put love into. I made something they can use and will be able to use for a while to come yet, a craft apron, and something for them to keep, a little bunny rabbit each. I thought I had started making them too early but I'm glad I did because it took me close to a month to make them between a christening, birthday parties and life in general. The craft aprons were the same design as the one I'd made previously for Little Lady here but I made them slightly shorter and changed the way I sewed on the binding to make it look neater. At Little Lady's instructions I used a rainbow striped fabric for my niece and coloured spots on a blue background for my nephew. Of course I had to make her one too which she chose a blue "twinkle star" fabric for. Forgot to take photos tho.

I got the bunny rabbit pattern from an old Homespun magazine (No. 82 Vol 11.3). The pattern looked a lot smaller than I thought it'd be so I enlarged it 150% and made my first trial bunny (on the right) which Little Lady quickly claimed. Confident I knew what I was doing now I enlarged it to 200% and made 4 more, one for each of my monkeys and one each for my niece and nephew.

I've also started the new Emma quilt with the Freckled Whimsy design:

My trusty ironing board has now been retired as a workbench since I rearranged my sewing area. Poor sucker gets no action anymore since I still can't be bothered actually ironing anything not craft related.

No, I don't eat yoghurt while sewing but the container is handy as a tall skinny rubbish bin for threads and such. I remember thinking "I'll have this quilt finished in no time if its anything like sewing these bits together. Too easy". Famous last words coz then I got to this part...

OMG there were SO many little half triangle squares to iron open and trim down! I got about half of them done in one day and then couldn't use my arm for the next 3 days.

Here they are laid out ready for little stickers so I know what to sew to what. I messed up pattern at the bottom left corner but realised after I took this pic so it's fixed now. Haven't started sewing yet. I've been completely obsessed with watching my chrissy present to myself - Fringe seasons 1 & 2. No hurry. I've only got 2 more quilts I want to make before May (girls you know who for - I'm going to be an Aunty again...twice!! So friggen excited!!!!!) Plus the one I'd love to make for Little Lady to replace her quilt on hot nights like tonight. And a dress like the little pink one I made last year for little Nicola who will be 1 soon. And I bought some patterns to make Little Lady some more dresses - yep actually found a pattern I liked! And a dress or two for me. And....

Sewing and soil

First batch finished. Little Lady is already wearing some of them and while she doesn't want to stand still for a picture she does like wearing them and they thankfully fit well.

For Little Lady:

I also made a t-shirt and pants in both the green and what looks like spotty blue but is actually little blue flowers - green set are in the wash and she's wearing the blue flowers ones right now.

For Little Sir:

My favourites are the animal ones in the middle. He's still in his all-in-ones to sleep for now so I only made him one pair of pants. Still got 9 more sets to do but they're going much quicker now.

And in the middle of all this sewing I managed to do a little gardening today. Something has decapitated virtually all my vegetable seedlings which is really disheartening since I spent a year working organic material into the soil which was a solid slab of clay and that's no exaggeration. One metre down and counting and I was still slicing clay off to get it out of the ground. One thing that has grown and not been eaten however is my grandmothers oregano. Legendary stuff this and in our family like liquid gold because it is the most pungent, flavoursome oregano plant ever. I've tried buying oregano plants in the past and they just can't compare to my Grandma's plant. She had to let her stash die off because she can't tend it anymore and now that mum has killed her plant, I'm the sole guardian of this treasure. In my house it is THE herb to use on steak, a little in scrambled eggs sprinkled with Bulgarian feta, on fried mushrooms with garlic, and in my awesome meatballs in homemade spaghetti sauce, in fact anything to do with tomatoes at all. Looks like a weed in this pic but I love it. Culinary heaven.

The Pyjama Sweat Shop

It's been a steep but thankfully speedy learning curve, this sewing actual clothing thing. My babies can't wear polyester and do you know how many 100% cotton pyjamas are out there for little ones, reasonably priced ones that is? I'm a Target girl not Country Road. 10 pairs? 2 pairs? None, nadda, ziltch. I haven't been able to find any at all. Everything is a polyester blend which means my 2 monkeys will sweat and itch and break out in eczema after just one night wearing them. So I opened (temporarily) my own little sweat shop. Thankyou Spotlight for your recent sales which made it all so much cheaper. Now if I could just win that $20,000 which I have been faithfully presenting my VIP card for for years now I'd be eternally grateful. Imagine all the fabric I could buy with that!! But I digress. Pyjamas.

I couldn't find any patterns I liked online, free or otherwise, and even less when flipping thru the pattern catalogues at Spotlight (as usual- are you starting to see a pattern here? Now you know why I so egotistically called my blog/scrapbook M-A's Designs. I'm very rarely happy with other peoples designs, constantly chopping and changing, and brainstorming my own). So knocked up my own based on the kiddies t-shirts and trackies/shorts which I know a lot of other people have done so that's nothing new. I adjusted lengths, widths, sleeves, waists and necklines to give a more comfy fit for sleeping in and then spent 3 days cutting out them all out.

This and this were an enormous help for a newbie trying to figure out how to do the neckline binding and this for general sewing tips on how to sew a t-shirt. I had already read that pants are sewn front and back first then inside leg as a single seam so just winged it. Note to self: used an 80/12 jersey needle which worked really well on the knit ribbed and cotton interlock fabrics. And tho it's all knit fabric I broke out my new overlocker anyway to neaten all seams before top-stitching anything that needed hemming or reinforcing like the shoulder and crotch. I'm now onto day three of sewing them together and should have half of them finished today. In all I will have made 9 pairs of pants, 19 pairs of shorts, 10 tanks tops, and 21 t-shirts. If my models are willing to stand still for 2 seconds I'll try to post pics of some of the finished pieces once they're done.

Little Lady's Adjustable Apron

My little miss loves to 'help' me in the kitchen. Washing the dishes usually involves pouring water from one cup or bowl into the next but she usually winds up absolutely soaked. Cooking means baking peanut butter biscuits or crumbing chicken and it's incredible how much flour she can embed into her clothes. Solution - an apron that will repel water and food. There are loads of patterns available but I wanted one longer and wider, particularly across the chest. Frankly I just can't leave alone when it comes to following someone elses pattern. I also wanted an apron that would grow with her so I drafted my own pattern of one that completely covers her chest and wraps around her sides with loops at the waist and very long shoulder straps to create an adjustable apron.

I used a cotton print layered under thin PCV with some double fold binding made from the same print material to hold it together and finish the edges.

I added a pocket this morning which helps hold the layers together. It looks huge on her but she's defnately covered. And she loves it.

Christchurch earthquake quilts

Deb from Works in Progress is putting together a few charity quilts for some families who lost their homes in the recent Christchurch earthquake. I've been hoping that I can steal some time away to make a couple for her as when we had the Black Saturday fires back in Feb 2009 I felt quite useless that I wasn't able to offer the same help to all those people who lost everything, especially since the fires came within 30kms of my home. So here's my little contribution:

The New Emma Quilt

I finished the original Emma quilt a while ago and have been working on the matching changemat which has stalled again because I'm not sure how I want to tie it up. I bound both with a crazy patch binding to match the crazy blocks. Took some time sewing the binding together before I could add it to the quilt but I'm really happy with how it ended up.

 It was quilted in straight lines of alternating green and orange thread. Not so easy to see with this pic but you get the idea.

And then I decided that it was a bit too gender neutral for pretty little Emma and she's probably sitting up by now so a small floor quilt won't be as useful as it would have if I'd finished and given it to her when she was born so she could lay on it and play. And really who needs an excuse to start another quilt.

Then Kelli posted this and I fell in love with the Freckled Whimsy Charm Pack Quilt. I played around with the layout a little and came up with this

which I'm planning to do with this

It'll be my first attempt at half square triangles but KarrieLyne's instructions are really clear and easy so I'm not expecting any dramas...famous last words no doubt.

Pretty in Pink Girly Twirly Skirt

Reading through some of the EB girls blogs a while back I came across this cute little girls twirly skirt made out of a massive circle of fabric and some elastic and with my limited experience sewing clothing I figured it shouldn't be too difficult to try. I used some pink star fabric that I picked up in a clearance at Big W of all places which was too light to be suitable for quilting since it was a little see-through. I measured the waist and length off an existing skirt and used it more as a guildline rather than actual measurements (read: I added an inch or 2 here and there and figured it was better to be too big than too small as I could always cut it back).

Short(ish) version, I cut the circle and folded the waistband to create a casing which I threaded elastic through, and then finished off the hem properly and tried it on the little one. She loved it and it was a little too long but I wasn't allowed to take it off at that stage to fix the length. I did notice that while it fell exactly as I wanted it still was quite see through so when I finally snaffled it back I decided to glam it up a bit by adding a ruffled layer of tulle which had it's own ruffled layer of tulle attached midway down. Then with some of the left over fabric I cut 2 long rectangles (couldn't tell you how long, just as big as I could get out of the remaining material), sewed them at both ends to create one wide tube and gathered the top of this too.

I put all three layers, (ie original skirt with the waistband unpicked, tulle, tube gathered skirt) together with another strip that would become the waistband, and sewed them all together. I then folded over the new wasteband to the right side and sewed it down and finished off the waistband by topstitching the very top. Threaded through elastic again and this is what I had....

The response...."E don't wuck it". Translated: "E don't like it" (she refers to herself in the third person and can't pronounce her name properly so E it is.) So it sat in her draw for about a week until she decided today that she just had to wear it.

Yeah, it's a little big but that's not a bad thing since she can wear it for a while yet. And the blue socks and 'stwipy leggins' apparently make the outfit. Ahh, she wucks it again and I am complete.