More Pincushions

Another 1950s style dress.  The skirt is almost full enough on this one, I'll keep going with them until I get it right.

I like this one, it does look somewhat 'primitive' but I'll never get that look because when I do the 'grunged' look I just don't like it, even though I like seeing other people's work.

Pincushions

I think I've found a project that will keep me happy for another few weeks.

It's a dress form pincushion.  I've wanted to make one of these for quite a number of years now but it has taken a challenge in a group I'm in to get me going with it.  They are very quick to make and the only problem I'm having is finding something to use as the stand.  That is going to take a bit of thinking about.  Here's another one

I've got lots of ideas in my head of how I want to decorate them.  The first one I made has the darts in it as shown in the pattern.  The second one I didn't bother with the darts and it looks fine.  I also changed the size of the pattern and made it smaller for the second one.  Now I could do with a cabinet with glass doors to keep this sort of thing in, that way they would stay clean and dust free, instead of just putting them away and looking at them occasionally.  My craft room gets terribly dusty with all the cutting out etc, that goes on in there.

Machine Applique

I decided that I would use the pattern Melissa sent me to do some machine applique.  I haven't got the patience to sew the shapes by hand so I use the Bondaweb/Wunderunder method.  Apart from being less tiring on the hands and eyes, it's a lot quicker.  Here's another applique idea using this method.  You will see that you can do quite elaborate shapes like this.  Here's one I started (but haven't finished yet)

I don't know if I'll actually stitch this one, I might leave it just Bondawebbed, the stitching looks a bit too complicated for me!  I had decided that I would be doing more applique this year.  There are four appliqued wall hangings in the local church that I made, wish I'd taken pictures of them but at the time it didn't occur to me that I would want to put them on a blog.

The Parlour

I can call our dining room the parlour now!!!  The sofa arrived yesterday and I'm so pleased with it.  I was worried that it would look too small and too cheap.  I ordered it on Sunday and it arrived Wednesday.  Not so long ago everything used to take weeks to arrive and not so long ago I would never have got this sofa for £139.  In the past, when I've made a purchase like this, I've woken up in the mornings feeling guilty and thinking that I'm being extravagant and that I've bought something we didn't really need but at that price I can enjoy it!!!

I was reading an article in the newspaper about a woman that started a cupcake making business and saved her family from bankruptcy.  I get a bit annoyed when I read articles like that.  Well done to the woman for taking the chance on doing this but I think there is more to it than just making the cakes, turning up and selling them.  These articles never tell the story of how they actually came up with their strategy, how they chose what venue to try.  I suppose I must feel a bit envious after my disappointing attempts last year, to sell my sewing at a fair that is put on regularly in a village near where I live.  I probably chose the wrong venue so this year, if I decide to have another go, I will try somewhere else.

Pattern Arrived

You may remember that Melissa was having a give-away recently.  Well, I was lucky enough to receive this fab pattern from her today!!!  I'm often short of ideas of what to sew (that's probably why I make several of one item).  This pattern is just what I needed to give me something entirely different to try.  I've made cloth dolls, cats, mice and chickens but I've never made a lion or a giraffe before.  Also included are embroidered quilts and a bird (think I'll make him first).  Thank you Melissa, you are a lovely blog friend!

Next I'll have to choose the fabric, this can be the difficult bit.  Here's a picture of one drawer of my fat-quarters, looks very messy doesn't it.  I like to keep things hidden away because my craft room would look very untidy if I had my fabric on shelves, not like this blog, where things are so neat and tidy.  I tell myself it's because my craft room is small and I have so much stuff that it never looks really nice, I still love it though and spend many hours here.

Spring Cleaning

There hasn't been any sewing or crafting going on here for a couple of days now.  I had a sudden, unexpected urge to do housework.  Now that is unusual these days I have to admit.  It wasn't the rush round with the vacuum and duster type housework either.  It was the 'I'm sick of the clutter' type housework.  I've got a big cabinet in my dining room that belonged to my grandmother.

It is crammed full of 'stuff', including video tapes of television programmes from the mid 1990s.  They will never be watched and I needed space for my DVDs, so the videos were thrown out.  What a satisfying feeling that was!

I also use my dining room to watch tv and have two small easy chairs in there that just do not match the other furniture.  They are going and I've ordered a small sofa that is more in keeping with the look I want, which is sort of Victorian, or at least eclectic Victorian/Edwardian/other.  I'd love it to look like a parlour.  The only time we really use this room for dining is when we have guests, which isn't very often these days, and I have a table in the kitchen that we can use.

I was discussing all this with two friends, one of whom was asking about stain removal.  If anyone has a way of removing a stain from carpet we'd love to hear.  It's one of those stains that has been cleaned but has left a discoloured patch that just will not come out.  I hate carpet and just have rugs in my house because of this reason.  When you have pets carpets are just not practical and I do love the look of wood floors with rugs.

Embroidery And My Sewing Machine

I've had my current sewing machine for about five years now and have never used it to it's full potential.  It has eighty five different stitches, as well as a button hole facility and an alphabet setting.  In the instruction manual it shows some ways to use the embroidery stitches that I just can't get the hang of.

You can see in the above, examples of using the memory to do a symetrical sequence of stitches.  There is a button that you push to do a mirror image of the chosen stitch but it just makes the stitch upside down.  So, this is going to take a bit of puzzling out.  I do have an idea that I came up with earlier and tomorrow I will try it out.

In the meantime I've just been doing a straight row of embroidery, it's nice but if my machine can do more I feel that I ought to be using all of it's capabilities.

Another project bag and accessory set.  This time I made a scissor pouch to go with it, I'm not entirely happy with it though.