More clothes for dolly

After her quiet play time a few months ago, LittleImp had written me a list of what dolly needed:
"Nite Nape" (night time nappy)
and
"Top" (for the day time)
I said if she was dolly's mummy she would need to pay this seamstress to make more clothes. Ten cents apiece was the agreed price and so off this seamstress went to work. For pittance!

The "Nite Nape" was cut from felt, with velcro added top and bottom (on opposite sides):

The daytime top was from some stretch knit scraps. A side plate used as a circle template.

Once the circle was cut out, I folded it in half and snipped out a small circle for the head (the fabric stretches so start small rather than big with the cut out). I then straight stitched from the outer curve up towards the neck line where the black lines are shown in the picture. This created the arm holes and sleeves.

Done

 Because this seamstress is generous (and she was having fun) she added a dress free of charge.
Using the same technique with a larger plate I cut out a big circle, folded in half and made the head hole. Becuase I was using cotton I cut the neck hole a bit bigger (no stretch) and also stitched around it with a zig zag stitch to stop heaps of fraying.
I took a long thin strip of fabric, found the centre and placed this centrally across the back of the dress as shown, attaching it to the dress with zig zag stitch over the section highlighted with the red line below.

Over her head, brought the strip ends around to the front and tied a bow. A very easy circle dress!

 Dolly is still scary.

Some things aren't perfect - a bit of French knitting whimsy

Little Imp was given a french knitter for Christmas. Not the sort I remember having as a kid, this one was big and plasticy, with twirling spools and other attachments.
Little Imp struggled with it all until we worked out that if she just used her hands instead of all the attachments she could knit all by herself. Just like kids did in the 'old days' (ha!).

I helped a bit, but after a bit of perseverance she had a tube we could turn into a cat - just like the one pictured on the cover of the box the knitter came in (well kind of!).

No instructions in the box for how to make said cat, but we muddled our way through, collecting all our ingredients from the craft box - pipe cleaners, felt triangles for ears, goggly eyes, stuffing and glue.

We stuffed the tube..

We tied off the top third to create the neck between the head and body...

We poked a (pink) pipe cleaner through the stuffing to create the upper legs/arms, and threaded a (blue) pipe cleaner through the base for the lower legs. I folded over a small section on all of the pipe cleaner ends to get rid of the sharp pointy bit. The blue legs we made quite a bit longer to help the cat sit up and balance (see pic further below).

Short sparkly pipe cleaners were threaded through on the face & twisted over and around each other for whiskers and the felt triangles were pinched in a bit to create an ear shaped curve and positioned with a liberal amount of glue.

The green pipe cleaner was twirled around a pencil for curly whirly-ness and looped in near the bottom to create a tail.

A stray green pom pom was located by Little Imp during my tail attaching and proclaimed to be required as a belly button (because all cats have to have belly buttons apparently).
Two googly eyes were glued in place where they belong...,

And the third eye you may have noticed in the 'ingredients' pile at the beginning? Well, apparently some cats also have an eye on the end of their tails!

Hello Whimsy Cat;)

Tiny drawstring bags for Montessori reading materials

It started with a request from OneLittleImps' teacher last term to repair some aprons the kids use, and next I know I have agreed to make little draw string bags in pink and green and blue....

.. agreed to make 36 of the fiddly little suckers! LittleImp goes to a local Montessori school, and these little bags will hold the relevant colour coded levels of reading materials for her class room.

Here is how to make just one bag.

What you need - fabric & ribbon. This bag is pretty tiny - approx 5"x6". Obviously you can upsize the dimensions & still follow the same instructions below.

Cut a rectangle 5.25" x 13" from your chosen fabric.

Mark each end on both edges at two points as shown - at 0.25" and 1.25". These marks are on what will become the inside of the bag.

Fold over the first 0.25" as marked & iron a fold across each short end.

 Fold the bag right sides together, matching up the short edges.

Sewing machine time. Line up your needle with the 1.25" mark and straight stitch using a 1/4" seam down each long edge (to reduce fraying you can either use an edging stitch here as I have, or zig zag down each edge after the straight stitching).

Back to the ironing board. Fold back & iron the top 1" of raw edge as shown

Using a straight stitch sew down each of these side folds. The pictures show how I did this - sew down one side...

...then turn the fabric & turn & sew back up the other side (I also reinforced with a few back & forward stitches at the point where the side seams meet given these little bags will take a bit of use by little fingers).

 This is what it should then look like. Repeat on the other side.

 Back to the ironing board to iron down what will become the casing for the drawstring. Use the 1.25" mark as a guide & fold the edge down to meet this point (or there abouts) & iron the fold.

Repeat on the other side and then straight stitch each of these folded edges down, keeping your stitches close to the fold. Make sure to secure the stitching well at the beginning and end, again to withstand the forces of the drawstring pulling.

Snip all the loose/excess bits of thread. Turn bag right side out & use a sharp-ish object to poke out the corners.

Now for the ribbon. Cut 2x13" lengths of ribbon for each bag. Use a safety pin to then thread one ribbon through both casings. (If the ribbon starts to fray then try folding it over a few times before pinning it with the safety pin.)

Once you have passed through both casings then knot the ends of the ribbon together (as seen on the left side below). Take the next piece of ribbon & thread this through both casings, starting from the other (non-knotted) side, once all the way around join the ends of the ribbon & tie another knot. All done!

 Only 35 to go...

Shower cap

The last showercap I made sure lasted longer than those flimsy ones you get free in hotel rooms.

I'm not sure that too many people still use showercaps, but if you do, then this is a pretty easy project to complete...not quite so easy to get a shot of someone wearing it at the end though!
OneLittleImp wasn't playing the game to wear it for a photoshoot, so I had to get creative. Thanks Tigger!

Quick How To:

Make a circle template with newspaper, pencil & string - my cap is 19"in diametre. If you want more frilly-ness then use a bigger circle to start with.

Use the template to cut 1 circle from fabric & one circle from a waterproof layer. I bought a cheap plastic table cloth from a $2 store a while back that I use for waterproofing different projects.

Place the waterproof layer and fabric right sides together & straight stitch all the way around the edge with a 1/4" seam, leaving enough opening to turn right side out.

Trim excess & clip seams before turning right side out.

Use your fingers to roll edge flat as much as possible while you top stitch all the way around using a 1/4" seam to hold the fabric & waterproof layers together at the edge. Change the colours of your top/bobbin thread if needed to match the colours of the fabric & waterproof layers.

Fold the circle into quarters & mark each quarter fold at the edge. This will be used to help with the gathering when you add in the elastic.

Use your own head to measure how much elastic you need - Cut this amount with about 1" extra added. Fold the elastic into quarters as well & mark each quarter fold.

Next, pin the start of your elastic (leaving the extra 1" tail that you will overlap at the end) to one of the quarter marks on the shower cap and then match up the next quarter lines on the shower cap & elastic before pinning these points together.

Back to the sewing machine. Change thread colours again if you need to.
Using about a 1/2-3/4" seam allowance, you now sew the elastic to the fabric. To create the gathers, pull the elastic as you sew with a multipoint zigzag to secure. Once you reach the first quarter mark, match up the next quarter of the shower cap & elastic & repeat. This will form your gathers.

Here are the gathers forming. Once you are all the way around you are all done. How simple is that?!?

...And then she finally let me take a picture!

Half square triangle cushion cover - Part 1

Half square triangles. Mmmm, every blog I read before I attempted my ‘HST’s’ made it appear these are easy. And perhaps they are…if you have measured perfectly, and cut just so, and sewn your ¼ inch seam with accuracy. But I can speak from experience & say that I for one am not so good at getting all three of those steps to work as well as perhaps they should. And that leads to half square triangles that don’t align perfectly in the corners. And that can be a little frustrating to say the least!

Thankfully I decided to start with a small project – a cushion cover – rather than a whole quilt. 

I wanted to use up some of my 5" charm square stash for these projects, matched to a coordinating plain fabric. Each cover ended up using 12 full charm squares and part of one extra square. I used the technique where you sew all the way around 2 squares with right sides together and then cut 2 diagonal lines to get 4 half square triangle squares.

The turquoise cover was my first attempt & I learnt a lot - even the second half of the turquoise cover has better aligning seams than the first, so I am optimistic that the second cushion cover in purple (using the same pattern) will be much improved technique wise.

There are plenty of blogs stepping through how to cut half square triangles, so I won’t reinvent that wheel. But I am going to jot down some of the key things I didn't find out readily from the net, and instead worked out through trial and error (with a few mutterings under my breath from time to time!!).

Cut 12 x (5 1/8”) squares from coordinating plain fabric (plus make one extra square). My charm squares never seem to be perfectly 5” or perfectly square, so I decided to cut the plain fabric squares at 5 1/8” to give me a bit of breathing space when stitching together. 

Place a charm square on top of a plain fabric square & stitch all the way around. I found it best to start stitching part way down one side (rather than in a corner) to avoid puckering where the stitching meets. And it was worth taking time to get the ¼” spacing accurate at each corner - sometimes I shortened the stitch length towards the corner to help with that.

 Cut from corner to corner to end up with 4 pieces as shown, Ideally these cut lines will be at a 45 degree angle to the sewn straight joining seams. Ideally!

Then open and press each triangle to get the HST squares. 

                                

 The first big mistake I made with the turqoise cushion was deciding not to square up until I had sewn 4 squares together into a 2x2 block. Botheration & bollocks. For the purple cover I squares up the individual squares first & that worked way better. 

I lined up my 45 degree andgle on the ruler with the seam and then trimmed down the first 2 edges (right and top), making sure I still had room to trim when I turned to square up the final two edges (in my case 3 1/8")

Next, spin the square around, line up the angle line again as well as the 3 1/8" size markers on the edge and cut the square to the size you want.

Once all the squares were sewn, squared up and pressed  I decide on the design & took the all important picture.

I guess ideally I would have had an even number of squares but the size of the cushion needing covering dictated a 7x7 square cover. I worked in rows, sewing adjoining squares into pairs. When pressing I made sure to alternate seams either pressed to the left or right. This helped when then sewing up the 2x2 blocks.

This picture shows the pressed seams facing left and right while I sew together. Nestling them at the seam helped to get a good result. I do still wonder though if pressing open would be better with this pattern given you end up with so many seams where all the pieces meet.

Here is the work in progress (from bottom right working to the left). 2x2 completed blocks, adjoining pairs sewn together, adjoining pairs waiting to be sewn together etc.... And the trusty computer screen showing the design so I don't stuff up & have to unpick!!

A bit further along the way of joining squares together...

The final seam. I did find that once I was sewing more than 3/4 squares together in one go that pinning at the seams was definitely worth it to get good alignment.

Da da!

It's interesting that this is almost the same design as the turquoise one, but I like it so much more. Not because of the colours, but the fact the central square has the patterned fabric rather than the solid seems to work so much better.

Now the more tedious task of making them into cushion covers begins....