Snow Buds

 

When our friends M & D got married last year M asked me if I could sew the dresses for their two little girls.

Of course I could! When, otherwise, would I get the chance to be submerged in pink and roses? I loved it!

  

  

The basic pattern is the same one I had made and used for the Polka Dot Summery Top. 

Only here I made a longer dress version of the same size, and a smaller version for the smaller dress.

M suggested the design with the ribbons and roses.

  

 

Cotton Reel Rack - Tutorial!

I've always wanted to have a cotton reel rack.

During one of my teaching practice occasions I got talking to the woodwork teacher at the local school where I'm based as a student teacher. I asked for advice on a quick and easy solution to store my cotton reels. And then she said I could just go down to her workshop and make a rack. I thought she was joking, but here it is! She gave me the materials and the scary drill, started me off and.....

now I have one!

Thanks S.!

It really was quite easy, after she explained how to hold the drill at a 45 degree angle, approx. Now I feel I could make another one all by myself.

Here is a quick (maybe not very thorough) tutorial:

All you need is:

• a piece of wood, the size you want, depending on how many reels you want to store on it
• Some wooden sticks that fit through the whole on the cotton reel. If you have a long stick you can easily saw it to the right length(approx. 6 cm long and 4 mm wide)
• ruler
• pencil
• a small hand drill
• wood glue
• paint (optional)

All this you can probably get at your local warehouse. Here we've got Bauhaus, for example. There you can find everything you need for this project and you can even borrow the saw on the spot to get the wooden board the right size and rent a drill.

Measure up with a ruler and mark with a pencil where you will be drilling the wholes. Make sure they are evenly spread out and that the distance is big enough to fit the reels beside each other. Mine are 3 cm apart, horizontally and 5 cm apart, vertically. I can fit both small and big reels.

Place the wooden board on a flat surface (with a pice of waste wood underneath to protect the surface), or use a workbench.
Place the drill (make sure it's the same measurement as the stick - your warehouse will help you with this, or you can even do it yourself) on the pencil marks and hold it at a 45 degree angle approx. so you get the sticks slanted.
Drill firmly but carefully approx. 1 cm into the wood. You can measure 1 cm from the drill end and put a bit of tape there just so you know when to stop (when the tape touches the wood).

Dip an end of the sticks in the wood glue and push them in through the wholes. Wipe off excess glue.

Let dry. How long, really depens on the glue. Mine needed approx. 30 minutes to be ready for painting.

Paint.

Done!

The measurements of my cotton reel rack are: 30 cm x 14 cm x 1,5cm.

At least 1,5 cm in width is advisable so you can really make sure the little sticks are properly fixed, although you need some wood glue anyway, before you put them in the wholes, just to make it more secure.
Be careful not to drill right through the wood. If you happen to do that it's really not a big problem. It just means that you have to make sure the stick doen't pop out the back when you glue it in. I drilled once right through, but as it's on the back you don't notice it.

It's really quite easy! If you want to attempt to make one and you find this tutorial a bit confusing, don't hesitate to ask me!

Donation to Doctors Without Borders

 Baujke, from BusyBeeFree has donated 25 euros to Doctors Without Borders in response to the fabric auction I held on my blog last month, on this post.

Thank you Baujke for participating! And I hope you enjoy the fabric!

Lilly of the Valley - Flowers for my mum

My mum's favourite flowers have always been Lilly of the Valley. 

The first time she saw them, I think, was when she went to Paris, France, in her early twenties. They don't grow in Portugal, where she comes from and lives, so they are very special, and exotic,  to her. Everytime I see the first Lilly of the Valley delicate flowers shooting up in the late Swedish Spring, I always call her to tell her about it!

When I found this fabulous floral fabric on Retrodepot I just knew I had to make something out of it for my mum. So I made this bag.

 

It is of course yet another size variation of  the Charming Handbag, pattern by Amy Karol, from Bend the Rules Sewing. Only here I have exchanged the handle for a shoulder strap. This is the third size (original size here and XL here!) I Have used for this same pattern. It is definitely a perfect pattern to use in different sizes.

 

The lining is a recycled old, but almost unused shirt that my partner had, literally, grown out of. It's a lovely thin, smooth cotton of very good quality!

The three little buttons I stiched to the decorative ribbon on the outside were new, but they have a very old-fashioned, vintage look to them, which was what I really liked about them. And they went perfectly with the Lilly of the Valley fabric.

Recycled jumper-bag

I made this bag using an old shrunken jumper I had kept for ages.  It went in with the wrong wash and turned out almost felted.  As Betz White explains in her beautiful book Sewing Green a garment has to contain at least 80% wool, or a combination of wool and other animal fibres to felt. This jumper was mostly synthetic and it had a low percentage of wool so it didn't really felt, but it's close, anyway. Not bad considering it was originally an accident!

I cut it straight along the underarm seams, turned it inside out and sewed in a cotton lining the same way I did for the Big Jumps Gym Bag. The fabric for the lining is called Très Jolie - perfect name which fits really well! It's designed by Janet G. Gossard for Fabrics by Spectrix. 

For the shoulder strap I used an old belt which had been lying around unused, from my older son's trousers.

I'm very pleased with how cosy this bag turned out and the lining has a - now - worn touch to it which feels lovely when I have to put my hand in it to get something out.

For the string I used red leather - I really like red leather, and it matches my purse (which is in my bag so you can't see it!) - and three cloisonné beads.

NOTE: The HELP HAITI! Fabric Auction - on previous post - will be open till the 31st January. If you haven't donated to any Help organisation yet, you might want to take part in this auction and not only will you be helping the victims in Haiti but also having the opportunity to receive a beautiful  fabric pack.

HELP HAITI! AUCTION

I am auctioning this fabric to collect money for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

cotton: approx. 48cm x 112cm, 50cm x 150cm, 50cm x 142cm, 70cm x 100 cm 

All the money collected will go to a help organisation.
In Sweden, the following organisations are helping in Haiti:
Actionaid, Erikshjälpen, Hoppets stjärna, Läkare utan gränser, Läkarmissionen, Plan Sverige, Rädda Barnen, Röda korset, SOS-Barnbyar, Svenska FN-förbundet, Svenska kyrkan and Unicef Sverige.

Leave a comment with how much money you are willing to donate.
I will send the fabric to any country in the world, free of charge, of course. And who gets the fabric can choose which help organisation - Swedish or local - to donate the money to.

HELP HAITI! And tell everyone you know to join this auction!

Thank you for your help!

A Brilliant Cause

Happy New Year!

It's been ages since I visited my own blog!
The 4th of Advent has gone. So has Christmas and the New Year is now here, roaring on.

I'd like the first post of this New Year to be a colourful one and so I leave you with some ribbons I bought when I went to Lisbon, Portugal, for Christmas.









In down town Lisbon there as still a few old haberdashers with dark wooden cupboards, shelves and a million little drawers which hide treasures like these.
These ribbons were bought in a shop called "Causa Brilhante", which of course means Brilliant (Shiny) Cause! And yes, this was a brilliant cause to spend a large percentage of my already empoverished study loan!

Last Summer I bought some ribbons in the same shop so I decided to go back. I explained to the gentleman working there that I had already bought some ribbons a while ago. He opened a drawer and asked "Was it from this drawer?", then as he opened another one, "Or from this one?"..."Or from this one?"... And he opened five or six different age worn drawers with endless colours and patterns and I didn't know where to turn! So many more I hadn't seen last time!

It's great to be back!