Monthly Archives: January 2014

Project 48

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I have decided (admittedly a little belatedly..) that I will do a Project 48 this year as a complement to my solemn vow of at least 4 posts a month. I suppose I’m being a little bit chicken about it, but 52 projects feels a little daunting and I don’t really want to set myself up for certain failure (and doom..doom..doom… :p).

I will create or remake 4 somethings a month with my hands and blog about them.

Without further ado..

We had a number of friends and relatives welcoming little people into their lives last year – celebration cards!

The pink bunting card was made of fabric I saved from shortening a dress. The neat factory-sewn hem was perfect for the top of the bunting, all I needed to do was cut little triangles and thread some string through. I googled pictures of prams, found one I liked and did a freehand drawing in pencil, before going over it with an inky black pen. I tried using a sharpie but found that there was too much ink bleed, so I ended up using a freebie law firm pen which worked very well.

The blue owl card was my first attempt at sewing text, I dabbled in cross-stitch when I was little but always found that to be cross-eye inducing ( pardon the terrible pun).  The felt and the owl were also leftovers from previous projects.

I’m pretty happy with the bunting card, but I think the owl card could use more elements as it looks quite bare at the moment. Inspiration hasn’t struck yet, so for now they are sat in the card box patiently waiting their turn.

 

Skittles’ Dress #2

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Happy 2014!

I didn’t really make any New Year resolutions in 2013 save for the vague notion of keeping a monthly journal (but I managed to skip a quarter of the year..). Looking back, it seems like the first 6 months were dominated by work, and thereafter we had a series of trips with family and friends interspersed with more work and yoga.

This year, I’d like to be more deliberate about setting aside time for creativity and writing, consider this my solemn vow to post at least 4 times a month.  I have a few completed projects on the blog backburner which will help  – I think I need to reinforce the blogging habit as well as work on style and content.

And so it begins…

Christmas and Chinese New Year were not far away  at the time of sewing so it felt right to make a little red dress for Skittles. I started with the same pattern I used for Dress 1, but this time I added a little ruffle at the bottom. I considered adding a pocket and actually made one but the scale was off and I ran out of fabric.. oh well.

Lessons learnt this time are:

1. Technique –  bias tape to finish the collar and armholes before joining up the sides. I also need to work on sewing curves smoothly.
2. Sizing – I need to shrink the pattern to fit Asian toddlers. Although Skittles has since arrived and is not a dainty china princess, I ended up taking the dress a bit down the sides   as the arm holes seemed ginormous.  You can see what a difference it made!
3. Ruffles – I should make a single continuous ruffle instead of 2 separate pieces. The length of the ruffle should be at least double the diameter of the hem to make a flouncier ruffle. A 4 inch width would have worked better with the proportions.

I still have a couple of baby items to post about, then I shall move on to paper..