Tag Archives: scrap fabric

Scrap Sunday: Sunday Roast Left overs

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Did you ever get a very useful advice that has changed your life?

A wise woman who happens to have a beautiful, clever, witty and kind hearted daughter (and a few other children) once gave me an incredibly helpful advice and I really try to live up to this wisdom. Well, maybe she did not think of it as advice, rather as a joyful story about her past. Anyway, apparently this wise woman used to put all those children’s tights and socks on one big pile to be mended in front of the fire on cold winter evenings. The pile grew bigger and bigger and so did the children. Until the waiting-to-be-mended tights did not fit anymore. As a good daughter I really try to follow this rule but today I broke it.

I wanted to mend my son’s trousers (hole on the knee) as we only have two warm ones, one with and one without hole. So, I offered him a good choice of beautiful and suitable fabrics for the patch. Which he all rejected. Not really to my surprise as he is notoriously rejecting everything I have ever made for him (Apart from literally one item. But I am not complaining. Really. He never asked me for all those silly dungarees, knitted jumpers or tiger costumes.)

Much later, when I had already given up on the idea I stumbled across another – probably less manly – fabric and showed it to him. I interpreted the lack of “yuk, disgusting” as a “yes please mother, I would be over the moon if you could mend my warm trousers with this beautiful fabric and I will be grateful for the rest of my life” and went for it. I cut out two manly footballs, appliqued them to the knees of the trousers (size 3y trousers are awfully tiny, in case you didn’t know it) and took a picture of a perfect left over project: left over trousers, left over fabric and left over food on the trousers.IMG_3128

A picture of the trousers covering a pair of legs would probably look better but I personally would not wait for that. I am already looking forward to tomorrow morning’s discussion in front of the wardrobe. And then we will just continue with our routine for the rest of the winter: Boy wears trousers without silly patches, comes home from nursery with incredibly dirty trousers, mum washes and dries them over night. Boy wears them again. Spring will come eventually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great news: expanding business… or why it is sometimes just better to remain a small independent business rather than turning into a big multinational company

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Yes, my wordpress account hasn’t been hacked, it is true, business went rather well at the end of last year and I really struggled to complete all my orders so I have decided that I can not do it on my own anymore. At first, I was rather excited about all these changes but I am less now.

When you have your own little business, you are independent, can take all decisions yourself, don’t have to compromise or – even worse – realise someone else’s – potentially silly and ugly – design. You can just work on your own pace, you are confident because you are creating something you can fully identify with. And now all of a sudden I have this rather bossy project leader, who does not listen to my ideas! Sure, she talked to the customer and made all the sketches for the design, chose the swatches and went back to the customer to discuss the final design. I only had to actually bring the design from paper into real life fabric. But, as I said, none of my ideas were even listened to! And then the fear, when I had to show the progress of my work…. I thought, joining with someone would take stress out of my life but it has instead increased it. But enough moaning, I guess, that is potentially dangerous anyway, I wouldn’t be the first one getting into trouble at work after a few imprudent comments online.

Lets talk about the actual project, the task was to make an apron with pockets for a nursery teacher who uses a lot of cards in her work.

So here is all the paperwork, from first sketching to measurements of the cards, notes about colour preferences,… and on the right side the chosen swatches….

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And that is were troubles started. Said teacher is a really nice person so as you can see, all swatches got ticked as she just found all of them lovely.

So, the new task was to make sure that all fabrics got used, in the – how I would have thought at least – most sensible way to make sure they match somehow.

So, in the next team meeting, I quickly realised that my opinion is not particularly valued …. Clearly the person taking lots of notes is in charge instead.

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– Pink is the main colour to be used! No discussion allowed! This is how it is! And the flowers will be the big pocket! Because it is the second nicest fabric!

– But…

– No but. That is how you will do it.

Clearly someone needs to go on a workshop about team work or leader ship or whatever.

Anyway, all that had left to me was to actually make the apron. I had sweaty hands when I nervously showed it to the project leader.  I can not describe the relief when the rather austere glance in her face turned into a smile and a “I like it, it looks beautiful”! IMG_3101

Phew. I am relieved, and I have to admit the result looks actually rather nice, even though I would have arranged things slightly differently (and in fairness, the appliques to use two of the many fabrics were actually my idea…. don’t tell her, but I just did it, without really asking)

Anyway, the awful experience of not actually being the creative head of my project have made me think again. I want to go back to my own small business. No other bossy people involved. I am currently looking into the legal side of undoing this fusion…. shouldn’t be a too big problem, considering that there has never been a written contract. I will keep you updated.

In the meantime, I wish you all a very belated happy new year! I hope all your holidays have been great and that you have settled back into reality with lots of good new years resolutions. As you can see, it has taken me two weeks to settle back. Sorry for this delay, it will get better. Probably.

Scrap Sunday: Leaving Presents

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I know, I know I promised to show you something you will need sunglasses for but as it is already Sunday I will have to talk about the latest scrap project first, the potential eye hurting post will have to wait.

My daughter had her last day in nursery on Friday, she will start big school in January so the pressure was quite high to produce some good gifts as unfortunately she has really a few great teachers and assistants in that stupid nursery!

She has a reputation of a …. ahem…. very creative style and some of the cloths I had made for her had been complimented a lot and are definitely recognisable so I really wanted to use some of these fabrics for the gifts.  The plan was to make make up bags for the 4 main persons in her nursery life and necklaces to hold the keys/badges or whatever they keep carrying around their necks for all the others. I was a little unsure if I should just use the same fabric for everyone (cute little strawberries on yellowish background – she had a dress and a skirt made out of it) or different ones and I actually got the answer just on Thursday (I always knew my last minute approach to get things done will eventually pay off) when one of the teachers mentioned that she really loved one of her dresses and she that she wished she could wear it herself. On my way home I decided to make different ones… if I could find that particular fabric the teacher had been talking about. I knew there was only a tiny amount left and that I had not thrown it away because it was really pretty. At first I did not find it, only when I eventually gave up and looked for something else instead (classic, I know). I decided to actually put a mini pocket on the bag rather than making all those boxed pleats the other bags will feature, as this particular detail had been pointed out by the teacher.

I think the idea is brilliant, the execution wasn’t really (good enough for the occasion, the amount of fabric left and the pressure I was under). I have lined all bags with cotton plus interface which makes the inner rather stiff and in the case of the jersey fabric outside, this was just not great as the jersey is almost glued to the inner. It is looks like a jersey dress that shows of all your rather not so great bumps and rolls 🙂 I should have cut out the exterior bigger or keep a softer inner. Anyway, it looks funny and it will definitely always remind her of the little person wearing the same kind of dress.

For the other bags I used the pattydoo pattern that I have previously used to use up some of my own skirts left over (I am just realising, that idea isn’t exactly new).

I have to apologise for the quality of the pictures, we were quite in a rush. I had to finish the last bag Friday morning and then the whole family, visiting mother in law included, had to help me getting everything together. Present wrapping, card writing, picture taking in the darkness of London 8.30am…. But we made it.

Strawberry skirt:

Corduroy dungarees:

Rainbow skirt:

For everybody else, I made the key holder necklace out of the strawberry fabric – I can proudly say that this is a great scrap fabric use up as I am sure you will always know lots of people who have to wear these kind of things. So it is a quick little fun present and not at all over the top. Unfortunately, I have no picture of the strawberry version (rush, remember), so I took one of the trial version out of a different material.

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I made a trial first to see if I can cut the material straight or if I have to cut it on the bias. To be honest it would probably lie around the neck better if cut on the bias but the straight version seemed good enough for me. Especially, if you overlap the ends before bringing them both through the ring bit and stitching them together.

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And in case if you were wondering where I got the clasps from – ebay is full of them.

So to sum it up, both bags and key holder thingy are excellent scrap use up projects and with the choice of fabrics you can actually create some fairly simple  and yet very personal gifts who will be very appreciated… although probably not as much as  cards written by a 5 year old (for the “lanch pipl”) 🙂 – you can’t compete with that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scrap Sunday: Phew, done (well, not really)

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IMG_3014The scrap skirt is officially done -well, apart from the hook, can’t find them, might have to buy new ones. I might have donated them to a sewing class, thinking that I will never ever sew a skirt.

I have only ever been working on it on Fridays, so it took for ages.

I think we can file this one under “a few lessons learnt”. It is not bad but also really not what I had in mind, so lets recapitulate:

I had this burgundy, very fine corduroy, a huge piece of scrap from a previous project. I wanted to make a skirt with 8 panels, each cut on the bias to show off the lines of the corduroy when they meet on each of the eight seams. Great idea I think, well not idea, great remembering from skirts that I have owned many kilos ago.

I did not have quite enough fabric to do that and it had been pointed out to me that since the corduroy was so fine, no one could actually see the lines. So I cut it straight. Big mistake as now I have an awkward seam in the middle of the front for no reason which actually blocks the fabric from falling nicely. Once I realised I had to cut it straight, I should have gone for 6 panels to avoid that seam.

I wanted too many things at the same time, nice A-line skirt with godets, cheekily showing of some kind of patterned fabric. Oh, and the whole skirt rather short.

The proportions of the whole thing are wrong, the corduroy can’t even hold the A-line shape as it’s seams are broken by the godets.

And the godets? Don’t get me even started. Too small, or rather too short. And maybe too many.

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On the other hand, I still love the colours and their combination. I also love the unplanned overlocked hem. Remember I only wanted to neaten the edge and then turn once, to keep the godets as long as possible and it actually looked rather nice. I did consider to do that again in blue but actually my blue thread was not quite the same tone so I kept the white edge.

And the blue lining is really cool, I think. Remember, you can’t see it but I know it is there 🙂

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Will I ever wear it? No, most likely not. I guess, this would have been a good calico project, I know now how not to do it and what I could have done better (I am now even thinking of a simple  A-line, with one big pleat in the front, more or less from the top, and that is where the patterned fabric is hiding – but that might also be a bit too extreme – I will definitely not try that one with nice fabric, but 6 panels with longer godets would definitely look good), so I do not regret the project as such but it is a real shame that I have wasted that cute patterned fabric as I only had one fat quarter bought on my weekend away in Oxford a couple of weeks ago. Clearly, I should have found a better use for it.

Anyway, with or without hook, I consider this project done and can move straight to the next one. Which has it’s deadline next Friday but I should really have it finished by Monday. Which happens to be tomorrow. I don’t want to reveal too much yet but you might consider wearing sunglasses next time you are looking for new posts on here 🙂