Promise

Sometimes you have to spend all your time in the garden... Spring is here and there's so much to see and do.

I'm building up my fern collection for the damp shade under the willow trees and I just love the way that the fronds are unfurling at the moment.

My hellebores for the same area of the garden are growing nicely in their pots - they started off as (cheaper) tiny seedlings but are now big enough to produce flowers, and the colours are lovely.

I've spent my time tidying everywhere, the polytunnel is now looking acceptable (point of note:- if you leave your turnips in the tunnel they bolt and reach the roof with bright yellow flowers!) and I even have one surviving pea plant at the end. I planted four for overwintering (last August) but I was too keen and there was too much growth last year and they just rotted (a common problem in the tunnel).  However there are pea pods on my survivor so fingers-crossed!!

My seedlings (16th April planting) were grown enough for potting on and moving from the window ledge to the tunnel. Here we have a couple of different tomato varieties, the one germinating cucumber, peas and mangetout. Oh and if anyone wants foxgloves, shout! I have loads planted from seeds collected last year (a lovely variety called Pam's Choice - creamy white with pink throat).  And there's the one surviving pepper plant from last year - I don't have much success with them either, hot and damp tunnel issue again....

While I've been tidying and potting, Mal and his Dad have been busy designing and constructing new veg beds.  The long term plan is to move all of the veg growing to the area next to the tunnel, and last year he built a couple of beds.  But we decided because of our heavy clay solid and poor drainage, we needed something a bit more substantial.

More pictures to follow - these are yesterday, and two beds were completed today I just didn't get around to pictures. I have to say they are mightily impressive!

I am Number One

Last Sunday I did my first Tri of the year - hopefully there will be more to follow! I did the same one for the first time last year and enjoyed it even with a hideous chest infection. But then the rest of the year was a write off with various other cold/coughs (all attributed to evil work air-con).  I'm really hoping that I can keep the exercise levels up (training is to strong a word for it!) and actually improve on my times rather than just getting round. 

Saying that I did actually finish 2 minutes faster this year! The 400m pool swim was endured (having only been swimming a couple of times this year!) - but I wasn't first out in my wave (the first wave as well hence I was #1!!) so didn't have that couple of second leading the race like last year! I was quickly over taken by other Club racers but I did manage to catch up with the girl who'd beaten me out of the pool. That's the trouble with being in the first wave - there's no one to chase down and overtake...

The outward leg of the bike phase is ever so slightly uphill - so it's not obvious you're gaining height, it just feels like you're knackered!! Returning felt so easy just spinning along - I probably should have been working harder!

Out of transition for the is straight up hill so you feel knackered and wibbly legged but after 5 minutes or so I started to get back into running rhythm. I was feeling surprisingly good on the run phase, even with the lack of training. The chest infection must have taken it out if me last year. 

Finishing the race I did feel I should have pushed myself further, especially as I realised afterwards that I was only a few second behind one of the Club gents, so might heve been able to catch him if I'd upped my run pace a bit.

Oh well there's always next year (and Deva Diva in the summer, and Newbury in autumn)....

Me Made May!!

I've been planning for this since I started sewing and heard about it on the Blogosphere last year, and now it's finally here.

If you haven't heard already, it's all about pledging to wear your own clothes throughout May as much or as little as you want with no pressure of panic sewing beforehand.

More about it on Zoe's blog here.

And this is my pledge:

I've gone with five days a week as at the weekends (in May) I'm usually pottering around in the garden wearing scruffs.  I'm hoping that this will highlight the things that are missing from my handmade wardrobe and help me plan what to sew for the rest of the year (rather than succumb to the latest Blog fad!!)

Fan girl

Looks like I'm turning into a bit of Deer and Doe fan girl - first there was the Belladone, then the Chardon, and now we have the Sureau.....

I had this grey/blue linen sat around for a few months - I think it came from Abakhan and the plan was always to make this dress and jazz it up with some piping.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

I cut a 38 bust and graded it to 40 a the waist and added an inch to the length of the bodice and the fit is not bad (I'm getting better).  It might be a 1/4 inch too long in the bodice now, but meh who's going to notice?!

Oh look, a zip

I didn't do anything fancy with the side zip, just followed the instructions.  They're really easy, the instructions that is, and the dress came together without any head scratching, procrastinating, or the seam ripper.

I *love* the contrast piping, and the wooden heart buttons (found on eBay). I'm so impressed with the finish as well (pats self on back). I tried to not cut corners or rush and it really shows.

And I was even a little OTT on the finish on the inside - every seam is bound.... Well it's linen, it's going to fray like billy'o (although it was fine when I was sewing). 

Possibly a bit too much?

All in all, I love this dress!!! Yay!!!!

Slow, slow, quick...

Now usually it takes me ages to finish a quilt, and it sits there for weeks between stages (evidence the half finished Butterfly quilt top, the finished Battenburg quilt top, and the half quilted Wintersmith quilt).  However, the first grandson of my lovely friend and colleague Laura arrived 10 weeks early and I decided that he'd need a quilt to keep him warm!

As I said in this post, this was made from a charm pack of Kate Spain's Daydreams collection for Moda (I'm a little bit of a Kate Spain fan...), and 5 FQs of solid pastel colours - ideal for a baby quilt I thought.

Given I started with the charm pack I decided to keep it simple (and quick), just cutting the FQs into 5'' squares, and then joining everything together to make the quilt 10 squares in both directions.  I didn't think about the placement at all, just divided everything into ten piles then joined everything in each pile to make the rows.

The backing and binding fabrics came from the craft cotton bins at Abakhan. I love the marble blue sparkly one - might have to go back and see if they have any more! For some reason I was being a complete spanner and it took me a few tries to join enough fabric together for the back (rushing, not thinking).

As the design was so simple, the quilting stayed simple as well, just joining the corners of the squares to divide them on the diagonal.  I didn't mark or draw anything at all, doing it all by eye.

Two for one

What everyone needs in their life is a skirt with sharks on it… After being unsuccessful at finding that Lobster fabric everyone has been blogging about, I gave up and resorted to this Boden Sharks and Divers fabric that I found on eBay.  It’s cotton, but quite a heavy weight and a bit stiff – and it also resists pins (or they leave marks).  I've had the Deer and Doe Chardon skirt pattern for ages so I decided to give it a go with this fabric.

  

I traced between two sizes (38 and 40) to give me more room at the waist, and went with the standard length.  I decided that this was to be a winter skirt so I lined it with some leftover lightweight cotton (from my Tova top), by just cutting out the front and back pieces again.  I joined the outer, lining and waist band together at the top but in hindsight I think this was a bit of a faux pas as there ended up being a lot of fabric at the waist.  What I should have done (and will do next time!) is join the lining to the bottom of the waistband and then the  top of waistband to the outer (as per the design).

The zip went in without problems, except I stitched too close to the teeth and then couldn't get it undone!  After redoing that it went fine, and I hand stitched the lining to the zip on the inside.  It’s not my finest work but who’s going to see the inside anyway?!

I’m not great at predicting what items will look like, and if they'll suit me but I have to say I love this skirt! It actually makes me look like I have a waist and hips J  But then I realised that with such a high waist (nothing like all the other items in my wardrobe), I had absolutely nothing to wear with it…. So I had to make another Sewaholic Renfrew top!

This is my second Renfrew – unlike the first it has full length sleeves, and I shortened it significantly (about 4’’) so that it just sits on my waist.  The front/back pieces I shortened to the line on the pattern that’s marked for where you add/remove length, then worked out the difference between this width and the original width to subtract that from the waistband piece.  All worked out well I think.  The fabric is some ponte roma that I picked up on eBay (hmmm, bit of a trend with this post).  Question is, how long can I manage to keep it white?!

A quilt a day...

I only started cutting the fabric yesterday afternoon!! Amazed at how quickly it's come together, although it is a charm pack of Kate Spain's Daydream collection for Moda (along with 5 FQs of matching solids from http://www.simplysolids.co.uk/) so a little cheating!!

To maximise the fabric used I just went for a simple 10x10 patchwork, ending up with a quit just under 4' square.

More pictures to follow (in daylight, not with phone camera)!

Just needs a name now...

Striped bats

I know I haven't blogged anything for ages so there’s a huge backlog of stuff to show.  I was really good a couple of weeks back and had a blitz on the outstanding sewing items – I really should do the same here! So in no particular order….

Here’s my Named Blair batwing shirt.  This was a labour of love really, the fabric is really really light jersey (Viscose stretch from Minerva) and significantly different to only other jersey I've used (for my as yet unblogged Named Dakota dress and Sewaholic Renfrew top).  I didn't realise it would be such a pain to sew – or cut! Trying to cut it out the fabric was moving about so much I ended up cutting each piece individually rather than folding the fabric over, and next time I'm definitely going to break out the rotary cutter…

Construction is pretty easy, only the front, back and two sleeves so it comes together really quickly and I stabilised the shoulder seems with a bit of leftover cotton selvage.  I did sort of try to match up the stripes on the front/back but it wasn't really going to work for the sleeves.

I got a twin needle to try out…. I did a few practise runs on scraps and then tried around the neck line.  I don’t know what happened but it chewed up the fabric (too light maybe? I was even using my walking foot!) and I had to unpick half a dozen times. Eventually I gave up and just put in a single row of stitches.

So given all that, I’m not really impressed with my finish on the top. However I love the loose floatiness of it, and it’s definitely something I’ll wear in the summer over vest tops.  I’d like to make another in a slightly heavier fabric, but the trauma is blocking the inspiration at the moment…..

Stormy seas

I'm in the process of creating a permanent sewing space in the snug at the moment.  Usually I would be sewing on the dining room table but with Mal at home more often now its a bit unfair, so I've engineered a space in the snug with some furniture moving.  The snug feels a bit empty and echos even though its such a tiny room, so it needs padding out with soft furnishings, and now my machine has a home I decided I need a mat.  My favourite quilt from last year was Oceania and I had some triangles left over so made this:

It's a generous size to fit my machine on, and I'm going to use a double layer of wadding to help deaden the machine noise.  I've also got loads of half triangles from the end of the strips that I cut the triangles from.  I've sewn them all together to make little rectangles, but I don't know what I'm going to use them for - they're only 2'' by 3.5''. Any ideas?

Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday with Kelly

Distraction

I know I should be finishing Wintersmith, but the draw of the next project was too strong (again - and I have the house to myself for a few days so can drape fabric everywhere)...

When I designed/made the Papillon quilt I intentionally only used half of the patterned fabric so that I would have enough left over to make a charity quilt.  The plan originally was to make something very similar, so I cut all of the fabric into 3.5'' squares.  But I have another idea...  I want to do a kind of pixelated look, with darker colours from the bottom right, and getting lighter towards the top left.

This is my first layout.

I've taken the photo then greyscaled it and blurred it to see if it would give the effect I wanted:

I think from these two images, I can see a couple of squares that I want to re-position (brightest pink in top half to be moved down). I'll leave it for a few days and think about it as well!