Summer Clothes and other such things

Recently I have had the pleasure of creating a marvellous (if I do say so myself) skirt on my new nifty little dress making model. The pockets took a while because I am in capable of sticking to instructions but I'm pretty chuffed with the outcome! Before using the vegetable died cotton I had to wash it at thirty degrees with salt then wash it again to make sure the colours stayed... I think you have to do this with all vegetable died material. Cotton House in London stock a lot of these fabrics. I used the same pattern which I used for this dress and shirt... It maybe my favourite pattern ever.  

In other news, working full-time is exhausting. I've updated my Flickr stream, I am photographing nursery children again, I discovered the joys of Inktense pencils and the book- 'The 100 year old man' (extremely good read). Currently I am on 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Morlan which is equally entertaining. 

Quilt

I FINISHED THE QUILT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON SINCE OCTOBER!!!!!

Notebooks

   
    For Mother's day this year I used some old lino stamps of flowers and printed them onto card. I then sewed it on to a wad of folded paper to create a notebook. Easy and simple! ... I actually used oil paints instead of block printing ink. It took longer to dry and probably not as professional, but I found it worked just fine (it's also a lot cheaper)

Tissue Paper Flowers

           Sometime towards the end of February I changed jobs again. This time to an art shop called CassArt and now I'm working full time.

          It's a really good art shop and quite a small company. Which is nice... The people there are lovely and it's a great working enviroment. 

         We do workshops for children and there's a studio upstairs for adult workshops. Last weekend I ran a tissue paper flower workshop which is the first one I've done.

         This weekend it's bunny masks but luckily for me I've got the weekend off! Which means paying attention to this blog and updating everyone on everything(if anyone actually reads these ramblings)  

My Brother's Wedding

My Brother is called Thomas and it just so happens that he is getting married this summer- hip hip hooray. These are his invitations. I didn't make them (If I had, they'd be a thousand times better) but they are cute!

Quilt

I've been working on a quilt since October... This is my first quilt so I'm relying a lot on a book called 'Patchwork Quilting and Appliqué: The Complete guide to all the Essential

Techniques' by Reader's Digest. This book has actually been a great help and contains easy step to step guides. You can find the book on Amazon for around £5 (second hand)

Of course I gave the Cloth House, London, a visit for the fabrics... But to save money I got the plain fabrics from my local (cheap) fabric shop. 

The picture on the right shows a rough layout of the patchwork... this is before they were sewn together. I took this photo to outline which patches to sew together. Currently I am just completing the patchwork... I still need to add a border and quilt it!  

A summery post in the middle of winter

Last summer I created my own version of the McCALL's 1 hour dress... M6102. I must admit I adapted it slightly because the pattern confused me... I often do this with sewing but usually end up de-stitching everything. Anyway, this time it didn't go wrong. The only thing was that it turned out to be VERY short. Infact, it's more of a long top, I have to wear jeans with it. I do love this pattern but next time I use it, I will definitely allow more material for the body of the dress.