Old Projects part 4

This was my very first cross stitch kit started way back in 1990/91 when I was pregnant.
And yes it is still not finished.

And I doubt it ever will be finished.

You see I did not realise until after I had run out of thread, that the stranded cotton is meant to be split. So I just used all 6 strands through out. When I figured out why I did not have enough, no problem I thought just go buy some more after all you have the chart listing the make and colours needed.

I carried on regardless and it took some time before I realised the shading was different. Well of course dye lots, I know that now and I also know to read instructions a couple of times over.

So now my work lies in a box in the sewing room. Every now and again I 'find' it, remember it, and smile.
Although I do think it would have turned out rather good, if I had paid attention in the first place. These days I take much more time on things. Was it youth, impatience, loss of brain cells in pregnancy. More likely all three.

Next time I have something special to share.

Sew Vala. x  

Rip it up and start again!

Hello everyone,

In my last post I mentioned I had been knitting again. well I did but it was months ago.

I started on this pattern. An absolutely lovely twin set with delightful ribbing pattern around the neck with matching ribbing at the lower part of the cardigan.

Taken from this book. Which is filled with fantasic period inspired designs. Mine was such a bargain. The book can be found on Amazon here although it does have a different cover it is the same book.

Well I got so far on the back of the jumper before putting the knitting down, when I eventually came back to it, two things had happened.

Happy the puppy had made a tasty treat of my needle and chewed off the end. Luckly all the knitting was still on the needle. As for the other well I am now a bit bigger than I was when I had started this jumper and there is now no way it is going to fit me.
So decission time, do I pull it all off and start again. Nope, because by now I was a little bored with this pattern and the idea of making two items, I also know being the very slow knitter I am it would not be ready until next summer (hence my love of chunky knits).
I had bought lots of wool enought to make both parts of the twin set. Off I went on a pattern hunt and have decided life should be brought to this little beauty instead.

Sirdar 9522. What is really cute about this pattern, is that the flower is part of the button hole, How sweet is that.

I checked the wool amounts and I have plenty to make the long sleave version in the pink colour shown above. And enough to make the short sleave in the contrast colour I had chosen and can you believe I can not remember what colour that was. I think it was a paler pink to tone with the dark pink rather than contrast against it, but there is a 50/50 chance that I am very wrong.



I am not going to give myself a time limit on this. Because I have a waiting list of items to be made up for other people. Some are presents and two are comissions, (yeah me. two people have asked me to make for them, how cool is that!)  As long as I do not put more weight on, it should fit. It will be less forgiving the the tight fitted twinset.

It will be a very long time before there is an update on this piece but I wanted to share with you what has kept me away from my little blog for so long.

Has anyone else had a change of heart during a project, or even come to the conclusion that they are growing faster than the project they are working on (pregancy excluded, of course) ?

Love to you all Vala x

By the way I love my new size, I now actually have a figure known as curvy and it is great.

Progress on Plain Pattern Project.

I am taking part in the plain pattern project over at new vintage lady. My choice was

Vogue 8146. I have previous made the jacket and never got around to making the dress because I decided the fabric I had chosen was just too boring. However I had already cut out the pattern and dress before I came to feel this dress is DULL.

So I was rather pleased when NVL hosted this sew-along, it would give me reason to finish it and then make it twice more with more interesting fabric and details.

However this was not to be. Yesterday I made the facings and started on the front darts, all was going well even though I realised that since cutting the dress out several months ago I have put on quite a bit of weight. This didn't matter as I knew I wasn't going to be wearing this dress anyway.

And this moring I did the back darts. And the sewed one part of the back to the front and was pinning on the other half back when I suddenly realised my mistake



I had sewn the other half back on to the wrong side of the fabric,

So I ended up with two left half backs. This happened because the fabric has no 'wrong side' and I wasn't paying attention to this when I drew out the darts.
Unfortunally due to the weave of the fabric I am unable to unpick the darts and to be honest I can't really be bothered.

So I think is more Earl Grey, while browsing my patterns and start again. With an all new plain patttern project.

Right then lets put the kettle on..

p.s I know the silly little pictures are not usually my style. But today I just kinda needed them. And I quite liked it, hope you did to.

Sew Vala.

My second item of clothing, finally.

Well here it is ladies (and gentlemen) finally i have made a piece of clothing. Well sort of, it is more of a re-fashion perhaps.

From this a charity shop buy, I loved the bottom half of the dress, it has a net underskirt attached to help keep the fullness of the skirt but I personally am not comfortable wearing strappless tops.

And this a much loved Monsoon dress that no longer can be zipped over my hips.

However the top part of the dress still fits.

I wanted to revamp the colour as I thought the pale blue did not quite go with the black. I used dylon burlesque red to create purple

As you may remember from yesterday's blog, which can be found here,  I also dyed my hand in the process. Yep its still purple, I am begining to think its perminant.

Ok, so I cut off the top of the black dress. I then sewed it to the inside of the purple dress. Unpicked the bottom section of the zip on the purple dress and cut off all the fabric below the now attached
black dress. I added a satin ribbon to cover where the two dresses meet and then sewed the lower section of the zip to the black skirt.

It wasn't all plain sailing I had to unpick and sew the satin ribbon twice as I had missed a section of about 4cm right at the front. And the zip I also sewed twice first by hand but I have never used an invisible zip before and I stitched to close so that when the zip was pulled it caught on the stitches. So I then machine sewed the zip into place and unpicked the handstitching.

It's still not perfect but I don't know how to recify this problem. My first thought was to make a detachable bow to cover but then I figured when I sat down it would come off. So my second guess is make a sash that fastens in a bow at the back. But as the dress has a slight drop waist would this just add bulk over the hips. Mmmmm, sugestions please.

Anyway here is the finished project

 I am really happy in how this turned out. I hope you lovely people like it too.

Happy sewing Vala.

some time later...

Well half term has been and gone. We had our first 'family' holiday, myself and three teens with my man and one of his teens. We spent a few days at Alton Towers, and a good time was had by all.
Once back came the usual round of holiday colds but mostly all recovered now.

After a few days of continual handbag sewing, I fancied doing something abit different. The time had come to pick up the old knitting needles as I figured I needed a change of texture to work with. Now I have three different knitted bags just waiting for the lining and the right handles to be attached.

When my man discovered I could knit, well that was the begining of yet even more requests (needless to say my daughters are still waiting for the aformentioned pirate and cosplay outfits and my son his cloak.) Being the old punk that he is my fella has asked for nothing more than a Dennis the mennis jumper. So being the 'of course my lovely, anything for you' kinda gal I popped into town bought a pattern I could 'mess' with and dk wool. I dont think I even got up to doing a couple of rows when I thought, 'not a chance bud' and gave up with the dk wool. So next it was up the the out of town store for the big ole chunky stuff and big, big needles. and now there is one arm and 3/4 of the back so far completed. :)

But of course this has taken me away from work so today I have been hard at it. Before the holiday I had ordered quite a few purse frames and set about the first one. unfortunally I could not get the pattern to fit and so put it away until later. So my plan today was to figure out and finish the purse. Some time later and many many rude words and stampping of feet, I still cant get the fabric to fit. so again it has been put aside, the unfortunate side effect is I ordered about ten of these particular frames. ah well.

Not to be put off, I picked up a pattern I had started designing in April, I was good this time and had worked the design out on card and glue, then transfered this to calico. and today I picked up the fabric and had a go. Even until the last stitch I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. Pictures to follow next time as by the time I had finished it was dark and energy lightbulbs with my camera are not a good combination. A hint though I came up with the design while watching a flash animation the other was working on. He's a scienist, it will be called the beaker bag ! well for now it is until I can come up with anything better.

Tomorrow, the weekend yeah cool. If the other still has manflu and stays home it will be the usual round of kids taxi and cmpletion of bags. If we are lucky and the manflu has gone it will be BBQ and beer, with my new favourite drink margaritas, good bye long island ice tea (the old favourite),

night all happy sewing

sewvala xx