Sewing: Round up May 2020

I've been really getting my Sewjo on this month. In addition to the hats and the baby leggings that I made, I have been printing and sticking some of the many PDF patterns I have purchased recently. I have to remake the leggings because the test square printed larger than it should have. I had assumed that because the hat pattern printed perfectly that all of the patterns would. Oops, newbie lesson learnt. The first pair will be put away for a long while until they fit.

First up I have been working on Everything Your Mama Made, ladies essentials sleep bra. I bought a 2nd hand a vest top that has fat-shrinking support through the body. I thought this would make a good addition to the bra so I have cut this out with the bra front. The bra front is the outer fabric of the vest top. I ran out of vest top for the back so I decided to cut up a too small pair of leggings and sew the legs together to make the back. I already decided to use the elastic from the leggings waistband as the underbust band for the bra. The fabric is thinner than I'd like but I  don't want to use the good stuff if it's not going to work. I forgot to take a before picture of the vest top but here are the leggings.

Nothing exciting. Just plain old leggings. This is how they look currently. 

Hopefully June will bring the mock up of this bra completed and I can move on to the good fabric. I am undecided whether to include the power mesh type stuff in this mock up or not. Watch this space.

Secondly, last month, I worked on making a pair of Over it all's in age 6-12 months. Another goodie from MBJM. I cut out the outer fabric and was just waiting on the solid pink jersey to come in my order today. Unfortunately the pink was refunded as it was out of stock so now I have this gorgeous fabric cut out and nothing to match with it. 

I considered making it reversible with a different fabric but I kinda had my heart set on a plain solid colour. Again, not sure exactly yet how this will progress but watch this space!

And thirdly, and I think lastly, I made a new hat for my 4 year old B. I previously posted about the matching pair I made for B and her baby sister. Well Mummy very daftly tucked B's hat into my pocket while out walking. B should have worn it but you know 4 year olds! I gave said 4 year old a piggy back and when I lowered her down I slid her over the back pocket that the hat was hanging out of. I believe that is when it fell out but having baby in the sling on my front I wouldn't have been able to see it. After around 30 minutes of playing in the brook we went to go home, realised it was missing and could not find it anywhere. We were all very tired so even decided to go back the next day to look properly. There was no hat. I imagine someone picked it up which is great if another little girl or boy will enjoy it. So now B (who screamed every second of the way home for her lost hat) needed a new hat. She only wanted one that matched her sister's hat. Of course being stupid I promised her another matching hat despite using up every bit of fabric on the first 2. I went back to my original source. No luck. I tried eBay and found both fabrics but only available from 2 different suppliers and as part of bundles with other fabrics I didn't want. I love my daughter but this is not an acceptable solution. So I let her loose on picking her own fabric. Well, almost. I narrowed down a selection of affordable ones that I knew she'd like and let her choose. She chose well. Princesses on 1 side and sparkly unicorns on the other.

I love the unicorns. They are beautiful and the fabric was nicely thick and lovely to work with. I fussy cut the princesses because there was a lot if white space in between and I didn't want lots of partial of princesses. I wanted to see the whole of them. This was my first time being picky. I usually just get as many pattern pieces fitted on as possible and think fussy cutters are wasteful but this was totally worth it for a good outcome. I won't be sewing this way on a regular basis but the hat is pretty.

Just look at all this wastage between the pieces. Hopefully I can fine some use for them.

I did follow some advice that suggests to use the hat top from the next size up. This made it easier to attach the hat top to the sides but did seem to make the hat finish up a bigger size.

I feel I've had a pretty busy month. Lots happening but not lots finished. I know we are half way through June when I am posting this but, ya know, 5 kids, lockdown and crafting leaves little time for blogging! I'll get straight on to June's update.

Chickens!

Let's talk chickens. Last year I got 3 ex-commercial chickens from BHWT. They were rather bald, completely terrified and very flappy. As a bird novice I had to get my husband to get them out of the box because I was too scared of the flappy wings! 

This is the first photo of them. All trying to escape from me taking photos by hiding in the nest box. The one facing us, Blue, ended up being the most confident and bullying the one at the bottom of the pecking order, Brenda. This was the end of June 2019. Blue only lived 2 months, she just died in the coop one day. So for the last 8 months we had Brenda, the one with the most feathers and Bok Bok, with the least. Brenda was and still is impossible to touch and catch, she keeps her distance but now loves to be around us and is no longer scared. Bok Bok was put to sleep last week with suspected EYP. She had only ever laid soft shell eggs, stopped all together in the winter and come spring never restarted so I assume she was laying internally. 

Bok Bok on the left and Brenda. Blue sticking her head out. First day free ranging.

So this brings me to the point of the post. I am down to one lonely hen. And she is lonely. This hen that has always stayed as far away from humans as possible is now waiting at the back door for us to come out and when we do she follows us closely. She nearly killed me walking circles around my legs while I hung the washing out, haha. Long story short she needs company. So two new girls have arrived. One Bluebell and one Black Star.

This picture was taken by my 7 year old son. He did a much better job than I did. I kept missing them and getting bodies with no heads.

At the front is my Bluebell, Echo and at the back is Delta, a Black Star. Both are point of lay hens collected 4 days ago. They are a little over 16 weeks. 

Brenda hates them so far. This is my first integration with hens and so I am likely doing it wrong but she never passes up an opportunity to hang on to the feathers at the back of their necks. There has been no blood so far but we are only allowing supervised contact for short periods as the two young ones end up stressed. I know the pecking order needs to be established but I am not yet confident with how much is okay and when to leave alone so erring on the side of caution.

The new girls are slowly getting more confident when Brenda is not hassling them and they are learning to come out of the coop on their own now. I had to physically put them in the run on the first day so they could have a drink and something to eat and put them back in the coop for bed.

I'm hoping in time Brenda will learn to love her new friends and that they provide us with some yummy eggs as a bonus. I will of course update our progress here.

Sewing: Lightning Leggings

So I made another thing. This one is 6-12 months for my 8 week old baby. This is the fastest thing I have ever sewed. I've mostly done bags with one tunic dress for my older daughter but they have all been lined to hide the seams. Some have needed fastenings, bags need straps which are fiddly and annoying. Last week's Sandcastle Bucket Hat had loads of steps and was reversible so took me an age. The beauty of the lightning leggings was that it was made from jersey fabric, my first time using it, and unlined. So I just had 5 piece to sew together. No hemming because I did the cuffed version. No elastic in the waistband. Just a few almost straight lines of stitching. 

I only have a regular sewing machine which I purchased second hand. It only came with the standard foot and the cheap ebay set I bought don't seem to like my machine and breaks needles! This means I'm limited to the range of stitches I can use. I went for the lightning shaped stretch stitch and it did an amazing job. As I said, first time sewing with stretchy fabric and I am chuffed to bits I managed to make it work. I did two rows of stitching, the first made the seam and the second was in the seam allowance to stop the edges unravelling. Most people would, it seems, use a coverstitch or overlock machine. I'm pretty sure I can't use my coverstitch because of my foot issue so the lightning stitch was the best option and worked brilliantly. I tried a regular zig zag on scrap fabric but it made the edges stretched and wavy so won't be doing that again! 

Anyway, here is the finished product. 

It's too big for my small one yet (not helped by my printing test square being bigger than it should have been, oops) and is in the wash currently. A) hoping it will shrink and B) hoping the stain that appeared on the fabric in storage will wash out. Typically, despite trying to avoid it altogether the stain has ended up on the very front.  

Sewing: Sandcastle Bucket Hat

So I have recently discovered sewing patterns by Made by Jack's Mum. They can be found on Etsy. I have dabbled a bit with sewing but with a new baby in cloth nappies these patterns have really sparked my interest. Regular shop bought clothes do not leave enough space for a cloth bum and specific clothes for cloth are expensive. Fabric is expensive too but I at least get the pleasure of buying it and sewing it 😂. 

The first pattern I have tried from MBJM is the Sandcastle Bucket Hat. I'm not sure this was the easiest to start with as a relative sewing newbie. It is all curves and is pretty fiddly not to mention it is reversible so needs double the amount of pieces cut. Still, I learnt alot from this project and despite a few blips and lots of unpicking stitches and swearing, I have two passable hats and they look pretty damn cute on. 

The picture is a bit pants. I left the baby inside so was rushing and had a chicken 'helping'. I'm suprised her feet never made it in the shot as she was hoping for something yummy to eat. The hats were a definite disappointment to her.

My blips included sewing my age 4 year top piece to my age 6-12 month sides. Then later on I was nearly finished and the baby woke from a nap so I rushed to finish the last bit of top stitching. I ended up folding and stitching the side of the hat underneath the top stitching. Again I had to unpick. Lesson learnt, rushing does not save you time. 

Both hats are the same, just different sizes. Both have yellow on one side and pink on the other. My 4 year old picked the fabrics from my stash. They are very light weight which is not a bad thing while wearing but means they are hard to stand up for a photograph. I put a lightweight interfacing in the brim to stop it being too floppy.

I finished these hats yesterday and have already cut out the pattern for my next MBJM project. Watch this space for leggings suitable for a fluffy baby bum.

Welcome everyone

Welcome to my blog. My first post will be a little about me and the direction I hope to be taking here.

I am mum to 5. 3 boys; 13, 11 and 7 and 2 girls; 4 and 7 weeks. The blog is about my life. My life as a mum, as a spinner, knitter, gardener, consumer. There are too many aspects of me and my life to just pin down one part of me to blog about. I have many goals I want to achieve and sometimes I need to research and can't find the information that I want or presented in a way that suits me so I want to share my experiences.

I first drafted this post over 3 years ago but now I am branching more into sewing and less in to knitting the want for somewhere to share my crafting has returned. I would usually use Ravelry for knitting, spinning and weaving but I can't share sewing and baking projects in the same way on there. If anyone is here and reading this, Hello and Welcome. I look forward to sharing my journey with you.