Category Archives: Everything else!

Spring Cleaning

I know that Spring Cleaning traditionally starts in the Spring…. but I decided on New Year’s Eve that it was time I actually sorted my fabrics. And I mean properly sorting them, not just looking at them and putting it all back in the cupboard again!

I’m sure I’m not the only person who keeps the offcuts of fabric “just in case” then never actually goes back through it again? I had a surprising amount of offcuts that were just too small to do anything with, so they all went out for the recycling collection as rag.

But what about those offcuts which are a more usable size, and the fabrics that I’ve bought and never got as far as using? I started out buying duvet covers as cheap fabric alternatives (especially useful when you can get a double duvet cover for £11, which has metres of fabric to play with). However, I haven’t used a duvet cover fabric in years, so it’s time for those to be passed on to someone who can make use of them.

A selection of the fabrics in my clear-out

Some of my online purchases over the years, were ones I probably wouldn’t have bought in an actual shop if I could handle them before buying. Things like the purple jersey in that photo above; it’s a lovely colour, but so heavy-weight it would be likely to stretch vertically while being worn. There’s also a lining fabric which came as part of a mystery box which I’m not likely to use as I prefer to add patterned cotton linings to coats. The bright blue fabric in that photos is a sweater fabric which was a lot more delicate than I had anticipated, and not really ideal to make a sweater for the male family member I had in mind.

My faux fur offcuts should still be the right size for someone to make a small cuddly toy, and the striped denim… unfortunately the stripes would be impossible for me to look at while sewing (since I’ve been sewing more, I’ve realised that high contrast patterns are not suitable for my eyes), so that had to go as well.

In total, I had a large charity sack full of fabric to donate, which I’m hoping will come in useful to someone!

I’m not quite finished yet though – I still need to sort the fabrics so they’re stored more logically, and the denims are all in the same box. Then I “just” need to work on sorting patterns (and that could take a long time!).

The Three Bears at Minerva

I’m back at the Minerva blog today, with four makes from a metre of Christmas cotton!

This was a really fun project to make and as you can probably tell, we had lots of fun taking the photos too!


Patterns: Delight by Emma’s Bears | Sketchbook by Buzzing and Bumbling
Fabric: Christmas cotton supplied by Minerva

Off We Go!

I spotted this panel fabric in my local fabric store early in the year, made up the book, then forgot all about it! This was a Christmas present for K, although it does seem a little young for him now (oops).

The back page is obviously completely personalised, but I’ve edited out the details so his full name isn’t on the photo. Can I just say I love the alphabet options on my Janome M200 QDC!

So I sent it with the Dinosaur Hatteras Hoodie plus a note saying that the dinosaurs had eaten all the words for the story, so he’d have to make up his own story to fit!

National Stationery Week

Did you know it’s National Stationery Week this week? As I’m currently half way through a couple of sewing projects (I know I said I would try and finish one before starting another…. the temptation was too great!), I thought it would be a good opportunity to share the Product Testing Review I did for Minerva Crafts earlier this year.

I tested the Colette Sewing Planner, and you can read what I thought of it at the Minerva Crafts Blog!

A Quick Storage Basket

A new year always seems to make people want to tidy up, and once I’d taken my Christmas tree down I realised that the table it had been on, could do with a little sorting out. The worst culprits for making it look a total mess, were the bundle of charger leads draped over a letter rack. The chargers get used too frequently to justify them being tucked away in a cupboard, so I felt the next best thing would be to make a little fabric basket to keep them tidy while still being accessible.

The pattern actually makes three baskets, but I only wanted to make one in this particular size (and wanted an excuse to use up some of my larger fabric scraps). I did make it slightly shorter than the pattern, simply because the fabric I was going to use for the cuff wasn’t quite long enough otherwise!

The fabric was actually part of a duvet cover I’d used as a ‘wearable muslin’ for a dress pattern previously – the main pattern was one side, and the cuff was the reverse design.

To quilt the basket, I simply stitched down some of the edges of the boxes. I don’t (yet) have a darning foot for my machine, so I decided that free-motion quilting was going to be a bit beyond my skills at the moment!

As you can see, two chargers fit perfectly into the basket, and if I make a couple more baskets for my relatives’ phone chargers too, there should be a lot less chance of getting in a muddle with which charger is for which device!

Happy December 1st

The weather here certainly thinks it’s winter already – to say it’s “chilly” outside would be an understatement! But it makes the first day of Advent seem even more seasonal. And what commonly goes with Advent? Yep, you guessed it, a chocolate advent calendar. I spotted the fabric panel for this calendar in my local Hobbycraft store (unfortunately they didn’t stock it online). Priced at £8 for a metre, I thought it was better value than some others I’d seen online…. but when I was told I could have one panel (50cm) for £4, that was one of the quickest decisions I’ve made to purchase anything!

The fabric came with a printed panel, complete with marked and numbered squares, plus all the individual printed pockets.

I added a piece of 2oz wadding to the back of the panel, and stitched through the edge of the pocket markings, just to hold the wadding in place.

The instructions say to fold over the pocket edges before attaching them to the calendar panel, but I found that way too fiddly to get a neat finish. So I improvised and added a polycotton backing to the pocket pieces, which also helps to make them sturdier.

That was quite easy to do – just place both fabric pieces right sides together, sew down one side, along the base and up the other side, Turn the pocket the right way out, fold the very top edges of both fabrics towards the inside, then top stitch that top part to close it up completely. Then the pocket can just be sewn on as normal.

I decided to stitch the pocket pieces on using white thread, as I didn’t want to try colour matching the blue of the sky, and thought that black (like the markings on the panel) would be a bit too heavy.

But how do you get the calendar to hang? When I cut some plain white polycotton for the backing, I added a couple of inches more in height than I needed, and folded that back over itself to make a tunnel. Recycling a sturdy straight plastic tube ‘handle’ from an old broken bag, I threaded some red and white ribbon through it, to allow it to hang from the door.

At this point, it was almost finished, but there were still raw edges around the entire thing, so some basic white bias binding was the perfect finishing touch. I did have to be creative and leave a gap for the ribbon to stick out, but you don’t notice that unless you look too closely!

All I need to do now, is get more chocolates to fill the pockets – the packet of Heros I used only contained 19 chocolates (and 6 of those were ones nobody in my family likes), so we’re still a little short!


Advent Calendar panel: Hobbycraft