World Book Day 2015 - Gingerbread man and Peter Pan

This year the school decided that they wanted to stick to a theme of fairy tales for world book day, I was rather hoping my youngest would like the gingerbread man idea but no, he is not big on dressing up but I was glad my daughter loved the suggestion.

Gingerbread man

I attempted to make the rough pattern/sizing by having my daughter lie on a long rolled out piece of paper but drawing round her was tricky and it wasn't that successful, although I did refer to it occasionally for rough measurements when she was in bed.

 Given she had to wear the outfit all day at school  I wanted to make it easy for her to work so parts of the outfit were detachable - the head was attached with velcro and the hands were a basic mitten shape that I made a little long so that they didn't have to join the sleeve.

The fabric was thin fleece which gave some texture to the outfit and didn't fray.  I couldn't believe it when I found some large ric rac in Hometown in Rochester, it was perfect for the embellishments. My daughter wanted the look of it to be similar to the gingerbread man in Shrek so we roughly followed the colours for the face. The facial features were made from felt with the mouth aligned with her eyes for her to see through. I did cover the mouth opening with some pink netting to keep as much of her hidden as possible.

The head also had a large cardboard cut out inside to get it to stay up, I had started by putting boning round the outside but this wasn't sufficient.

There were some last minute messy alterations to the arms so that she could move freely and that was it.  It wasn't the neatest of sewing but it was effective.

Peter Pan

This outfit was so simple to make - but I did ensure I made it before the gingerbread man as I could see myself not getting round to it with all the sewing on the other outfit. The top was a basic t shirt shape, loose fitting with a belt round it to hitch it up, trousers I sort of made the pattern up using another pair of his but I didn't make the seat long enough so they did slip a bit when he sat down.  The hat was trial and error!

The descriptions for both outfits are not great, when I sew for costumes I know that I am never going to be making the same thing again so don't keep track of what I do, in addition I am always running late getting them done so barely stop for photos either!

Children's bum bag, fanny pack or whatever you would like to call it!

This was a weekend sewing project following notification from my son's school that all that children who need certain medicines (inhalers or insulin) should keep it on them at all times and the suggestion was a bum bag.  In order to make it more appealing to wear I took my son to my favourite fabric store, Hometown in Rochester, to allow him to pick out his fabric and with a little guidance to steer away from large prints and light prints he settled on the robots, Makower Fabrics Robots Dark Little Monsters Collection.

The pattern I used was one I found on pinterest from daisyjanie below:

http://daisyjanie.typepad.com/daisyjanie/2011/06/hip-pouch-sew-along-supplies-list.html

The things I would note about this pattern:

1) It does mention using canvas as the lining fabric, I didn't have any so used cotton with interfacing on my lining.

2) It is quite a small bag, I have included a photo with my rotary cutter on it so you can get an idea of size. For me it was nice that it wasn't too big for my son, being only 6 but it only just fitted the medication he needed.

I used some polka dot lining from my stash that my mother-in-law had got from India.

DaisyJanie had included some printable pattern pieces which were very helpful to use.

The pattern gives the option of using either a webbing waist band or making it out of the fabric, I chose to use the fabric made one - hopefully it will withstand the daily use of my son.

Despite my best efforts to get the robots to stand the correct way up on the waist band I lined them up on the backing fabric when attaching them forgetting that I should have really lined them up with the front panel! Sadly I only realised this late in the day when I had lost the will to unpick.

However I did need to unpick parts later as you can see when layering up the pouch to stitch it all together I had forgotten to tuck the straps inside first. Very annoying but I was on a mission to complete it.

Daisy Janie gave thorough instructions with lots of photos, I would be willing to follow another pattern again.

It would be good to see if the pattern could be enlarged easily as I do feel this could be slightly too small for general adult usage.

Anyway, take a look at the finished article below, I hope you like it :)

Drawstring bag - take two!

You may have seen my previous post about a drawstring bag I have made (see here http://jayaquiltsandcrafts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/drawstring-bag.html , I liked it so much that I made another as a gift bag for some presents that we were leaving for a lovely little girl whose house we stayed in while on holiday.  The pattern was based on the one from this blog: http://www.incolororder.com/2011/10/lined-drawstring-bag-tutorial.html

I found some great "london" themed fabric, London Buildings fabric by Makower, for the bag that coordinated really well with some fabric I found in my stash. I adapted the pattern that I used before (but also made a slight error in my calculations that I had to rectify as I putting it together. But in the end I was pleased with how it turned out.

This time I made the drawstring out of the fabric too and much preferred it to the ribbons that I had used on the previous one.

Quilt number 10 - Rail fence baby quilt

This quilt was done in a bit of a rush...as per normal you could be forgiven for thinking..but I had a lovely new nephew born on boxing day and although I knew he was coming I wouldn't allow myself to start until I had finished off quilt number 9. So I had to pick an easy pattern for quick piecing. I went on the Ipad application Blockfab to find an idea for a simple one and thought I would try the rail fence pattern again, this time without the borders to avoid the mistake I did with quilt number 3.

I am really pleased with the way my fabric stash has built up as I was able to make this quilt from start to finish with only fabrics from my stash, which was handy as I had done enough shopping in the run up to Christmas.  In addition as it was only a cot sized quilt I had some spare wadding left over from a previous project.

I made the strips 2 inches wide and stitched the strips together in 3's before cutting into squares. I followed the simple rule of the safari print in the middle with a pattern on top and a plain on the bottom, apart from one row.

I also added a couple of plain squares so I could personalise it by adding his name in chain stitch (clearly my handwriting and stitching are both appalling as I was frustrated it didn't turn out better).

I tried randomly arranging the squares but in the ended followed a diagonal order to them as it saved any weird matching.

For a change I used the safari pattern fabric which is mini safari by timeless treasures for the backing as well, mainly as I think with hindsight I should have made the strips a bit wider as the pattern was lost somewhat on the front.

I didn't do a small border on this one as I wanted to keep the size smaller so just did the one border. The quilting

was a freehand meander, still not a completely flat back but better than normal. I didn't do it too tight as I wanted the quilt to have some movement as it was only small.

As it is being given to a family with a newborn I did warn them about not using it as a bedcover until their child is 1, quilts are not very breathable.