Milk and cookies

This is one of those bit of this, bit of that posts.

First up C and I made these this morning (peanut butter and choc chip, thank you very much Bill Granger) and I must confess there are not many left at this point.

We also did some painting.

I'm plotting which socks to knit next, in the hope that this will motivate me to finish off the ones I'm knitting at the moment. Next up is likely to be Skew with this incredibly delicious yarn, although I'm quite intrigued by the construction of these too.

While I was checking those out I had to add this and this to the knitting queue too, although knitting my growing lad some colder weather woollies is perhaps what I should be spending my knitting time on.

Sewing him some winter clothes is also pretty high on the priorities, as are finishing off some more baby gifts, clothes for me, and perhaps a quick quilt as a wedding gift for the Easter weekend.... When is Easter?


Perhaps that idea is a wee bit ambitious, given it took me three weeks to get around to buying buttons and finishing off the button holes on Mum's shirt. I'm pleased to report she loves it.

I made a hat to go with it too.

...for baby (not me)

I am way, way, behind in the giving of baby gifts to friends who have had babies in the last year.
I feel like I managed to tick one off the list at least with this package for a little girl born last month.

I had been finishing a sock monkey, but I had this lingering feeling that, as my friend is impeccably stylish and possibly not into the handmade/recycled aesthetic, the monkey might not bring her the delight that he brings me.
I decided to compensate by giving her a book that I knew would give her a giggle (as it did me).

But it didn't really go with the monkey.
So I decided to finish off one of the bibs that I had half made a few months ago to go with the book instead.

But the night before I was planning to visit I decided it still needed something more.
I pulled out my binder of baby sewing patterns thinking perhaps a quick zakka softie would do the trick, but instead I rediscovered the fantastic Stardust cloth baby shoe pattern.
Rummaging in my scraps I quickly settled upon some Japanese black floral print left over from my favorite skirt, to pair with some scraps of soft natural linen (which I received as wrapping from a gift from another friend), and an hour and a half later I had a beautiful pair of soft shoes to finish off the set.

A perfect little set, which did indeed bring a smile to my friend's face.
Wish my feet were that size...

All decked out

It had been a while since I'd done a swap, but I'm glad very glad I made the time and effort to participate in Sooz's Tea Towel swap. I was paired up with some wonderful swappers, some already good friends, some completely new to me. A feast of delights had been filtering into the letterbox over the last couple of weeks. I'm in the process of purging the kitchen drawers of unattractive old cotton tea towels, and enjoying the fresh new look in the kitchen.



And to fill you in on how I created my spotty tea towels, they were all individually hand painted using a template. To make the template I used a gridded cutting mat to mark a grid of dots onto an A3 sheet of acetate (*ahem* borrowed *ahem* from the office supply cupboard) , and then cut small vaguely circular openings in them with a cutting knife. That laborious task over, I laid the template over the pre-washed tea towels and painted into the dots fairly randomly, varying the colours and placement, so the grid was never quite completed.  I wiped the template clean between each tea towel to ensure no errant splodges to ruin the imperfectly perfect pattern, and voila!

Shopping Baggage

 

I've recently started to use (and reuse) recycled home made mesh produce bags.

Like to know more?

Then head on over to Sew Green to read my post about shopping bags.

The black subtraction experiment

One of the most satisfying projects from craft weekend was my black subtraction tunic- a highly experimental sewing exercise, with the very last of my black stretch knit stash. So inspiring and satisfying I thought I'd share a bit more about it here.
 
The basic design process is Julian Roberts' Subtraction Cutting technique- you used to be able to get a free mini-book on his techniques from his website, but sadly no more-you can see a few images there, but you have to invest in his book, or a personal masterclass to find out much more. Or have a friend who printed it in the past (lucky me!). Julian presents the idea that a garment is essentially a flexible tube for passing your body though, and so long as you maintain a tube large enough (and long enough) for your body to pass through, you can fold and cut and twist and sculpt that tube (or tubes) in a myriad of ways- ways that truly bend your mind until you've actually done the exercise- cut and twisted and seamed and slipped into (and perhaps even for a little while after).

As this was a total experiment I used some cheap and stretchy (ie forgiving) black (also forgiving) fabric. I had about 1.5m left on the roll, some of which had holes and flaws I needed to work around. I cut out the shoulders and neckline as per my personalised cap sleeve T pattern (with slightly longer arms) and sewed some slightly free-form side seams to create a wearable tube.

Then I assessed the holes and flaws, and cut two new larger holes- big enough for my body to pass through- where some of the flaws were. They were sort of squished blobs to conserve length, instead of the circles Julian shows in his patterns.

Then I folded the fabric to bring the new holes together, and sewed them together, to pull up the fabric and create some new options for how my body could pass through from top to bottom.
 
I also had a minor freakout that this was somehow going to not work, but I got over that and tried it on. And then tried it on a different way, and then another way (at times like this is it very helpful to be surrounded by a gaggle of creative clothes making buddies), until we found a way that worked- passing only part one arm and my head through the new holes, so I had an extra new shoulder strap which pulled the fabric up with some lovely draping.

I then proceeded to hack at the hemline to make it a suitable length for pulling on over trousers to wear to work, and finished all the hem edges on the overlocker.
A highly satisfying, fun, liberating and quick, experiment!