Easy DIY Stag Cushion

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stag cushion diy (1)I know, I’m having somewhat of a sewing renaissance here at the moment. Apparently the trick is to actually get your sewing machine out, who knew!

Anyway, after having totally flunked at making this the other week and making my Children’s Tea Towel Apron instead, I then found where I had hidden the fabric. It was, of course, on top of the coffee machine. This, dear reader, is pretty much the story of my life. Anyway, having found the material and with The Husband having taken The Toddler out I jumped on the opportunity to get some more sewing done.

You can view this tutorial in one of two ways, if you follow just the instructions form making an envelope cushion and ignore all the stag bits then I promise, even as a beginner you can get this done in under an hour. The instructions come from what I learnt at The Make It Room the other week and my first attempt was done in no time at all. If you want to do the stag too it will probably take you about an hour and a half. I did mean to time it but…umm…I met up with the family and had lunch in the middle so kinda forgot. Sorry about that. The instructions are as follows. Continue reading →

And the award goes to…

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the-liebster-awardA week or so ago I got tagged in a Leibster Award meme by Ruth who writes The Polished Button. If you haven’t visited her site before go now! Honestly do go it is fabulous, vintage inspired sewing, lovely shop selling stuff you’d like to buy and refashioning of old and second hand clothes. Ruth is probably the kind of blogger I would like to be if I didn’t witter on about burning stuff and Things What Go Wrong so I was very pleased that she tagged me! So these are the questions Ruth set me and my answers…

1. How long have you been blogging and why did you start?

I started in March 2012. the Husband was starting a blog at the time and I needed something to get me off my backside and do more rather than moaning about all the stuff I wasn’t doing. I think it’s been pretty successful at that?!  Continue reading →

DIY Childrens Tea Towel Apron

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Upcycled tea towel DIYSo, after an epic amount of procrastination, last night was to be the night that I did some sewing. Child in bed. Husband out. Embellished cushion covers to be made so cushions measured, template created, even the iron was at the ready. And then of course once The Toddler was in bed I realised I’d left the fabric in his room. Or somewhere like that anyway. Hmm.

Not to be deterred (it having taken weeks to get the sewing machine out after all) I then had a quick panic about what I could make, especially due to the mild no fabric issue. Then I remembered two things; one, while baking that afternoon The Toddler had got his top totally covered in cake mixture, two, while trying to be a domestic goddess earlier last week by cooking a mid week roast dinner, I had set fire to the brand new Emma Bridgewater tea towel that Mumma Craftsonsea had sent me. Normal levels of domesticity resumed there then. So rather than throw away my lovely new towel I thought I would try and up cycle it into an apron for The Toddler. The whole thing was done in less than an hour and that includes me making up a pattern, so with a bit of foresight I think this could be done in 30 minutes easily. Here’s how I did it.  Continue reading →

Ten minute crafting

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satchel in progessMore and more I find myself at the moment with a huge list of things I want to do, and as the list gets longer and longer the less I seem able to get anything done. Tired. A bit overwhelmed. With a small child that doesn’t want to go to sleep and a house with melted ice lollies ground into the flooring.

Then a few days ago I saw a post on Facebook, I think it was from Craft Blog UK but apologies if I’ve got that wrong. Anyway, it said to take ten minutes every day to do something creative. At the time I thought something along the lines of ‘humph’ and forgot about it, but as the week progressed I thought more about it.  Continue reading →

Southend achieves city status!

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Not proper ‘as decided by the Queen with a Cathedral and all that jazz’ status, obviously. Despite what the local council would like. Or City of Culture status which (you guessed it!) the council are also going for. Nope, Southend has gone one better, we have our first cardboard city. Whoop! Oh….

The Husband, as I’ve mentioned before, runs the local food bank / homeless drop in / poverty relief / community cafe / whatever so, despite my aspirations to wear Boden all day and let them all eat cake, I do have a fairly accurate idea of what life is like for people on the street. A few years back I went for a job at Southend Council in their homeless department and they duly informed me that once a year they walked down the High Street and counted the number of rough sleepers. Reader, no one sleeps down the High Street. You get beaten up by people coming out of nightclubs. Verbal abuse. Urinated on. Why on earth would you sleep there? People do, I now know, sleep down the beach, in the woods and one fellow showed The Husband a little while ago his home. It was a lockable toilet near the Jobcentre. Then he got kicked out of it by crack dealers so he moved into an alley. This kind of puts my problems of having a small garden into perspective.  Continue reading →

Parenting Fail at The National Trust

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national trust 1So last week we went to Cornwall. This is how much I love Cornwall – when The Husband and I went to South Africa we climbed to the top of Table Mountain (yep, really climbed, stop snickering), stopped, caught our breath and looked around. ‘It’s gorgeous here.’ We said, ‘looks just like Cornwall.’

So it was with great excitement that I noticed that while we were there The National Trust were doing a free open weekend on their properties. Now obviously, being in possession of a toddler I was mildly concerned at exactly how much he would enjoy traipsing round an old building which contained neither balloons nor pictures of Batman, however I was reliably informed that The National Trust is now very family friendly. There was an adventure playground there. The advertising showed a picture of small children playing idyllically in the bluebells. The fact that the children were also wearing Victorian dress should have rung an alarm bell. It didn’t. Oops.  Continue reading →

Brilliance in Blogging Awards – shocks and shameless plugs

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BiBlogoYou know when sometimes you are away from home and you think ‘I’ll just quickly check my emails’ and then along comes something that totally throws you and you have to spend the next half an hour finding out if its true or not? Well that was me last week. In Cornwall with an Internet connection powered by a hamster on a wheel when I noticed a tweet from Nell who writes The Pigeon Pair and Me (which is very good, do go check it out) saying that I was a semi-finalist in the Brilliance in Blogging Awards, although she she added there was no surprise there though.
Surprised? Ahem. I nearly had a heart attack. And there being no wifi there I think I spent this months mortgage payment on the Internet hamster trying to realise if this was something proper or some kind of weird joke or twitter ‘someone is spreading rumours about you’ spam.  Continue reading →

Sewing at The Make It Room

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makeitroom So, having declared last week that, inspired by the Great British Sewing Bee, I was going to dust off my sewing machine and bravely try and start sewing again, I was very lucky in that last weekend I got to book on a class at The Make it Room in Howe Green to learn to make cushions.

I’ve sewn an envelope cushion before, in fact it was the last thing I actually cracked the sewing machine out for. I even made up the pattern myself. But the fact that I haven’t blogged it tells you roughly how well it went. It’s ok, I mean, it’s in my front room so it’s not a total disaster-o-rama or anything, but the back rather gapes and it’s just…. well, the machine has gathered dust since then. That’s not a good sign is it?  Continue reading →

Perfect Yorkshire Puddings?!?

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Stop the clocks people, I have made a roast dinner!

perfect yorkshire puddings Ok, I know that for most people this is hardly Big News, but for me? I don’t do roast dinners. Agro. Washing up. Not that exciting. Most importantly, not pasta or cake which are the two lynchpins of my healthy balanced diet. However my friend Rachel who has the world’s best tea loaf recipe told me the other day that she had the perfect recipe for yorkshire puddings. Rachel cooks roast dinners a lot, because unlike me she is a Good Housewife. And her kids eat LOADS, so I thought I would give it a try. Look, I’m in my 30′s with toddler, pregnant and married to a preacher, these days cooking a roast is classified as living on the edge to me.  Continue reading →

Things I won’t be sewing myself – dresses

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New Look White Floral Bird Bandeau Maxi Dress There are some things I feel that I can probably sew myself. Today I’ve been out at a sewing workshop (more on that later) and I’m now feeling a bit more confident around the sewing machine again. I think an easy tote bag should be ok. Maybe a pair of summer trousers for my son. A doorstop? I’m pretty much ok with sewing by hand too although I don’t claim to know any of the more ‘fancy’ stiches. (Chain stitch? Not a clue, my friend, not a clue.)

The thing though that I really can’t see myself making though is clothes, and having watched the trouble that the contestants on the Great British Sewing Bee have had getting clothes to fit properly and look vaguely professional I don’t think I’ll be attempting that at any point soon. I’m not defeatist  I just am more than happy to buy something off the shelf instead, after all I only have the time between putting the toddler to bed and cooking dinner to sew and I can’t see me whipping up anything that snazzy that quickly! new look white floral chiffon belted dress

I’m happy therefore to report that there are some very cute frocks in New Look currently, none of which demand more effort to own than a browse online or a look around the shop. My personal favorites are the white floral bird bandeau maxi dress (which is £19.99 and has a very cute bird print), the White Floral Chiffon Belted Dress (which is £22.99 and looks very shabby chic and perfect for summer) and the Blue and White Bird Print Shirred Sleeveless Dress (which is £12.99 and which probably outs me as someone who has a thing for bird prints.) They have a wide range of fancy frocks and hybrid dresses (aka, frocks what take their inspiration from more than one traditional style) over on their site and I’m also happy to report that a quick browse found me similar dresses in the maternity range. Phew and hurrah!

Blue and White Bird Print Shirred Sleeveless Dress  Note: This is a sponsored post however all opinions expressed in it are my own. Especially the love expressed for bird prints on dresses.