Crafts at Bovey Tracey

is on this weekend and I am going! Hooray. I cant wait to get there and see all the creative goodness that is will be there.  I moved the kids half term trip to the week  after half term so I can be there.  Ayaan and Tameeko will be off romping with their soon to be best friend Meranda being watched by three fantastic parents ( who are being kind and giving me a day of craft heaven)  I have booked my mini taster session and am ready for devon.

Hibernation…

I have had so many different ideas rolling around in my head that I have been working to put it all down. A sribble here and there and some bits of fabric added to remind me what this project is about so that I dont lose momentum.  I have lovely artist sketchingbook now filled with bits and pieces of stuff am working on. I was looking at the book and I thought it needed a cover. soemthing special that would remind me of how much I love doing this. pictures to be posted soon!

the finished pictures…

here it is. The finished pictures for the upcycled jeans apron… just in time to get them to my friend Harshi before she moves into her new place tomorrow.  Foodies and seamers unite!

 

 

 

Hope she likes it. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alabama chenille embroidery

Easter weekend and the kids are occupied and I have a break from school runs and thinking of house things. So i turn to my new Alabama chenille embroidery book for some inspiration.  I adore this form of emboirdery. There is something very organic and natual about the book and this work.  To explore the possibility I decided to try two different projects. I have been toying with the idea of turning a pair of jeans into an apron and used a paisley design underlayed with a Heather Baily fabric to finish it. Now I only need finish the apron. Not a bad first attempt!

The second project that I am working on is a pair of pillow cases and as you can see they have gone wild. I must admit that the giraffe has always been my favorite animal so of course he made it into the picture.

I

i love the green outline and the backing fabric! so here’s the quick how to

1. Decide on the picture/stencil you want to use. If you are using a drawing then you need to create stencil to paint with.

2. Position your stencil and tape it into place.

3.paint over the stencil using fabric paint or fabric markers or even fabric chalk. Different mediums create a different look so experiment with what you want. I liked the thick outline in green for the pillowcases so I painted a very thick line using alot of paint.

4. Allow the paint to dry completley before you remove the stencil. Mine took about 15 min .

5 Attach the  backing dependent on how you want to use it.  For finer outlines on softer more see thru fabric you need to keep the backing close to the stitch line

6. Baste your backing fabric on and sew. I used a back stitch on one and a running stitch on the other.  staying fairly close to the outline.

7. Snip close to the sewing but leave a healthy margin (I love this part) snip the fabric and reveal your bottom fabric.

8. Enjoy.

More of this will be on sale in the folksy shop soon. 

My lovely new avatar

The new avatar

 

So I have been very busy the last few weeks. Too busy to write which is a shame since I so enjoy having my say 🙂 to the telented etsian whose bid I accepted for the making of the logo thank you very much. Love it… to see her shop and check out more of her work http://www.etsy.com/shop/tfacciotto

A picture in my head

So I have been busy revising changes to the seamsoeasy website. The new look is lovely. Very swish and fun and most definately more me than the current one, I digress. To help me do all of this and keep teaching and creating I hired the help of the highly recommented and very talented Mr Phil Graham, who has been responsible for making sure the site works well on top of all the pretty lovely bits going on. And on his suggestions I was looking thru some stock pictures of things I like to look thru ie anything to do with crafting sewing and various other bits and I came across a picture that stopped me in mid track. The site had no information of where it was but it got my attention because it is the picture in my head of a perfect evening walk. The sort you take on holiday, a winding path that may lead nowhere or somewhere but it does not matter because the jouney counts for everything… so I thought I would share it here.

How to sew a childrens apron…

I love crafting with my kids and to this end have aprons for messy play, cooking and various other creative talents around the house for them. Here is a pattern I put together to make the apron. I like decorating them as well. They take me about 2 hours to finish from patterning to completing so really quite easy to sew. The longest part is the embroidery for me!  Here is a picture  of my finished apron.

Here goes.. if you need more info please leave a comment or email me at  www.mail@seamsoeasy.com

A few things to gather before you start:

fabric, main about 3/4 yard, can be adjusted to suit your childs height.

scraps of fabric and buttons to decorate  with.

2 yards of bias binding in cotton to contrast or match your fabric.

pinking shears

Right now for the important bits…

Draw the pattern with the following measurments

• The neck width is 7.1/2”.
• The arm hole cut out is 10”
• Across the waist (under the arm) is 17”
• Length from the High shoulder point to the hem is 19 ½”
• the pocket is aprox 5 1/2 “ x 4” and is placed 2/12” from the side seam and 3” from the bottom hem.

I find it easiest to work with a ½” seam allowance so those values are included in the above measurments.

Cut this pattern above out of paper, anything you have to hand is fine! I used the kids craft paper to cut this but newspaper or any other fairly solid paper is good.

Fold the pattern in half lengthwise once you hve cut it out so that you can make sure that both sides are equal.

Get out your main fabric and iron all over first. Then fold in half and place the folded paper pattern on the fabric and pin in place.

Cut one pattern piece and now for the fun bit , decorate as you please!

I did a tree out of some left over cushion fabric and did the leaves,  butterflies and other bits out of left over sewing scraps and some interesting buttons. This can be anything you want to do.

Right now to hem the apron. Start by using your pinking shears to snip along the side seams from under arm  on the left down to the bottom hem and back up to the underarm on the right.  Turn over the hem and pin.  Do the same for the straight bit on the neck. Pin only do not sew this down now.

Take the bias tape and start by opening it up and measurming 18″ (left side tie) upto the armhole and then pin down on the wrong side of the fabric right upto the neck.

continue to use the bias binding to shape the neck , I used 14″ from one side of the neck to the other and then back down the other (right) side armhole. Keep pinning and leave another 18″ for the tie on the other side. Now start sewing down the side. Begin with the side that is under the arm and sew up the armhole to the neck edge. (we sort the ties out when we are finishing!)

 

Sew the other side down as well.  Now refolding the bias tape (to the way it was) except this time it will sandwich your main body fabric within the fold, and because we sewed on the inside edge there will only be one seam showing. Turn down and starting with one side of the tie, sew the bias tape down.

You would have pinned the rest of the hem, sheared side down and carefully sew from underarm  down the side bottom hem and upto the other arm hole. Now finish the straight bit by the neck

Press and stand back and admire your hardwork!

A birthday to remember…

So it was that time of year again… a birthday and what better way to celebrate than with good friends? Their munchkins are six months this way and that of our munchkins which made for 4 under 3 1/2’s in the house over the weekend. What fun. To amuse them on the rather rainy sunday we took them all to Gambadoes, luckily for us, is around the corner. For those of you who have no idea what I am on about it is indoor kid heaven. A large and small slide, dodgem cars, a carousal (favorite with Tami) and various other climbing, jumping and maneouvering things to keep them occupied. 

Ayaan was doing the dodgem cars by himself at the end of the day. Yeah!

Ok so not the best way to celebrate a birthday BUT they were tired and went straight to sleep and then we got a lovely chinese meal with some bubbly, which was a perfect way to celebrate 🙂

Seams instruction…

I was browsing on the make create site and came across this rather well explained artical on seams… the writer has a good amount of photographes and very clear explainations. check it out:

http://www.craftstylish.com/item/41979/try-these-techniques-for-perfectly-beautiful-seams/page/all

New pictures…

So i got some of the new hair accessories photographed by Jade Tinkler http://www.jadetinkler.co.uk/ , someone I found on the trusty Netmums website http://www.netmums.com/home/localhome/bromley/.  Most of them have beeb loaded on to to http://www.flickr.com/photos/seamsoeasy but here are a few of my favorite ones….

Thank you Jade for these. I love them.