Tutorial: Santa Sacks

The October theme for the Stashbusting sewalong was sewing for Christmas. I didn't quite manage to get anything Christmas related done during October, but I made up for it in November, by making my children some Santa Sacks. I also made one of my nieces one at the same time. I didn't take many pictures along the way, as I hadn't made up my mind until I was near the end that I would actually post a tutorial on how I did them. Don't worry though, it's pretty easy to do!

A-Line Skirt, and making my skirt blocks fit!

So I decided to enter a contest. I joined the Pattern Review website last year, but have yet to even set up my profile properly (still no photo!) I did decide however, to enter my first competition with them. I made a skirt to go in round one of the Pattern Review Sewing Bee - based on the British Sewing Bee.

Original Front

Black and White Striped Top

Continuing on from my list of priority sewing, this was actually the first thing that I finished of the four items I mentioned. Here is my new favourite top, made with the remnants from my striped long sleeve dress.

UFO: Stripy Summer Dress

In my blog hop post,I mentioned four projects that I wanted to focus on finishing. Here is the first of them.

My husband started making this dress for me about 7 years ago. Yes, you heard right, my husband was making this for me.

Let's back up a bit. When I was studying fashion design (whilst pregnant with our first child - there's nothing like being a mature age student who's pregnant!), my husband decided that he would try his hand at a bit of sewing. He refused all my offers of help, saying that he wanted to work it all out for himself. He made me a few maternity tops (which was quite helpful, as I was up to my elbows in morning sickness and studying). He's also made himself a few pairs of pants and a shirt. In some ways it backfired on him though, as I frequently turn him away when he requests that I mend something for him. I know he's perfectly capable of doing it himself!

Back to this dress though. He decided that he wanted to make me a dress, and, using a block that we had made together to my measurements, he drafted his own pattern for this dress, to his own design.

He was doing OK til it came to finishing off a V shaped waist panel, and there it has stayed for the last 6 or 7 years. Until now!

Blog Hop

Thank you to Sue from fadanista for the nomination for the blog hop. I love seeing all the new things that Sue has been making. She sets such a fast sewing pace that I can't always keep up with her new makes! I've been enjoying reading other people's blog hop posts, and seeing a bit about what makes them tick.

Always inquisitive about things like this, I did a bit of research to try and find where this blog hop all started, and for the most part have come up with other bloggers saying that they have done a bit of research trying to find out where it all started. Example.

I'm not sure if it started as the same blog hop, but I found lots of quilters participating in the Around the World Blog Hop (even with it's own button you can add!), some posts with slightly different questions to the ones that I will be answering here. One post suggested if you want to know where it started that you go back through the nominations and find the start. Which is what I started to do, but gave up after a while. My computer had so many tabs open that I thought it might rebel and crash on me, and I'd only gone back about a month!

The quilters questions seem to be aimed more at the creative process of their quilting, whereas the sewing blog hop seems to be about the blog itself.

Anyway, enough about that, I'm sure you're much more interested in my answers.

Lingerie: Hand Dyed Bra

It's been a while between bras, but here's my latest.

I've been itching to try some major design changes, but after wearing the first ones that I made on regular rotation, I decided that it might be worth tweaking the design a little and buying underwires in the next size up. That of course meant other minor changes to my basic design.

The colour looks a little washed out here, in real life all the colours go together much better

Stashbusting Sewalong: September Theme "Children"

I know I totally missed posting this in September, but I also missed sewing most of this in September! The (optional) theme for last month's stashbusting sewalong was making something for or inspired by, children.

I was thinking of tackling a quilt cover for my daughter, but really didn't have any time to even think about that, and as yet have still done nothing about it. My brother however, asked if I could make a few sleeping bags for his daughter. She is growing like a weed, and has already outgrown all of the sleeping bags made by my sister and I for her and then and my children!