Introducing Zephyrine

I had an NPC to play a little while back who is a wind elemental.  She's part of an elemental council and her brief included the description of her as 'the cheeky one'.

So I decided to stash bust some fabric into a costume.  

The pattern is Simplicity 0515.  The bodice is cotton drill, the skirt and sleeves are linen and the skirt has petal shaped panels of chiffon overlaid on it.

As per recommendation from a friend I lengthened the skirt panels by 3 inches.  If I'd had more fabric I might have gone further but there we go, this was a stash bust exercise!

Of course wind elementals all have blue lips and random eye liner!

First Birthday Present - Party Dress

Tiny Bean has been around for over a year now!  She's growing super fast (all the pseudo nieces are), and so I've made this a bit big in the hopes she can grow into it!

 For the eagle eyed amongst you, why yes that is the Cottage Mama party dress pattern I used for Lizard's Baptism Outfit.  It's such a nice pattern to sew, I might have decided all of them will be getting one!  (I plan to ask Small Bean what colour she'd like as these days she's old enough to have an opinion and Starbug, well I have plans for hers as well, watch this space!).

The buttons are gold roses and the button loops are a scrap of purple ribbon.  It's made of satin dupion and lined in linen.  I'd love to say that's because I wanted a luxury feel for this dress, but it's actually because I had white and purple linen in the right amounts to use up!

Cake!

Made as a craft night treat in honour of Ruthwhoisnotablogger's birthday!

Very tasty is was too, if I do say so myself!

Birthday Pattern Weights

Ruthwhoisnotablogger had a birthday recently and we celebrated at craft night!  Mostly by cake and presents.  Because we're crafters, we made our gifts for her.  Here's what I made.

Pattern weights!  They are a nice useful gift.  I made mine out of linen, two types of cotton, satin dupion and plush velvet.  I used this tutorial and as suggested did them as a batch sew, which sped things up a lot!

I also made a little basket for them all to live in, so they hopefully won't clutter Ruth's house!

I enjoyed stitching them, but they were quite fiddly so I don't think I'll be making anymore for a while!

Lounging Trousers

I had a sewing saturday a few weeks ago and I have to say I really enjoyed it.  We watched the Croods (and a load of pointless episodes) and Mr Kit did some online quizzes as I sat and cut and pinned and stitched.  I had a fair few projects I wanted to get done and then I had about an hour left at the end of the day and the urge for a quick project.

So I grabbed some t-shirting from the sash and set to this trouser project in the most cavalier fashion going (next to no measuring and pins weren't used at any point!).

They are made out of a grey t-shirting with dark grey and pink flowers on it.  The waistband is elastic and they are loosely modelled on my home made tracksuit trousers.

There are no words for how comfortable they are!  Currently they are a smidge too long (even by my standards) but as t-shirting has a nasty tendency to shrink after a few washes I'm leaving them for now.  I can always cut the hem shorter in a few weeks.

 They are going to be slob day trousers/pj bottoms for when I have guests round and don't want to be indecent when heading into the kitchen for my morning tea etc!

 They fit far better than they have a right too given that I didn't try them on at all throughout the sewing, just crossed my fingers and hoped!  They are also entirely seamed on the overlocker, just because that's the easiest way to handle t-shirting I find.

New Baby Gift - Vest

A friend has become a father!  So, yeah I decided to make a baby gift!  Many thanks to Katy for giving me some cream t-shirting and printing the pattern out for me as our printer decided to have a sulky fit!

The pattern is this one from Shwin and Shwin.  They aren't kidding about the jersey for the edging though!  The quote is Tolkien, it seemed appropriate for a new little one.  In case anyone is wondering, no I didn't hoop or stablise the fabric before embroidering.  I just free stitched it using my fingers to slightly tension the bit I was working on.  It's habit formed before I knew you could stablise for embroidery...

It was a really fun make and I am now wondering about running up another one, for the next small person I'm aware of making their way into the world!

Birthday Belt Pouch

My friend Sappy got a year older!  So I ran him up a belt pouch for one of his potential next year's characters.

I did some free machine embroidery on the front and it's lined in the same cotton as the outer fabric.

The seams are all enclosed with satin bias binding and that's about all there is to say for it really.

I quite enjoyed making this and I definitely plan to do more machine embroidery doodles in the future!