Softies For Mirabel 2012

Dear Softies that I made for Softies for Mirabel, your making entertained me for weeks on my break from uni, I hope you reached the safe hands of Pip and Meet Me At Mikes before continuing on to some wonderful little kids.

There were cats.

There were bears.

A legion of frogs.

And some dolls

Ha! I tweeted, I flickr'd and I Sent them off in the mail and I promptly forgot to blog them. I really need some completion-of-tasks-without-distraction lessons!

Softies for Mirabel 2012

This week I have been Stitching up some Softies for Mirabel. How are you all doing with yours?

If you haven't already, you can join up over here at Meet Me At Mikes

I decided to go a bit retro, using a book my Mum bought in the 70's or 80's. 

Book: Soft Toys to make for Children Edited by Alison Lowe Marshall Cavendish 1973-84 

From this book I'm making cats, bears, frogs, elephants and dolls.

Some Images from the book Soft Toys to make for Children

I got started sewing cats and bears during the week, I'm finishing them off now, frogs are being cut out this afternoon and the dolls over the weekend. With any luck they all should be done by the end of next week when I would like to start my Christmas sewing.

I have a couple of weeks more off before uni starts again. This time off has been such a wonderful thing I cannot even tell you how much it has helped me to relax and do what I wanted to each day!

Angels for the Forgotten

I took some time off uni recently and over that time off I did some sewing for a charity called Angels for the Forgotten.
They do great work helping out kids in foster care or living in crisis.

Heres what I made and promptly forgot to post about!

A Happy couple of new friends for a new baby

With the recent wonderful news of my friends brand new baby, I really wanted to make something for her.

Over the weekend I stitched up a couple of bright and patterny little friends who are now on their way to baby, who I hope will love them forever.

These are one of my favourites to make for charity and friends. The Hector the alien type giraffes from the Softies book that I adore!

Softies Penguin books.

A Stitched Message

Over the past couple of weeks I started sewing something for someone who was going through a bit of a tough time health wise. I thought greeting cards or flowers were boring, and I wanted to make something while we were waiting to hear about test results and surgery to keep my hands busy and my mind off the waiting! I wasn't able to do a whole lot of sewing, just a bit here and there mainly when I couldn't concentrate on study.
I didn't really know what I was going to make. I thought maybe I'd make a fabric card, or a postcard at first, but then it evolved.
I pulled various bits of scrap fabric out that I had kept from other projects because of the floral patterns. I always figured the flowers would be useful as appliques or even as inspiration for embroidery one day.
So I fiddled around cutting out the various flowers in all sorts of combinations then ironed them onto some gingham using the fusible webbing stuff.

I thought ok, I have a roll of the batting in my cupboard so I sandwiched it between two pieces of yellow gingham and I pulled out the darning foot for the machine, dropped the feed-dog and stitched around and around the flowers using red and yellow, orange, blue and pink threads. I really like how the in-between bits puffed up between the rows of stitch.
I then decided to write a message on a second piece of gingham, batting and gingham sandwiched.
At this stage I still wasn't sure if I was making a fabric card!
I hand wrote the message using the fabric pen and then used the same coloured threads from the flower side to stitch over the words and a fabric heart.
Then came a binding nightmare involving me, an iron and the #$%^& binding tool that didn't work!...and eventually just became my scorched fingers folding, holding ironing.

I stitched the binding all the way around the front, flowered panel first, then sandwiched the back panel on, realising it looked like an oven mitt, I decided it was now going to be a pillow instead!

I stitched almost all the way around the back of the binding leaving it attached to the machine with the needle down, while I quickly filled the inside with stuffing, then continued the stitch along the binding.

I quickly snapped these pics with my phone before it went off to deliver it's message and hopefully cheer someone's day.

Missing Photos

OK, so recently the service storing all my photos has disappeared forever, so I know there are images missing all over the place on the blog.
I'm attempting to fix them up. Hopefully it'll look better soon.
It's my fault I had plenty of warning to move them over, I just missed a whole heap of images!! So some are working fine, some are missing. I'll go over old blog posts and add the pics back in but I can only do one or two at a time.

In other news, I'm really angry a UK sewing magazine subscription purchased til December (my christmas pressie the past few years) hasn't sent me the past 3 magazines, has gone bankrupt and been bought by another company, changed it's name and still I havent received a new mag!

I'd been planning to not renew the subscription again anyway because the magazine had turned to absolute rubbish, pages and pages and pages of advertising and very little interesting content.

I think i'll just buy books on Amazon rather than bother with magazine subscriptions in future.

I can't end on a good note, the past couple of weeks have just been awful. Uni work is out of control. Much bad news in our family in many ways effecting many people and nothing I can talk about. Just one of those periods of time you wish you'd never answered the phone and weren't told and could live in a blissful ignorance bubble instead.

Angels For the Forgotten

I'm coming out of my self imposed -[No Sewing until my uni work is done mode] .

The reason is i came across this appeal today and I cannot imagine sitting here typing up my essay about self indulgent fashion icons for my uni assignment while rattling around in my head how I feel for any kids in this situation.

Just imagine being removed from your house with nothing but the clothes on your back. AND we all know what horrific or devastating conditions must have existed for a child to be taken out of their home in the first place.

Angels for the Forgotten do wonderful work. During the floods they were a God-send here.

So I'm setting aside uni work to sew as much as I can for them this week.

I ask you, please help them! Blog about them, link to their challenge, and I know we are all so busy, but I also know you can achieve sewing miracles so I urge you to make anything you can manage from their list even if it's just 1 or 2 thats 1 or 2 closer to their goals:

Angels for the forgotten have listed their 2012 challenge goals, they need:

2500 Angel bags 

1200 Angel blankies 

1200 crayon /pencil rolls 

1000 heart or angel dangels /tags 

For patterns and more information about what they need and to see where the local drop off point near you might be:

Visit Angels for the Forgotten's Angel Bag Sewing Challenge

Rust and Tannic Paste Resist

My favourite of all the dyeing exercises for uni, was the paste resist, rust & tannic dyeing. The effects are really striking and it's so easy to do!

Before dyeing with the alum, Starch & flour paste pattern applied

After rust & tannic dyeing

My Favourite of all the rust & tannic was the rust using metal objects. I tied objects up in cloth & soaked it all in cleaning vinegar in a plastic tub lifting in various parts out to expose to the air from time to time. It took several weeks, but it's just sitting there really so not too hard!

The colours & patterns are amazing!

Shibori & Indigo Dyeing

Part of what I was doing all last study period, was Some Shibori & Indigo Dyeing. It was a lengthy process but I enjoyed it a whole lot! Some samples were really successful, others could have done with a bit longer in the dye I think.