What you don't do to your thumb if you want to sew and/or keep your thumb

Wow, look what happens when you step back for just a moment, a month goes by with only one blog post that whole time!
There has been a crazy amount of actual working going on. But, now I have 2 weeks of holidays to recover! (and clean my house) I've been lucky enough to pick up a part-time contract for the whole of next term, which is lovely. I'll be teaching food tech to three year 7 classes and filling up the rest of each day with casual classes when and if they are available.

About a week ago now, I bashed/crushed/twisted my thumb unceremoniously between the big bolt that holds the sewing needle in the machine and the sewing machine bed. Theres no way to explain how I did this...all I can do is show & tell why you should not do this if you want to continue to own a thumb.

It started swelling straight away, but it seemed like such a minor cut. I took a photo to laugh t myself about look what happens when I try to sew tired...joke son me well and truly now!
By mid week it didn't look small or minor, it was gooey and sooooo painful even a small bump or touch made me cry, it was also burning hot and oozy, it started to pain, and spreading a raised lump a deep red colour under the skin from the cut all the way down to the knuckle joint. By Friday I could not stand to move my thumb, cover it with anything, (no bandage, tape, rubber gloves, nothing) and the pain and dark red burning was spreading into the palm of my hand. I can't show you, those photos would have been too gross and gooey and even if I had the thought of mind to take any, (I was too busy weeping at the time of dressing changes) they'd probably end up in some hall of goo or manky file on the internet -I've seen the toe files people!! LOL
Now that I am on the Antibiotics and let's just delicately say, my thumb has been slightly skinned and mostly de-gooed by the Dr. I can show you what it looks like today. It looks really good :)

See that darker patch of skin reaching toward my knuckle? Luckily it's receding fast, because thats the infection and it's hot and burning and damage causing! Today my thumb only hurts if I bump it or if I'm doing too  much with it. - Let me tell you, I had no idea how much I use my thumb until now! Typing is particularly bad, turning things like jars or taps even worse! The most sad is my scissors, I bought brand new Mundial shiny sharp "good" scissors right before this happened, the very night this happened, and I haven't been able to use them since!

For this months and last months FOSAL items I get a big fat FAIL stamp on. The little May cross-stitch still did not get finished, It was a purple stocking.

I didn't even get time to choose one to start for June, and here it is, July already. :(

I did complete my 12 sewing challenges in 12 months June item, (Something self designed or self drafted) and I even photographed it with days to spare, and then I promptly put the camera down and forgot to blog or flickr them. BAH! So I guess that's a Fail too! It did take me almost 3 weeks to sew. 15 minutes here, an hour there. Some time grabbed before dinner, after dinner, while I could still stay awake and before I made my thumb not so opposable.

I made...an apron. I had no pattern, I used my measuring tape to measure me, then estimated some extra room for gathering, around the uh, bust area. Then I drew it up onto some brown paper taped together. (It was like brown paper dress-ups!) I ended up stitching the gathers into the brown paper, then taking around half the gathering out of the bust region, re-fitted it and then, finally got to cut out some material! My rotary cutter and I went to town! I cut 2 strips for the waistband  (the 2 waistband pieces sandwich together trapping the top of the apron between one edge and the skirt of the apron between the bottom edge) and each tie is two really long pieces stitched together on 3 sides to form a tube when turned out.  The open end of one tie pokes inside the left and the other into the right edge of the waistband sandwich and is stitched in. I made wide binding for around the neck straps and edging on the top of the apron.
I stitched around the edges of the waistband, straps and ties with the dark blue thread to finish it off.

The top and bottom edge of the top part of the apron is gathered, or rather ruffled using my ruffler foot. It gives the "boobage" area a better fitting rounded shape rather than what a flat apron always does on me, which always seems to "tent" in the middle.

The floral fabric is vintage from my Mum's cupboard It's a very heavy, thick cotton. I've been in love with it for a very long time, she gave it to me a couple of years ago, I just didn't know what to sew from it. It's too floral for pants. Too heavy for shirts. I don't wear skirts. I just didn't know what to do besides look at it lovingly! The plain blue fabric is 100% cotton bought from Spotlight last year, it was bought for something else, but I can't remember what!
I may still take up the skirt because it's a tad long.
During the past few weeks I made a cake, from a packet..I know..Oh the horror! But it did taste good!

In other news, I have not been keeping up with my finish 2 projects before starting another. I plan to rectify that this week if my sewing room ever goes back to useable.
I'd been having back problems after sewing for even short bursts. I tried lot's of different chairs and stools but really I've found the Horn sewing table too low for me and a I keep hunching over to use my machine. So, I will be using my enormous table to sew from and cut out on. (It was destined for Dad's shed but never made it there) my horn sewing table is going to keep being used mainly for my overlocker and my old sewing machine and so, today this is what my poor sewing room looks like.

The poor Horn feels unloved. We tried to think of ways to lift the horn up a bit, but there just isn't any is there? It has a fold/pull out section to make it a T shape with draws etc so no matter what we thought of, we couldn't work out how to keep it functional.

So we decided instead to use my poor old table (which would have had to have it's legs repaired in order to be used anyway). The poor old wobbly thing! But now it has been re-legged completely to make it taller. Here it is in progress, with the table top upside down underneath it, because we have no space to move around it otherwise ;)

The legs may be stained sometime in the future, but for now they will stay as they are and we'll see how it goes.
Just before pulling apart the sewing room, I stitched up the free bag kit that came with a magazine called Homestyle sewing. I didn't make it fancy or make a flower or anything, I just made it and it fits magazines perfectly to take on holidays with us tomorrow to the beach.

Have a lovely rest of today, I've just realised I've been typing this post for a week! Finally I got to hit Publish on this post!

Baby it's cold outside!

Baby it's cold outside! I've been singing this song in my head in a never ending loop all weekend. I have no idea why, I think it's a good lifetime ago when I last even actually heard that song. And thanks to you tube I found out it's not actually sung by who I thought it was all this time!

Baby It's Cold Outside

Christine | MySpace Video

Anyway, we stayed inside all weekend near a heater and I sang that in my head! Husband is feeling sniffly after a week of putting up with me feeling sniffly so I baked a cake for my husband (I had to have a chance to bake wearing my new apron!) and because he almost never gets cakes or biscuits in our house, he really loved the idea.

Please note that in order to eat the cake we had to also have tea, proper tea apparently, in a pot. Which we did! and it was lovely, but by this stage getting later and later after dinner, I rushed to ice it. However, I maybe should have allowed the cake to cool for just a bit longer, as you clearly see the cakes top layer sliding off and hurtling towards my Home economics assignment from year 7. (1989) Yes my friends, cross stitch and flower embroidery on gingham. And just to prove the usefulness over the years of cross stitch on gingham, my mum uncovered this deep within her cupboards complete with a piece of school book paper pinned and stapled to the corner and written in pencil, my name, yr 7, 1989 assignment 1. With a big red A in a circle and the teachers signature, on the back once unfolded, some maths homework ripped out of my book.  I was apparently much better at cross stitching gingham than I was at maths as I am now horrified and embarrassed by my lack of yr 7 algebra skills found on the other side written like a dogs breakfast and would now like to humbly apologise to all my teachers.

The important thing to remember is, I made a great cake! It was a lemon delicious sponge type cake with lemon and coconut icing. And we all consumed enough sugar to give us all diabetes and keep us awake for hours!
Sunday was also suitably lovely, we began the day with my husband making pancakes!

Maybe I should bake him a cake more often if I get pancakes in return!

As for sewing, I ventured into the sewing room for a few hours over the weekend, just long enough to cut out all the pieces for the my next project, the KF everything Wallet.

It has an enclosed zip in it for my May item for the 12 in 12 sewing challenge. I'm using the leftover pieces of fabric from the Apron I made for Fabiola at Little Cooties for the The Great Apron Swap.

My lovelies!

It's been a Busy and productive week all around really!
I forgot to tell you about the night I jumped up and down a lot because my lovelies arrived from Spin Blessings. I am in love with these beauties and they have already been amazing in forming many stitches.

They are Susan Bates wonderfully coloured aluminium hooks in a range of sizes. I've popped some Foohy Gooshy Grips into them to cover the grip bit with the writing, which irritates my finger after hooking for a while. For the bigger hooks, the Gooshy grips fit right on the hooks, the smaller hooks the Gooshy grips slide off or rattle around inside. Instead, I've used some bluetac wrapped around them and rolled the gooshy grips over the bluetac. A great idea! Not my idea, Teresa the queen of crochet did a wonderful YouTube video about this:)
I've used mostly, the biggest, size 11 hook to make a scarf for my husband, for all those outdoor recess and lunch duties over winter to come. It makes lovely stitches and they slide on and off wonderfully! I'm in love!

It's made with alternating Single crochet and treble crochet across the width then chaining up. It's a great quick pattern that I can mindlessly do while hanging out on the lounge watching TV at night. It uses two strands of yarn together. I have no idea why the variegated yarn has ended up forming bands of distinctly different sections, it's all along the scarf so far in 10 cm or so chunks then changes for about 10 cm it's like the variegations all line up for 10 rows, then they don't, then they do again..weird...chunks...almost like I made stripes. We'll just say it's meant to be like that?...yes..it's the design. ;)

My apron swap partner Fab sent me this wonderful apron that I have not stopped wearing since it arrived!
It's Gorgeous and fun and yellow delicious!

Now I can show you the one I made, as she has received it, and has blogged about it herself over at Little Cooties.

The fabric is a Tribal range of poplin, 100% Cotton from spotlight. The apron took 1 metre of both fabrics, so 2 metres in total.

I used every ounce of patience to stitch around the scallop edge:)

I used my Bernina Ruffler to gather the top of the apron skirt on a setting of Stitch length 2 and the ruffler set to 6. (creates a gathered fold every 6 stitches). It reduced the 1 metre width down to almost half.

It's fully reversible, mostly to make the scallop edgy bits easier, but also so you get 2 aprons in one;)

The pockets are "tulip" shaped pockets. I unpicked these several times before I realised, like an idiot that I shouldn't try to stitch through both layers together and beg the pockets to be aligned perfectly, I should stitch 1 pocket to 1 fabric layer instead and the other pocket to the other layer of fabric. DUH!
So, theres my apron:) I love it and I think Fab loves it too.
This week I absolutely HAD to finish one more UFO before I am allowed to begin my new project. (12 in 12 challenge for May)
The UFO I chose was a warm winter tartan dress my mum had begun sewing for me when I was a little kid. She gave up on it for 25 odd years and then gave it to me to finish off for my niece who was staying with us at the time, I said I would, then took one look at it and never got back to doing it, because, "zips are too hard" and there were bits missing (the neck facing) and some of the stitching was a little on the weird side..I think my mum may have gone a little nuts on it.
It looks almost done I said on Monday...hmmm looks are so deceiving! I thought, I'll knock this one off pretty quick and get onto my new project...hmmm...nope, wrong again.

The shoulders had been sewn together on the outside, instead of the inside, and then tucked into another seam to hide it, and then there was the stitching around the waist...

And this was one of the neater sections, some were triple zigzagged, triple straight stitched and a gathering stitch and felt lumpy, thick and solid...The fabric was fraying, and I decided to unpick everything and stitch it up again.
3 days of unpicking the entire dress later...

I finally got to overlocking and re-assembling, including the lovely lace on the front, in two rows, which had been tucked and folded over (a bit lumpy) instead of ending in the seams. I unpicked the zigzag and straight stitched it back on in the same curves it had been on, because it was pretty:)

Then I cut a neck facing out of the belt pieces that was supposed to go with it but mum had forgotten to sew into the side seams. I felt it was more important to have a facing to neaten up the neck.
And then...onto the part I had been dreading and avoiding all week, and again, avoiding all day today.

Today I watched tutorials, read new blogs, sipped tea, googled, did everything other than the zip today! I don't know what I was thinking avoiding it. Tonight I sewed in the zip...It wasn't that scary. I did it in a few add breaks during Masterchef. I did remember an old trick my mum showed me of tying a ribbon onto the zipper pull to help move the zip around the foot of your machine in order to keep your stitch straight. Score one for mum, it worked a treat, even if I did forget to use the zipper foot on the correct sides...whoops...still good still good!

And here it is...all overlocked and stitched and finished! Another UFO done!!! Hooray! And thanks again to Karin at MadebyK whose New project plan is the only reason I can force myself to finish 2 UFO's before I can start any new project. Thankfully crafty bloggy sharing people like her are injecting some sanity into my crazy ADHD-like - attention span for starting loads of projects and not finishing! Oh look bright shiny thing!
And now onto the important task of sleep...night all.

A Long weekend of Project finishes!

I've spent the weekend nursing a migraine - BOO! and finishing projects YAY!
Thanks to the lovely Hilary over at Quilary. She pointed me to another lovely blog called Made By K.

At Made by K, Karin has created a wonderful printout to list your unfinished projects on to encourage finishing! Her plan is simple. You print out her project plan and list each project so you know what projects you have there waiting to be finished and what the hold up was. The key to this is that you can't start a new project until you have completed 2 of your unfinished ones from your list. And ...there's no more hiding!
The first step was to print out the Project plan document, I ended up printing it out a whole lot because I have a whole whole lot of unfinished projects.
Then I retrieved each piece of an unfinished project from it's washing basket hiding place. Then I sorted all the individual pieces that make up one project into a ziplock bag. So now each of my projects is in it's own bag with a label. (You don't have to do this, its just something I needed to get organised). Then I wrote each project down on the document and wrote the reason for it's hold up to being finished.

In the shame of having sooooo many pages of unfinished projects, this weekend I decided on a catchup weekend. No new projects until I finished/made progress on a whole stack of them this weekend.

First there was the other Maisey.

There were 3 Maiseys cut out and in the basket, one for each of my sisters girls. 2 Maiseys are now done, just One Maisey to go. The third Maisey is all stitched up, she just needs stuffing and will be finished off tomorrow. :)

Then onto a much harder project. Actually it is two projects and they are not technically mine, they are actually unfinished projects of my mums. They were begun in 1970 when my aunt was getting married. With the leftover fabrics from my aunts wedding and bridesmaids dresses some Barbie dresses were cut out. Some were stitched up by hand, and some were just cut out. They were never finished and lived in a bag in my mums sewing cupboard. I loved to take them out and look at them when I was small, and I always wished she would finish them so my Barbies could get married. Then, last year she gave them to me and asked me if I wanted to re-sew them and finished them off. Now comes the hard part, I left them and left them, because I was a little scared of them falling to pieces and not being able to be fixed. At some stage a child has had a go at stitching them together, I believe it may have been my sister, possibly my cousin. The thread and some of the lining fabrics had disintegrated and frayed and the hand stitching was bulky and uneven, not like the nice little stitches my mum always did.
Here are the before pictures for one of the Bridesmaid outfit:

And here is the before pictures of the brides dress. See the gorgeous fabric, so scared it would get ruined!

Bulky stitching on waist and seams.

and Disintegrating and fraying. :(

I unpicked everything very carefully and zigzagged all the edges before stitching back together.
The finished Bridesmaid dress:

The finished Brides dress:

Together:

There is still one Bridesmaid dress to go. It was never stitched up, but is fully cut out, it will be a project for another day. :)

I also finished stitching my cross stitch which was supposed to be finished for March FOSAL. However, I noticed the other day that I had forgotten to stitch the stem of the leaf pattern in silver. So now it is finished in terms of the cross-stitch. It still requires sewing on some backing fabric to make into an ornament, and so it will be completed tomorrow on the machine, but here is a progress photo before I pop off to bed.

I also finished weaving in all the ends of the crochet granny square blanket for the twins, but I am still working on the other one for the older girl:) So, to be continued...

Tomorrow under the rules, I must finish 2 before starting another. And so, I will!...my new project is an apron swap, so I REALLY want to do it, I REALLY HAVE TO DO IT and so I MUST finish 2 tomorrow to start my apron project.

What was I doing again!?

Sometimes it surprises me how completely off track life can get. One moment I'm cruising through days. I haven't been working much and money was tight this month, But I was reading, blogging, sewing, making, cooking, cleaning and cutting out at the speed of light. I even found time to visit friends, play in the garden, learn to crochet. Oh the joy!
And then theres this past week.
Mum went into hospital. I made lot's of nervous Granny squares during lot's of nervous waits. Everything is waiting with hospitals. Waiting in admission to fill out paperwork, waiting for doctors to assess, waiting for tests to be run, waiting for showers and toilets, waiting for meals, waiting for the Angio-gram to be done, waiting for results. More tests, more waiting, lot's of waiting. Lot's of wonky Granny squares. Still waiting.  At least she can come home to Dad for one night over the weekend. We'll call that shore leave ;) before she has to go back into Hospital Sunday night for further tests to be done next week so, I'm predicting lot's more waiting and more Granny squares.

This week at home, nothing got cleaned, washed or cooked. Nothing got sewn or cut out, Nothing got made or blogged or even photographed. The garden forgot to be watered.

The other evening, I managed to rapidly (less than 5 mins) photograph the few items I had previously made to be mailed down to the Edwards family to take across to the Vietnam orphans. They should reach them in time, say Aus post..hmm I hope so!

I made 6 Baby Wraptops with some matching wide legged loungin' around baby pants out of cotton fabrics from my stash.

These I made the teal roses fabric into pants and the Baby Wraptop and used the pastel rainbow fabric for the bias on the wrap top and as contrast on the pants to match.

For these I made the pants from the same pastel rainbow fabric as the Baby Wraptops bias and used the pink fabric as contrast on the pants because to match the pink from the Baby Wraptop.

For these I made the pants from the same pastel rainbow fabric as the Baby Wraptops bias and used the pastel rainbow fabric in a horizontal direction as contrast on the pants because I had run out of the pink from the Baby Wraptop.

For these I made the pants from the same pastel rainbow fabric as the Baby Wraptops bias and used the teal roses fabric as contrast on the pants.

For these I used some of the teal rose print fabric to make bias to match the pants. The pants used the pink roses fabric in contrasting bands to match the main fabric for the Baby Wraptop.

These ones I had unfortunately run out of the teal roses fabric bias but instead used three pastel rainbow hearts appliqued on the Baby Wraptop and 3 on the left leg of the pants to match the pastel rainbow bias I had made and used on the Baby Wraptop.

I also made a couple of dresses and a skirt from some bright coloured 100% Cotton fabric from Mum.

I then appliqued 2 small sleeveless tops and made 2 matching pairs of shorts.

I also appliqued and  finished off  a pair of yellow pants my Mum had cut out a long time ago, (also listed in my UFO box list) and sent them along too. They had a very large GOLD paint fabric makers mark across them, I guess she didn't notice when she cut them out? It was huge! and GOLD! It said 100% Cotton proudly made in the peoples republic of china right across one whole leg. Oddly, the pants dimensions don't make sense either, so, I re-cut the pants, smaller, but using the pattern I made up for the Loungin' around pants. I then cut out an elastic casing for the waistband using some brightly coloured striped fabric from my stash and used the same bright striped fabric to Applique Stars and a big stripe across the leg to cover the massive Makers stamp that not only would not wash out, could be clearly seen from the other side of the fabric! The main fabric is a bright yellow fabric bought to make shorts for us girls back in the 80's for  a Primary school swimming carnival. They then got used for every swimming and athletics carnival. These baby pants were cut out from the leftover fabric after 2 of us had shorts each, and an enormous flag. Go GOLD! Now they are going to somewhere they can be worn and played in! YAY! And strike another one off my UFO list!

I tried to get our school to ask the kids to collect a few things, I thought if each student brought in a new dummy, bottle or an exercise book or a small something, it would add up to lot's and spread the load across many.  But the school executive put the Kibosh on the idea..something about already supporting too many charities already:( that also makes me sad:(

I feel so guilty! I wish I could have done more, made more, and sent more. I really wanted to :( I had not had time to cut out or sew the boy's things I had planned to make to send down. I also wanted to go buy some exercise books and school related stuff and some Savlon and dummies too, but never made it to a shop this whole week. It is such a heartfelt worthy cause. I hope to God they had enough stuff from other people or that maybe I can make it up the next time they are able to go back across to Vietnam. My husband tried to help me by saying what I made was plenty, but it really wasn't much in the grand scheme of things they need. I just can't stop thinking about all those babies and children in orphanages. Do families ever come and take them home to love and care and raise them? Does that happen in other countries? The thought of children growing up in an orphanage long-term instead of a family makes me so very sad. I just watched a youtube video of a Vietnam orphanage, I want to take them all home and love them. I just can't stop crying. Here in Australia, people are desperate to adopt, with many willing parents waiting years and years on an endless list to love a child. I know it's considered bad to take kids away from their own culture, but to grow up in an orphanage is better? I guess I am shocked that orphanages even need to exist! Today is a desperately sad day! The world is just bogging me down today. I need to find some happy..I'll go in search.