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 skirt made from another skirt

While my niece is here we've been making her lot's of clothes, and heres another one! At some point during the 90's my mum made herself a very large long skirt. Then after having made the skirt she cut a good 30 cm's off the bottom of the skirt before she wore it. The left over piece of skirt was hemmed and had 8 curved panels in it, because there was so much fabric, I cut along the hem and seams (instead of unpicking - I hate unpicking!) and overlocked and stitched 5 of the pieces back together again. Technically I could have saved myself time and just left the seams as they were, but I prefer the look of overlocked edges to zigzag, and this way all the parts will look the same. I used the remaining panels to cut out pieces of frill and sewed them together. I then began using a gathering stitch on my overlocker along the entire frill, which looked really long but gathered up almost perfectly to the size of the skirt (after fiddling around for hours with the settings to get it to do semi decently gathered stitch). It turns out the manual apparently has the wrong settings for the needle tensions for the gathering instructions. grrr!
Luckily it turned out great, it's one of those projects that could have gone either way but would have probably ended up in the "Later pile"if I hadn't persisted.

Again I made a fabric flower using a tutorial from Wise Craft because my niece really loved the last one. I again added a vintage button from my mums button jar and this time, some new organza ribbons. I love these fabric flowers. After they've been washed a few times and start to fray and curl they get a whole lot more character that I love!

If it weren't for Police Academy being the late night movie last night I may not have spent so much time trying to work out how to gather with my overlocker. Police Academy is an oldie that's for sure, but it still has the ability to make me laugh out loud and throughout all the fiddling and test stitching with the overlocker I needed some laughing! For those with this overlocker, Janome Harmony 9102D The settings I finally used were : Left Needle Thread Tension Dial set to 9. The Right Needle Thread Tension Dial set to 9. Upper and Lower Looper Thread Tension Dials set to 3. The stitch length dial set to 4. The Differential feed dial set to the next mark past the 2 (the book calls it 2.2) and the Needle plate setting knob set to S. But please if anyone knows if there is a more correct way to gather using this overlocker please let me know!