Fabrics for our summer project

My 7-year-old and I were planning to make pretty dresses for her and her tiny sister last summer. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during the first week of the summer holidays and spent a week in hospital and the rest of the holidays adjusting, recovering and learning how to deal with her condition.

This summer we are DETERMINED to make them, and we'll keep you up to date with our progress.

Here are the fabrics we have chosen.

Tiny girl is having pink ...


Big girl is having red ...


We're using the Feliz dress pattern by Farbenmix and adding a few ruffles at the back of the underdress.

Watch this space!!

End of Year Teacher Gifts

It's becoming a bit of a tradition in our house to make one of these little concertina books for the children's teachers at the end of the school year. The child chooses the patterned papers, ribbons and embellishments, does all the sticking and glueing, and writes little messages on squares of coloured paper to stick inside. I think they're nicer than giving a shop-bought card.

Front:


Back:


Inside:


This year, because the teachers have been absolutely wonderful, and have looked after my two diabetic darlings so brilliantly, we also made them a little handbag each, using theApril Bag pattern at Sew Mama Sew. http://www.sewmamasew.com/store/media/blog/SMSAprilBags.pdf




Less fattening than a box of chocolates, and will last longer. :-D

Some of my sewing from June

I haven't taken photos of everything I made, and some of it has been sent off to other people, so it's too late.

I have a pile of old baby clothes sitting upstairs waiting to be quilted or turned into something useful. As we were having a birthday party in June for our littlest girl, I decided it was a good time to try making some bunting with it. I didn't manage to get much made in time for the party, but it's a start, and I'll try to make some more ready for the next party. :-)



It's a great way of keeping some of your favourite fabrics from the childrens' clothes, without ending up with a houseful of useless tiny outfits!


I also cut out some letters freehand and appliqued them onto a dark red towel.


Not the best photo, but you get the idea.

Starting a New Quilting Project

I found this tutorial recently

Cathedral Window Tutorial

Years ago my gran showed me some beautiful examples of cathedral window quilting that she had done; some of them very tiny. They were all perfect and amazed me. I couldn't imagine how she had made them.

As there is a pile of old baby clothes waiting to be quilted, I thought this might be an ideal way to use them.

My first attempt turned out quite well, but I discovered that doing the "window" part with my machine isn't very practical. The stitches turned out very messy and I broke two needles in the process. I think I'll try by hand next time. I like the overall result though.

Spotty Wrap Dress

There's a lovely little dress in a shop in town, which I would love for Baby, but they only make it in sizes up to 12 months and she's now 22 months old. :-(

This is the dress...

http://www.mothercare.com/Humphreys-Corner-dress/dp/B0031NOZDQ/sr=1-2/qid=1272052090/ref=sr_1_2/276-1987948-9217856?_encoding=UTF8&m=A2LBKNDJ2KZUGQ&n=42764041&mcb=core

I decided to try making a version myself, without the elephant embroidery and without the big bow on the front. I think it turned out quite well.

Instead of the spotty strip and white ruffle around the bottom I used this cotton trim. I bought a full 100m reel of it on ebay for about £1.99 when I was making frilly bibs for my first baby, 7 years ago. Since then it has been used on skirts, dresses, doll clothes, baby blankets, bibs, etc. and there is still quite a lot left!

I started overlocking and one of the needles snapped. I can't find the hex key to replace the needle at the moment, so I did a 3-thread overlock instead which wasn't great (I didn't get the tension quite right) but was preferable to raw edges.

Topstitching the trim.

The bodice.

The almost-finished dress. All I have to do is add the poppers (snaps) to the back and sew in the last loose threads.

I Finally Finished the Quilt!!

My YCMT quilt has been sitting around unfinished for about a year, during which time the baby has grown up so much that she won't be able to use it as a pram quilt!

We've had a very full year, and I've hardly been near the sewing machine. Our eldest daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in July 2009. In February 2010 our son (just turned 5) started showing symptoms too, and he has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes too. It's a lot to cope with, but we manage, and the injections, carb-counting, etc. are becoming a routine part of daily life in our family.



Today the two eldest children went back to school after their Easter holiday, and the baby decided to have a good nap, so I thought I would try getting a bit more of the quilt done.


Here is the quilt top pinned to the wadding (batting).

I chose to use the same pink flowery fabric for the backing as I had used for the border.

All ready to start stitching!

The back. I decided not to do anything too complicated.

Almost finished! The binding sewn on at the front and pinned at the back, ready to be sewn. It's not a magic, self-standing quilt. Somewhere behind there, there's a 7-year-old standing on a chair! :-)

The camera batteries ran out before I did the blind hemming, but as it basically looks exactly like the pictures above, you don't really need another photo.

I'm glad it's done, but wish I'd finished it while "the baby" (now nearly two years old) was still tiny enough to use it in her pram. It would have looked gorgeous.

This isn't a creation of mine. It was made by my daughter, who is 6 and has type 1 diabetes. It's a "diabotic". See this blog to find out about diabotics.

Introducing ... Diane Botic. She has purple spiky hair and an antenna made of a calibration strip. Her tummy is also a drawer which apparently makes ice cubes for dispensing to children at injection time.