Crochet Giant Granny Scarf

After I posted about the headband that I knitted my sister for Christmas, Sheila, who I bought the pattern from, very kindly got in touch with me and asked if I'd like to try one of her other patterns. Sheila has lots of lovely knitting and crochet patterns in her Etsy shop, so I jumped at the chance and, after a bit of deliberation, chose the Giant Fall Granny Scarf  crochet pattern. Here's my version...

You may have noticed from this that I've also already knit myself the same headband that I made for my sister (albeit in a different colour) and I'm just as pleased with it second time around, possibly even more so because this time I get to keep it! 

Anyway, back to the scarf! As the name suggests it is a bit of a giant, but in a very good way. Chunky, oversized scarves are lovely and cosy, and working with thick yarn and a large hook (or needles when knitting) obviously means that projects grow satisfyingly quickly. 

The cosy factor is definitely the most important thing for me at the moment though. I may have managed to find one of the rare moments of sun that we've had in the UK recently to take these photos, but (as you can probably tell from the state of my hair - thank goodness the headband is keeping it at least vaguely under control!) it was crazily windy and freezing cold so a huge snuggly scarf was definitely a very welcome companion on this walk.

The pattern was simple and easy to follow and I'm really pleased with the results. The scarf is intended to be worked in stripes of 6 different colours, which looks great, but for once I decided to be a tiny bit sensible when it came to picking what yarn to use and stuck to one lovely colour which should hopefully go with any of the coats/jackets I might want to wear it with.

I'm also pleased that I've started 2014 off with a crochet project under my belt because one of my aims this year is to keep building on my very limited crochet skills, so this is a good start to getting that going.

And another fun thing about this scarf? If you can bear to unwrap it from around your neck in the cold, it looks nice and dramatic blowing in the wind...

What more could you want?!

Easy autumnal headbands

After last week's knitted headband tutorial, this week I thought I'd write a quick post to share a couple of other ideas for easy headbands that I've made recently. Personally, I think that headbands are great for this time of year when your ears can end up feeling a bit chilly but it's not quite cold enough for it to be proper hat weather yet. Plus, they're usually quick and easy projects which can be good for a bit of a break when you're in the middle of working on bigger things!

I made the first of the headbands using the 1950s pin up head scarf pattern which is available as a free download from Bluegingerdoll. It's super simple and a great way of using up material left over from other projects.

I used a vintage Laura Ashley brushed cotton, which makes it nice and warm! You can wear the head scarf knotted on top of your head, but I prefer it knotted at the back, like this...

My second headband is a crochet turban headband from the book Geek Chic Crochet (which has quite a few nice patterns if anyone is looking for some new crochet projects by the way!).

This is another really simple pattern - I only learnt to crochet earlier this year and I would still definitely classify myself as a beginner but I managed it no trouble. 

They've both been getting quite a lot of wear in the last couple of weeks as the temperatures have dropped.

I've got a couple of bigger WIPs which I'm close to finishing so I'll be back to share those soon!

Shopper Bag from Sew!

Today is my sister's birthday so, given that she'll have opened her presents by now, I thought I'd show you one of the things I made for her - a cute little shoulder bag...

I used the Shopper Bag pattern from Sew! by Cath Kidston, which was actually the book that was responsible for getting me into sewing (I always enjoyed making things and had been talking about possibly buying a sewing machine for ages, so my Mum bought me the book for Christmas a couple of years ago to encourage me to stop talking about it and actually do it!). I hadn't made anything from the book for a while, but I remembered the bag patterns and thought that this one would be just right for what I had in mind.

The material was from the remnants bin in John Lewis a few months ago (my sister was with me at the time and said it would make a nice bag, so I decided there and then to keep this for her birthday present) and I had just enough to make the bag and the strap. The lining is a light blue chambray, which was also in the remnants bin at the same time - some good finds that day!

The book says to use webbing for the strap, which I probably would have preferred, but I couldn't find any locally (having been so convinced that I would find some that I left it too late to order online) so I improvised and interfaced the material and it worked out fine. 

The pattern is quite simple but effective and the bag is a good size for all the essentials, so a good choice to make for a present I think.

I'm now off to carry on with some more selfish sewing - see you soon!

Linking up to:

Colette Laurel Top

Here's my latest finished project - a Colette Laurel top.

Having made two skirts already, I thought it was time I tried to make something for my top half. I think part of me had been putting this off because I was a bit scared about the fact that a top involves much more need for fitting than a twirly skirt, and when I was on my dressmaking course, this seemed to lead to quite a lot of problems for my fellow students. With this in mind, I decided to abandon my usual need to have things finished quickly and make a muslin out of an old sheet to check everything was OK. I cut a 12 and (luckily!) it all seemed to fit fine without any alterations so I set to work on the "proper" version of the top.

Sadly I think the muslin may have fit me a little better than my finished version but I think it fits fine still so it's all good! The instructions were really good for a beginner like me, so it was no trouble to sew it all together and I got through all the steps reasonably quickly. 

The fabric is a cute blue and white floral cotton that I got from Fabric Godmother a while ago, it was originally for another project but I think it works well for this top - and I'm happy with how the white bias binding works with the floral print, especially the pretty lace-edged binding I used on the sleeves.

Overall, another project I'm happy with! I wasn't 100% convinced when I first finished it so I put it on and wore it straightaway in the hope that that would help me make up my mind (otherwise it would have been likely to hang unworn in my wardrobe for months because I'd never have been sure about it!) and I'm happy to say that it worked - it's a definite thumbs up now, and I quite fancy making one of the dress versions of the Laurel pattern soon.

And now I'll finish with a plea for help - has anyone got any tips for taking photos of my dressmaking projects? Either in terms of the technical photography stuff or how not to feel (and therefore look) embarrassed while you're taking the photos...

I'm quite keen on photography but don't generally like pointing the camera at myself so any pearls of wisdom would be very welcome!

Pom pom flowers

On a recent charity shop trip I acquired a nice tall vase. So tall, in fact, that it won't fit in any of my cupboards meaning it has since been sitting somewhat forlornly in my living room crying out to be filled with something pretty. Obviously there are lovely flowers that I could buy, but this vase really needs the tall, dramatic type flowers that always cost that bit more than I would like to spend on something that's going to have wilted and need to be replaced within a week. So I set about trying to find some nice artificial ones, failed, and came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to make some "flowers" instead. A quick browse of Pinterest later, and pom pom flowers seemed to be the answer - simple, colourful, a bit quirky and cheap being as I have quite a bit of wool left over from various projects.

There are plenty of versions out there (this one and this one were the main ones that inspired me), but here's my interpretation...

As you can probably tell they're really simple - just make your pom poms in whatever shapes and colours you like using your preferred pom pom making method (I might have to try out a Clover pom pom maker at some point, but this time I used the old-fashioned method of wrapping wool round 2 pieces of card), get some appropriate lengths of garden cane, put a little bit of glue (I used my hot glue gun) on the end and hold the pom pom onto the end of the cane for a couple of minutes to make sure it sticks...

That's all it takes! 

Here's my "bouquet" and the no-longer-forlorn vase in all their glory...

Simple but effective I think! I might have to make some others in different colours and alternate them, but I've got a couple more projects in the pipeline that need to be finished before I get round to that - watch this space!

Sewaholic Hollyburn: Take 2

Having been so pleased with the results of my first attempt of a Sewaholic Hollyburn skirt, I couldn't wait to make a second version of the skirt, and I'm happy to report that I still love the pattern second time around. Here's take 2...

I wanted it to be a bit different from my first attempt, so this time I made view C (the shortest option) with the belt loops from view A, and I used a very fine baby cord fabric with the intention that it would be ready to wear with tights and boots once autumn appears. Of course, I was excited about finishing the skirt so I had to wear it right away on a lovely, warm August day...

Not quite what I was envisaging when I chose the fabric, but if you ask me this just makes the skirt even better because it means it's nice and versatile and I'll get lots of wear out of it. The baby cord is navy but has a tiny white, rusty and green floral print on it so doesn't look too dreary on a sunny day, but equally it won't look too summery once the colder months arrive.

All in all, I'm just as pleased with this version as I was with the first one, and it proves that the first one wasn't a fluke! If anyone out there is thinking about giving dressmaking a try, I'd definitely recommend this pattern - you only really need the waistband to fit so there aren't any complicated fitting issues, the instructions are really easy to follow and you end up with a great result.

I'm excited about trying out some other patterns now, but I think there'll be more versions of the Hollyburn in the future - you can't go wrong with a pretty full skirt really can you?

Camera bag

Like most bloggers, I love taking photos and so try to have my camera with me whenever I can. In the last couple of months this has resulted in various solutions of how to take a camera around whilst still having the essentials that I need for a day out, ranging from cutting down the essentials to the absolute bare minimum that I need and stuffing that in every spare bit of space in my camera bag to lugging around a massive bag with my camera bag and the rest of my contents of a normal handbag inside it. Sometimes these options are fine, but there's times when I just want a more simple solution that still looks good, so for a while now I've been coveting a Jo Totes camera bag. They look fantastic - just like a normal handbag but with padding for your camera and lots of convenient pockets for all the other bits and pieces you might want to have with you. Sadly they're a bit out of my price range for a bag at the moment, but one of them is definitely on the birthday/Christmas list (I just need to decide which one...) so my camera was going to stay in its current practical but not very pretty bag, but then I spotted this month's Sewing World magazine which caught my eye because it has a camera bag on it's cover. The solution! So I snapped it up and got to work.

There were quite a lot of pieces to cut out, interface and line with fusible fleecing so the preparation took quite a while but it was all fairly simple and easy to put the pieces together - helped by very clear instructions with photos of some of the slightly more complicated (still not very complicated!) steps which meant it was easy to know what you were meant to be doing. Here's my finished result...

And here's the back and inside - plenty of pockets:

The one change I did make was that I lengthened the strap - the one in the pattern seems to be for a shoulder bag but I prefer cross-body bags. I just measured the strap of a bag that I already own and used that for the length measurement, easy peasy!

Possibly the trickiest bit was attaching the press fasteners - it was the first time I'd used them and it took me a while to realise how useless the instructions that came with mine were. A quick google search sorted things out though!

In the middle of construction I was wishing that I'd chosen a print with a more random pattern for the outer pockets or that I'd deliberately constructed it so that the checked print intentionally didn't match up (or that I was the kind of person who didn't care if it matched), but I'm pleased that I persevered and made sure that it all lined up.

It was a great way to use up some of my stash too, and all of the materials I used were either left over from other projects or bargain remnant bin/ebay finds, and the stripey lining was the back of a men's shirt that I bought for £1 in a charity shop! 

If anyone else is having similar camera bag dilemmas, get out and buy Sewing World magazine now - this issue is still in the shops at the moment, and there are lots of other pretty projects in there too! 

The Teddy Dog

In my first post I showed you some personalised cushions that I'd made; one of them was for a cousin's baby and when my other cousin's daughter saw it she was quite taken with it so I said I'd make one for her and some other little girls in the family, but one of the girls decided that she didn't really want a cushion and would rather have, in her words, a teddy dog. This possibly wasn't the best request for me to be given being as I'm not particularly keen on dogs (controversial I know, but I have my reasons!), and when I was little I was much more of a fan of dolls than of cuddly toys, and on a more practical level I'd never made anything like this before, but I decided I'd give it a go and set about finding a pattern.

There are cute a few tutorials out there for making soft toys/plushies, and I almost decided on this one from Jenny Allsorts, but eventually I found Repeating Patterns on Etsy, and thought that their puppy pattern looked quite cute so that was the one I went with.

I was slightly daunted when I first started looking through the PDF pattern, but I soon realised that it was all very clearly explained and there's a photograph for each step so it's easy to see what you're supposed to be doing. So it was quite easy to go from this....

to this....

to the finished article...

I really would recommend Repeating Patterns if you want to make soft toys, I've never sewn anything like this before and all the little pieces, seams and darts were a little bit tricky at times but the pattern and instructions were so clear that you really couldn't go wrong.

Let's just hope his new owner will be pleased with him!

Business card holder

Recently I got some business cards printed for my Etsy shop from the brilliant MOO (if you're looking for business cards I'd definitely recommend them - they're more expensive than some of the other options online but definitely worth it, I was really pleased with mine) and thought that they needed a nice home to live in. I considered buying one as there are many nice options out there, but in the end I decided that as I'm using them to promote my handmade business, I really should try making one myself.

I found a great tutorial from The Crafty Cupboard which seemed pretty simple so I decided to give it a go, and here is the result...

I repressed my urge to use as many pretty prints as possible, and instead used denim for the outside with the reasoning that it'll tougher and will wear better if I'm carrying it around in my bag all the time, but I thought appearance was more important on the inside so I chose two contrasting spotty prints...

And here it is with the cards in their new home...

I'm really pleased - I'd definitely recommend using this tutorial if you want to make yourself a card holder, it was really easy to follow and as you can see it produces great results!