Quick tee surgery

Phew it was warm today! Most of my clothes were in the washing machine and I had this daggy old tee left. It was a regular v-neck with sleeves to my elbows, and felt much too hot.
So off to the sewing room, chop the sleeves short with the rotary cutter, then chop out the heavy v-neck with some ridiculously large foot long dressmakers shears (cos my scissors were elsewhere..).
First I took the tee in a few cms each side, starting at the waistband, zipping up the sides on the overlocker to the sleeve edge.
I zipped a rolled hem around with the overlocker on the raw edges on the sleeves and neck and put 2 rows of shirring around the neckline.
I actually don't mind this tee now. I can see lots of tee surgery in my future..

(Hmm, better clean that mirror.. just keeping it "real". ;) )

And of course, that then left me with some scraps to play with! :) Rolled rose and a plait. Who knows what I will use them on if anything, but a good technique practice. The rose was from one cut off sleeve piece, cut into one continuous strip.

Meanwhile I have also been making 5 petaled flowers from more scraps. there's also a button cluster awaiting a clip backing. I had some broccoli boxes hanging aroundand found the foam lids perfect to pin the flowers onto to keep everything tidy and stop them being crushed.

And the scrappy flower blooms are increasing.

Scrappy Flower Tutorial.

 I am making a stack of these scrappy flowers to sell on my Christmas market stall. they will feature on hairclips and bands and all sorts of accessories. Here is a field of scrappy flowers awaiting their final touches.

Cut 6-7 circles the same size,

I used my clover yoyomakers for easy guides. I put a few layers inside then just cut around the edges, Some people like plain circles and the frayed look, I've used my pinking shears.

Use one circle for the base, depending on the final use, you might like to stiffen it or use felt.
Take a second circle and fold in half.

Then fold the half so that one third of it covers the second third.

Place it so the edges line up with the base and stitch it up through the doubled third and back through the single third.

Rinse and repeat
Place each subsequent folded circle onto the single fold of the previous one, leaving a small gap.

When you get to the end, tuck the single side of the last piece, under the double side of the first piece. Mostly I use 5 pieces around but for some reason, this time I needed 6 to go around

Embellish with yoyos or buttons or whatever and attach to whatever you like such as hairband, brooch, hairclip, dress, etc. Make double or triple layers in graduating sizes for an even fuller look.
Here's one using a second layer of the same size circles overlapped just a little in the centre.

Now, go get your scraps and start snipping and stitching !

You can make these to sell or use however you like yourself but of course the text and pics and tute itself are copyright. Which means you need permission to reproduce. (In case you hadn't figured that out).

Birthday time! Pink, ponies, pom poms and pettiskirts!

A little girls pink party dress fantasy come true!



First the pink present explosion with a baby My Little Pony we found at the Op shop and Pearl agreed to save for her birthday.

No time for hair fixing when there are presents to open!

  The twirl factor is always an important consideration.

 Little pink riding hood, who could resist such sweetness?

The cat that got the cream.....I am irresistably cute aren't I?

Reversible cape, shiny satin side out. the cape is very simple to make with only 3 pieces, 2 for the hood and 1 for the actual cape. It can be made unlined too. It is an
Ottobre design pattern 06/2008.













Wearing the pettiskirt on top looks amazing too. I was going to just make a tee, but decided I would like something under the pettiskirt if Pearl wanted to wear it that way around.

The pettiskirt was from an ebay seller, and for only $19.99 including postage! Now everyone, well, the females at least, young and old, want one too!

 Fluffly ruffles galore! And cute faux lace-up ballerina tights for under. The velour transfer I cut myself on my Klic n Kut craft plotter. I found a My Little Pony colour in page, copied to the software and then vectorised and simplified it for the cut.  I was really happy with how it turned out and there will be plenty more transfers in my future!

  And now a litany of the sewing disasters that struck while attempting a last minute night time sew. This was not my best work, Murphy was definitely visiting last night. Note to self... don't sew late at night. Lucky little girls have no eye for the details!
  Things were going well up until when I put the transfer on. It worked well. Really well. So well in fact, that I  I had very securely ironed an excess trim line (should have been removed first) well and truly on, never to be removed. Not sure why I hadn't noticed i had left that bit on but it was right along the edge of the transfer backing.  I had to put the guipure lace daises around it to hide the fault line at the top. It wasn't a straight line or even. Because the top part was already put together and not able to lie flat, the daisies were a pain to put on and of course are not perfectly rounded. Surprisingly the tulle and satin played the game nicely, until I had to hem the satin, when it went all puckery, but no time to redo. I will probably do a rolled hem instead. And the pom pom! the cape was perfect until then. In the morning when I wasn't too tired to think straight, I realise I should have used a walking foot on the sewing machine. I should have put the trim on the outside not the inside, (but was tired and lazy and didn't want to change the thread colours over ) and it stretched and puckered and drove me crazy, then thought i could fix it by putting ric-rac trim on the outside, but instead made it worse. Surprisingly the last thing I did was the neck binding on the dress. Which I just hacked off a likely looking piece of the Stella fabric (cotton/lycra blend), and it turned out perfect! lol
I was pleased with the stretch/woven combo with the Farbenmix Henrika pattern. It worked well, which makes it even more flexible for future stash combinations.
 So about an hour before everyone arrived beccy and I are staring at the cake wondering how we were going to transform it into a pony cake. Cut it into shape? Pipe icing? I thought about tracing a pony shape then carving out a flat layer around it so the pony was in relief. Decided that would take too long lol, so just found a pony picture and drew a pony freestyle, copying a pic on my computer screen. I was pretty pleased with the likeness. We then filled in the surrounds with pale pink cream cheese icing. We were going to fill in the pony but decided it was a good contrast as is and the cake swirls looked good. The heart marshmallows were sliced in half to make them thinner for the borders and pink and white sprinkles applied liberally to the icing.

Make a wish!

Beccy made the actual mud cake. I suggested a zebra technique so you get a striped marbling effect. It was a bit harder because of the size of the pan but did create good effect.


 We used about 1/3 of the cream cheese icing we had mixed up, but I put the bowl out at the party tea alongside a big bowl of marshmallows and it was a yummy marshmallow dip! No leftovers there!