Kim's Game

I was clearing out our garage the other day and I found a box of some of my favourite childhood trinkets, or as my lovely Granny used to call them, nic nacs. Sometimes she used to take me to a little shop in Maidenhead to get a new nic nac. Often it was some sort of box or tin as I loved those and had loads, each with some tiny, different, thing inside. I also collected tiny china animals, shiny buttons, semi precious stones, bits of rejected jewellery. I expect most girls did that kind of thing...right?
Anyhoo, the point of all this reminiscing is that this box of old nic nacs gave me an idea for a good game that could fit in your handbag, bottom of pushchair, car glove box etc and could make those 'waiting' moments (waiting for lunch, waiting at the Doctors surgery, waiting for the bus) much more pleasant.
I didn't realise, this game has a name. Kim's Game. You probably all know that, but I didn't. I was a brownie but apparently not a very good one.

So, if you don't know the game, it goes like this. You lay a number of items out in front of you. Study them for a minute and then someone removes one and the other player or players have to guess which one. You can make it easier for children by having less to start with and you can also take away more than one item which makes it a bit easier to guess. It's harder than it looks but that's good as it means the children can play against adults and really enjoy making them guess. You can change the items around as everyone starts to remember them and you don't need to have a giant box of nic nacs to delve into. Anything small will do. A paperclip, a stone, a badge etc...
I also made this little bag to hold it all in. 

There are many patterns for lined drawstring pouches on the web but I used this one from Martha Stewart's book, which is also available for free on her site...here!
What would be really good, which I thought of afterwards, would be a pouch that opens out into a flat circle so that you can use that to lay all the things on.
Thanks, Nix!

Purses for teachers...

I decided to make some pencil cases/purses for my son’s teachers as a leaving present. It was his last day at pre-school on Wednesday and so typically I ended up slightly panicked on Tuesday. I already had the material and I had made some similar ones previously after searching for ‘zipped lined pouch’ on the web.

This time I used this tutorial over at flossieteacakes, because I like the zip end covers and it also looked beautifully clear and nicely photographed.

My stitches are not as neat as hers though...

How do you sew two perfectly straight lines over a bumpy zip anyway? And even though the instructions very clearly stated that the zip should be exactly 8 inches, I managed to miss-measure and ended up with a zip too long for my nicely cut out pieces of fabric. 

On the right is the fabric cut to the tutorial measurements and on the left the fabric cut to the zip length! I put these 8 inch pieces to one side to make more smaller purses at a later stage.

I also only had iron-on interfacing instead of sew-on interfacing and I feel that left my fabric looking slightly wrinkled even after a good ironing. I think the iron on stuff I used was a bit dodgy as that didn’t happen last time I made one...Really I think I should have used sew-in...If Flossie says use sew-in then do it!

All in all, my purses turned out okay and in fact after the zip fiasco I think the longer purses look more like pencil cases which is probably a more useful shape. The teachers really liked them. 

Also measure twice, cut once, the golden rule for EVERYTHING! should have been followed. However, I do think that the best way to make these pouches is to buy the zip that looks the right length for what you want to do and then work out the rest of the dimensions from there.

Now I have picked up some pretty pink 8 inch zips and already have the fabric cut out with interfacing stuck on so it shouldn’t take me more than an hour to knock up a couple more. I may even keep one for myself!

Thanks, Nix!