A pirate's life for me...

My baby boy (3 last Sunday - sob sob) is very much into pirates at the moment. Partly because that's what all 3 year old boys tend to like but mainly because he loves a new Disney kids program called 'Jake and the Neverland Pirates' which we get on Sky. I wanted to make him a 'Jake' costume as part of his Christmas present.

BTW: If anyone who reads this blog has a child who loves that show I can highly recommend the soundtrack CD. I picked it up just before Christmas on Amazon for about £3.50 and it's great. The pirate rock is actually quite catchy for a kids CD. We have all been singing and dancing to it...anyway, I digress...The dressing up clothes...
I decided to make Zac a pirate costume just like Jake's and so here is what I did...
First I looked at this site that my friend Jess, in New Zealand, sent to me because they did a fair bit of boy craft. Dana actually has a whole section on boys that I will definitely be looking over again. Anyway, she had a pirate vest tutorial which looked really cool but as I was running a bit short on time, I decided to wing it and made the whole thing up.
I chose some fabric that wouldn't fray so that I wouldn't need to hem it and some gold edging/tape/ribbon type stuff from a local craft shop.
So for the vest I took a one that I had made previously for a cowboy costume and chalked and then cut around it. The way I originally made the cowboy vest was by taking a T shirt that came up on the big side and with chalk drawing the shape of it without sleeves onto the felt and then cutting that out twice. One for the back, one for the front. Cut up the centre of the front piece to make the opening and shape the neck. For Jake's I left the lapel flaps in place as that's kind of how his looks. Sew the sides an the shoulders together...hey presto!

If you want to make one out of fabric that would need hemming you should follow the tutorial from Dana's website here.

So next I used a zig zag stitch and some yellow cotton to sew the glittery edging tape on. It frays so I had to sew the ends under themselves. I also didn't quite buy enough so it only got sewn on the front. I found some old buttons and sewed them on and that was the vest done.

I then made a red headband like Jake's one by sewing a long inside out sausage which tapered at each end. Next I turned it the right way out and closed the gap with the machine. That's the great thing about dressing up clothes. It  doesn't really matter too much about the finishing. I also wanted to re-create Jake's T-shirt with leather ties so I took an old long-sleeved white vest of Zac's and cut the neck off and then made a cut vertically. I then bound this with brown bias tape and made some holes which I threaded the brown cord through...See pic above if you don't get what I mean. This didn't really work as well as I had hoped as the T-shirt material was very stretchy cotton jersey. The neck opening ended up bigger than it should have but again, it doesn't really matter. It actually made it easier for a 3 year old to get on himself.
I got the belt 'buckle' from the craft shop and I stitched it on to a piece of brown felt that can be threaded through any jeans as my son had been known to get through more than one pair in a day!
I didn't get a picture of him wearing this creation on Christmas Day as it was slightly busy! However, since then we have been to the panto and watched Peter Pan with Hook and his gang and so now we have added to the pirate dressing up collection.

The pirate hats were from here but I used Dylon fabric paint rather than cut out and sew on the jolly roger...

The map, I hand drew with a sharpie onto fabric after searching the web for 'pirate map' and coming up with this one in Google images. I was quite pleased with this and it was really quick...Ed says I missed my calling as a pirate cartographer...:)

The hook is obviously a plastic coat hanger which I cut with a hack saw and taped up so that Zac could stick it up his sleeve. The fishing line, dowling with a nick out of it to stop the line from slipping, string and a small bit of wire shaped for the fishing hook.

The flag and eye patch were actually a real pain but mainly because I didn't have any black felt in my stash. Every other colour but no black. So as I was making this at 10pm the night before his 3rd Birthday party I had to improvise. I found an old top and cut it up. I used interfacing to stiffen the fabric and I sewed it inside out and then turned it the right way out.
I drew the two skull and crossbones after searching for a suitable image online and copying it. I used this Dylon fabric paint which worked well.

Cakes for Zac's party...a bit last minute as I had planned to buy some pirate flags and cases to save some time but I went to get them and the shop had run out so I made them instead. If you want to make cupcake flags, to save you some time, the perfect sized flags are approximately 3.5cm x 2.5cm. You should get four in a row on A4 paper. Cut them out in pairs, wrap them around the stick with glue. I then coloured in the white line which divides the two sides of the flag with a black marker. I would have attached a PDF of my pirate flag sheet but haven't worked out how to do that on my blog yet...

One happy pirate with his Uncle Phil X

Stitchery

I love how easy embroidery is...even if you only know one or two types of stitch you can create something unique!
This lettering for a card was done with 2 threads in back stitch. I didn't transfer the words on. I just wrote them directly onto the fabric with a normal pencil. In areas where I didn't quite sew directly over the pencil, I just rubbed out afterwards with a normal white rubber...

I also personalised a T-Shirt for my Mum's husband, Willy, for Christmas. He is a fan of the Celtic footballer called Jinky Johnson...and I think his golfing mates call him Jinky or something (bloke humour). So anyway, I bought an ordinary polo shirt from good old M&S and embroidered it for him...It's obviously a bit of a joke, but he loved it and wears it to golf. So here's how I did that:

First of all, I looked up Jinky and decided it would be much to hard to embroider the man himself, even with his distinctive red hair. I decided to go for just the Celtic shirt and his name. Would you believe I had to look at a youtube tute on how to draw a football shirt?? Well I did. Illustration and drawing have never been a skill of mine. I think I printed the name 'Jinky' out in a plain font like Tahoma.

Before I did anything else I used some t-shirt stabiliser on the back of the section I was going to be embroidering as apparently T-shirt or jersey type materials are notoriously hard to stitch on due to the stretchy nature of the fabric. I got all of this information from this book...You can use 'freezer paper' as a stabiliser too. I have a roll from the US courtesy of Auntie Jane as I don't think it's available in the UK.

Once I had the football shirt shape and the font for 'Jinky' at the right size I put them together on one piece of paper. I then turned that paper over and traced over the design on the back so that the lettering was back to front. I used the transfer pen pictured below.

Then I ironed it on to the front of the polo shirt...Slightly scary as if it went wrong the T-shirt was ruined and this was all done a few days before Christmas!

It didn't really matter that the 'I' was missing. I was just glad it hadn't moved during the transfer process and left lots of black marks everywhere. Next step was to pop it into an embroidery hoop, stabilising paper and all. I used 6 threads in satin stitch for the stripes and 3 threads back stitch for the words and outlining. In hindsight I think I would have cut both down and used 3 threads for the satin stitch and 2 threads for the outlining and words. Anyway, it looked alright when it was finished and got some laughs when it was opened on boxing day.

Probably not my best work but as a novelty present it was a success and once the T-shirt was pressed it actually looked much better.

More pre-Christmas catch up posts to follow!

Nix!

Combat those January Blues...

I am trying to keep my spirits up. It's not that there is actually anything wrong (which makes me feel worse - lucky and yet so ungrateful!) it's just January. It doesn't get light until about 8 in the mornings, I am not looking my best after the Christmas indulgence, and to top it off, my youngest son went off to nursery on Monday. He's going three mornings a week. I feel like he's left home! Apart from when he's home and then I remember why it was time he went for some structured fun at nursery...

So anyway, if you too are feeling blue, here are three things that have cheered me up in the last few days:
1. A massive clear out of junk this weekend. Big tidy up. Loads of sorting, chucking, sweeping, cleaning, throwing, donating and recycling. Honestly, start small: one drawer or box and soon you will be quite addicted and feeling good, productive and organised.
2. Loud music, for me, songs with quite loud swear words that you can shout go down a treat...today it was a bit of Indie Rock a la Bloc Party (Silent Alarm) and yesterday some Mumford and Sons (Sigh No More)...
3. Make yourself a nice breakfast (after the school run, if you do one) and sit down at a table to eat it...I know, this is real groundbreaking stuff! A good start to the day...Here is a picture of today's eggs and smoked salmon...

I know you can't do all of these things every day, for example, tomorrow morning I will be at creepy crawlies listening to the Bob the Builder theme whilst jumping on the bouncy castle with Zac by 9.30 but hey, I might listen to some loud sweary music on the way home...Fortunately Zac can't pronounce his Fs...

More blog posts coming...I must, if only for my fans...Thea and Becky... :)

Byeee Nix X

Cutting

The boys wanted to do some cutting and I got a bit carried away! I had forgotten how much fun it is to cut folded paper and gently unfold it to reveal the design. An idea for cards another time? We'll certainly be doing it again.

Tips:
For patterns in a row, fold like a corrcetina and make sure to leave at least one but ideally two joins on either side of the folded wad of paper. Apart from that, cut as adventurously as you like.
For circular patterns, fold a square in half, then again and again. Once more, when cutting be sure to leave joins on both sides. If you want to do snowflakes you need to fold in half, then one third in and then another third in.

Posting from my phone for the first time!

Christmas Bunting

A very quick bunting post...Thea is waiting with her fabric and scissors ready to go...I made this bunting to go above the table in my dining room for Christmas. In the picture are just half of the 120 flags that I got from 2m of fabric. This way of cutting and sewing bunting is very time-efficient (you sew all of your flags from each fabric at the same time) and also almost totally fabric waste free.

What you need:

• Fabric (the next post will explain how to work out how much you'll need, it depends on how big you want your flags and how long a piece of bunting you need)
• Bias tape
• Tailors chalk
• Scissors
• Iron and ironing board
• Chop stick and some tweezers

If you have it:

• Cutting mat marked out with inches

First of all, iron your fabric.

Next, fold your first fabric in half with the rs facing each other. If the pattern of the fabric is such that it needs to be a certain way up then cut your fabric in half and place the two halves together with the pattern up the right way.**

**Correction here! Thanks Shonika for pointing this out. If you cut the fabric in half to make your flags, the patterns will be the same way up on both sides but will still result in half of your flags having the pattern the right way up and half having the pattern upside down. If you just fold your fabric in half then all of your flags will have the pattern the right way up on one side and the wrong way up on the other side. If your fabric doesn't have a right way up you don't need to worry about this bit at all. Sorry for incorrect original instructions!

Now lay your fabric out and get your ruler and chalk ready to start marking out the grid for the flags.

To make flags about 3.5 inches across and 4.5 inches down you need to mark along the length of the fabric every 4 inches (this is very easily done if you happen to have an inch marked cutting board as shown in the photo).

Next measure 5 inches down and draw a line the length of your fabric (this line is just so you know where to make the next lot of marks.) So now, make dashes along this line. The first is 2 inches from the end and then after that every 4 inches. So this second row of marks should be in the centre of the row of marks above.

Then measure the depth of your flag again (5 inches) and mark out every 4 inches from the end (these marks are in line with the top marks). You keep repeating this depending on how many flags you want to get from your fabric.

You then join them up by using chalk and your ruler...You should have lots of triangles now.

Next pin your fabrics in a few places, particularly if you used two separate pieces rather than one folded piece. This is to hold the fabric in place while you sew. No cutting yet!

Thread your machine and start running straight lines all the way from top to bottom of the fabric either side of the chalked line. You need to leave enough of a gap between your two rows of stitches that will allow you to cut between the lines without getting too close to the stitches. About 1cm should be fine. To make this fast I tended to do one row of stitches and then for doing the second row you line the first stitches up with something on the machine and just keep it straight from there. 

Do all the chalked diagonal lines but not any horizontal ones (These were just so you knew where to make  your 4 inch marks). It should end up looking like this all over...

Next you are going to cut between the stitches and you will see your flags begin to take shape. If you have some diamonds, cut them in half.

At the end all that you should be left with is a couple of bits like this piece below...and lots and lots of flags.

Next cut the tips from all your triangles as you are now going to turn them right side out.

Use a chopstick to push the bottom of the triangle to a point and tweezers from the outside to pull it gently out if it gets a bit twisted in there.

Follow the instructions above for your other fabrics and then iron all your little triangles. You are ready to start putting your bunting together.

Next lay your triangles in their different piles out near your machine. Take your bias tape, fold in half and sew the first bit (the tying end). Next take your first triangle, insert and sew. I did all of these flags without a gap but a small gap also looks nice. If you do decide to do a gap, rather than measuring it each time, just make it a distance on your machine. e.g. when the previous flag gets to the back, insert the next one.

et voila...

Future posts on the topic of bunting will include...

• How to work out the amount of material you'll need
• How to work out how much bias tape you'll need
• Quicker, garden or party bunting
• Applique bunting with names or pictures

Watch this space (but don't hold your breath whilst watching it!)

Nix X

Little makes...

So much to do, so little time...so I have been making some little things to keep me crafty (=happy).  Both of these ideas came from Pinterest...where else!
The comb took about 10 mins to make and it doesn't really need explaining...get thread, buy comb and wrap...really simple but I like the effect. The idea came from here via Pinterest.

The scarf took about an hour and a half. The pattern is free from this blog. The pattern is in American terminology so translate as follows:
single = double
double = treble
half double = half treble
I did repeat row 2 to make it slightly wider. I also kind of did my own thing at the end to make it a bit neater. I sort of went around the bottom with a scallop if you know what I mean!
Bye for now, Nix!

Links galore...

Hi, I've been having a bit of a summer break...by that I mean running around with my kids and not managing much else. It's been fun...some photos will follow.

I have managed to look at Pinterest and today I found a link to a great blog: www.alinasadventuresinhomemaking.com...This nice lady has trawled the Internet and linked to so many great tutorials such as best adult clothing tutorials and best kids clothing tutorials...In fact there are so many tutorials on here, many with print-out-able PDFs that it's slightly overwhelming!

Bye for now, Nix!