An Unnecessary Doorstop!

For my birthday in April I got given a book called The Crafty Minx by Kelly Doust. 

Kelly is an Australian with a knack for making handmade treasures out of recycled bits and pieces which is just up my street! I found her blog yesterday if you're interested to take a look: http://thecraftyminx.com.au/

The book has lots of ideas and patterns for things to make and I took inspiration for my latest cushion cover from it. This doorstop was first on a list of things that I have queued up to make. It's made from bits of fabric I've picked up here and there: an old pair of jeans, some old curtains, upholstery material and some fabric I inherited with my sewing machine. It's filled with the contents of a bag of rice and some extra stuffing so it's pretty solid.

The only problem with making a doorstop is that my bedroom door stays open by itself so it's not a necessary accessory and we don't need it anywhere else in the house. However, while I was on holiday with my parents a couple of weeks ago, my mum mentioned that she was in need of a new one for the lounge so happily I was able to send mine to a good home.

So not such an unnecessary doorstep after all!

a springtime cosy for rainy days

I made this tea cosy several months ago but it's taken me this long to get round to posting about it. It was one of the first projects I wanted to do when I brought my sewing machine up to Durham at the beginning of the year because it would a) not take too long to make, b) not require me to buy much fabric as it's nearly all recycled bits and pieces and c) be useful - we didn't have one in our house before!

I bought the green background but it was only a fat 1/4 and came very cheap from the quilting stall (which I frequent regularly) in Durham's indoor market. Although you can't see it in these photos, the tea cosy is lined with some checked material which was left over from a hat my Mum made me when I was about six. The floral Liberty fabric is the same that I used for my pincushion and the pink printed material was brought back from Ghana by my aunt and uncle when they lived there about fifteen years ago. And as you can see, my Mum found something useful to do with it back then but I've somewhat outgrown the trousers and top now.

I designed the cosy myself and made a paper pattern for it which I've hung onto in case I make one of these for a friend. It did become quite fiddly sewing on the letters and birds though as I wanted the stitching to be invisible so it was done be hand and had to be quite precise. I also spent longer than I needed quilting the background, pinning and tacking it first to get the distances and angles right before realising that I had a quilting foot on my machine which would do all that for me!

Dress to skirt in 10 easy (or not so easy) steps!

I saw this dress about four years ago in a sale and loved the material so I bought it even though it was a size too small. I've never really got a lot of use out of it though because it wasn't very comfortable to wear. So this year I made the practical decision to transform it into a skirt. Luckily for me, my Mum who is great at dressmaking wrote out a nicely numbered set of instructions, which I followed (nearly) to the letter.

I had to buy a zip but the buttons I pinched from an old t-shirt that wore out. The most time consuming thing was definitely lining up the fabric because every time I thought I'd got it right and the pattern matched up, it would slide around and end up wonky again! But I'm happy with the end result and it's a pretty popular wardrobe choice for work these days...

Recycled Cushions

I'm not always very good at throwing things away even if it's something I never use but I love to recycle. Clothing and other bits of material are especially good for this.

This green cushion was made out of a t-shirt that I'd had a little while and really loved but the style wasn't very good so I just didn't wear it much. It was fun to make (although not as easy as I'd expected it to be) and only took a few hours. I'd anticipated using the original side seams but they weren't straight enough so I ended up cutting a square each from the front and back and then sewing them together. I did however use the t-shirt's bottom hem on the back opening which gave a neat edge that I didn't have to do myself!

I also made the purple cushion from some old felt I had and another old t-shirt, but I can't claim originality for the idea because I found it on a Google image search!