Having A Go At Embroidery

Morning all, I hope you're all well and enjoying the sunshine today. A few complained about the rain over the weekend but it was gratefully received in our garden. We've had a pretty good summer so far which has meant hardly any rain, so a chance for the water butts to refill is always nice.


I recently had a go at some embroidery having bought a little beginners kit recently off of Etsy, which I'm yet to start. In between all the crochet it's nice to do some sewing and I'm in the process of making a hanging wall organiser, decorated with a bit of embroidery. I'm quite pleased how this has come out anyway for my first attempt - something you have to be patient with!

I should have more photos of the finished product to show you soon.

Jo, I'm conscious I haven't yet posted the chocolate cake recipe yet, promise to try and get round to it before I go on holiday! I can't deny Mike and the boys chocolate cake! :-)

Have a great week everyone!

Em x

14th December: Handmade Gifts No.3 - Mini Fruit Loaves, Cushions and Ipad Cases!

Just a few more handmade gift ideas for anyone who may be struggling for ideas. All of these were easy to make/bake/sew.

Mini Fruit Loaves
Jack bought me a lovely mini loaf pan from Lakeland a few years ago and I love it! It's heavy and they usefully have loose-bottoms. So far I've only done simple mini fruit loaves using the tray but I think some mini lemon drizzle loaves would be very good, that's going on one of my lists for a rainy day!

Please let me know if you'd like the recipe I use for making my boozy fruit loaves

 

I used some cellophane and ribbon to keep my mini fruit loaves fresh

 

 

Cushions
I made some cushions for my parents' house in France a few years ago. I opted for feather-filled cushions from John Lewis, but Dunelm also have a great range with lots of different shapes and sizes. I bought some fabric from Ebay in two varying colours and I sewed a nice piping around the edge of the cushions too. This was a cheap gift idea and I loved spending the evenings doing some sewing - this year crochet has definitely replaced my sewing obsession, who knows what it will be next year!

 

 

Ipad Sleeve/Case

I made this for my Mum's friend and was so pleased with how it turned out that I also made myself one. It doesn't require a lot of fabric - I made this with a fat quarter, some wadding, a few beads and some ribbon for edging. Again, this was a very simple sewing project; I used my sewing machine to make the main sleeve and then everything else was hand-sewn. I used a bit of elastic and a button to stop the ipad sliding back out.

 

 

 

 

Have a good day!

 

Em x

10th December: Mini Christmas Sewing Project

Here are a couple of photos of some simple felt Christmas trees I made to hang on our tree. It was an easy hand-sewing project and I decided to accessorise my trees with sequins and beads, but you could also do mini patchwork trees, use ribbon or whatever you have handy.

 

Making a start...

 

Beads now sewn on and ready to sew around the edges and stuff with a bit of wadding

 

Finished little tree!

 

And here's my little sequin one too!

3rd December: Handmade Sock Snowman

A couple of years ago I had a go at making a sock snowman and it was great fun! Mr Sock Snowman now comes out every Christmas and has pride of place in the living room for all to admire and prod his rice-filled tummy!

Sock snowmen are great fun to make whether you're a kid or an adult!

 

Here's a few instructions on how to make a sock snowman (or how I made mine - alter as you like!):

 

You'll Need:

• One clean white non-cheesy sock
• Rice or other dried pulses for the filling
• Buttons for eyes & other decoration
• Orange card for the nose (or whatever you can find to resemble a little carrot!)
• Needle & thread
• Scissors
• Yarn (for knitting/crocheting a scarf and hat)
• Hair tie/elastic band x2

Instructions:

 

I started by filling the sock with rice (fill the sock about halfway). I used rice as rice was big enough that I didn't need to line the inside with something beforehand and could pour it straight into the sock. Dried lentils or something similar would also work well, but I'd avoid anything messy like flour.

 

Get a hair tie and tie tightly around where you've filled to in the sock to hold the rice into the first 'section' of your snowman. Fill the remainder of the sock with more rice, making sure you leave plenty of excess sock at the top to tie off. Tie off with the other hair band/elastic band and cut off any excess sock that you don't want - so Mr Snowman doesn't look like he has a ponytail!

 

Mould rice in the sock until the snowman looks how you'd like him to look - aka, nice and round! Sew buttons on for eyes and any other décor you'd like to give your snowman. Alternatively you could just glue decoration onto him rather than having to do any sewing.

 

 

Knit a simple scarf and hat for Mr Snowman so he doesn't look so naked, I used some leftover red yarn and made him a cute bobble for his hat too. You could use leftover scraps of fabric as a scarf if not or tie a nice ribbon around his neck.

 

I made a basic cone shape out of some orange card and used a sewing pin to fasten it in place on the snowman as his nose. I decided against a mouth as I thought he looked better without but you could always sew on a mouth :-)

 

 

One other thing you could do to make your sock snowman look extra accessorised is find some small twigs in the garden to act as arms - you should be able to poke these straight through the sock and they should stay in position.

 

 

And there you go, a simple but funny Sock Snowman! If you're adventurous you could always make a whole family of sock snowmen! Using a brown sock you could make a sock reindeer, a black sock you could make a penguin and so on! I'd love to see your creations if you give it a go :-)

 

Em x

 

 

Weekend; So Many Jobs, So Little Time...

I love weekends when we don't have any 'going out and about' plans, so that we can make the most of time at home. We usually look forward to that as it means a bit of relaxing after we've both had long weeks at work, but the jobs at home seem to be mounting up so it feels like we didn't actually sit down all weekend!

I was glad the weather was dry at the weekend and the sun did pop out and say hello a couple of times over the last two days too. We drove Barry to the next village and up to a big car park where the Ridgeway is (it's about a twenty minute walk to the Ridgeway from our house and we were keen to explore another part of it), he wasn't best pleased on the short ten minute car journey but seemed to think it wasn't so bad when rewarded with a nice long walk, muddy puddles and meeting lots of new dogs. It was windy up on the Ridgeway but lovely to see so many people walking, cycling and even in pony traps! We met a lovely couple walking their two Irish Wolfhounds, they really are gorgeous dogs. Having just met a couple of ponies Barry wasn't sure if these Wolfhounds were too equine-related and he hung back while one came and leaned his head against my chest (they're so tall!). We continued through an underpass (under the A34) where lovely paintings and rhymes about The Ridgeway can be found on the walls.

We met a few cyclists and a bouncy Beagle puppy and his owner too and then Barry found the muddiest puddles possible to run and splash through.

Part Jack Russell, part Gazelle? Barry bounds everywhere! Proven in slo-mo!

 

Eventually we headed back to the car after a good few miles walk with a happy puppy in tow. Barry was much happier on the short car journey home and realises the car isn't so bad when he gets an exciting walk at the other end. As soon as we were home I decided to give Barry a bath. The 'Bath' word is worse than the 'Walk' word in our house, Barry goes mental at the mention of a bath, not running the other way but in excitement! He must be one of very few dogs that cries in excitement for a bath or shower. A short while later we had one clean dog and one soaking wet owner (he's a wriggler when I'm trying to dry him).

 

Barry excited for a bath!

 

I spent the rest of Saturday helping Jack with the shed building. This is the first weekend in a while that Jack hasn't been working and I think he's pleased with what he's managed to achieve with the shed. I was on painting duty and also did some gardening once I was done. By the end of the day we were flagging from all the fresh air and hard work so rewarded ourselves with dinner out at Nandos - I had a free whole chicken that we shared with some sides courtesy of my loyalty card after nearly a year of saving the rewards up so it was a very cheap and satisfying meal out.

 

Painting the sides before they were fixed together

 

Yesterday I just seemed to have a million things to do and not enough time. I planned to get started with doing my pickled onions for this year (got a 4kg sack of pickling onions from the farm shop for £6, pretty good value and cheaper than on our local market), also have some apples to cook up and make into crumbles, I wanted to make a nice pasta sauce for Jack's lunch at work this week and I also wanted to make myself another soup for the week. In the end I only managed to do the pasta sauce and make a soup as I got side-tracked tidying the kitchen cupboards and cooking a joint of pork and a whole chicken that were in the freezer and needed using up. That's our dinners sorted all of this week; tonight we're having one of my favourite 'sloppy' dinners: sliced pork warmed up in my homemade pork and apple gravy with mash and lots of veg (I'm veg obsessed, I'd eat a plate of veg with gravy any day!). The crackling on the pork was really good (I'd get the sack if it wasn't!) and we devoured that yesterday with some lovely veg and little Yorkshire puds, but in my haste at doing so many things at once I forgot to cook potatoes (silly woman).

 

Next task is to get pickling...!

 

I made a nice vegetable soup; pretty much made the recipe up though I did take some inspiration from my new soup book but had to work with the veg I had:

2 carrots

2 parsnips

1/4 portion of a large swede

1 white onion

1 leek

White wine vinegar

Seasoning

A few small fresh snips of rosemary

1 1/2 pints vegetable stock

 

I fried the diced onion and leek in a dash of white wine vinegar first to soften them and then added the rest of the ingredients (all chopped up) along with stock and left to bubble away. I fished out the rosemary stalks, seasoned and then blended the soup. It's really tasty, I think it's the parsnip that I can taste the most and it's a lovely yellowy orange colour. I bought a cheap pumpkin at the weekend too so I can try and make a pumpkin soup next. For the last few years I've always cooked a sausage, sage and pumpkin casserole at Halloween and it's delicious, the recipe is here if anyone is interested.

 

I had planned on doing some Christmas card making again this weekend but ran out of time. I did manage to make a start on decorating an old notice board; it's going to be hung in the spare room where I've got a bit of a sewing/knitting theme going on anyway so decided to decorate the edge of the notice boards with two old tape measures. They might actually come in handy for measuring things. I'm in the process of making some little heart shaped pin cushions to hang on the board too, made with some vintage-inspired and sewing-themed fabric. Hopefully I'll have a finished photo to show you soon.

 

 

 

Recent Sewing Project: Shopper Bag

Just a small blog post about a shopper bag I recently made for a friend. She's sausage dog mad and when I saw this fabric on EBay I had to get it and make something for her. She recently moved house so I thought it may come in handy and she was delighted when it arrived with their new home card.

It's the first sewing project I've done in a while actually and I loved getting the sewing machine out. I made the handles on this bag a little too long I think, but it always annoys me when a bag doesn't have long enough handles for you to shove it over your shoulder when carrying other bags and trying to get the key in the door! I must get around to making some more things soon on the sewing machine; I've seen some fantastic patterns for a peg bag which I'd really like to make and the lovely little silk jewellery bag an old work colleague bought me has just about fallen apart so I need to make a new one of those too, it's just finding the time to get around to getting all the sewing bits out and having some needle n thread therapy.

Anyway, here's a photo of Barry modelling my handiwork!