Completed: Hand printed cushions

Technically I should win Worst Sister of the Year award with these, but I think I managed to redeem myself. My brother and his girlfriend got engaged in May this year, and moved house in September, and I only just gave them this, their engagement/new house present on Christmas Day. That's the bad sister bit. The good sister bit, was that I made the effort to hand print, and sew them their present, which they did at least get in the same calendar year.

I don't think my brother reads my blog, but he does follow me on IG, and has a tendency to ask me to make him a version of whatever I've made from time to time. One of these days I'll call his bluff and make him dinosaur PJs, but in the meantime I made him cushions inspired by a sweatshirt and a dress. If you read my original sweatshirt post, you'll see that the inspiration for that was a cushion, so it's all got a bit meta.

 The stencil is the same as that used on my sweatshirt - not the exact one, I don't keep them, so I  had to cut a new one - and the cross is that which I used to block print my Scout dress. They are both printed with black ink onto white soft furnishing fabric from Remnant Kings. It has a slight texture, which keeps it interesting, and it was really cheap at something like £7/m. I wanted some colour, and so used a turquoise cotton velvet from Edinburgh Fabrics (which was something ludicrous like £20/m) to back and pipe them. This is only the second time I've sewn piping and my first sewing velvet. It was OK, but I wouldn't rush to do it again. There are quite a few mistakes on these, the most noticeable being that I sewed the piping onto the back of the cushion, meaning the zip is now on the front. I put the zips to the bottom, and my brother will never notice, but that's one to remember. I also made the zip opening too small, so I did actually think I wasn't going to get the cushion pads in there for about 5 mins. That was fun. (It wasn't). 

Regardless though, I really like these. They look nice and contemporary, but also look unique and handmade (in a good way. I hope). I love the turquoise colour, and the velvet is gorgeously, strokeably tactile. I am seriously considering making velvet cushions for our house. Possibly not piped though. 

I don't yet have photos of the cushions in their new home. My brother and his girlfriend live in London, but were heading straight off to Turkey yesterday (she is Turkish) for New Year. So these photos are all taken in our house. 

And yes, I've already started wondering what I'll be sewing to wear to a wedding in Istanbul in July! ;)

Completed: DIY pocket shorts & bonus birthday t-shirt

Small Boy is in desperate need of some shorts. Most of the shorts he is currently wearing are age 3-4, and he turned 6 last month. To be honest, they do still fit, but I felt that he probably was due some new ones.

We had a look through my stash, and he chose a fabric. This is not the fabric he chose. The pattern required a few changes to meet his specifications and I wanted to make a wearable muslin pair to make sure I hadn't messed it up. And then I kind of got carried away with details. I didn't have time to make both pairs before we went on holiday.

The pattern is the free Oliver and S Sunny Day Shorts, which I've made before as PJs for both boys. They are a very basic, elasticated waist pattern. The changes I made were to lengthen them to below knee length, and to add front and back pockets. The back pockets are patch pockets and I copied the size from another pair of shorts, changing the shape slightly. For the front pockets, I drafted pocket pieces and bags and made it slightly more challenging by adding a 2 piece facing - I don't know the proper name for this, sorry. It's like the pockets you get in jeans, where the exposed top part of the facing is denim, but the lower portion of the same piece is the pocket lining. Do you know what I mean? I did this because by then I realised I had just enough of this denim for the shorts, which I knew would be too bulky for a full pocket facing.

This is what I mean

The denim is left over from this Inari dress, and I had to cut it all on the cross grain to fit it in. The pockets and waist band facing (yeah, I "drafted" that too, again to cut down on bulk) are made from chambray left over from my midi skirt. As I was cutting it, I was thinking it was a pity I didn't have any cool boyish fabric to use, when I came up with the idea of letting him design them himself. I cut the pieces and then let him draw on them with fabric pen. Of course I forgot to tell him which way up the pieces went, so some of the are now on their sides, but that doesn't matter too much. For info, each piece is themed. We have Tom & Jerry, Star Wars, Edinburgh Zoo and Dragons of Berk. The waistband says his name and then From Mummy and Daddy, Thank You. 

I finally managed to use the selvedge on this denim, on the back pockets and I sewed them on wrong side out for fun. All topstitching is done in turquoise thread, although as it's normal thread it's pretty subtle, which is a shame, because it's pretty good! I did bar tacks at the pockets to strengthen them, which turned out well. I also did a fake fly, which I free handed, because without it, the shorts looked a bit meh. It's subtle, but I think it makes them.

The fit is quite a bit baggier than he usually wears, but it works. I could slim the legs down, but I'd also need to start fiddling around with the crotch curve and I'm not prepared to do that for boy's shorts. The thing about boys is that they grow, so any changes I make, I'll only have to make again in a year or so. It would be easier just to buy a different pattern.

The boy is delighted with these and I am too. He wore them 3 days straight on holiday, where these photos were taken. We went to Dunoon on the West of Scotland for a week, and these were taken at Inverary Jail, where we spent a day. He is wearing the shorts with his birthday tee, which I have realised I haven't blogged. I didn't make the tee - it's M&S - but I did the stormtrooper stencil using my usual method. I think birthday tees are becoming a tradition. This one I made in good time, so the ink would have plenty of time to cure. I found the stencil on Pinterest, here. He also loves this. Double win!!!

He takes his modelling very seriously. To a point.

And then his brother wanted to join in.

Coincidentally, he was wearing his Milk t-shirt under that fleece! Home-stencilled tees FTW!

Cuties steal my heart every time! 

Try them, try them and you may.Try them and you may, I say.

Small Boy's school had Book Week at the beginning of May. This seems to be peculiar to their school, and is not a national thing, but it's a nice idea. Mostly it involved sharing their favourite books, reading with their P7 buddies and tanoy instructions to "stop, drop and read"!!! It also afforded the chance to dress up as a character from a favourite book on the Friday. His first suggestion was a Stormtrooper and I had to gently inform him that although, yes, you do get books about Star Wars, it didn't start out as a book. We were reading Roald Dahl's The Witches at the time, but there wasn't anything that I could easily make that he could dress up as from that. I was drawing the line at a mouse costume. Instead, I suggested Green Eggs and Ham, and Sam-I-Am. I thought it would be easy. It probably could have been if I wasn't me.

We eventually settled on a yellow t-shirt, with some stencilling (to make it clear who he was meant to be) with cream coloured trousers that he already owned. He was insistent on the hat.

Due to tight timelines, I sourced my fabric from Primark. I thought I'd be able to buy a plain yellow tee, but no such luck, so instead I bought 3 tees for £1 each, so that I could cut them up to make a tee. I generally don't like shopping in Primark for many reasons, so it sat a bit uncomfortably with me. The fabric is appalling quality and I really wish I'd had more time to source decent quality fabric, as I'm really proud of the finished article and just hope it lasts.

Using the backs of the 3 tees (the fronts had a print) I was able to cut one front, one back and 2 long sleeves. The sleeves are a bit off grain, but then the fabric was to begin with!!!

I did the stencil using freezer paper again. I googled images from the book and printed them to size and traced and cut them. It was really fiddly and took ages. It honestly took about a half a day to cut and stencil the tees, but I really enjoyed it (bar the constant fear I was going to mess it up with the final cut!). I stencilled the black outline and had planned to stencil the other colours, but ultimately decided just to colour them in with fabric paint, which I think worked fine (and took considerably less time). To save time, energy and my sanity, I only painted the green eggs and ham. I am beyond happy with how it turned out.

Before the colour

The t-shirt is yet another iteration of the Rowan Tee, and again I used the existing hems, which saved time. I was also able to reuse the neck binding from one of the original tees, so it does look pretty good despite the fabric.

The hat is made from red felt, using a rough tutorial I found on Pinterest, which I now can't find. It turrned out way better than I expected and it had to be forcibly removed from Small Boy's head at bedtime.

There's not much more to say about this, so here are some pictures of Small Boy showing off!

Completed: Birthday T-shirt for Baby Boy

What's the curse of the sewist? Too many plans, not enough time? Killer stash avalanches? Pins in the sofa? Or is it that little thought that needles its way into your head at 7.30 in the evening, which says "of course you have enough time to make and stencil a t-shirt for Baby Boy's birthday tomorrow..."?

So, guess what I did on Thursday night?

I literally have no idea where the birthday t-shirt desire came from. I previously felt no need to make him anything, although I have had this particular t-shirt planned in my head forever. But anyway, after we put the boys down that night, I dug out the stuff and got cracking! 

The pattern is the Titchy Threads Rowan Tee. Such a great pattern, with so many variations, and I always go for basic view A every time (here and here). Anyway, I already had age 2 cut out with the exception of the short sleeve piece - so, no need for faffing around sticking PDFs together - and there are only 4 pattern pieces, so I was on to a good start.

The fabric is repurposed from a maternity t-shirt, I've had in my upcycling stash for a while. In my memory, the fabric was actually a bit nicer. In reality it's about 70% polyester, 30% cotton, which wouldn't be a my first choice for the boys, but the weight was good, and the plain grey marl was a good canvas and is boy friendly. I managed to squeeze all the pattern pieces in and even was able to reuse the ribbing at the neckline. Win!

I reused the bottom hem to save on time too. As this was a maternity tee, it had a dipped hem at the front, but it wasn't too pronounced, so I used that for the back pattern piece, thinking a slightly dipped hem at the back would make more sense on a kids tee, and used the back for the front. The original sleeves were cuffed, not hemmed, so I couldn't do the same there. No biggie, though.

Pre-smudging. Look how neat it was!

I've made this pattern 4 times now, so it was dead easy and went together without any problems. I sewed it with the lightening bolt stitch and left the edges raw. The sleeves and top stitching at the neck are done with a triple stitch, which is sturdier than my twin needle, particularly for boys clothes. The original hem was sewn with a coverstitch so it doesn't match, but really, who's going to notice that? I do kind of wish I'd done the topstitching in red to match the print, but that would have meant taking a lot longer over the topstitching, as it would have been visible. Plus I never thought about it until I'd done the sleeves and unpicking triple stitching simply wasn't going to happen.

I came across the stencil on Tara's blog a while back, and have coveted it ever since. I think it's so cool. She has a few that I love - I've definitely earmarked the stormtrooper one for Small Boy. It took a bit of time to trace and then cut out - those narrow lines are pretty fiddly. As with last time, I used freezer paper, and the speedball block printing ink, this time in red. 

It all worked really well, and I was very pleased with it.  I finished at about 11pm and left it to dry overnight, and as the ink felt dry in the morning, I put him in it. However, about half an hour later, P noticed that the ink was running a bit, and sure enough it had smudged, over the t-shirt and over one of the (white, obvs) pillowcases on our bed!!! Now, this is totally my fault. As I've mentioned before, the ink needs to cure for 5-7 days before it can be washed. I naively assumed that once it was dry, it was completely dry and that he could wear it as long as I didn't wash it. NOT THE CASE! 

With smudging. Sorry, design feature.

I took it off him immediately (and got the pillowcase straight into a basin with some Vanish!). Initially I was really annoyed. The freezer paper gives such a clean edge, the ink looked perfect and pretty professional. But, there wasn't much I could do about it. I took a photo later and popped it on Instagram and all commenters said either the smudging wasn't obvious, or that it added to the look. So, now it's a design feature! But not one that I will be repeating. Lessons learnt? Follow the instructions. And be more organised. And call mistakes design features, and then move on.

Baby Boy loves it. "Monks" (his word for milk - all liquids are plurals right now) is his favourite drink,which he demands as soon as he wakes and as soon as he gets out the bath at night. I remember Small Boy weaning himself off his cup of milk in the morning and afternoon, but Baby Boy is reluctant to give it up just yet. So, no doubt, he'll be looking forward to wearing it next week at some point, once the ink is truly dry and cured. 

And now, because this post is a bit photo-light, here's a photo of him blowing his birthday candles out. Sweetie that he is! 

Happy Birthday, my special boy. xxx

Completed: Block Printed Scout Dress

Hello! Hope you are enjoying the Easter break if you are having one. I, sadly, am heading back to work tomorrow having just had a week and a bit off. I am easing the pain with red wine, sweet potato crisps and a new dress to wear tomorrow.

There are a couple of back stories to this particular dress, but firstly let's talk about the most exciting part: I printed my own fabric! I've been interested in doing this for a while. If you follow me on Pinterest you will notice I've been spamming your feed with print related pins (my board is here if you are interested), and buoyed by my recent stencil success, and some successful potato printing that Small Boy and I did at Christmas, I finally got round to executing the idea. I already had the ink, and most of the necessary tools, so I bought some linocutting tools on Amazon and I was good to go.

The fabric printing process was really good fun and I definitely want to do more of it. A lot more. I read a few different tutorials online before starting. Rochelle has written a few posts , which were really helpful. I bought the same ink and carving block she uses (I've linked to the products I bought, but I'm pretty sure I did not pay that much for the ink). I will state that I am most definitely not an artist. I cannot draw for toffee, but all that Pinterest-ing made it clear that simple, geographical shapes can work really well. I had a play around with a few different shapes, and made a few stamps before settling on the really simple cross stamp.

I will definitely revisit the triangles and the cross-hatch circles at some future point

The carving of the stamps is trickier than it looks on all the videos - I was anxious I was going to mess it all up at the last moment, and although I enjoyed doing it, once I was done I found I was really tense!



Rather than over-complicate things, I went with random pattern placement, which I like and which, I think, suits the style of the dress. I did ensure all of the crosses were the same way up by marking the back of the stamp, and I tried as much as possible to keep the crosses parallel to the grainline, but this was done by eye. As you can see from the above photo, rather than print 1.5m of fabric, I cut the pattern pieces out first and printed each separately. The main reason was that I cut out the pieces before deciding to print them, but I would have done so anyway, as I simply don't have the room to print large pieces of fabric. It also allowed me to consider how I wanted the pattern to look on each piece, and helped to avoid any awkward "X marks the spot" faux-pas on my bust, or anywhere else!

The fabric itself is a very lovely chambray from The Sweet Mercerie (sorry, not sure which one to link to it), that I bought in their Black Friday sale. It's beautifully soft and has a nice drape and a really lovely weave to it. I wish I had bought more.

Now for the dress. The shape was inspired by the below dress that I spotted in this season's Hush catalogue. I'm really loving their aesthetic at the moment, and thought this dress looked really cool, comfortable and stylish.

The shape looked very simple, so I thought I could emulate it cropping a Grainline Scout to waist level and adding a gathered skirt, which is what I did. I also added the button back detail because I like it. To do that, I didn't cut the back bodice on the fold, and added a further 7cm width to make a grown on placket (is that a term? it is now). The placket was 3cm wide, based on the size of my buttons. I doubled this over and used a 1cm SA (3 x 2, +1 = 7) (I just used a comma in a sum). In the end I sewed the placket shut, as I don't need it and it saved me making button holes. Had I decided to do that initially, I could have just created an external box pleat and saved myself a bit of work!

Other alterations included raising the neckline slightly, and reducing the shoulder to a size 0. Recently I've been thinking that my Scouts are too large on the shoulders, so this modification has given me my preferred fit through the shoulder. I also cut the size 0 sleeve. I'm not convinced this was the right thing to do as my notches were totally off, but I think the worst thing that could happen there would be less sleeve cap ease, and having made this previously with no sleeve cap ease, I knew this wouldn't be the end of the world.


I think it has worked well. My version is somewhat looser fitting than the Hush dress, and initially I thought I had wasted my lovely printed fabric on the frumpiest dress ever - both the volume and the initial length seemed off - but as ever Instagram saved the day.

My gut feeling was to chop considerable length off it, to counter the frump, but as sewsarahuk pointed out, it would have thrown the garment off balance (she also suggested that if all else failed, I could crop it to a peplum top, which I would never have thought of and made me so relieved that I had a back up plan. Thank you sewsarahuk!). So, instead I hemmed it at just above knee level. This has the added bonus of meaning I will be able to wear it in the summer - while I like my legs clad in black opaques, I'm not so keen on them bare, so my hemlines tend to be much more modest in summer!

It's funny because even after hemming it last night, I still wasn't completely convinced, but when I chucked it on today with tights and heeled ankle boots to take these photos, I completely fell in love with it. Yes, some people will probably still think it's unflattering (husband's comment: "it's really nice. It's meant to be wide isn't it? I like it, but you don't look like you have any boobs"), but I really do like it.

And should I decide that I'm not in the mood for loose and flowing, it actually works pretty well belted!


But mostly likely I won't, and I'll happily wear it like this!