Jammie sewing

It’s the Easter holidays and Darling Sister Two is home for a couple of weeks. With DS1 in the conservatory working on her dress and me alternately spinning, sewing or knitting, DS2 has decided she too would like to make some awesome pyjamas and join us in crafty pursuits!

DS2 at work on her jammies – that’s VW campers on the other side of the pyjama leg!

We went to Steve Bane Fabrics in Dorchester where she picked out two fun cotton prints. I also got some fabric there and decided to make myself some pyjama shorts too. This was a really quick make using Simplicity 7071  again.

Pyjama photos outside… it’s definitely spring!

No the most flattering garment but they are comfortable and I look forward to wearing them more when the weather gets a bit warmer!

I love this fabric and the neat little side vent

I’d like to have a go at adapting this pattern for a more fitted pair of shorts for day wear though and maybe some running shorts? We’ll see how it goes :)

And a little label so I can tell the front from the back!

A spot of sewing

Aldi sewing machine anyone? Yes please!

Until now we’ve always just used Ma’s old sewing machine at home, there’s nothing wrong with it apart from the slightly too sensitive foot peddle that sometimes sends the needle whirring if you so much as breathe near it…  more fool you if you left your project under the needle and didn’t turn the machine off when you went away for a bit.

And the fact that it’s a Japanese machine that requires a massive great ancient transformer to be brought out every time you want to use it means it’s not always terribly convenient…

When I saw Aldi had Singer sewing machines in stock I took a chance. I’m guessing this is a cheapo version that is produced especially for Aldi as I haven’t been able to find many reviews of it or any trace on the Singer Website. It seems to work well enough though and here is its first proper project:

Elephant pyjamas for Darling Sister One! I picked out the blue elephant patterned fabric in our local fabric shop because it was the cheapest  I knew she would love it. Unfortunately, on getting out the pattern it turned out I hadn’t bought enough. The direction of the print meant that other arrangements of the pattern pieces wouldn’t work, so it was back to the shop. As I’d bought the end of the roll they had none of the blue fabric left but we managed to find a matching pink elephant print for the other leg!

I used the same pattern as I’d used before for my pyjama bottoms but I forgot that Darling Sister One is quite a bit shorter than me. After cutting out the pieces and sewing them all together, I got to fitting the length and realised I should have thought of this before-hand… It would have been rather easier to turn up the hem if I’d shortened the leength in the first place and didn’t have to cut several inches off the bottom!

That said, they turned out alright and I think she likes them!

She’s also become the first person (apart from me) to get something with one of my fancy new labels in, lucky girl!

I didn’t get the hang of using these fancy decorative stitches though…

Any tips on what I’m doing wrong would be lovely! Do I need to change the plate? Or the stitch length settings? I couldn’t get the fabric to feed through at the right rate to make nice smooth scallops :(

Recent-ish FOs and WIPs

Crazy amount of posting here atm but I want to make sure I have a record for myself of what I have done :)

First up, my first ever sewing from a pattern! I have made a few dresses and other bits and bobs before but never ‘properly’ and never anything that I actually ended up wanting to wear! I got the fabric for £1.50 from a charity shop – no idea what it is but I liked the colours. Turned out well I think, although unless you make them too small you can’t really go wrong with jammie bottoms!

With a special label in the back… :D

The other recently finished project is my vine mitts using the Kujeillen pattern by Tiina Kuu. As you might notice, they are not quite matching  as I wasn’t very good at counting rows in the pattern… since they’re only for myself I couldn’t be bothered to go back and fix it whenever I noticed the mistakes! These are knitted in Drops alpaca, a lovely 4 ply yarn in pretty colours.

As for WIPs, first is my Invisibility Shawl by Kerrie Allman from Charmed Knits. This is my first lace knitting and I’m using a beautiful mulberry coloured yarn – Drops Lace which is a lovely mix of 70% baby alpaca and 30% silk. The pattern is lovely and simple and though I’m finding the laceweight yarn a bit tricky to handle, it’s getting there!

And finally, a slow project of a big ol’ crochet blanket – made to use up odds and ends of handspun and dyed yarn ma has lying around from her early days of spinning. I don’t really have a plan but have made the colourful bits into granny squares and plan to use the larger amounts of grey and white yarn to bring it all together :)

Watch this space to see if these get finished! :P