Washing Machine

It is customary in the Netherlands to celebrate a thing called Sinterklaas. It’s basically a different version of Saint Nicholas or Santa. However, we celebrate it on the 5th of December, we tell kids it’s his birthday, but the real Sinterklaas died that day. You buy gifts for people and sing songs. Some people celebrate it by making ‘surprises’. All the names are put into a hat and everyone gets one that is not his name, they buy presents for this person and make their ‘surprise’. The surprise is related to the person you buy the presents for and also has a poem with it.
So.. for the 2011 celebration of Sinterklaas (which we celebrated the 18th of December)  I had my mother’s name. She has been complaining that she hates sorting our black socks, because they are all different but all black.  I made a washing machine, I put some coloured socks in with instructions on them and she had to match socks and follow the instructions. She seemed to like it.

It was all made of cardboard and covered with white paper. I used a picture of our washing machine to make the label in the top right corner. Here are some pictures:

 

I really enjoyed myself making it. It was fun to see that it did work and that she liked it. All in all my Sinterklaas was a lot of fun.

Long Time No See

Yes I know, I’ve not been here for a while. I have no excuses. Well one, my sewing machine broke in December (which is quite the problem), so no sewing related things. I have made some things since the last time I’ve posted. A mp3-player pouch, it’s awful, ugly and crude but I needed one soon and my machine had just broke, and it works, so that’s fine. I’ll update it when I’ve gotten my machine fixed.

I’ve started a skirt that just needs hemming and buttonholes, (it’s almost all done by hand since my machine broke..), however, this was the beginning of January, and I’ve since done nothing to the skirt.

I did make a present for a friend, which was a pouch, this time with a flame embroidery. The pouch from all sides:

   

 

The last picture might look weird to you.. white things with dots and stripes on them? They are a couple of pebbles I got from our front garden. I painted dots and stripes on them and put them in the pouch with an instruction leaflet. When playing you can use them as runes or play games with them like Pigs. It is not very useful, but I thought it was fun. He seemed to like it, so I’m happy. I’m going to attempt to write more here, to make me do other things than watch television.

Presents

I have a birthday party tomorrow. However, I was faced with a problem. What could I possibly give as a present? I had no ideas, so eventually I decided to make something. Next question: what would I make? Something easy but nice looking, the answer was, so I decided to make another ear bud pouch (previous one). I found a nice blue fabric in my stash that I’d used for a pencil skirt (and still had 3 meters left after that). Which looked quite nice, and I had a zipper which was quite close. So I used those, here it is:

 

One adjustment I made compared to the previous one was that I added a ‘pocket’ on the back of the pouch, so you can put a coin in there for a shopping cart or something like that.

So the other bit of the gift has 2 parts. If I show them to you, can you guess what they make together?

Well here they are anyways:

 

Left is a ribbon (oh, what a surprise ; )) and right is a set of tiny clothes pins that I’ve glued a funky bit of ribbon too.
Did you guess?

The answer is: A Christmas Card Hanging Line! (Or birthday cards, Easter cards, whatever cards you may get). Tadaa!

With two cards, I really like the left card. In the Netherlands children come around each year selling so called kinderpostzegels, or children’s stamps. The proceeds go to a charity to help children. One year they had kinderpostzegels that were designed by Dick Bruna, the writer of Miffy (or Nijntje, in Dutch). They also sell cards that are designed by the same person, and the left is a walrus of Dick Bruna, I still have a soft spot for Nijntje related things, that’s why I like it so much.

Well off to bed soon, so I can be cheerful and happy at the party tomorrow! I hope she likes them!

Ear bud pouch

I found this tutorial not very long ago via Ucreate. It is for making a little ‘Circle zip ear bud pouch’ (link). I figured, I have some scraps left over from my purple and black dress, why not make me one of those.. (Apart from the fact that I don’t own a mp3-player or thing that needs ear buds, but that’s.. not important, right?)

So I did, cut out the fabric last night, which was about 5 minutes of work. And just put the pouch under the machine. It was literally half an hour worth of work. The tutorial is so easy to follow, and the steps are clear and easy. It’s pretty much perfect.

I had a blue zipper and some purple leftovers and decided that using yellow would be even more colourful, since the body of the pouch was going to black. Here it is:

I gave it to my mother, since she has ear buds, and she quite liked it, so that was nice. Now when I ever come around to buying something that plays music for me, I’m make myself another one, since they can be whipped during lunch basically! I’d suggest this for an easy little project. Also, if you make it bigger you can put more stuff in it, a little purse of some kind. Whoo, can’t wait to try that one out.

Mending

I did it, I mended stuff. 2,5 things. A 5 cm seam, a 5 cm gather and a bit in my coat. Results! I also finished by black & purple dress but I don’t have nice pictures yet so that’ll come later. My little bolero had a seam that was sort of coming apart, not yet a rip but not fully secure anymore. Half a second later, finished. Proof (left is always before, right after):

 

Same with the gathering:

 

And half of my jacket, I didn’t do the pocket yet, but I did do the sleeve. Too bad I couldn’t find the right colour, but I was eager to get something done so I didn’t really care, still don’t.

  

Proud.

Finally

Yes! I finally finished something. After all this time, I’ve managed to do something creative again. Whoopy!

I made a needle-case for my friend on Friday (hot pink, dark blue, lime green, yellow thread and a gray ribbon), which I forgot/neglected to take a picture of (since I was finishing it on the train ride there). However, I did ask her if she could make a picture of it, so I’ll possibly upload that somewhere in the future.

And today, a glorious free day (which I will have for the rest of the week: go holiday!) I finally finished clearing up my sewing room/my parents storage room. I had decided I wanted to sort the books in the bookcase, which turned out to be an enormous, hideously huge task.  But I have finished it and created: 3 more empty shelves! Hip hip Hooray!

And consequently decided to finish my mice bag. So I finally attached the straps and the buttons, and added some button elastic for easy closing (and a nice different color pop). And it is finished! Mice mice mice, the text reads “Als de kat van huis is dansen de muizen op tafel”, loosely translated as: when the cat is away the mice will play.

I hope this free week will let me start (and finish) some other projects, like:

The black & purple dress (only hemming and attaching shoulder bands).
Redoing the red pants (complete ehm, upper area needs redoing).
Starting a 3/4 circle skirt with pockets.
Repairing the bolero thing (stitching 5 cm)
Gathering the black & white houndstooth shirt (only 10 cm gathering)

As you can see… I am quite lazy and tend to postpone even the smallest of tasks. But now I have the illusive free time to play in. I’ll see what I’ll actually get done, but I hope to do at least the above mentioned things. So hopefully I have more to share.

Adjusting

I’ve started school the 5th of September. It’s taking a bit of adjusting. Not just the ‘getting up at 7 o’clock in the morning’ is making my life way sleepier, also the incredible amounts of reading I’m supposed to do make my eyes all droopy. All the reading has also lead to limited amount of crafty time. I’ve done a few things, salvaged the top of my wannabe pant suit thing, and made it into an unfinished dress. Only hem and straps left though, I planned to do that Saturday, then I fell and hurt my ankle so I didn’t. The ankle is almost fine now though (yay!). And I’ve been knitting a cardigan.

I quite like knitting. However, I’m not very good at it, nor am I very quick. So starting quite some time ago, I’ve now managed about 22 cm of the back panel. I’m guessing that’s 2/5 of the back panel finished. Which means there’s still a heck of a lot to do before I can actually wear it. But slow progress is still progress right? Ok, writing this was my break from reading, back to chapter 5!

Jewellery

So the visit to town on Wednesday landed me some other goodies too. I’ve been looking for some big red beads since my mother showed me her necklace.

I made the red plaid skirt some time ago and found that wearing a black/grey is turtle neck with it and that necklace looked really nice. So I’ve wanted to make one for myself. I couldn’t really find any nice red (and affordable) beads, so I opted to go with purple. To add some difference I added some black beads and some white swirly ones. I really like the finished look.

 

The other bits I made were two earrings for my mother. She wanted some over the top earrings to wear during samba performances. So they needed to be in the samba colours, yellow and blue. However, we found it was difficult to find some in the shop. So when we were in the bead shop, we got two square donuts and two blue beads for in the donuts, to make her some earrings. I had some feathers at home and some other bits and bobs like the hooks and something to secure the feathers with. And within 5 minutes my mom had some over the top samba earrings.

PJs

Although this summer has seen absolutely terrible weather. It was Summer for one month in Spring and has been Autumn ever since. Terrible rain, depressing skies, grey everything basically. But sometimes there was still a little heat left over from an otherwise blah day, and my PJ pants were hot. So today (much too late since it’s almost Winter now) I finished the short PJ pants that I decided to make a couple of days ago. I was planning to do it yesterday but the sash making got in the way. Anyways, it’s not sexy or appealing, but it’s soft and made from the poppy fabric, I present you with: short PJ pants.

Sashes Everywhere!

My parents are in a samba-band, which I think I’ve mentioned before. Their colours are blue and yellow. During performances they wear a blue shirt with white pants. On the back of the shirt the logo is printed in yellow. They do have a yellow coat for cold times, but in summer the shirt is enough. Now it was suggested by one of the members that they could all wear yellow sashes to show more yellow. So my mum asked me if I felt like doing that. I (stupidly) said yes. So yesterday my mum and me went fabric shopping, which was fun, and regular shopping, also fun. The night was spent, together with another samba player, making 20 sashes. I have figured out that I’m never ever going to make curtains. Sewing long stretches of fabric is boring. Especially 3 times per sash…

And they were long, I did 8 of 2 meters, 8 of 2,40 (which is really really really boringly long) and 4 of 1,80. First I sewed a bit into a tube with a pointy end, then gave it to my mum who turned it inside out and ironed it. Then I’d get it back and sewed all around it (so 2 pointy bits and 2 very very long bits). And voilà, a sash. After I finished the first 8 and half finished the second 8 my machine decided that I was stupid and it wasn’t going to do it nicely any more. It wanted some rest, well it was 11 at the time, so I was quite happy with that, apart from the fact it stopped liking me of course. So this morning I finished them. Finishing the last one felt so incredibly nice. It was amazing. Here is what they look like on the ironing board, and on me (while wearing my mums shirt):