Bondaweb and binding foot… The jury’s out….

Got a lovely message from Jana at: https://meandmyveritas.wordpress.com/ today about nominating me for a Liebster award! What a wonderful thing to come on to 🙂 Thankyou very much Jana – such a lovely thing :).

I have had a busy couple of days, a few posts ago (apologies) I mentioned that I’d been to an applique class at my local craft centre on Monday 26th Jan. We used bondaweb – its this paper stuff with adhesive on which gets sticky when it gets hot (ie when ironed). I have always just done the pin and sew method to do my applique. Always used the sewing machine with the zigzag stitch (I think that has to be my favourite stitch haha). But this is different. You draw or trace the bits you want to applique onto the bondaweb – you then cut these out. Your then iron the rough side onto the material you want to stick onto your fabric backing. You then cut these shapes out. Next you cut around these (again!), then take to backing off the bondaweb that is stuck to these shapes. You then place these onto your backing fabric and iron again. Then You sew around them – the teacher recommended blanket stitch – but as I am really not a fan of hand sewing (I know – slap wrist time! I’m just so impatient haha) I used my beloved zigzag stitch.

There are benefits to using bondaweb of course:

• The fact that the fabric pieces are stuck down they don’t move when you are stitching around them
• It’s especially good for fiddly bits
• you can copy images out of books easier and get more accurate shapes onto material

However, I just found it a bit of a faff. I’m used to just cutting, pinning and sewing and that’s it – I will use bondaweb again if I want to do a particularly fiddly bit of applique and maybe lettering – however for the bigger shapes etc I think I’m more than happy to stick to my pin and stitch method 🙂

The next new thing I’ve tried this week is a binding foot. I got a pack of 12 feet for about £10 off amazon at the recommendation of my sewing guru. ‘get a binding foot’ she said ‘it’s so easy’ she said – she didn’t factor in my complete lack of experience haha. By gosh it was hard – I used a shop bought binding in the end – and I followed a guide I found on my amazing friend pinterest : http://www.thesewingdirectory.co.uk/how-to-use-a-binding-foot/

Brilliant guide, really good photographs – I’m just a bit of a dunce at times haha. I kept on putting the binding through the foot. No problem. Put the material through the gap. No problem. Now sew the binding onto the material. By gosh, this is invented by someone with a very sick sense of humour. It nearly got lobbed in the bin several times. This is what it kept doing:

It kept sliding the material out – I unpicked three of the sides at some point – finally seemed to tame it on the fourth side and I must say it does look a lot neater than when I do it with normal foot the two steps way – even if a lot more frustrating haha.

This is the end result:

It’s for my youngests room (he’s 2 and a half) as a wall hanging.

Here is a picture of my binding foot in case you’ve never seen one:

I also got a sewing magnate (?!?!?!)

Looking forward to figuring that one out! haha!

A sewing magnate:

I also got my first sewing pattern through the post today as well. Had a look at it. Yep, that’s not confusing at all haha – was like reading hieroglyphs – my sewing guru will be going through it with me at some point in the next few weeks so I’ll feel a little less confused (hopefully!)

Here it is:

Says easy so we’ll see!

One last thought for today – time goes too fast where children growing up are concerned. My eldest son (and eldest child) was 9 years old today! Happy Birthday – he’s such a wonderful, kind, caring. funny little boy. I am very proud of him, and how he looks out for all his younger siblings but especially Bertie. I just so very wish that they didn’t grow up quite so fast. Happy 9th Birthday Harry.

aarrgghhh!! That should of been easy!

Well, today I had to do those sewing ‘jobs’ – you know the ones that are needed to be done, and they usually start with someone saying: ‘now you can sew, you can do this…’. Well, not always as I found out today haha. I had it in my mind that it was all going to be so easy. A couple of hours work maximum, then maybe have time to move onto something more fun whilst I was child free. Nope, nope, nope – that wasn’t how it worked out. About 3 months ago we had a horrid sick bug that ran rampant through the house, resulting in 3 of the 4 children covering as much of the sofa as you can imagine in vomit. Lovely. So my husband decided to wash the covers on a 60 degree wash. Actually this sounds like it is going to be a horrific tale of woe, but only 2 covers came off the worse. They must of shrunk or something so when the kids next pulled them off to create their own soft play area in my living room (as they are want to do – often) the zips just peeled off on one side. Queue the hubby: ‘that’ll be easy to fix, just stitch the zips back on’. Yep, well first I had to get over my fear of zips. That conquered through a few cushions made, I still was putting it off, it’s just not a fun repairing something as creating something new. I finally tackled it today – it did not go well – I couldn’t get the zip to stay on the fabric – it kept going off – I managed to stitch for ages with the fabric together – not once – oh no – but twice! My unpicker (seam ripper) had an hours usage on that one! Finally, finally it was done – I sat back, sighed, pulled the cover off the machine and promptly broke the zip! aaarrrrgggggghhhhh! I am not ashamed to say I did have a bit of a break down (there may have been some swearing involved haha) – luckily the hubby managed to fix it (just). The other cushion cover went off without a hitch! I don’t understand why the first one reduced me to tears. Think it was getting me back for procrastinating haha. That done onto next job: I had to patch up my daughters jeans a the little monkey had picked the patch off them. That was actually really simple – on both these jobs I used my 16/100 needles and it did make it a lot easier. I used pink polka dots and I think it looks really quite pretty.

Tonight I am expecting to get quite stressed once again as I’m going to attempt to use my new binding foot with home made binding (that I’m yet to make haha) expect a stressed out post tomorrow! wish me luck – I have a feeling I’ll really need it!

Dinner at Tom Brady & Gisele Bündchen’s House

great british sewing bee – sew excited!!! (see what I did there?) 🙂

Longreads

Mark Leibovich, in the New York Times, gets a rare look inside the life of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who?s now 37 in a league where few play past the age of 40. The result is some obsessive habits about caring for his body and the food he eats:

Every morning in the Bahamas, Brady undertook an intense regimen that included resistance drills, exercises with rubber bands and stretches designed to foster muscular flexibility. While traditional training in football emphasizes the building of muscle strength, [Body coach Alex] Guerrero also focuses on pliability, which Brady equates to sponginess and elasticity. “If there’s so much pressure, just constant tugging on your tendons and ligaments, you’re going to get hurt,” Brady told me. “Like with a kid, when they fall, they don’t get hurt. Their muscles are soft. When you get older, you lose that.”

After his vacation workouts…

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First makes….

My mother said I should begin right at the very beginning… so I did. I sat down once the machine was all threaded, I put my foot on the pedal, with my material on the machine and the presser foot down, took a deep, deep breath and pressed with my foot – and promptly pooped myself at how fast it was going! I kept stopping and starting with it – mum had me do some straight lines first and to practice going forwards and backwards to ‘lock’ the stitches into place (your machine should have a switch on the front which you press down and keep hold of to go back wards – doing this technique at the beginning and ends of stitches is a lazy way – because you don’t have to tie a know in your thread once you’ve finished – such a time saver! – you just go forwards, backwards, then forwards again over about the first cm of your stitches – I love lazy ways!) then some more wavy stitches (very hard when you’re machine ‘runs’ away with you when your new haha). Then turning corners – this was actually not too hard – you just stitch to where you want to change direction – then lift up your presser foot – MAKE SURE YOUR NEEDLE IS STILL IN THE FABRIC! swivel the fabric round so you’ll be stitching in the right direction, put your foot back down and stitch on! brilliant!

Then came the epiphany – she had me do something that instead of me being overwhelmed and scared of sewing into an addict! She made me make something! It was a really simple something – but still a something – I began to see the potential!

I made a mini tote bag for my sewing things! If me, a complete, very nervous, sewing dunce could make this in an evening on her first ever sewing outing – then think what I could make with a little practice and as time went on! This is why I adore sewing: you can take a piece of plain fabric and make something out of it! Something you created! Something to be proud of or to learn from! magnificent!

It was actually really quite easy to make – I didn’t need a pattern or need to know any of the sewing terms – or know anything at all really.

First: you cut out two pieces of fabric – slightly bigger than you want the bag to be in the end – about 2cm I found was best as I was starting out – left room for mistakes! They need to be about the same size and shape and the easiest way to do this is to fold your fabric in half – then draw the shape onto one side – I use chalk to do this – and cut carefully around it.

There are two sides to fabric: the right side and the wrong side. The right side is the side that is the one you want showing – usually the pattern will be a brighter on the right side. The wrong side is the side you don’t want showing

Place the two fabric squares together right side to right side (so the wrong sides are showing) and sew around three edges, turning corners as needed – leave the edge which you want to be your bag opening unstitched.

Fold over around 2cm at the top of the bag (the bag is still inside out so this folded part will be inside the bag) and stitch at the bottom edge of this fold.

Once this is done you want to make the handle – decide on the length and width you want it to be. Again add 2cm to this (this is actually known as your seam allowance – there’s a technical term) sew around three edges of this, right side to right side. You need to then turn this right side out – the edge you need to leave open is the top – the easiest was to pull it through is by using a big hand stitching needle – use some thick wooley type thread (known as embroiderers thread) and put a stitch onto the closed end. Then pull it through onto itself. Voila! stitch the end shut(folding1cm each edge inside the strap to neaten) You have a right way out strap!

You then need to attach your strap onto your bag you can do this however you wish – I just put the strap ends onto either side of the bag, over the side seams and stitched a square onto the strap through to the bag.

Turn the bag the right way out and tada! you have made a bag! Well done! Don’t you feel ridiculously proud? I did 🙂 The next night I made two bigger bags in exactly the same way for my youngest two children to take their clothes to nursery.

 I got the material

for these from a charity shop. The small bag was a duvet and the larger bags were a care bear pillow case! I am happy to report that all are still going strong and being used. You can just get your ideas out of your head and it doesn’t have to be perfect, make mistakes! they are homemade with love!

I got it out of the box…

I got my sewing machine out of the box! My mother was visiting and we decided: today is the day! So with great trepidation I opened the box and lifted out my sewing machine. My mother showed me how to thread it and how to bring the bobbin through. Most sewing machines have instructions actually on them with how to thread, but it is usually a case of putting the cotton spool onto the stick which is furthest back onto the top, taking your thread and taking it around some sort of weird looking circle thing, then down through a grove, under the dial for the thread tension, then up through the hook on the arm of the bit that takes your needle up and down whilst sewing (see – I know all the technical terms haha) – then back down again and thread through your needle. It can seem a real faff at first but it soon becomes second nature and you can do it quite quickly – just take it slowly at first and think about what you are doing. The next bit is bobbin threading – there seem to be two types of bobbin threading out there – one is were the bobbin lays flat – usually under a plastic door which comes off. The next type is in a metal case which is vertical and goes under the feed dogs (the feed dogs are the jaggedy teeth type things which lay under the needle – they feed your fabric through for you!) – I have no idea how these work – my mothers machine has this type but I’ve just (sort of) got my head around how mine works. Again most machines actually have instructions on how to do this actually printed onto the machine. I found bringing my thread through really hard at first – and I mean it took me several attempts everytime and I dreaded having to do it! – as they are all different I couldn’t describe what to do with it without confusing the issue. But what I can tell you is a couple of tips my sewing guru told me: You are basically just getting the thread to come through to the feed dog. The easiest thing to do is to put your thread from your needle under the foot – and HOLD it – do a manual stitch by turning the big wheel on the side – your needle will go down and then up – as it starts to come up gently pull the needle thread whilst turning the wheel – you will see a wee loop come up under your needle – use a pin to pull this out – you need to keep both these threads under your foot whilst sewing. That’s your machine ready to go! Here comes the scary (for me) bit! Sounds complicated but once you’ve done it a few times its second nature, I promise.

Apologies….

Apologies for being away for a wee while – I’ve had a horrible fluey cold – it’s been really very annoying as I haven’t even been well enough to sew! I’ve now got family visiting for my eldest sons 9th birthday so that has been hectic too!!! Just a quick update on me and what I’ve been up to: I got my needles through the post this week – and I used the 16/100 to sew the husbands badge into his cap elastic (he’s in the navy and just got promoted) – and that was a real test! I used my zipper foot as didn’t have a lot of space to play with around the cap badge. It went through it fine and he made himself bleed when he tried to hand sew it so that saved a lot of tears! I also got my feet through the post – there are no instructions or labels with them so deciphering that will be fun! Once I was up to it I made my 3rd son (Bertie with special needs) his weighted lappad – that was a faff with all the ‘poly-pellets’. I will do a post about that later on. Speaking of Bertie – we had a meeting with some of the specialists from his special needs nursery and they are fairly confident of a diagnoses of pathological demand avoidance – which is a autism spectrum disorder. We should get the official diagnoses mid march. I also attended a applique workshop at our local creative space. It was using bondaweb – must say I wasn’t overly impressed – it just seems such a faff rather than my usual method of pin and stitch – although does seem to be a useful technique for more applying more fiddly bits onto fabric. My good friend and sewing mentor form sew simple took me to a lovely little fabric shop on Plymouths Barbican – I just went to look at fabrics and patterns for a dress that she is making for her birthday – £25 later and I ended up buying my first ever sewing pattern and the fabric and haberdashery to make it! oooopppps! I’m no where near ready to actually make it myself but she’s going to go through pattern usage on Friday afternoon – this is the link to the pattern I’ve chosen: http://mccallpattern.mccall.com/m6959-products-48438.php?page_id=108 – quite a busy week for a sick person really! Anyway – got several projects in the pipeline but will hopefully be blogging more this week! Happy sewing!

Look what I made…

I don’t have much time to write tonight as off out with some other mums from school for wine and nibbles – queue nattering about nothing until the wee hours :). I just had to come on and say… Look what I made…. my first item of clothing for me… A skirt 🙂 Not fantastic, and quite a simple wrap around style, but none the less I’m very pleased. I wanted it finished for tonight and I managed it … just! Will detail in a later post what I did etc, but heres some pictures of the finished result (ignore the socks haha).

Does this mean I learn faster…

Just come across this blog post on pinterest (told you I love it) – it encourages you to just go ahead and make mistakes as you’ll learn faster – that means I must be one of the fastest learners – right? haha – but seriously a feel good read about those of us who have a closer relationship with our seam ripper than our significant other. http://mellysews.com/2015/01/why-you-should-sew-badly-sewing-mistakes.html

Sewing machines on a budget!

As I said in my previous post, I was given an ancient (but electrified) singer machine and my mother bought me one for my birthday. I have been unable to use the singer as of yet as it is very large and heavy and as yet we have yet to persuade anyone to bring it the 200+ miles to us from my mothers to here. I am looking forward to having a try of it once it does manage to complete this journey – should be interesting! (shhh though – my aunt is still under the illusion that I have been using it all this time – its becoming interesting explaining things though ‘ooh I didn’t know my machine had a button setting!) My mother bought me a mini sewing machine from amazon – it cost her around £50 I think. It is a Vida – not one I’d heard of before – despite being small and cheap it was great to learn on, especially for a very nervous sewer. It goes quite slowly and only has a choice of 8 stitches so it is not at all confusing. It served me well until a) I wanted to do bigger projects and b) I’d used up all the pre-wound bobbins that came with it and it point blank refused to wind anymore. Just think it decided it no longer wanted to be a sewing machine any longer – maybe it wanted to be a toaster instead? Uh-oh! I was stuck not being able to sew! Disaster! It was not long before Christmas and we had very little money to play with so was on a very strict budget! I had to go and get a new sewing machine as soon as possible for as cheap as possible. A full sized one with a few more bits and bobs. After a manic bit of research I went for a brother ls14. At only £79.99, the reviews seemed positive for beginner sewers, so I thought that’s the one for me. It was a big change & having quite a few different stitches to go for I did get it wrong the first few times out of the block (note: look at the different zigzag stitches and don’t use the ones for satin when your not using satin as steam will come out of your ears). It is also much more powerful and harder to control than my little machine – at first I’d press on the pedal and it’d go just from humming to 100 miles an hour. Now I am used to it though I love it – I can control it just as well as my little one and it comes with a zipper foot and button hole foot and a button hole programme. And the best thing? It winds bobbins up and seems like it actually wants to be a sewing machine (so far….). I am hoping to get a better one as I progress but for now being right at the beginning this one is the love of my life (the husband is getting slightly jealous the money and attention I lash upon it…!). My advice for selecting a sewing machine if you’re a complete beginner as I am? read the reviews if buying on-line. Make sure that it is beginner friendly. Don’t spend a fortune on your first machine as you’ll likely not need most of the stitches on there for quite a while. Make sure you an handle it – that you can control it otherwise you’ll hate it and it’ll be one of those things you started and then just gathers dust. The best thing is to borrow one or look on your local selling sites on facebook etc if someone is selling one cheaply for you to get started – you can always invest in a more expensive one later – like I plan on doing 🙂 You’ll soon learn that sewing is not a hobby you need to throw money at – you can get lovely, fulfilling results just as cheaply.

First steps (baby steps) and why I love pinterest.

For me, like many, sewing has always seemed like a mysterious world, with its own secret language. I first decided I wanted to sew in May 2014. I wanted to make clothes for the children was my main motivation. Like anything I wanted to do a bit of research before embarking on it. I spoke to family, friends and looked online. It was there that I came across the wonderfulness that is pinterest. It is a absolute hive of ideas, information and just plain beauty for sewing, crafts and anything creatively related. It’s so girly, aspirational and a feast for the senses. I have gotten so many ideas from there. Many of which my sewing skills are not up to yet – but one day I hope they will be. After speaking to my aunt and my mother, who came to visit us in June for my youngest two childrens Christening, I was offered a sewing machine, fabric and help and guidance, as they were both taught to sew by my maternal grandmother. I jumped at the chance. My mother bought me a smaller sewing machine to get me started in August, but I still did not feel confident enough to start without her guidance, and as she lives 5 hours away by car it would be a while until she was able to help. She did buy me a book, which still is my favourite book. I will go through the books I have which I have found useful in another blog. However, this book is: how to use your sewing machine. It is a amazon publication, and seems aimed at a younger audience than those of us of a (certain!) age – but it was just at my level – it starts with the very basics such as threading your sewing machine, what the basic stitches are, it even has lines to copy in both straights and curves so you can practise your stitches :). It then goes onto projects starting from very small to slightly more complex clothes, and details all the techniques you will need to complete them. Including very simple patterns. For the beginner sewer it is marvellous. You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Use-Your-Sewing-Machine/dp/1908707275/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421882572&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+use+your+sewing+machine+a+complete+guide+for+absolute+beginners

I only started actually using my sewing machine in September when my mother visited again to show me the actual practical – was loving the ideas and dreaming of all the things I COULD make – but was far too terrified to actually use the sewing machine – It was still sat in its box, sealed, taunting me. I needed a huge push to rip that cellotape off, provided by my mother.

Will blog about picking my sewing machine soon.