I am so sorry for not blogging for a few days but we have some family problems at the moment and we are spending quite a bit of time supporting my Brother in Law who is devastated by what has arisen. There is nothing we can do to help in a practical way but we can be there for him to talk things through and so that is what we are doing.
Meanwhile....in between that and jobs I am still finding a little time to sew and am still on the doll's clothes and here is what I have done so far.......
Both tops here have been adapted from patterns. the trousers and skirt I made from scratch. The circle skirt needs a net petticoat which I shall make if I have enough net in my stash.
The dress was made from a pattern and it actually fit so no adapting and the wrap over skirt was made from scratch.
The green skirt was designed by me using inspiration from my favourite skirt and the circle skirt was again made from scratch....really easy to do.
I need to get cracking on more tops as we now have lots of skirts and trousers.
It looks like the sun of this morning is giving way to dark clouds and rain. Hopefully it will cool things down a bit as the heat here the past couple of days has been horrible.
Even if it does cool down though we will still be having salad for tea. We have hardly eaten anything else for a few weeks....and we even had it for Sunday lunch 😃
Thank you all so much for comments on the last post.
Have a lovely day.
Sheila-x-
This is the little outfit I finished yesterday........
The jersey leggings are made from some pyjamas that no longer fit Ruby and the top is made from fabric I used to make her a top last year. She was thrilled to bits.
I used a commercial pattern for the leggings and made my own pattern for the top.
Today I am taking the top pattern and using it as the base of a new pattern to make a drop sided top to use up the rest of the floral jersey.
Just a few jobs to do before I can get to the machine and then later today I need to go out and do some shopping and call in at the voting station to make my mark.
Spent a mad half an hour at The Doodles last night when we dropped Ruby off. Marlowe has developed the most ear shattering scream when she is excited.It is extremely painful to listen to. I ended up calming her down with a snuggle on my knee and some picture books. Her excitement last night was seeing Ruby. She really loves her big sister.
Laundry to fold and a quick kitchen tidy and that will be house jobs done until tea time.
Hope you are having a lovely day.
Sheila-x-
I'm very late blogging today as all day I have been fighting a battle. Nothing huge....just tackling sewing with jersey at last.
Battle 1....how to stop it curling....spray starch the hell out of it. It also makes it so much easier to cut.
Battle 2....remember to change to a ball point needle. I didn't and the result was a bit of a hot mess to start with.
Battle 3....the bottom hem on a pair of dolls leggings is teeny tiny. I switched my regular foot to the smallest foot I could find in my collection.....I think it was a cording foot but it did the trick. Next time I'll sew the hems before I sew the leg seams.
Result....one pair of perfectly acceptable leggings....but the next pair will be better.
Tomorrow I will remember lessons learned today and have a go at a t shirt.
I'll be able to start taking photos soon as I am just about to order some proper stands for the dolls. Ruby will love being able to have them standing up.
Over the last couple of days or so the garden has exploded in a riot of colour. The roses and the peony have so many flowers on them. I'd love to cut some for the house but there seem to be rather a lot of ants around the peony and I am not letting those little blighters into the house.
We seem to be eating salad like it's going out of fashion at the minute so I am thinking I might get DD to sew me some cut and come again lettuce in a container on the yard.
Tomatoes don't do well for us so we are not even going to try this year....although once we get a greenhouse we might try again.
Time now to go and settle down for a while to watch Vikings which DD and I are on our third watching of now that we have finished The Sopranos.
Hope you have all had a lovely day.
Sheila-x-
I am so over this hot weather now.
Most of my weekend has been spent nursing headaches and horrible itchy rashes which just about drove me insane.
This morning started off lovely and cool but as the day has gone on the thermometer has crept up and up.....although not quite as high as it's highest yesterday which was 28C in the sewing room.
Andy is off today and won't go back to work until tomorrow at 9pm so we have done a few jobs which needed doing. He has cleaned the outside of the windows that look down the road out of the sewing room for me as I can't get to them. Climbing over a wall and dropping down into a narrow gap is just beyond me I'm afraid.
While he was doing that I have been doing laundry and taking apart all of the fans we have in the house and cleaning them....another job that life is just to short for....lol.
Andy has decided that I deserve a night off from cooking tonight and is taking us out for a meal.....I didn't tell him that I had no intentions of turning the cooker on today and tea was going to be cold meat and salad so there will be no cooking tomorrow either as I will just shuffle that over.
Well I think I shall go and have a nice soak in the bath for half an hour. I feel really grubby after cleaning those fans out.
Hope you are all having a lovely day.
Sheila-x-
I am having just the best time at the moment.
Jobs done in the morning and sewing for the rest of the day until it's time to get tea.
I'm still on the doll clothes and have progressed to making my own simple patterns as I am getting a little frustrated trying to adapt the patterns I have to fit these dolls. Most of the patterns for 18" dolls are designed to fit the American Girl doll. She is a big girl whereas the DesignAFriend doll is much slimmer. Some of the outfits can be made to fit by doing a bigger seam allowance but the more structured stuff is quite difficult.
Quite a few skirts have been done so my next job is to design a pattern or two for tops....they will be jersey tops.....this could turn into a hot mess....lol.
Once I have got some complete outfits finished I will do a photo shoot and show you what I have been up to.
Not liking the heat today. My head is aching and I feel itchy and gross. The fan is on but it's just moving warm air round so I might as well save the electricity and turn it off. I will be having a nice cool bath tonight.
Right....I am off to do a bit of sketching for some ideas before DD gets home and wants feeding.
Hope you are enjoying the heat.
Sheila-x-
