The Anonymous Blueberry Muffin Thief Sews...

I ordered a couple of fabric samples last week from a well known online fabric retailer. They arrived yesterday, and were vastly different colours to what was shown on the website (taking into account monitor variances, and my suspicions confirmed by another person on yet another monitor). Needless to say I sent them a rather grumpy email, especially as this wasn't the first time it happened (pale orange fleece on the website turned out to be bright blogger logo orange when the sample turned up). Annoyingly I had to order fabric because I need it for my CrazyDogLadySewing shirt and that was the only place I could find any fabric that looked even remotely right. I'm sort of dreading the response (if I get one). In vaguely related news, that will be the last fabric I buy for the duration of Lent. I'm broke, I have too much stash, and since the LARP season is going to be kicking off soon, I'm going to suddenly lose a lot of free time at weekends.

This is a top I've made to actually wear somewhere other than LARP events. At work even. This is a Polly top from By Hand London . I'm fairly sure I'm the last person in the blog world to make this, but hey. We all have to start somewhere right?  

Over due post time! And two for the price of one! Day off today. Headaches and nosebleeds = no desire to be in an overheated office. So I'm having a day of trying to shift headaches and finish some stuff up. I have people coming over next weekend so I need to clear some space. So, stuff what I've finished of late. This is the LARP shirt I've been working on for a while (way too long). It's view D of Simplicity 3519 , and I would like to say that I am never making this pattern again (unless, possibly, someone pays me).  

To declare my Wurm hat finished! OMG so snuggly and warm :D Terrible hallway selfies are the best I can manage at the moment. Sewing post tomorrow, as the LARP shirt is nominally finished (I plan to hack the sleeves tomorrow) and I'm in the middle of cutting a Polly top (as in, I'm taking a brief brake to make a cup of tea in the middle of laying stuff out)

  It's been a month, can we all agree on that? January and February are historically awful months for me and mine, so I'm generally a fan of them passing as fast as possible. January did well on that count, although it's been a drag at work. In response to this, I did what any sane person would do; I spent money. Firstly, I replaced the decrepit old printer that I got free with my laptop (that has since vanished into whatever ether old laptops go to) when I went to university. Which, as was so kindly pointed out last night, was 10 years ago this coming October.  I haven't set the new one up (I'm trying to work out where to put it) but it does now mean I have no excuse for not printing patterns, and it means that when I do print patterns, I don't have to do it sneaky like at work.     Then I bought fabric. (disclaimer: not all of this fabric was bought this month, but there are 3m of gorgeous soft ponte that's sitting in a bag rather than b...

 More projects are in the works. I am however suffering from a severe case of winter blues, coupled with LARP starting to pick up again for the year (pre-season planning and stuff) and a general loathing of my job that's infecting pretty much everything I do.   But enough of the blah. I spent the weekend trying to sort my house out, mostly so that I had enough flat surface to get some cutting done. Saturday I cut the pieces for a LARP shirt. It's a Simplicity 3519  in view D, which I know is going to be massive on the sleeves and probably too small on the chest. It's cut in a size XL (to accommodate chest) and the sleeves are only half the size of the back and front (and they're huge). I used about 3 metres of calico for this, which is a pain as that's most of my toile fabric gone in one shot. Oh well. Even if it is huge, I can pass it off onto someone else, or I can modify it to actually fit me. LARP shirts that fit me are a rarity, so making my own is basic...

This is a really image heavy post, for while I sort of apologise, but on the other hand, the fabric is amazing, so at least it's pretty :D (I'm also writing this in between bits of work at work, so if coding is amiss, I apologise - there's something not quite right with the images, I'll fix it when I get home) - photos have now been fixed. The first finished make of the year is an Ethel Tote from Swoon Patterns . I've had the pattern for a couple of months now (it's a free pattern that I picked up because I'd bought their Betty Bowler pattern and then decided I wanted a test project to see where I was missing knowledge). I bought the fabric before Christmas and kind of used it as a lure to make sure I got all the xmas sewing done in time. This is a PDF pattern, with some bits that need taping together. I printed it at work, and somehow ended up with everything being about half an inch bigger than it should have been (I suspect I messed up the prin...

I started the cutting last night, got about halfway through, thought I'd screwed up the interfacing, gave up and went to bed. Came home this evening, running on 4 hours sleep (god I'm sick of these high winds already; my street is a wind funnel) and thought that more work on it would be a bad idea. When have I EVER paid attention to that kind of thinking? Finished the cutting and started ironing interfacing while I was making dinner, finished ironing the interfacing and fusible fleece after dinner and thought I'd leave it there. But no. No, I started sewing (once I'd stared at the instructions and then googled for finished versions of the project, because I was having issues working out where one of the pockets was intended to go). The two open pockets have been started. I'm in love with the fabric all over again. I wish there was a slightly better colour match on the thread, but I've not been able to find one, and in some ways I quite like it. I won...

Someone has just agreed to pay me, nay, asked to pay me, for a squid! Colours and price have been agreed, now to order fabric and get going. I'm also considering making one in 'realistic' colours. I'm also trying not to pad the fabric orders just so I can get free shipping, unless it's stuff I actually need. I've got a Wurm on my knitting needles at the moment, a bag full of knitting needles that need sorting into sizes, and this weekend, along with trying to clean my kitchen after 2 evenings of manic baking this week, I'm hoping to finish the skirt muslin, work out what size it NEEDS to be (rather than what it currently is) and cut an actual skirt. I found some fabric that I think was supposed to be a draft excluder many years ago, but which is actually really nice cotton, and it would make a really cool skirt (that hopefully doesn't need a lining). This is just the front piece. While I am somewhat large in the hip department, this goes all t...

 This is the last of the presents I made this year. I did start another scarf for my step-mum, but that ended up being too much work and I ripped it out. Anyway, this is a 2 meter knitted scarf, which on Ravelry is known as the Pathfinder Fibonacci. Pathfinder, because the colours are as close to the ones we use for the LARP group as I could find, and Fibonacci because that's the pattern the rows are laid out in.

 This was the big one. The one that was going to the person whose opinion as a crafter I care about, and a person who has had a bit of a rough year. Thankfully, by some miracle, it all came together, although this was NOT without disasters.

This was what was called the emergency xmas present. I'd had a vague idea to make these, and possibly even gift one to the recipient at some point, but had mostly been focussing on other people for presents. Then I couldn't find anything in the shops and went and made these in a very short space of time (ok, about a week, but I was working, and had to wait for stuff to show up).

So, one of my friends is a giant Trek geek (this is not saying I'm not, but she's even more of a fan than I am). And she moved house fairly recently, so, when I saw this fabric over at Plush Addict, I thought "yes! cushions!" and then procrastinated for about a month over whether she'd actually like them. (spoilers: she did)

I shall be blogging the christmas makes in the next few days, and plans for the coming year. I may have spent a bit too much on patterns last night in Jaycott's sale. But so far I have been safe from any of the fabric sales as nothing is appealing to me.

Emergency xmas present almost finished, well, about half way there. It turned out there was more hand stitching involved than I thought, but hey. It's going ok. I've just bought buttons for it, and new needles for my machine because sewing through fleece and then suede and felt has basically destroyed my last decent needle. Knitting is coming along. Fibonacci scarf is about 66% done, lacework scarf hasn't actually been touched in about a week, but I have until Boxing Day to get that done, and I'm not actually doing anything on Christmas day, so I have a chance. My tree isn't up because I currently don't have any room. Soooon (the plan is to do it on sunday, when all my sewing stuff should have gone away for a couple of days and I can move furniture).   And here is the current state of the sewing table. Fabric, patterns, baking paper and suede jacket. Mwahaha.   And this is me and my squid, for size reference. I'm about 5' 6 (on a good d...

    So I'm currently faffing around at work, waiting for a meeting that might not happen and trying no to go mad with the current project I'm working on (pro tip: don't make the English graduate computerise the electrical drawings. bad things happen) My pretty fabric for my post xmas present sewing showed up at work on Friday (when I was off doing xmas shopping in MK) so I didn't get it until today. It's so pretty! And I managed some impressive colour matching given I was working on my not very well calibrated work monitor! This is going to be tucked away until I'm done, so I'm not tempted before I'm done with presents.   I posted the other night about how much I love my seam ripper (there was an issue with squid, which will be covered in a post later when I can get all the photos in the right order, so, when I get home) and someone asked what it was, so I took this to illustrate the point. It sees a fair amount of use, and this weekend ...

Another mildly panicked xmas present, to be made from this deconstructed suede jacket. Oh charity shops I do love thee sometimes.   Basically I may have failed to find anything for someone for christmas, so they're getting LARP kit, hastily thrown together from a broken down suede jacket and whatever material I can find in my stash that will match. 

I have many of them. Mostly because I'm frustrated with how long it's taking me to get stuff done for xmas, but sadly that's the nature of the beast when I'm knitting in lunchbreaks and the hour or so after I get home. Anyway, after xmas, I have plans. I'm going to finish the green shawl I was making for me, and I'm going to finish the skirt muslin I was making to see how massively out that sizing is. I have a small hope that I might get a dressmakers dummy (or at least money towards one) for xmas, so that would make things a little easier. I have LARP kit I want to make; a new dress for Odyssey, and a shirt for my rogue that looks a bit more Roman than what I've got at the moment. I might also remake the coat for my totally not nasty wannabe paladin. We shall see. And there's the usual round of repairs to be made. I also, today, in my lunchbreak, purchased this fabric and this fabric plus all the associated stabilisers and stuff to make this ...

November was a bit of a fail. Let's just leave it at that. Work has been pretty horrific of late, and I'm not getting as much crafting done as I'd like and xmas presents have started to become a pressing issue. The squid suffered some setbacks last weekend, when it became apparent that the long thin tentacles were going to be problematic to stuff. It turns out (so shockingly) that the fleece has a lot more stretch than the quilting cotton, and so as I was trying to stuff one of them, the cotton started splitting. No matter. I have plenty of fleece, so the long tentacles will just be all fleece. We'll call it a feature? Maybe? I've spent the afternoon sewing up the shorter tentacles and the fins. They now need stuffing, and then once the long tentacles are done, assembly can commence. Other than the squid, the main thing I've been working on is the Fibonacci sequence scarf for R. He knows about (he had to ok the colours, and I work on it during g...

The red cloak is finished! I wore it last week to an evening LARP event with the bottom hem still unstitched, but I finally got round to finishing it today (and as sods law dictates, the bobbin ran out with about an inch to go so I had to hand stitch). All in all this was a fairly simple project. I messed up cutting a couple of pieces, but I cut them too large rather than too small, so it was easily fixable (and I realised before I started sewing). The triangular inserts were a bit interesting to stitch in, and the points of them are shakily hand sewn (I will neaten them up if they cause me problems). This was me selfie-ing last week once the collar and buttons were done, along with the hat that would go with the outfit. And this is the collar up close. Someone said it could possibly do with something to stiffen it, but I have real issues with things being tight round my neck at times, and I quite like that it's squishy and soft. The button holes are a little wonky because...