Month: February 2016

Window dressings

Curtain Alterations

sewambitious

Now for something REALLY ambitious…

When we moved into our house I left most of our curtains behind except for our bedroom curtains.  These are huge for our new bedroom window so I thought, with my new sewing machine, I would alter them.

What a disaster!!

I’ve never worked with fabric so large and I struggled to keep up with the width of fabric (probably 5 metres) and measured and cutting.  Fortunately I don’t plan to keep these curtains once we redecorate but what a nightmare!  I did one curtain and then didn’t have time to do any more.  There is one more curtain and two linings to do too!

I have since had a tip – fold the fabric and cut through several layers.  This makes a lot of sense!

Time taken: so far about 2 hours but this project isn’t finished yet!

Toys

Stuffed Elephant

sewambitious

I now have my very own sewing machine.  The elephant.jpgworld is my oyster in terms of what I can make!  My daughter has a small cloth duck which she has when she goes to sleep at night and I wanted to make a small stuffed toy for her.  I trawled the internet and finally found something which looked easy.  It wasn’t too bad but it came up too small so I had to size it up by half again (trying to remember GSCE maths!).  I managed to size it up successfully and I made my first stuffed toy.  A pink elephant.  The ears were supposed to be made of felt but I didn’t have any so these are double fabric sewn on.  My hand sewing leaves a lot to be desired.

Unfortunately my daughter isn’t interested in it but I was very chuffed at my first attempt!

Time taken: About an hour plus time scaling up

Home furnishings

My very first project

sewambitious

My very first sewing project was a cover for a footstool.  Having seen the prices of ones you could buy from a store where we bought the large footstool (with storage) I decided I’d prefer to choose my own fabric and have a go at making one myself.  How hard could it be…?

I really didn’t know what I was doing and probably the fact that I was trying not only to match the pattern on both top and bottom halves of the footstool, I was trying to make it the same as it was in the shop – with Velcro fastenings!

Well it actually doesn’t look too bad, from a distance.  Close up it is flawed – most of the velcro doesn’t even meet! – but it has been in use for over 2 years now and it still looks good so I have to say I am pleased with it.  I’ll find a photo and post it on here.

After that I made a couple of cushion covers to match and after that I gave up.  This was all on my mum’s old Singer Sewing Machine.  A great machine but heavy to move around and I had to go to my mum’s to use it.