Tag Archives: family

Mum’s the word

I think I have blogged too much about how paralyzed I am by the stash, especially since I had to give up some fabric/craft storage for the family (they live here too, you know :p), and I have stacks of fabrics awaiting re-location around my sewing area now.

Recently, I sent over a few yards of fabrics to my mum, so that she can make cushion and pillow covers for her room. And I mentioned to her that I have been listing some fabrics on Facebook, as I need more space in the house.

Her response: Why sell them? SEW! Make something with the fabrics!

And here’s what I did when I got home:

Seat covers for home office chairs

This fabric was bought at Ikea and I like the wide width, heavy/home decor weight to the print. It took me about an hour to measure seat, cut fabrics, sew, serge and thread the cotton twill tape through the casing I made. I made an identical cover for my husband’s chair too. The lousy leather seats were worn and broken and these fabric covers helped breathe new life to them. I didn’t have to add any padding, etc. The cushion is still good, just the leather material was unsightly.

It felt really good to use up yardage and toss the remnant to my scrap bin (that’s another horror story for another day).

Well, I had grand plans to cut up more fabrics for project this weekend, but I spent a lazy Saturday with the family, reading (Artemis Fowl series – for me!), napping, building Lego and having a great steamboat meal at an old-fashion coffee shop instead. So, I hope you are having a restful weekend too and I leave you with a picture of one of my favourite drawers in the house 🙂

Kawaii Japanese Fabric Stash Drawer

May the Force be with me…

Halloween is becoming a fun excuse for me to dress up Benji for our get-togethers with friends. And who says you
can only have fun dressing up little girls?

Last year, we had a fuss-free outfit and Benji was not totally clued in on what was going on!

This year, it was as clear as daylight what he would enjoy being costumed as… I present: Young Ben Kenobi!

I have the Taftc apparel pattern and sewing course to thank for the confidence to work on this project with the Simplicity 3575 pattern. The Dad said that the costume should not have a sash but I included it anyway to keep the layers from getting into the boy’s way.

For fabric, I used this lovely brown Essex Linen that I bought a long long time ago. There are a few learnings from this project:

1) Buy the pattern from the store, instead of purchasing the softcopy. I had to print 41 pages on my printer and used about 2 rolls of tapes taping the pages together. Even then, some lines were wonky. TEDIOUS!

2) The sleeves and robe length were way too long even when I used a XS child size which listed the same measurements as Benji’s.

3) The pattern doesn’t provide overlocking instructions or seam finishing recommendations. I will simply overlock every piece of fabric cut-outs in the future.

4) The sleeves were too long for my Son, and I decided to ‘hem’ the sleeves with the Blind Hem Stitch. I found it much easier to hem the narrower ‘tube’ by hand.

5) For the robe hem, I finally got to use my blind hem footer on the Bernina as it is meant to be used! It was so easy and it really works great on the garment.

Looking forward to next year’s dress-up already! 😀

Fabric Stash Report – Summary for Weeks 8 through 12

5 weeks’ worth of Fabric Stash Summary. This post is FULL of fabric goodness. If you are on a fabric diet, look away now 😉

I ordered more fabrics from my favorite local fabric sellers again in May. Unfortunately, when they came through the door, I hardly had time to go through them. Today, I took some time to get them out of the bags to breathe some fresh air and of course, to take the pictures.

All Stars by Riley Blake

Lantern Bloom by Laura Gunn

Poppy by Lara Gunn

Dots by Paula Prass

Daisy Chain by Amy Butler

Michael Miller & Robert Kaufman

Cherish was kind enough to help include a special order for RK’s essex linen which I’m in love with. They are little trickier to handle, compared to 100% cotton, but easier (and cheaper!) than 100% linen. They are almost impossible to find locally and I would buy in bulk from the U.S. when we do a shopping spree online :p

Fat Quarter Bundle - 3 little bears

Fat Quarter Bundle - Mingle

Collect 'em all!

221 colours...

Cherish also helped me to source this colour chart as I’m deciding on stocking up on my Solids. Gosh… I absolutely adore EVERY colour! 😀

As for what went OUT:

A few more custom-order crayon wallets

Fabric wrap for Benji’s friend’s 3rd birthday.

A few Matryoshka doll appliqued totes

Weeks 8, 9, 10, 11, 12: 24 May – 20 June

In: 126 yds (Ooops!)

Out: 2 yds

YTD total:
Purchased: 176 yds
Busted: 17.75 yds
net: -158.25 yds

Besides the usual work and family matters, we took off for a short get-away at Cameron Highlands and KL in Malaysia for about a week. It was a great road trip with friends and it felt like an extended playdate for our kids!

Hopefully I can get back into the sewing swing of things this week.

“A season of feasting… and wasting” – The Straits Times

The headlines in today’s papers caught my attention. The was my exact sentiment as I put away my son’s gift wrapping, the boxes/plastics that the toys are clothes were packaged in and also the left-over Christmas pastries in the pantry. It is really scary reading how much waste (esp. food waste) is generated in this festive period.

Over at our household, we are also trying to cut down the volume of trash that gets dumped in our garbage bins. We try to repair, reuse, recycle as much as we possibly can. One ‘green’ item is my fav re-usable bag: the Ikea Big Blue Bag:

image from ikea.com

We always have a couple of these bags in our car. They are great for carrying grocery, esp. the heavy bottles, or cartons, etc that the normal plastic bags can’t hold anyway. These bags are strong and easy to clean out. Best of all, they are guaranteed for life!

This year, I didn’t spend a single cent on gift wrapping paper either. All my gift items are either packaged in my Midnight craft sandwich baggies (made from recycled paper), tied with baker’s twine or with cute piece of decor tape. For bulkier items, I made gift bags and tried my hand at furoshiki wrapping too.

Handmade drawstring gift bags

1 yard of Ikea fabric, wave-cut, rubber bands at both ends & finished with ribbons

Furoshiki-style fabric gift wrapping

Fabric gift wraps are absolutely wonderful to make and to use. For the furoshiki wrap, I simply folded the fabrics selvedge to selvedge, right sides together, leaving a small gap to turn the wrap around. And I top stitch the square fabric and closed the gap. It was perfect for Baby Elliot’s soft book.

Good Grief! It’s November already?

The whole family was taking turns catching the cold/flu/sinus bugs. I had no bandwidth to craft, sew, or take any photos. The only thing that kept me sane was the occasional sale and convos from the Etsy shop. Hopefully, I’ll have more to share in Nov!

This Halloween, we were invited to a friend’s place for dinner and trick & treating around their neighborhood. The weather was DREARY. It rained and rained and stormed some more. But after dinner, the rain let up some and we brought the kids out for some spooky fun!

Talk about last minute ‘inspiration’, I whipped up this outfit from 12-1am Friday night. I don’t have any solid black fabric for the zig zag and had to make-do by using the reverse of a black fabric that has some grey swirls on the front. I used Therm O Web’s Strong No Sew fusible webbing and ironed the zig zag straight unto the T-shirt. Not a stitch sewn! 😀

Forward looking: I ordered a WHOLE bunch of delicious baker’s twine (in various colours!) for the holiday season and I’ve been prepping them for a secret project. More about that later! 😀