Sunday 28 April 2013

Sunday Crafternoon

After yesterday's failed attempt at dressmaking, Captain Bayley and I spent the day making stuff.

I needed a couple of quick wins, so I took a bit of liberty tana lawn patchwork left over from a quilt I made a friend of mine when she had a baby:


And made a scented, microwaveable eye pillow. I lack the patience to do lots of fiddly finishing on big projects, like clothes, but I'm totally up for spending forever hand finishing the inside of a eye cushion that will never see the light of day. I tacked a bit of white cotton to the back of the patchwork since it was quite delicate, and then did french seams on the inside before rolling the open edge under and hand sewing it down.

I filled it three quarters of the way with rice that I had scented with essential oils (lavender, mostly, with a touch of rose absolute and patchouli) before blanket-stitching the opening closed with light green thread.
I'm happy with the result - Mark says it smells like his grandmother, but I find it soothing. Anyway, the construction is pretty sturdy so if I want to open it up and tip out the rice and put it in the washing machine it should be fine. 

I also decided to try turning one of Mark's rejected shirts into something for myself. He's a big guy, so the trick was cutting it down and tailoring it. Here's the original shirt: 
I lay one of my shirts over it, and cut the sleeves off and took some volume out of the sides. I turned the sleeves into bias binding for the armholes, put a couple of darts in and used the rest of the sleeves to make a bow for the front. Tah dah!
The bust darts are a little dodgy, so I might only wear this under sweaters, but I have another shirt that I might convert next weekend - there are definitely some improvements I could make. 

Mark was busy too - he got some little model robots delivered yesterday morning, and he spent the day painting them - I'll try to get some pictures later on!


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