Believe it or not, this teddy bear is knit!
All you need to make him is 2 1/2 ounces of fingering weight wool, a pair of 3mm knitting needles (US size 2), and some stuffing.
Searching through Trove the other day, I found this really cute sewing pattern for daisy petal collar and cuffs.
I’ve never seen a collar treatment like this in any modern drafting books. It could be used as is, or you can play with the shapes of the petals for a number of different effects. I think it would be particularly pretty made with an ombre fabric so the petals are darker near the neckline and lighter at the tips. You could even use a liquid fabric paint to colour them.
Check out the pattern from the Brisbane Courier, January 16th 1932.
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Please let me know if there are any vintage techniques you’d like me to include. I have more plushwork templates to share coming up, plus some exciting vintage sewing leaflets so stay tuned!
I found this sweet little embroidery motif of a peasant lady while searching Trove a while ago.
She’s perfect for felt appliquĂ© or embroidery but the simplicity of the design would also work really well for scrapbooking if you have a cutter that will allow you to enter your own designs.
My latest finished project for 2016 is also a first for me! I covered a lampshade 🙂
First it looked like this.
Yech. You can’t tell from this photo how truly disgusting and nasty it was. It reminded me of this scene from Black Books:
Now it looks like this, (it’s destined for my bed side table but I need to paint the table first).
I bought this thrifted green lamp at one of the many local op shops quite a while ago and it had a tall olive green cylindrical lampshade on it. The shade was a lovely shape, but it didn’t have any supports holding the top and bottom rings together and I didn’t know how to recover it. So I bought the one shown above.
Then I tested a whole load of colour options with my Singer 401. The orange tape is seam tape, while the others are bias binding. I keep my samples in a notebook for future reference.
As you can see, I chose to use the pale mint bias binding as I thought it went best with my other nick-nacks. The thread is Wonderfil Silco 40 tex (which I believe is 35wt?) cotton in colour SCM-08. It has a really lovely satin finish that gives you a bit of shine but not as much as rayon would.
It’s far from perfect but I’m happy enough with it and I did learn a lot should I ever want to make another one.
Things I learnt while recovering a manky old lampshade:
- When purchasing remnants from Spotlight, check for tea stains :-/
- There is a reason this particular shade was covered in fabric cut on the bias. The seams simply would not lay straight on the upright spokes. They all shifted to one side no matter what I did to control them. Bias cut fabric means you can cut the whole thing in one piece and it will fit even if you have to stretch it a bit. And you can hide the one wonky seam where you won’t see it. Unless you put it in front of a mirror.
- Allowing 2.5cm/1″ for the hemmed edges was nowhere near enough. I could have done with at least another 1cm/half inch.
- Check that the opening in the shade that goes over the bulb holder is the right size. Thank goodness for that sticky velcro stuff used for hanging pictures.
Now I start TAFE on Tuesday and I need a little bag to keep my tea mug safe in my backpack. I’d better get stitching!
Back in December I mentioned that I was planning on stitching out every possible stitch that can be made on the Singer 401.
(My Singer 401G hard at work sewing some Doctor Who bunting).
I put my machine to work, and stitched all of them. And I mean ALL OF THEM. And I made this:
If you’ve ever had a burning desire to know exactly what you get when you combine all the settings with all the fashion discs (cams), now you can. Just click here to download the Singer 401 Stitch Book (pdf file). I’ve also included lots of tips on getting your stitch to look beautiful, and some references for further reading and investigation.
I hope all the Singer 401 owners out there will find this useful. I googled my fingers raw trying to find a reference when I first bought my 401 and when there wasn’t one, I thought I’d upload mine in case anyone else was looking for the same information.
I almost forgot to add that I made a pinterest board! My Pinterest board with ideas for decorative stitches. It has some great ideas that I never would have thought of in a million stitches.