Make: Africa Painting

Years ago, I got a paint-by-numbers from Lidl. I started it way-back-when, but must have put it away before it was finished. I found it when we moved house last month and decided I should finish it off.

The pack came with 12 coloured paints, two brushes and three printed base pieces. I've never been great at painting, but paint-by-numbers couldn't be too difficult, right? That said, this one was slightly more complicated, as it involved combinations of colours, e.g. 8 + 9 + 10.

 

 

I ended up needing to mix a LOT of different orangey-red shades, which did get a bit confusing... It was quite challenging getting the shadows just right, despite the numbered areas.

 

But I'm pretty pleased with the final result!

 

Perhaps Toto could almost hear the drums echoing across the Serengeti?

Tetris Blanket is famous!

In 2014, I spent nine months making my Tetris Blanket - a richly rewarded labour of love.

Well now, the Tetris blanket has its own film!!

...

Okay, so that might be a bit of an overstatement. But it does feature on a real-life purchaseable DVD!

Back in January, a group of us went to see a "maths- and science-based stand-up comedy show" at the Bloomsbury Theatre: a trio called Festival of the Spoken Nerd presenting Full Frontal Nerdity.

At the interval, they asked people to Tweet the "nerdiest thing you've done in London" - so I sent them a picture of the Tetris Blanket.

After the interval, they showed some of the Tweets... including my blanket! Which got a very satisfying "ooooooooh" from the whole theatre of over 500 people :) Such a proud moment!

While I receive no royalties for my "ooooooooh", if you like nerdy science then I recommend the DVD - you can get a copy for, like, £5 from their shop.

Amend: Prisoner Jumpsuit

My friend recently broke out of prison and came round to my place in need of some sewing help, because her bright orange jumpsuit was far too conspicuous... because it just wasn't tailored properly. There was enough space in the suit for two people. And probably a small country as well.

I cut several inches off of each side - all the way from the cuff to underarm, then down to the ankle. There was very little time to do a spotlessly perfect job, so rather than carefully measuring the amount for each side... I just estimated and went for it. I tacked the sides, then machined them with straight stitch, chopped the excess fabric, and oversewed with a zigzag stitch.

I also shortened the arms and legs significantly. The thing about being on the run, if you're being chased, well is you don't want to trip on your prisoner jumpsuit. So I decided it would be good to put elastic in the bottom of the ankle hem. I created a channel that was large enough to hold the elastic, leaving a gap of about an inch through which to insert the elastic. I fed the elastic round the inside of the channel using a safety pin to guide it through. Then, after stitching the ends of the elastic together to make a loop, I used the thread-ends from the machine stitching to hand-sew the gap closed.

 

Finally, I decided to make a belt, to make the suit an even better fit. Using the offcuts, I sewed a corresponding seam along the opposite side to the existing one, to form a channel. I then trimmed the edges back as close as possible and turned it inside out. Then I sewed each edge again - to form a French seam. Once turned the right way out again, I fed some more elastic through the middle.

 

I then sent my friend on her way, to continue her prison break. Somewhere, she picked up a more conspicuous helmet, which made blending in slightly more challenging... but at least the jumpsuit wasn't the size of a house!

 

 

Make: Army Armbands

In a few week's time, I will have the honour of being a bridesmaid for the very first time! Eek! We had the Hen-Do recently, which I had the pleasure of organising. It was never going to be your bog-standard hen-do - for my friend, Helen, is no bog-standard hen! Throw away any conventional ideas and think 10 girls throwing themselves round an army assault course in the woods... Whoop!

The girls came from different walks of Helen's past, so I thought it would be useful to have name-tags of some kind, so would know whose names to shout out in encouragement and, you know, who to apologise to for standing on their heads or shoving bums up and over 8ft walls...

 

I used an old pair of camo shorts and cut them up to make the main part of the name band.

For the ties, I used this netting/webbed fabric, because it didn't need hemming and would tie comfortably around the upper arm.

I only had one evening to make 11 armbands, so it was not the neatest job in the world - quantity over quality! This obviously meant spreading my stuff everywhere! Over the whole floor! Across three rooms!

I machine stitched down the short edge of each piece, one after another like a washing line, with a piece of black netting attached to either side.

Then, because I can't carry on without just a little bit of quality, I top-stitched each join too. This also made it the join a lot stronger.

 

And of course, it's not just one... But many!

The idea was that everyone could write their name on the centre piece of fabric with a Sharpie marker. I also added some regimental stripes to the bride's band and also the bridesmaids'...

And they worked very well on the day - by the end of the assault course, we all knew who we'd been heaving round the woods!

Make: Tessellating Cat Blanket

I found out just after Christmas that a friend of mine was expecting her first baby. This friend is a full-on cat lover, so when I found a cute cat jumper pattern on Ravelry, I decided to have a go at it myself, converted into a baby blanket.

I used Excel, set up with a column width of three, to design my pattern, reproduced here using an iPad app for pattern designing. The cats go across in rows and also up and down in columns.

I bought some baby-friendly yarn from Deramores, Stylecraft Special Baby DK. Not knowing if it would be a boy or a girl, I thought that denim blue would be a hardy colour for hiding grubby marks and that cream would complement it in a nice contrast. I used approx. size 4 circular needles, to give me a long enough needle-length on which to spread out all the stitches.

I cast on 110 stitches in the denim and knit a border using a free stitch from Deramores "Something for the Weekend" series called Ringlet Stitch. It forms a sort of bubble-effect border.

Then I started on knitting the pattern - and WOW did it need some hefty concentration. I was using a Fair Isle colour-change style, where the colours are carried or "stranded" behind the work as you knit. Where there is a gap of more than four stitches, you catch the yarn strand between stitches, to prevent long loops of yarn that could get snagged accidentally. This makes for a pleasing patchwork pattern n the reverse of the blanket.

However the problem with these loops, even small ones, is that they could catch on very small baby fingers and toes. To avoid this, I thought I'd mount a backing piece of material to the reverse. As knitting is stretchy, I needed the backing fabric to also be stretchy, so I chose jersey cotton, like t-shirts a remade of. In fact, I cut up and used a t-shirt for this!

This would be the first time I've used a sewing machine on a piece of knitting... Bring it on!

Sewing stretchy fabrics is a nightmare. To assist a bit, I used a stretch sewing machine needle, which has a "medium ballpoint tip" (a small nobbly bit by the eye of the needle) and a special eye. These help to guide the needle between the fibres of the fabric weave, rather than breaking the threads

Thread is not usually stretchy, so if you use a standard straight machine stitch, the thread can easily snap when you stretch the garment. My machine comes with a special "stretch stitch" to help with this. The stitch uses three rows of parallel stitching with small gaps between each. However, because hey are so close together, the final result is that it looks like a normal straight stitch.

 

I had to sew two pieces of the jersey together to make a large enough piece for the backing. I did this using a top-stitched seam, like you get on the side of a pair of jeans.

Then came attaching the jersey to the knitting. I started with the long side seams. To keep the raw edges hidden, I decided to sew down each long side, with the raw edges contained on the inside. 

To strengthen the seam, I sewed a double row of stitches up each edge. This helps keep it very secure, which I felt was necessary given that the knitted side would potentially have small holes in it, that could weaken the join.

 

One great thing about jersey cotton is that it doesn't fray. This means there's no need to hem the raw edges, just hide them.

I hand-sewed the short edges to seal the backing to the knitted front piece. Then I used a technique called quilting to machine sew straight lines at regular intervals down the blanket. This helps to keep the two pieces aligned properly with each other, and prevents it ballooning out. This would be particularly noticeable when the blanket was washed, which could be expected to happen often with a baby blanket.

And here it is! The final pièce de résistance! Tessellating cats!

Amend: Party Flats

A few years ago, I bought some foldable flat shoes from Camden Lock Market for £10. They are ideal for slipping into a handbag when going out clubbing for an evening, to provide some relief from the inevitable sky-high heel pain.

They only came in Small (2-3), Medium (4-5) and Large (6-7), so if you're an even-numbered shoe size (I'm a 6) then they end up a little bit too large - which has been exacerbated over time. It has taken me long enough to actually do this, but I finally got round to attaching some elastic to the sides while sitting on a train to a friend's hen-do.

Just a few stitches hand-sewn on either side seemed to do the job. I also oversewed the ends of the elastic, to help prevent fraying.

And here they are, ready to rock and roll!