Make: Curtain Wall (1)

Our new flat has a large, open-plan living room, where we tend put any guests when they’re staying overnight. There’s plenty of space for our futon and it’s without the scuffling noises from the guinea pig cage that’s in the small back bedroom.

The only problem is that, as it is an open-plan space, it’s a bit like sleeping in the kitchen at the same time… Also, it makes it difficult for Boyf or I to go upstairs to get breakfast, fetch pig greens or iron a shirt in the morning before work.

 

We didn’t want a permanent barrier, as we love the open space. We came up with the idea of putting a curtain pole up, concealed on the back of a beam that goes across the room. We could hang curtains from that pole, which could be drawn across when we have guests staying, but hidden away most of the time.

 

The design I came up with involves several black curtains to form the majority of the “wall”, alongside one red panel to form the “door”. These would need to be around 2.5m tall, to cover the space from floor to ceiling. A friend suggested button-down tab tops, which would make it really easy to move and remove the curtains as required.

 

 

Knowing that I would need to make at least five matching curtains, I made up a quick pattern for what each curtain should look like.

 

Then, I headed up to Walthamstow market one Saturday, to get hold of enough fabric to cover the huge space. I spent less than £30 on 18m of black fabric, 4m of red fabric, 30 buttons and some red trim. A proper bargain for over 5kg of fabric!

 

 

Make: Origami & Calligraphy

One of my very good friends got married on the August bank holiday weekend, and I had the honour of being one of her bridesmaids! This was my first time ever being a bridesmaid, and it was a lot a lot a lot of fun!

 

While I can in no way claim to have a detailed record of all the work that went into the nuptial shindig, I did help with a few of the creative bits – so I thought I’d share some of them here!

 

One of the most fun aspects were the handmade origami bouquets. A group of us went round to the bride’s house for an evening of pizza, wine and paper-folding. While initially we were all pretty sceptical about our origami abilities, we soon warmed up to the task.

 

 

Each bouquet had three purple flowers, three yellow flowers, and three leaf-groups. If I’ve done the maths correctly, that meant a total of 39 petals per bouquet – multiplied by four bouquets makes 156 in total.

 

 

Once they were all made, we arranged them into the 5-petal flowers and stuck them together with PVA and sticky microdots. Then, the purple ones were mounted onto some ribbon-covered dowling and doused in more PVA for good measure.

 

It was a delicate drying process, with methods including wine bottles, frying pans and curtain rails…

 

Meanwhile the yellow ones and leaves were glued into a kind of crown with a hole in the middle, which the dowling would later go through to form the full bouquet.

 

 

 

But the final results were pretty amazing! And definitely long-lasting – mine survived the wedding, the after-party, and the train ride home, to now sit proudly in a vase in the living room, and be the only flowers in my house that don't lament my lack of horticultural ability!

 

 

 

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I used another of my creative skills in exchange for another meal at Hen’s house later – calligraphy. If that’s what you can call a combination of neat handwriting and knowledge of swirly computer-style fonts. Which I am.

 

 

We came to a mutual agreement whereby lasagne and homemade ice cream was exchanged for table names.

 

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The final bit of tinkering was actually a few amendments I made to the beautiful bridesmaids dresses. I added a few stitches into the crossover v-neck, as a precaution against ceilidh-induced bouncing, and also moved the button on the back of the dress, to improve the fit across my narrow shoulders.

 

Et voilà! What a day it was! Much fun was had by all concerned, there were no imminent disasters – and everyone resisted the temptation to shout “I object” at an inappropriate moment. Hurrah!

 

 

Make: Epic Baking Day

We've been at our new flat for a little over two months now, without any attempts at baking anything. Well, with the help of my sis, today became an Epic Baking Day.

#1. Lemon Meringue Ice Cream Cake

The base is a layer of Madeira cake and on top, goes a mixture of crème fraiche and meringue.

"Swirls" of lemon curd are also intermingled in with the topping. Although my "swirls" look deceptively like "blobs"...

This then goes into the freezer for four hours, so we'll return to the dessert later...

 

#2. Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've made this recipe before, and I know it to be a good one - it's a Millie's cookies one from BBC.

They make really tasty, gooey cookies, stuffed full of choc chips.

The recipe suggests it makes 12, but we managed to get 40 out of it!

Delicious with a glass of milk - there are definitely not 40 left now!

#3. Toad in the Hole

A dish for dinner that we all have enjoyed, but none have cooked before.

It was another BBC recipe for this one, although with a few substitutions, including dijon mustard for mustard powder and marjoram and oregano for thyme.

 

After leaving it in the oven to bubble way for a while... Ta-da! Hom nom nom!

 

 

And now, back to #1 after four hours of freezing...

Oooh yeah! 

 

And inside, swirls of lemon and frozen meringue ice cream

 

All three were very tasty (even if I say so myself!) although I would make a few notes for making them again: -

1. Could be made with other flavours, like pineapple curd or maybe berry compote. The base tended to separate from the topping - I wonder if brushing a layer of lemon curd on the cake layer first would help hold it together?

2. If you were to double the quantities... You'd get double the number of cookies...

3. The batter really stuck to the base of the dish. Maybe buttering the base would help prevent this? And certainly a more linear arrangement of sausages would make it easier to cut up!

All in all, a successful day!

 



Amend: Shortening Curtains

We got some cheap IKEA curtains last week, to hang at the window on the stairs in our flat. The curtains only come in one length, 300cm, which was dragging on the floor - dangerous on a flight of stairs.

This is not necessarily the best guide on how to shorten curtains properly... Ours were cheap and I wanted to get them done in one evening.

The fabric had a clear line detail in the weave, so I was hoping to be able to measure one side, then follow one of those lines across in a straight line to the other side.

Ideally you would measure down from the top of the curtain, to get them the same length. But I didn't have enough space to do that. Instead, I measured up from the bottom by 80cm on one side, and followed the weave across with pins. Unfortunately, what was 80cm on one side, was 82cm on the other. Maybe it was optimistic that cheap IKEA curtains would be sewn squarely along the fabric...

I abandoned this approach, and instead, folded the curtain in half along its length (top left to top right) and then repeated into quarters. I then measured 80cm up each side, pinned a straightish line using a slat from a Venetian blind, and hacked off the bottom of the curtain.

A few pins to hold it in place for a double-fold hem, with the raw edges hidden inside, then I whisked it through the sewing machine. Then they needed a few hand-sewn sections at the ends, to seal the ends at each side.

Here's a trick I use when tying off thread ends. As well as back-stitching the seam, I like to knot the long ends to tie them off tightly. The problem can be, that if you snip the thread ends off, that knot can come undone. My solution is, after tying the knot, to then sew a long stitch, with the thread inside the hem, emerging about 1cm from the original knot, and trim it off there.

Then a quick blast under the iron, hop up the ladder et voilà!

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!