Secret Santa

As may be gathered from previous posts, I'm a fan of crafty things and follow a few blogs etc from crafty people. I'm in constant awe of the skills of people.

One of the people I follow is Corinne Lapierre, who makes lovely designs in felt.  This year she organised a Secret Santa on her Facebook page, the rules being that the item must cost around £2, be small enough to post, and be hand made.

I was full of ideas, and then the names were drawn, I got Corinne! What do you send to someone who designs in felt?

Well, not felt, was what I decided, and I also decided to hand sew, and eventually picked something from Debbie Shore's Half Yard Heaven book. A cover for handy wipes.

First, get your wipes.

Cut your material to size, wrap the material round the wipes, and allow an extra inch

Edge the shorter sides with bias tape.  The instructions are to add a ribbon, but I decided to add a couple of buttons, and wrap ribbon round them

Fold the bound ends to meet in the middle, and sew across the the short ends.

As she's now received it, here's a picture of the finished item, together with a card.

More little hand sewn things - first attempt

Pretty little hearts.

I posted this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, but never did anything else with the material, but today I've cut some more out, ready to take with me next week.

I've often struggled to cut out a heart shape, until the glaringly obvious struck me; its a couple of circles and a triangle.

Armed with that knowledge, I made a heart template.  Get a piece of card, and fold it, on the fold, get something circular to draw round (lid or something similar) and the draw a straight line from the circle, down to the fold.  Cut it out, and voila! A heart!

Use this as a template for material, cut out 2 identical pieces. Stitch them right sides together, leaving a small gap for stuffing. Stuff and then close up the gap. 

Make more in different sizes, join the top of one to the bottom of another. Use buttons, ribbons and other embellishments to hide any joins. Attach a ribbon to the top.

The smaller one of these has some dried lavender as well as toy stuffing.

New Sewing Machine

Well, I treated myself.
By a complicated series of coincidences I eventually bought a new (to me) sewing machine.Now this was way back in July, and I had a little play with it, then life got in the way, and I left it for a while.

Until last weekend, when I dragged it out again to start working on my patchwork project.

Oh wow!  Its so much fun! This photo 'borrowed' from the company website, mine hasn't got the pretty aqua bits on it.

It's got a quilting foot and can do automatic needle threading and so much stuff, including some embroidery stitches.

I need a bit of practice with the zipper foot though, there's a definite knack to it.

Patchwork on the go

So, there I was last week, in a hotel in Glasgow, surrounded by Spanish teenagers in town for the football.  And what was I doing?
Well I'd taken my trusty little project book with me, and hesitant about taking the hexagons, had taken some material cut into squares.

So sat there, hand sewing a couple of squares together.  Due to the size of the squares, its a much faster way to build up a square than the hexagons.  These are 4 1/2 " squares so the finished piece of 9 squares will be roughly 12" when done.
I definitely got some odd looks!

A new project for the winter nights

Many, many years ago, I made a patchwork quilt.  I painstakingly cut out the hexagons, and made them up. It took forever, but since buying my lovely new sewing machine, I discovered how to use the quilting attachment, so I've decided to have another go.

The first thing I made was a quilted 'book' a bit like the sort of thing you have for babies.  I saw the idea somewhere, and have sort of adapted it. I couldn't work out how to have light sewing on the light bits and dark sewing on the dark bits, so gave up and just hoped the stitching was straight.

Its a bit wonky in places, but not bad for a first attempt.


But, for a purist like me, that's sort of cheating.  So I'm going to make a 'sampler' quilt.  Various different patterns, but if I stick to making 8", 12" and 16" squares, it should be OK.
Why the different sizes? Well some patterns lend themselves to small sizes, hexagons for one. Others, like Drunkards path tend to need to be larger to get the effect.

So. First things first.  Cut out the little hexagons out of paper. This took hours! The perfectionist in me cut out 2" strips of paper and then used a protractor (gosh! that took me back to school)  to get perfect 60 degree angles.  This is quite important, get them ever so slightly out, as my first ones where, and they'll never join together properly.
Now when I say little, this is the size, just a bit bigger than a 50p piece. Which makes it the ideal size for taking away with me.

 Having cut out the little pieces of paper, they were then used as a template to create the correct shape. Without the paper, it would be impossible to do hexagons.

Well actually, that's not true. I've since discovered that there is an American company making templates that make it simple to make hexagons. Fake hexagons
Well actually, technically, they're not hexagons, they're trapezoids, but it does mean you can use a sewing machine, as there aren't any awkward corners that need to be hand stitched.
They're also a fair amount of money if you're not a serious needleworker, so for now I'll stick to my pencil, ruler, protractor and scissors!

 A bit of history
Hexagons are part of a patchwork style known as 'English Paper Piercing' (well at least in the UK its called that) Other designs using this style are baby blocks and stars. Its mainly used for hand sewing and can be used on very small pieces of material, which would not normally be suitable for a sewing machine. This makes it ideal for using up odd scraps.

Frugality, luck or just common sense?

I don't normally do 'frugal' posts, leave them to the excellent Robyn at Essexhebridean; mainly because its just 'what I do' on a daily basis so I don't really think about it, but also because I don't have large purchases to make that I can save money on, and rarely buy online so don't get cashback. The biggest expenditure would be on the car and hotels, but the company I work for deals with that sort of thing.

But last Friday I wandered to the market; well I say market, but its generally the usual tat that is everywhere. But there is a fruit and veg stall, a butchers van and a fish van. I don't buy from the butchers van, as he sells in huge quantities, and I've got a good local butcher. But the veg stall is bargainous.
Here's what I picked up, all for the grand sum of £5!

There's a bag of assorted salad stuff, iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, spring onions, cress and a couple of radishes.  2 huge punnets of strawberries, and some clementines and lemons.  There's also a bag of spuds.

I'm sure I've mentioned before, that I'm lucky to have a local butcher.  He is, apparently, one of the few butchers left in the North West still doing their own butcher.  At least that's what the sign said. Yesterday when I went in, it was quiet, so I asked him about it, and what do other butchers do.  They buy the meat ready cut up.  Not necessarily into chops or steaks, but will buy the 'chunk' of the animal that sells best.  Even Morrison's much vaunted 'butchers shop', although they will cut to order, so if you want steaks for example, they will cut from a sirloin that they have bought in. They won't have previously cut the sirloin themselves.

What do you know!  Its also how he can keep costs down, because he can and does sell the cheaper cuts, so things like neck of lamb, shin of beef etc.  He also makes his own sausages and burgers, which aren't full of cereal, so don't disappear to nothing when you cook them.

The other advantage of course, over supermarkets, is that I can get just exactly the cut I want, and the amount I want. No waste, so again, while not frugal, not wasteful.

This week I bought a chicken which at just under £5 was more expensive than I'd pay in the supermarket, for the same weight, but actually is better value, because its not full of water and salt, and is so much more tasty.  Also it does way more than one meal (even if we do have more than the measly amount that is used on some blogs) we've had an excellent roast dinner, I've made  a chicken pasta salad thingy for tomorrows lunch, J will have some for his tea a couple of nights and he's under instructions that anything remaining on Tuesday is to go into the freezer.  The carcass has already been frozen ready for soup season.

And then yesterday I took a trip to Ikea. I took my sister, as she needed something, and was looking for material for cushions and possibly to make blinds.  The material I liked was £7 a metre. Then across the room I spotted something I liked; turns out it was a duvet cover. The last one they had left, so only a fiver!  Roughly 4 metres of material maybe?  Who knows? But for that money I don't care.

I like bargains.

Some lovely places and a fundamental feminist issue

In my job I get to go to some lovely places, sit on trains and watch the countryside whizz by.

Thats what I did this week.

First week back after a couple of months off, so no early morning trains for me.  Nope. This was far more leisurely (at least to start with).  Walked to local station, not that easy with suitcase, laptop bag and lunch; up and over to the platform and onto the Runcorn train.  Off at Runcorn and wait for the fast London train.  Its also amazing how much cheaper it is to travel in the middle of the day.

Then the fun starts; from Euston, to Euston Square (no lifts) then Edgeware Road and finally High Street Kensington.  Believe me I was shattered!

But the point of this is a bit more fundamental.  Colleague was moaning about having to carry her 1 bag around with her, and how nobody bothered to help her.  Maybe its an age thing (she's in her twenties) but I wouldn't dream of asking for help.  Basically she was talking about 'fluttering her eyelashes' at any passing male in the hope that he helped her.  To me, that is so fundamentally wrong.  I started work in 1975, following on from the heady 60's, and women were still fighting to get out of the kitchen.


Best of luck to her, but its not for me.


P.S I did have some photo's of stations, but my phone was stolen along with my bag on the return journey.