Two Blues

Having refashioned a couple of tops into a top for my Eldest, (blogged here), Middle daughter started to angle for a top as well. I was left with a dark blue body and pale blue sleeves and various scraps of the pale blue, so I got to work. I have not got an overlocker/serger so I have stitched both of these tops on a smallish zigzag to keep a bit of stretch in the fabric. I didn't want to have the same decoration on the top as Eldest's, so I had a look at some of Middle's tops for ideas. One that she wears alot had some flower motifs in a reverse applique style so I thought I would give that a try. I experimented with a couple of scraps and liked the effect, so on with the top...

I forgot to take pictures of the different stages, but here are a couple of the finished item..
After I had finished the flowers I found a tutorial for reverse applique here.

Finally finished flowers

Finally finished all my allocation of flowers. Some were easier than others to sew. The plain orange material was tough, it was almost as if it was repelling the needle! I was not the only flower sew-er to find this - I had to buy a thimble after piercing my thumb with the blunt end of my needle.

Garden Walk fabric flowers

Having had the prototype of the fabric flowers accepted by the Garden Walk committee, the next step was to choose some fabric. Lorraine and I went to Timaru to visit fabric shops. One of the fabric shops was having a closing down sale, where we found a lovely orange gingham. We bought what was left on the roll, which was just about 3 metres.
I then spent some time cutting up the fabric into suitably sized strips (9cm by 37cm) and ended up with 99 strips.

It was decided that we needed more than 99 flowers. Last year 120 tickets were sold, and so I went shopping again. Since we had been shopping last, the original shop had closed. I checked out the other 2 fabric shops and, surprisingly(!) couldn't find any matching gingham. I did find a plain orange cotton that matched the gingham perfectly and bought 3 metres. This was when I got some of the samples of fabric mentioned in a previous post. I cut the new material into same size strips ready to start sewing.

We were initially going to have the two flowers, orange and gingham. Lorraine and I decided that it might look good if we had some flower that had both fabrics in - this meant that I cut about half of the gingham and half the orange strips in half - still with me? and then sewed the gingham to the orange to create two-tone strips.

So now the plan is to have 4 flowers: gingham, orange, orange/gingham and gingham/orange!

The programme for the walk will be coordinated with the flowers. The sewing has been divided between some of the Garden Walk committee members, with each person getting about 34 strips. Certainly do-able even if some people openly admit they are not that proficient! I provided instructions and photos of each stage which I will link to soon.

still got the blues...

I have now finished the refashion of the blue tops for Eldest Daughter.

I used the body of the paler top and the arms of the darker top.
I gathered the head of the sleeves slightly so that I wouldn't have to trim them down. I think you can see that in the pictures below. I used a trimmed section of the darker top to highlight the neck, copying the way one of her Boden tops has been finished.
I wanted to decorate the front some how and had a little play:
Here she is, very pleased to be wearing her new top ( just a few seams to tidy up on the inside). She likes her tops quite long and is constantly pulling down ones that are a bit shorter, so this is deliberately on the long side!

Feeling blue?

Not really!
I found these two tops in a Timaru charity shop. I really want to try sewing with knits, but don't want to screw up good fabric. Having been flicking through various blogs, and looking at the Wardrobe Refashion website, I thought I would try refashioning a couple of t-shirts first. My eldest is in need of more long sleeve tops - she keeps doing this rather inconvenient thing called growing - so I thought she could benefit from my efforts. She has a lot of blue in her wardrobe, most of which still fits, so hopefully this will help. My plan is to make the body from the light blue top, which seems to be a heavy-ish weight t-shirt material. Then add the sleeves from the darker blue top, which is a ribbed knit. There will be embellishment of some sort having been inspired by this blog, but I will try very hard not to include all my ideas in one top - sometimes less is more!

Current state of play - both tops are minus their collars and arms, with the paler top cut into a smaller t-shirt shape. Forgot to take pictures of these stages. I am planning to put it all back together with in the next few days.

Samples...

I was wondering what to write about, as I haven't done much this last week or so, but looking through my previous posts I find I still need to look at fabric and samples. I have finally downloaded pictures of the fabrics, so now I will have a think about what I
might like to make.
These are the samples I have:
This one I probably won't do anything with. I got it as a sample for the primary school flower project, but the shop did not have enough fabric and also it was an Amy Butler fabric, quite expensive and possibly too nice for such a project:

This selection I got from Bolt of Cloth in Christchurch, when I got the fabric for my Mackenzie Frock Stars outfit:

My favourite is the pohutakawa print on linen. It is $139 a metre and I'm not sure that I could justify spending that amount on material. If I could I might make something like this. The plain olive brown linen could be a pair of summer trousers. I have a pair of Boden trousers that I love, but are sadly looking their age and wearing almost through in some places so I could make something to replace them. Alternatively, a Kasia skirt with the spotty fabric as a contrast on the hip area.

The next two both have a turquoise colour in them which I am finding myself drawn to recently:

The first is a knit that I thought I would try using for a t-shirt type top, possibly a Lydia or something a bit more drapey like the Weekender Renaissance top from Hot Patterns, which arrived in the post the other day. The second is a very wafty thin polyester which has a striking diagonal pattern that is actually a lot more colourful than the sample. For this I thought either a loose batwing top with a vest top/tank underneath or something a bit more structured like the JJ blouse. Lots of if's and maybe's. I have mental pictures of them all, then I look at Burdastyle and some of the many sewing blogs out there and get very confused.

I have never sewn with knit fabric before and am quite keen to try it out. Most of the tops that I have in my wardrobe are knits and variations on t-shirt styles. It can't be that hard - can it?? I thought that I would use my winnings from the Frock Stars Competition to buy one or another of the fabrics above - watch this space as they say!

Baking

On one of my youngest's kindy free days we did some baking. Firstly we made her suggestion, Chocolate Cupcakes:

then we made my choice, Ginger Crunch:

Then we made a new recipe from one of my favourite blogs, Smitten Kitchen. I have made many recipes from this blog and enjoyed nearly all of them. These are 'Thick, chewy oatmeal raisin cookies' and they are delicious!