Precious Baby Boy Garland DIY 

Personalised Bunting Garland Tutorial

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Yet again over a year has flown by since my last post!  It's been a busy 12 months, with a complete remodel of our downstairs but the builders have finally left now. My sewing machines were safely stowed away for the whole time and now they're not only unpacked but also newly serviced. I wonder what excuse I can use next year, if this pattern continues!

Anyway apologies over, Let me show you the adorable bunting I stitched for the newest addition to the lovely La Spada Ristorante family. We are so lucky to have this wonderful Italian restaurant just five minutes away, the food is gorgeous and the atmosphere welcoming. The family who own it treat their customers like family and even gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers when I was undergoing surgery and treatment for breast cancer.  I was therefore delighted to take the opportunity to create a gift for the chef's new baby boy.

Our house renovations included a new kitchen and TV lounge, along with a complete refit of my sewing room. I'm only letting you see two sides of that at the moment, as I haven't finished unpacking the cupboards and shelves on the other walls yet!

I'm delighted with all three rooms, their design and quality exceeded my expectations, so Paul and the team from Dragonville Interiors will also be doing our bathrooms next year!  

Sewing Room

(Still waiting for the oak bullnose bottom step!)

TV Lounge

Tutorial 

The first step is to make a template for your fabric letters and bunting flags. Simply use Microsoft Publisher/Word, or similar software, to create a 14 cm equilateral triangle and then resize your chosen font until the letters fit nicely in the middle of the triangle.  Print onto thin card and cut out.

Now take your card letters and turn them over before tracing around them onto the smooth side of a sheet of Bondaweb.  Iron onto the wrong side of the navy polka-dot fabric and cut out.....They will now be facing the right way round!    Cut the required number of pennant flags from the light blue and beige fabrics, not forgetting to cut out the same number of linings.

Peel the backing paper from your letters and place centrally onto the flag fronts and, once you're happy with the positioning, fix with a hot iron.

Using white thread sew around each of the letters at least twice to create a 'sketchy' feel.  Don't worry if you have a couple of wobbles as this all adds to the appeal of raw edge appliqué!

Place each appliquéd flag onto a triangle cut from your lining fabric, right sides together, and stitch the side seams leaving the top open.   Trim seam allowances and clip the bottom point to reduce bulk. 

Turn the flags right side out and use a chopstick or blunt stick to gently push out the points.  Press and then trim off the little 'ears' at the top of the flags creating a nice straight edge.

We now need to enclose the raw edges, the easiest method is to use pre-made purchased binding or even just fold some ribbon or canvas tape in half.

To apply bias-binding, open it out and stitch to the right side of your flags matching up the raw edges at the top.  Carry on sewing whilst placing your flags with an even spacing and leaving at least 10cm of tape at each end for hanging.  Then fold the binding over to the wrong side and catch into position with little hand-stitches, using the machined line as your guide.

This method ensures a neat finish on the right side of the flags with no visible stitching.

....and that's it!

If you can sew a straight line, you can sew adorable personalised bunting!

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Finally, no blog post would be complete without

Lola, Luna, Digby and Orla 

 

Happy Halloween Garland

Upcycled Bedding Bunting!

Halloween seems to be becoming a bigger event each year in the UK but most of the decorations are either imported, plastic or both. I wanted to create some that are kinder to our planet and was therefore delighted to source a 'well-used' duvet cover costing just 50p! 

I forgot to take any photos before I attacked it with my scissors, so 'borrowed' this image of an unopened set from the internet!  The pillowcases were missing from my set but the sugar skulls on those would have been rather too big for bunting anyway! 

I was able to cut 80 pennants/flags from the duvet cover, not such bad value for 50p!  The bells were from a thrifted wire Christmas decoration which, after taking apart with pilers, yielded enough bells for many, many more projects to come - The 70 I used here didn't even seem to make a dent in the stash!

In the bottom of my bead tin were these tiny skulls from a batch I picked up at a car boot sale years ago.  They're not really my thing and I wasn't expecting to find a use for them but they worked out pretty well on this project! 

Halloween wouldn't be Halloween without cats, so here's the gorgeous Luna 'helping' me with my stitching!

The sugar skull duvet cover was originally from George at Asda and they stock lots of lovely seasonal designs. I was also excited to find this used set featuring the most adorably kitsch Christmas Kittens!

Once I've finishing stitching it into some upcycled Christmas items, I'll post some more photos and perhaps even a tutorial or two!  It really is gratifying to take an item which at first appears 'worn out' and then find lots of salvageable areas to cut out and stitch, creating new items for many more years to come.

Applique Zipper Pouches & Bunting

 Personalised Teacher Appreciation Gifts

My daughter finishes school next week before (hopefully) heading off to university in the autumn. Schools in the UK, like many throughout the world, have spent much of the last year in lockdown. Those in the North were particularly affected, with far more closures than down South.  Some elements of the UK press would have their readers believe that teachers have been on an extended holiday over the last 16 months.  Nothing could be further from the truth, my daughter's teachers have been amazing and consistently delivered high quality lessons via Zoom whilst also being physically available in school for vulnerable students. 

It's therefore been a pleasure to stitch gifts marking our appreciation for the fabulous job they've done.  Sewing for women is pretty straightforward but I always struggle to come up with ideas for men.  After quite a bit of faffing (timewasting!) I finally decided to upcycle school badges, previously unpicked from outgrown uniform blazers.

The first 'male' gift was this pencil case.  I stitched the salvaged school badge onto one side and on the other the recipient's initials. I designed the letters in the style of an American Varsity font, which was perfect for both the school theme and masculine tone.

 

The second masculine gift also used upcycled school badges, this time stitched to pennants on each end of a string of personalised bunting.  It's for my daughter's very wonderful Head of Year and, whilst he may not have a use for it at home, he will hopefully find a place to hang it it in his school office.  As before I created the letters in an 'American Varsity' style also adding a red ric-rac trim and yellow tape to coordinate with the colours in the badge.  The flag fronts were cut from an old work shirt of my husband's whilst the backs used old school shirts! 

Once the men's gifts were completed I started on the women's and for these I used a cute pencil case design which I  had previously created as a pattern for a magazine.   

I wanted the gifts to be personalised, so embroidered names on the fronts rather than the original 'Write on' sentiment

 

Whilst I was stitching away I was usually kept company by at least one of our three cats.  Luna also seemed keen to make another appearance here at SewforSoul, so here's some bonus kitty spam!!

 

Thank You Teachers!

Sewing and Cats

 Two of my favourite things!

So I've finally got around to writing a SewforSoul update, having left an embarrassingly long gap since my last post! Lots has been going on here, including the sad death of Lily, our tabby cat, who often used to make a blog appearance.

Mr Larkin and I decided not to get another cat, as our human offspring will soon both be at university and my elderly father-in-law needs ever more care, so we felt it best to stay feline free......

This decision held for at least four months(!) before I weakened and we welcomed Luna and Lola, two British Shorthair girls, into our house and hearts.

When they arrived they were just the cutest bundles of fluff I have ever seen and they literally brought tears to mine and my daughter's eyes!  A year further on and they're still very adorable and fluffy, just much bigger!

Like all cats they are unbelievably nosy and are always keen to be involved in everything and anything anyone is doing.  Unsurprisingly, what they enjoy doing most is inserting themselves into the activity where they're actually needed the least! So this means they're often to be found in my sewing room 'helping' me with both fabric choices and the actual stitching....

Now you would think having originally decided we weren't having any more cats, two would have been more than enough......Not so!

We recently also acquired Digby, a little Snow Savannah boy! 

British Shorthairs and Savannahs are different in everyway - personality, size and build, fur, etc etc but Digby and the girls actually complement each other beautifully!

Views around cat ownership have definitely changed since we last had new cats, with many people now keeping their pets as indoor kitties only. I personally think that lots of cats like to have outside access, so we had our garden cat proofed by Viking Joinery using the Felisafe system. 

This meant a pretty brutal pruning back of over twenty years of growth but it was definitely worth the loss of shrubbery for the peace of mind the cat fencing provides.

Chris, the joiner from Viking, did a brilliant job and worked 10 hour days for a week in order to fit the system. He also made us a bespoke gate (& water butt lid!) for the same price as an inferior off the shelf version. He and his partner don't have cats, instead sharing their home with cute guinea pigs!  He really is a lovely guy and also gives his time and amazing joinery skills to helping at the Cavy Corner Guinea Pig Sanctuary. So when I saw some lovely guinea pig fabric over at Etsy I knew exactly what to make him for a little thank you present....

Festive Guinea Pig Bunting!