My Creative Space

Today I am finishing off a job I have been meaning to do for 6 months now, making placemats and coasters. These are just two bits of fabric with some thin polyester batting, but once finished they should look quite good, hopefully.

Also, I am still working on the booties from last week, I have a finished one here and it shouldn't take too long to complete the next one. Turns out, while I am quite blase about things I make for myself, when I am making something specifically for someone else I become very very anal. I have re-made these so many times I could probably do it in my sleep. I hope they are appreciated!

Lots more lovely (hopefully less frustrated) creative peeps over here.

Making a muslin

Confession time. I. have. never. made. a. muslin.

There I said it.

I think I have mentioned my need for instant gratification before, and muslins just do not provide that. Why would I essentially want to sew something twice?

But, my latest project uses vintage fabric and a vintage pattern, if I get this one wrong I can't just run out to spotlight to get some more fabric. So, today I have started the muslin. So far I have it all sewn up but I do not have the correct size zip so can not finish it just yet but already I have found a couple of things that will need fixing. The most glaringly obvious is that the waistline is about an inch lower then my natural waistline, so that will need fixing. Plus it is way to big...

So, I may be coming around to this muslin business, if I hadn't have made one then the dress would have been ruined due to the waistline alone (this has already happened to me with a different project). But, I am going to reserve judgement till I see the final finished dress.

My Creative Space...

Wow, I have not been a part of this in a few weeks and I miss it! I have started a jewellery course on Thursdays and it has taken me a while to get organised enough to produce a post. So here we go...

This week I am working on baby booties, some friends from America arrive here next week and she is 6 months pregnant with their first child so I wanted to make something little that is easy for them to take back to the U.S.

I found these crochet shoes from here and I think they are crazy cute. Plus I have not crocheted in a while as I ran out of potential projects, but these have got the ball rolling again.

I started trying to make them with some wool in my stash but it hasn't really worked out (I blame the wool, despite trying three different hook sizes I can't get them the correct size) so today I am going to go get some more. I am thinking red with bright green soles (they are having a girl) as you are never to young for your first pair of red shoes. Now I just need to get myself some red Louboutins and we can match...

Image from here

As normal, loads more creative spaces here!

Good things...

Firstly, look what I won from the lovely Cath over at ChunkyChooky:

I never win anything so this was super exciting, and the book is really helpful. I don't know about you but even though you can find all the instructions you need on the inter-webby thing, I still like to have my reference books too.

Also, I planted some herbs a couple of weeks ago and check out my coriander, it is growing so well I think I will have to thin it out and re-plant it! The basil is poking its little head out too, and while there has not been a peep from the others I have high hopes.

Dreaming of Hawaii

This is the dress I got at the Love Vintage fair, the colours really caught my eye, and the cut was really flattering. It is an 80's dress, but I had hoped that with the right accessories I could make it look a bit more vintage. I was thinking along the lines of meeting Elvis in Hawaii...

I think I kind of made it work, I curled my hair, put on some vintage earrings, a chunky bracelet and some vintage inspired shoes and I think I looked vintage. In fact, one of my male friends said I looked like I was from the 40's, without any provocation, so I must have done something right!

I wore this to high tea at The Victoria Room and felt very sophisticated, if a tad over dressed, I needed to be having cocktails really. But, life is always a bit more fun when you are overdressed don't you think?

Tracing my vintage pattern

My lovely vintage patterns arrived from What-I-Found, and they are perfect. Both uncut, none of the pieces are missing and both have the instructions. So now, I have the fun job of tracing them (as I would like to conserve them as they are). I always find tracing a pain, but with vintage it is even harder! When I am tracing from, say, Burda magazine I just staple the pages together to stop them moving around but I can't really do that this time. I have looked at pattern weights before but they seem like an unnecessary (big) expense. So I am using the wish and hope method, going ahead and wishing and hoping that pieces don't move to much and cause to much distortion.

Wish me luck!