Time flies...

Well, here I am, shuffling shamefully back to the blogging lark far too many weeks later! Still, I've not been idle in the meantime, far from it, and I'm planning to share things I've been doing while I was gone here by degrees.

Things like this pretty yoga mat bag that has been on my list of things to make for ever such a long time. Not only because my old one is looking a bit worse for wear after 4 years or so, but because I really like this pattern, with it's drawstring top and side pocket. My yoga teacher comes to our offices after work, so the pocket's perfect for keeping things like my pass and phone safe and with me during class and the strap is satisfyingly sturdy. 

This is not the best photo in the world, for which I apologise, it's not so easy to photograph such things, but propping it up is pretty much the only way to show off the lovely fabric! It is from Amy Butler's 'Love' collection, and the colours are closest to reality in the first photo. Because it rarely goes outside (it lives behind my desk), the cream colour should stay cream for a fair long while, hopefully!

 I think I've mentioned this book before now, which is where the pattern came from. It was pretty easy to follow, the most challenging thing was the drawstring but that was only because my stitched channel went a bit narrow somewhere along the line due to the line wandering off a bit, it still worked though! The only thing I would say about pockets is that you should definitely remember to stitch them on before you stitch the bag up - I had to do a considerable bit of unpicking because I omitted that detail! Still, it was worth it, my yoga mat is very happy in its new bag. Beautiful and useful, the perfect little sewing project. :)

Month in Numbers: May

Re-joining Julie's Month in Numbers bandwagon to record a real firecracker of a month!

4: bridesmaids at my sister's wedding on May 1st. Such a lovely day with lots of handmade touches, from the invitations to the church flowers to the cake.

3: days in Paris, in which 2 girls discovered that Mojitos appear to be the most popular drink in the city. To the extent where the bartender at a birthday party we attended (at which roughly 90% of the attendees had ordered the same) plaintively informed us "We do have other drinks you know..." Never ones to pass up a trend, the best ones we found were in a tiny bar on the Butte de Montmartre where the hand on the rum was liberal to say the least!

€27.20: The amount of cold hard cash we parted with in exchange for 2 ice creams and 2 lemonades on the Champs Elysees! Ah well, it was a hot day and almost worth it. :-o

2: 30th birthday parties, the last of which featured 6 birthday cakes, 2 barbecues and far too many bottles of wine to count!

2: nights at the theatre: The Tempest at the Little Angel and the wonderful Filter's Silence with the RSC at the Hampstead.

18-22: The score at our first ever rugby match my friend and I attended at Twickenham on bank holiday Saturday, which we found ourselves at entirely by chance! (Leicester Tigers v Saracens)

7: miles of the London Capital Ring walk from Wimbledon Park to Richmond completed on bank holiday Sunday. Featuring 9 intrepid walkers, of whom 4 managed to fit inside a hollow tree and it took 5 to join hands to make a ring around one of the great plane trees of London that we encountered along the way! And 3 jugs of Pimms and lemonade to refresh us afterwards. :o)

19: The number of songs in Belle and Sebastian's Roundhouse set on May 30th. A brilliant end to the month!

Bring on June!

A stitch in time

Well, I have been a bad blogger for the past few weeks! But in them there has been a family wedding and a holiday, so happy times to inspire new creative things. Soon I'll show you some of the crafty touches from the wedding that occupied so much of my creative energy in the run up to it!

While I was gone, new magazine Mollie Makes hit the shelves in the UK, and I wasted no time in getting my hands on a copy. Subtitled 'living and loving handmade', it's beautifully designed and full of projects and beautiful images to inspire every kind of crafty endeavour. Attached to the front was a little felt kit, which, after I had got it out and cut it up and found matching embroidery threads, looked something like this

The idea was to make a smartphone cover, but having so recently knocked up a cover for my new iPhone on my sewing machine, I decided to adapt the alternative suggestion of a coin purse to be big enough to hold the cosmetics I carry in my handbag for work since I'm always losing my lipbalm  and mini mascara in the detritus of the rest of it. I started by cutting the shapes (which I'd already done by the time I thought to take the above photo) and then stitched the colours to the grey using the most basic of running stitches.  Since mine was wider than the helpful template in the mag, I drew round a candle for my circle and adapted everything else to fit.

Then I realised i hadn't actually done blanket stitch since I was about 12 and in the Guides! So out came my handy book of sewing stitches to remind me how it was done.

I made some adaptations to the pattern. I folded one piece of grey felt at the top and bottom rather than starting with two bits, and given that I wanted it to close somehow, I made a scalloped flap at the top, sewed on the cute button that came with the kit and fastened it really simply with a loop of thread.

Two peaceful evenings of sewing later, and it was done. I'll say straight off that the stitches aren't the most straight and even, but hey, I relearned blanket stitch and made something useful I really like! The colour combination is fab, it reminds me of Cosmo Cricket's Re:cycle line.

I'll be watching Miss Mollie with interest!

Bank holiday project: homemade iPhone case

Hello! What a lovely bank holiday weekend this has been. Well, it had this theatre in it, which makes any weekend a highlight.

The RSC's new theatre (The RST) is truly brilliant, and in Macbeth, it has a production that really shows off what it can do. I have been taking a photo from this spot every time I've been to Stratford since the building work began, and it is wonderful to finally see the vision realised. I sat on the terrace in the sunshine between plays and drank a private little birthday toast to the house playwright (The town celebrates officially next weekend, but it is in fact usually celebrated on St George's Day - Easter got in the way this year!)

So the purpose of this post was really to show you what I have been making today. April has bought this little guy into my life:

And not before time - a phone that was made this century is a definite step up from my last one! I've been carrying it around in an old sock since I got it,  so today I resolved to make it something more fitting. I have been perusing Etsy for suitable ideas, so today I decided to see if I could recreate one for myself.

I started by measuring the iphone (and googling for other case dimensions), and so began with with two pretty fabrics and some batting measuring 4.5 x 12 inches.

And this is what I ended up with! It might not look much, and is indeed extremely simple - just batting stitched between two bits cut off fat quarters folded up and turned inside out - but it is the first thing I have ever made on my sewing machine without a pattern. That's huge. I am seriously the most inexpert sewer you ever saw, but apparently I've done enough to see a picture and have some idea how to make it up as I go along. It's not perfect, and I wish I'd thought to attach a pocket for earphones, but I love the fabric, it's much better than an old sock, and I can easily replace it when I get bored. It's also made out of things I already had. Win!

Next Sunday is my sister's wedding (yay!), so I've also been making her a card - but more of that (and hopefully some pretty photos too) after the day! Until then, happy short bank holiday week, enjoy what's left of it, especially if you're on holiday for the duration! x

Happy weekend

How could I not love a weekend that started with a Waterloo sunset like this?

After a roundtrip to Wigan yesterday for a final bridesmaid dress fitting (yes, it fits!), today I was not good for anything more strenuous than a spot of scrapbooking with some of the pretty new things I bought from Ally Pally last weekend. Want to see?

This primary-coloured page is about a lovely night out at the London Word Festival (which is on right now, definitely worth checking out if you're London-based). Those suspended luggage tags you can see is a work entitled 'the tree of lost things', in which everyone is invited to write onto a tag a thing they have lost. These range from the pragmatic ("my gloves on the 7:35 from Brighton") to the prosaic ("my heart to a starship trooper") and reading them is an absolute joy.

The page is based on this one of Shimelle's from the March bit of the 4x6 photo love project, but mine is simpler with two landscape photos rather than three portrait and uses misting to replace further embellishment.

It features Studio Calico, Sassafras, October Afternoon's Thrift Shop and Mr Huey's hotdog mist. Is it just me, or does mist have a tendency to go absolutely everywhere? It got me, my oilskin crafting cloth and even the carpet (oops!) in the process, but I do like the effect. And I can recommend 'Vanish' as being rather good at getting mist out of carpets.

This page also involves misting, but as a method of distressing, along with some ink splatters, so it was even messier! More Thrift Shop and more Sassafras on this one, which is about the bookshop Shakespeare and Co, which is as much a refuge and a library as a shop and has a writers room, typewriter and piano amongst it's treasures. In a back room, I found a clock with a cracked face, which well suits the sense that time has stopped here.

In other news, my basil is growing! Here are the first little shoots, watched over by Gabriel the Toad.

I am attempting to grow herbs and salad on window sills. My chives aren't growing at all which is surprising considering it is meant to be the easiest of the lot, but no, it's the rocket that's winning so far.

Happy new week!

Month in Numbers: March

Hello! Last month I began sharing my month in numbers, as inspired by the lovely Julie, who has also provided the rather smart image above. March then proceeded to come and go before I knew it! It had many quantifiable things in it though, so rather than hang my head in shame, I've decided to sneak in belatedly instead. So there's a start to March's list:

10: number of days late this post is!

2: weekends away: to Manchester (more of that anon!) and to Leigh-on-Sea, featuring friends and variable weather. (Packed optimistically for Spring, only for Winter to decide it wasn't quite done yet.)

46: the number of photos taken that weekend in Manchester, which happened to be my sister's hen party! It involved feather boas, glitter and the obligatory ball and chain, and we had an excellent (and suitably random) night out at the Birdcage. The dancers with fireworks strapped to their hips were a bit of a highlight.

0: The amount my visit to the Ideal Home Show cost. A free ticket came with February's mag and I surprised myself with my own restraint! So many lovely things in the room sets too. Well, I can dream...

3: Incidents of red shoes! Went to see Kneehigh's utterly glorious version of it at BAC, couldn't resist wearing mine for the occasion, and then noticed the 1948 Powell and Pressburger film was on the iplayer the following weekend - result! One of the greatest stories ever told, and so many ways to tell it.

1: farewell gig for one of the most distinctive venues in London. Bye bye Luminaire, you'll be missed.

19: days early in submitting my census. Me being that early for anything is definitely a turn-up for the books. I completed it online and that made it far less of a faff than writing in the answers and deciphering the form would have been. Describing my job in 44 characters or less proved an interesting challenge, twitter-esque compression skills put to good use there!

5: Easter cakes made with chocolate, syrup, cornflakes and butter and topped with 3 little eggs each. Yum.

2: cherry blossom trees outside Southwark Cathedral on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon providing cheering evidence that Spring is truly on it's way.

Happy new week!

PS: With luck I'll have worked out how to get that nice image to appear in my sidebar by the time we get to next month!

Some actual scrapping!

So the sun finally reappeared in London this weekend, and there was much rejoicing. It's been grey and miserable for so long, the little warmth was a welcome surprise, spring feels like it's a long tome coming this year. So at some point I have a lovely sunset on the river and some pretty cherry blossom to scrap from yesterday afternoon, but since I'm spectacularly behind with photo printing, that will have to wait. I've got a heap of CHA 2011 scrappy goodness on its way from Sarah's Cards, so I thought it was time to put a dent in some of the current stash and my teetering pile of unscrapped photos! Hence this layout with photos from the Latitude festival last summer and October Afternoon's campfire line.

I love the pictorial paper of a campsite with little pockets of trees, it was perfect for photos of the Latitude site, which is on an estate and has random bits of woodland and a manmade lake running through it. They spray paint the sheep pretty colours, and it was so hot on the Sunday that loads of them were sheltering in the tiny amount of shade behind the Latitude sign. It isn't really that shape, it's a straight line, and the photos don't quite line up, but I like the 3D effect of putting the photos together so it rendered my haphazard photo taking a happy accident. I wrote extra notes of festival highlights on the background, which blend in nicely with the paper itself. Pretty simple, but I like.

In other news, today I made some Easter cornflake cakes using a fab recipe out of Ideal Home. It involves dark chocolate, golden syrup and butter, yum. I usually just melt chocolate, but will be trying this again for sure. Talking of Ideal Home, I went to the show last weekend and fell head over heels for this room.

One day, when I have a house where I can actually paint the walls, some of them are going to be orange like this! Sigh. Design heaven.