Winter Re-purposing

I did a bit of skirt hitching up the other day having decided that they were all suddenly too long (!?!) and went back to some old bits and pieces I enjoyed making last namely Mug Huggies and Big Broach Buttons. So the off cuts of my winter skirts have now become:

My coffee mugs new jacket (the cord feels really luxurious and is totally right for the winter)

My coat’s new badge

If I didn’t feel like I was hoarding junk and stuff that really, I just want to give to the charity shop (in terms of old clothes etc) I could quite get into this whole re-purposing thing!

Drumroll...

And it turned out to be a glove... of sorts!



Bloomin warm one too! I just have to make the other one now. :-)

This week has been all about the knitting

Its turned cold again here in London and even attempted to snow again earlier in the week, so I am going to persevere with the knitted goods for a while. Probably not the most forward thinking approach to crafting. Really, I should be making spring dresses like artsy crafty babe. Whilst she has definitely inspired me with her forward planning, I wont get to the material shop for another couple of weeks and am enjoying the knit so will keep the dress making on hold for a bit.

So I’ve been working on two things:

One - Baby knitwear. One of my best friends is expecting her first baby (very exciting) so I have made my very first set of baby hat, mittens and booties. I have a while to wait to find out the sex, but when I do I plan to customize them by weaving an appropriate color ribbon through the wool.

And two - this.

I’m not sure what it is yet. I might just leave it as a scarf for a little person, or I might turn it into fingerless glove type things – I have a bit of a thing for them at the moment!

Old Fashioned, but due to make a comeback I’m sure – Muffs!

A day off work means plenty of crafting and blogging. Blissful!

In December I was up in Soho in one of my favouritest (is that even a word?) cloth shops looking for inspiration for 2010 Christmas presents. I wanted something that would feel and look special but that would ultimately be enjoyable and not ridiculously time consuming to make. Now I love the Cloth House shops as they are like sweet shops for adults; pricier than some places totally, but the patterns and range of cloths are of a fantastic quality. I tend to go around prodding and poking materials to get a good idea of what they feel like and everything stopped when I came across the most enormous rolls of a fantastic chocolately red with silvery sheen faux fur. Luscious - I could have happily made a bed out of it!

Anyway with the snow and the cold and the fact that I had the nicest fabric around I figured that a muff would be the perfect way forwards. After a reasonable amount of searching and trialing I found these instructions from burdastyle the most straight forward and accurate.

This is how they turned out...

I did make a few additions/ changes of my own though:

1. Instead of using a lining fabric for the inside I just used a second layer of the fur. What’s the point in using the lovely furry fabric if you hands don’t get the tactile benefit!

2. I ended up hand stitching both ends shut. In the end my sewing machine wasn’t quite heavy duty enough to sew two layers of fur together. You cant tell it was hand stitched which is a bonus.

3. I added a length of ribbon to each end of the muff as I was sewing it up so that if you want to you can hang the muff around your neck.

As you can see the end result is quite pretty and really toasty for your hands. My mum LOVED hers and wore it out in the snow for our boxing day walk! Whilst they look quite classy without, I added a button detail to a couple of the muffs which gives them more of a vintage type feel.

If you are going to attempt one yourself my tops tips would be:

- If you have one of those olive sticks (kind of like cocktail sticks… but for olives) in the back of a kitchen drawer they are PERFECT of making sure you have no fur caught up in the stitching.

- If you are adding a detail like buttons or ribbon firstly make sure you work out where the seem ridge inside is going to be. Too high up/ low down and its annoying for your hands and secondly – make sure you have the fur facing in the right direction! In the prototype I kept for myself the fur is the wrong way up when using the ribbon – doh!