Whooosh and they are off

I've been putting it off, hoping it will go away and generally avoiding the issue but it just has to be done - I really must just stop Dressing A Girl Around the World!


I started this project just over a month ago and I honestly believe I could actually go on and on. Upcycling odds and ends of fabric and bigger dresses can be awkward and frustrating but, turns out, overcoming the various challenges is all part of the fun. 


Two packages have now been sent off to Louise Horler from Sew Scrumptious, the UK International Partner for the charity and I'm in the process of packaging up my final parcel. Incredibly, Louise has already collected over 2000 dresses from sewers in the UK and on 14th August the latest consignment will be off to Uganda. How exciting is that?

As you can see, I have done all I can to use up every scrap of fabric so that each dress has a tiny doll wearing a matching dress, some kind of hairband and an extra pocket or a little bag to keep the doll in.

       
As is always the way with upcycling sewing projects, 
there's always a scrap of fabric or a matching 
button which can be added.

Then there are the challenges of adapting clothes for little girls. Sometimes I have added an extra layer of fabric so that the dresses are not see-through in the brightest sunshine. Occasionally I have added a panel across the top because, without the recipient to hand, I have wanted to be sure to preserve their modesty.


One thing I know for certain, I will return to making dresses for this amazing charity and several others I have found out there before long. 


It's been a wonderful feel-good creative challenge - try it!

Seriously addictive

My Summer sew project is turning out to be such fun and all in a good cause. Seven dresses have now been despatched to Louise from Dress A Girl Around the World. I keep thinking I'm nearing the end of my stash of appropriate fabric but then I see some in a charity shop which would work...I have even cut up a few of the clothes in my wardrobe. Well, it's all in a good cause!

I have never claimed to be a dressmaker but perfecting my skills can't be doing any harm and I'm just loving working on the extras - the little rag doll, bag/pocket and hairband that I'm making out of the fabric scraps.


Most of the dresses are upcycled, which can be a challenge, and definitely tales longer than the dresses I make from scratch.

My goal is 10 dresses (for now) and then I must revert to all the other ideas stacking up! All you sewers out there - give it a go - just one dress will make a difference to a little girl, living in poverty somewhere. What a feeling.

Celebrating success

It's only now, four months later that I can celebrate all the hard work we did last March in our front garden.
   Since we moved here 18 years ago it has been ok-ish space. (We're on a main road with strip of flower bed next to the car space, behind a bus stop so it's not a great place to garden.) The previous owners had sensibly spent some dosh and put some thought into a low-maintenace front with a lovely ceanothus, a rose and a laurel. For years I had sort of maintained them with the occasional prune, and filled in the gaps with grasses, a yucca, lavender, hollyhocks, cardoons and lots of big pebbles.
   In time I realised my additions had the potential to become the real stars of the show but the shrubs were ragged and overgrown and still quite dominant in the space due to their size. The trouble was, taking them out was going to be a nightmare job. 
   Thanks to the lovely sunny weather back in March (remember that?) I did start and what I start I always (doggedly) finish! Not before we had endured much extreme digging and sawing, not to mention trips to the dump and not inconsiderable backache for me and Mister.

The job was finished with a scattering of yellow and orange calendula* seeds and one of those mixed annual seed packets which I flung around with great abandon. Of course this year no watering was required through the spring as we watched and waited as the seedlings and inevitable weeds emerged. Some other flowers I added later did require some more care - the red sunflowers and dahilas are yet to flower (probably holding out for some err, actual sun). (The morning glory plants, which need sun, sun, sun have quickly chucked out a few puny flowers and given up in despair.)


   So despite this vile summer here in the UK and the depressing lack of picnic, barbecue and seaside visiting opportunities, I rush to the rainy front window every morning to check what's new in the flower patch - simple pleasures!




* Bright and breezy but inexplicably unfashionable Calendula is one of my favourite healing herbs. Its soothing properties mean its flowerheads are fantastic in home-made skin creams. The flowerheads are also great in tea for sorting out upset tummies. James Wong is my guru for this kind of wisdom - I find his natural remedies are fun to make and often do work wonders.

Dressing a Girl Around the World

Dresses, bags, hairbands and rag dolls completed this week for Dress A Girl Around the World.


Having so much fun - just finished bag for dress on the left and just started on the little doll to be clothed in the scraps left over from the dress and what's left from that makes a hairband.

Summer sew project

Over the last few days, my sewing machine has been silent, I've been feeling listless, after a flurry of deadlines and frantic activity suddenly I had no projects on the go and nothing was inspiring me... I was trying to hide it but days were passing and nothing was getting done.


When I get like this I have learnt to just go with it and see where it takes me and yesterday afternoon I found myself Googling 'crafts for charity'. After about 2 hours of contemplating lovely crafts I can't really do and great charities which were not really 'speaking' to me, I realised the answer was in a charity I came across months ago, called Dress a Girl Around the World.

It goes like this - people who sew are asked to make dresses for girls living in poverty in the developing world. Can you believe there are little girls who do not have a single dress? Some sewers make bags, hairbands, puppets and dolls to accompany the dresses which I think is such a lovely touch. When I read more, I suddenly realised the time was right for me to get involved. You know that whoosh when you realise that everything has been leading up to something and suddenly now is the time?


We try so hard to be green in our house but the girls and I are as guilty as most of us of buying clothes which we hardly ever end up wearing - that in a world where there are girls who do not have a single dress? To somehow compensate for the wickedness of this habit,I have tended to hold on to all the perfect, cotton clothes 'to upcycle'.


Trouble is, and this is shaming, the pile grows quicker that I can make sleep pillows, cushions, bags or whatever I'm into.


But the reason for my restlessness was obvious - this project was calling me and I had to rediscover it!


Yesterday I emailed Louise from the lovely blog Sew Scrumptious, who runs the UK branch of the charity and now all systems are go.

Check this blog for how I get on and a link to the charity (their website is down as I write).

Check Louise's blog for more info, including patterns and how to donate.

It's over and I really mean it this time

It's the right thing to do, I mean, isn't it? There's nothing else I can realistically make from the stuff to the left of the pic, is there?


Just don't ask how long it has taken me to come to this decision or how much I have draaaaagged out this final item, made from a charity shop pair of jeans nearly two months ago.


I tried to be experimental with the stitching, some was ok, some not as you can see from these pics.

With this one, I started without any idea of what I would end up with and now I'm triumphantly describing it to my family as my patchwork placemat for all those solitary, week-day lunches.

In case you were wondering, I found that solitary scrap to the top left, as I was finishing of and couldn't resist sewing it in, like a lonely tear.


Tbh, I vere wildly between thinking 'it's quite rubbish' to 'shows some promise'.

You may call it cheating but I dreamt up this jeans challenge so I think I'm allowed to introduce the shiny, lumpy bright green fabric which I think were part of a set of vintage curtains I have been hoarding for years.

Yes moving on is hard but always easier when you have started itching to revisit a few ideas from the past as well as embark on a variation on a theme.


After trying to steal the sleepy sheep pillow, Becky has asked for a pig pillow, I have just found the perfect fabric for a herbal bath idea and realised that the next challenge is to use up as much as I can from an upcycled sundress.


To as they say, 'take your mind off it, love'.

Saying it with flowers

Stringy, tight, thrifty, call it what you will but I was determined to use the scraps left over from my project to make stuff from a pair of charity shop jeans. The pile of denim oddments may have looked unpromising and, given the time this has taken me, was  labour intensive, to say the least.

Quite early on, it became obvious that the flower shapes and sizes would have to be different and that developed into the main joy of this project, picking up a scrap and working out how to work it!

It was fun to plunder my stitch bank and quite a challenge to bring in enough variation to keep it interesting, as opposed to messy.

So here they are from a variety of angles on my kitchen worktop...

.....with close ups of some of my favourites...

.....this (below) has to be a contender ...

Not a bad transformation for a pile of scraps! Trouble is, there are some leftovers and guess what, they are not in the bin yet.

Notes from my garden

To use a phrase I first heard from the lips of Saint Jamie Oliver, I'm really into herbage, and really quite dedicated to making useful things incorporating the power of plants.


So just because:

• Chelsea Flower Show week, where we were being regaled by weird and very wonderful garden designs has just finished
• Whoosh, summer is here and all my recent efforts are bursting forth

I thought it was time to take you on a quick tour of my garden and check out how my powerful plants are coming along.

We inherited this slightly shady, brick-edged bed and it's the perfect place for many herbs as well as this mini Bacchus statue. Check out the alchemilla mollis, various mints, marjoram, the alliums and chives.

We love to lounge around in our garden. A gap in a bed was bench-shaped so in it went. Last week I was clearing out an old shed in preparation for a new potting shed this autumn and I found this mirror which I hung on the silver birch behind it. 


When we had those lousy winters, I thought I had lost all the cordyline Australis - but no -  they started springing up at the bases so I chopped the dead tops off and on this one glued an old candle lantern.


There was always a strange circle in our lawn when we cut the grass, until I started to dig and found what I maybe whimsically now describe as a filled-in well.Some cobbles and an ever-changing planted pot and it's a bit of a feature nowadays.

For the Mediterranean herbs of course I needed a really dry, sunny spot. At the moment we're having sage with everything because of the success of this one.

Finally, for so many reasons we had to have a pond. It's full of newts although we had hoped for frogs to eat the slugs ... great how nature always makes its own mind up!
A fantastic spot for a bout of gentle contemplation.

More notes from my garden coming soon, please drop by again!

Scraps

You know that feeling when you know exactly what you want to do next but are not sure how to go about it?

It happens to me a lot and I sort of relish it, wallowing in the creative confusion for a few days until ...WHAM the methodology comes whooshing in and I'm so beside myself I'm not sure how to start.

Determined to use up every scrap of my old pair of jeans, I am left, as you see, with a heap of oddments. But as I must say, 20 zillion times a day, something always comes up just as you need it and the special Wedding magazine in the latest issue of Mollie Makes mag has persuaded me that I simply have to have a back at making fabric flowers with the rest.

I particularly adore these utterly breathtaking bouquets which were featured and which will provide my inspiration as I begin and if I get stuck.

Now I don't think it's cheating to raid my supplies of ribbons, buttons, lace, fabrics and beads, do you, to add interest?

Agreed ... then off I go!

Do you need a sleep angel?

 

Yawn, mutter, mutter.


It could be because my sleep has been pretty poor again recently that I find myself drawn to gorgeous, sleep-inducing chamomile and lavender. Not in a sleep pillow this time but in a denim doll which I made from an old pair of jeans.


As I was making the snuffly bunny I though to myself, 'Hang on a minute, the world is your oyster here. There are so many gentle, beneficial herbs which could be stuffed into objects!' A sleep angel could be attached to the side of a cot, Moses basket or pram, not as a toy, but as an eye-catching object which at the same time would help a baby nod off to sleep.


As usual I found myself getting carried away with the stitching. Here's the collar and face detail:

And here's the pattern on the dress:

I made the hair using a lovely technique I have adapted many times before which I first read about in my treasured book, Homemade: Gorgeous things to make with love by Ros Badger and Elspeth Thompson.


I'm glad that her limbs are flexible enough to arranger her into various sleeping poses
Here's the sleep angel having her afternoon nap...

                           

... and with all these soporific herbs wafting about, plus a few sleepless nights, I may just join her....

More, err, 'jeanius' ideas

So who'd have thought an old pair of jeans had so many possibilities?
  Determined now to complete this challenge and use up every single scrap of denim from these charity shop jeans, I have been somewhat busy in the last week. 
  Always on a quest to keep things useful, here goes:


1 The coaster

I stuffed this with some fabric from an old oven glove to protect any surface I should select.
  The possibilities are endless with this one but I stuck to a good old floral cup of tea motif this time. A quick and easy make for Mother's Day and birthdays or when you just want to jolly somebody along!






2 The pincushion

Inspired by a design in a back issue of Mollie Makes, this pear pincushion used up some odd scraps of denim which were starting to accumulate. I improvised the stalk with another odd shape of fabric and created the leaf by embellishing a leaf design (just the perfect scale!) taken from a small scrap of vintage fabric I found in the loft. 
  Already in use - you can never have too many pincushions!






3 The address book cover

Call me old fashioned but I cannot bring myself to digitise all my contacts and have a fondness for my Cath Kidson address book which, through use was starting to look more shabby than chic and most excessively 'vintage'. Too lazy to buy a new one and enter in all those details and besides, wanting to be thrifty here, I decided to revamp the well used book I have before it's too late. 
   I cut out some denim about 10cm wider and taller than the book, cut away at the spine and folded over at the sides and then sewed on some lazy daisy and chain stitches randomly along the spine and appliqued an old fashioned telephone motif in to the cover. Then I blanket stitched all the way round through two layers of fabric and the card cover to hold it all together.
 What's more, now that it's protected by this tough fabric I hope my trusty address book now has a few more years of wear!


4 The sunffly bunny

There was enough fabric on one of the jean legs to design a very simple rabbit shape. With wrong sides together, I cut two out and improvised some embroidery to embellish the ears, eyes, mouth and nose as well as the pads of the 'hands' and feet.
  I also worked out an easy way to stitch on some whiskers and couldn't resist a quick pom-pom for the bunny tail (as you can see in the pic below of the rabbit face down and 'asleep' with a 'friend')

 Always wanting to stay away from cheesy, cute and cliche as far as I can,  I love their quirkiness but my daughter insists the green eyes give him a sinister edge so the next version will have to look more 'cuddly'. Nevertheless, this bunny definitely most definitely has a benevolent side. He's mainly stuffed with lovely soft and eco wool waste but I also included in the middle of his tummy a muslin pouch containing eucalyptus leaves. This makes him interestingly scrunchy as well as nice to cuddle when you have a cold as the oil released by the leaves will give off a congestion clearing perfume to sort out the sniffles. 
  The idea of simple toys has given me the idea of incorporating small amounts of safe and gentle herbs and plants into stuffings for interest ..... hmmm!


  I reakon I can just about manage one of those and then I'm going to need some serious inspiration to tackle the mini mountain of tiny scraps which is all that now remains of the jeans!