As mentioned previously I have been doing a lot of sewing lately. One of the things I have been making is project bags for my knitting and crochet projects. I usually have so many WIPs on the go, and they tend to be chucked in baskets or left lying around on the sofa, to become comfy beds for the cat. So making sure each one has a home when I'm not working on it is important.

It started out rather innocently, to be fair. I found a pattern, bought a couple of fat quarters on eBay because I liked the patterns, and chose lining fabric from my leftovers of coloured cotton from the shield banner I'd made earlier in the year.

The pattern is the No Guts Boxie Pouch and it is so simple and quick to make. I didn't use interfacing in my first attempt, as the fabric is a fairly sturdy cotton to begin with. I just love the cats and yarn print!

The second fat quarter was owls. I think, on reflection, these owls are a little too big for this size of project, but what I love about this one is the bright blue fabric I used for the lining. Sadly, I don't appear to have taken a picture of it! But it matches the very bright blue you can see in the owls.

It kind of set me off on a road, though, as I found myself buying fat quarter bundles in Fabric Land and Hobbycraft, and a selection of contrasting zips from eBay...

I now have nine more bags I can make! I am going to experiment with some other patterns, and not make 9 more identical bags. But most of them will be of a similar style I think. I found a set of fat quarters featuring slightly smaller owls so hopefully they will look more sensible on a small project like these bags.

It's no secret that I love stationery. My husband knows this well, and so every Christmas I get something interesting in my stocking. This year was no exception, as I got the Happy Jackson notebook you see above, as well as quite possibly the coolest gadget I have ever owned - an electric pencil sharpener! I spent a good portion of Christmas Day/Boxing Day sat cross legged on my living room floor, merrily sharpening all of my coloured pencils.

I decided straight away that I would indeed use this notebook to keep track of my ideas and plans, so it has become my place for noting down ideas for patterns, new ways to organise my craft spaces etc. I've been going a bit crazy on Pinterest of late, particularly my Sewing board. I was looking for a pattern for a DPN roll, and an interchangeable needle roll, and nothing I found was quite right. So, I picked tutorials which were roughly what I was after, and got out my notebook and pencil to sketch out my cunning plans.

I started with the DPN roll, as that seemed the more straightforward of the two. I had picked up a gorgeous set of fat quarters while shopping for fabric for costumes, and decided straight away that this was the project to use it in.

I have three different height pockets, so there is space for the longest, shortest and inbetweenist needles in my collection.

The only thing I forgot to do was add the ribbon to tie it shut before I did my side seam! I'm not too bothered, as the weight of the needles inside holds it shut when it's rolled up and sitting on the shelf with the rest of my needles. This roll has more space in it than the one I was using previously, which had been a free gift in a magazine, and is now being used to house my straight needles.

The interchangeable needle case was a little trickier. I looked at tutorial after tutorial, and in the end decided I would just have to decide exactly what I needed my roll to be, and figure it out myself. And that is exactly what I did.

The new and exciting technique used for this project was piping. I'd never done piping before, but happened to have a load of left over black bias binding and some old string kicking about from previous projects. I found a tutorial on Pinterest and just cracked on with it. The end result is, I am pleased to say, not that bad. The bit where the piping crosses over itself and dives into the seam is hidden by the ribbon when the roll is done up.

Inside, there are pockets for each pair of needles I got with my set of Knit Pro interchangeable needles, three pockets for the three different lengths of cable and a closeable pocked which houses the tightening keys and cable ends. So much nicer than the clear plastic case that came with the set!

I have to say, now that I have the space to sew, I am remembering how much I love doing it! And all of the non-clothing projects I have done so far have been so quick and easy, with brilliant results. I am also already developing something of a fat quarter habit, which is dangerous!

Earlier on in the year, I rediscovered my love of sewing. I hadn't really got my machine out at all since moving into this house almost two years ago, but over the summer I have been churning out all manner of things for LARP.

It started with the sashes I made, although the sewing was really a necessity there for me to have something to experiment with screen printing on. Once I was done with those, I started thinking about other things I could make ahead of the main LARP event on August bank holiday weekend. I don't have photos of all of the things I made, which is a shame as I did spend a week almost production lining pantaloons (more of the same as I made before), in various bright colours. My character now has eight pairs of pantaloons, which is almost enough to wear a different pair every day across all of the events I go to in a year!

What I can show you, however, is everything else I made.

I made a lot of bunting. More bunting than I think we will ever need! I could have been lazy, and used pinking shears to cut out triangles, but as I don't have any pinking shears and I wanted my triangles to be different colours on each side, I actually cut out twice as many triangles as needed and spent three days sewing them together, trimming seams, turning them around and ironing them. Three days! Then, it took me and a friend a whole afternoon to sit and pin the triangles to the bias binding. There were a lot of pins. Worth it though, as the finished bunting looked amazing strung across the back of the pavilion we built for our tourney ground.

As part of the tourney, we also decided that the Ladies of Court would hand out favours to our chosen knights. To supply the group with favours, I picked up a cheap pack of handkerchiefs on eBay and hand embroidered the initials of each of the ladies' character names into the corner. All perfectly colour matched to our groups, of course! The opposite corner of the hankie had a butterfly embellishment already included so they looked really sweet once the embroidery was done, and it had the desired effect in character when we all stood and handed them out (even if none of our chosen knights ended up winning anything).

Finally, I decided to make a banner to hang in the main command tent. As the fictional land of Albion is split into ten kingdoms, each of the kingdoms has its own heraldic shield. However, they aren't used all that widely in the game by the current group of players, so I decided to try and raise their profiles by making a banner of them.

I left off the heraldic devices as I was in no mood to try and sew animals and so forth. It actually made for quite a fun guessing game in character, trying to see who knew which shields were which. Each shield was cut out and sewn individually with colour matched thread (those curved hems were a nightmare!) and then sewn in place onto the banner (made from an old tablecloth I found) with black thread to highlight the outlines. The gap in the middle was filled with a tribal lion, which I screen printed onto a separate piece of fabric before sewing on.

I had to cut the stencil into 8 parts because the fabric rectangle I was using is roughly the size of an A3 sheet of paper. Which meant it took a while to print as I had to wait for each section to dry before moving on to the next. I'm quite sad that I don't have a photo of the complete finished article, but I forgot to take one before I packed up for the event and now the banner lives in the box with the rest of the faction banners. I'll try and get one at the next event in March.

The last thing I made for LARP this year is the thing I am most proud of. The most complicated sewing pattern I have used to date. A medieval doublet for my husband to wear to our winter banquet. As the NPC (non player character) he plays for us is a King, he needed a suitably posh outfit. Again, apologies for the poor quality iPhone photos, but my camera went walkies so I couldn't take decent ones at the time.

I learned so much about making things from patterns doing this outfit. It is the first thing I have made that really needed to fit properly, and since the pattern sizing doesn't exactly match my husband's measurements, I had to improvise a bit to get the waist to fit. It actually turned out rather well, so I am very pleased. I also learned a lot about things my sewing machine can do, as I needed to make buttonholes in the shirt cuffs, so had to dig out the buttonhole foot and learn how the buttonhole settings worked.

All together, the shirt, doublet and sash took about two weeks from opening the pattern and cutting the pieces out, to having a finished outfit. It was finished on the morning of the banquet, so I was really working right up to the deadline.

My next major clothing sewing challenge is going to be making a new coat for my character. I've found a pattern I love, I just need to find a fabric I want to use for it and then I can get cracking.

I haven't done much knitting or crocheting of late. Mainly because I have been busy working on a special, secret project which I couldn't talk about until after the most recent LARP event! At the previous event in June, I had agreed to make some sashes for my faction. They needed to look good, but be relatively simple to make as I had to make enough for fifteen people.

I decided the sewing part would be fairly simple, if I made long sashes which were tied on, rather than trying to make sashes to fit exactly. Especially considering the range of sizes in the group of people I was making them for - a huge variety of height and girth across the group. What I struggled with initially was a technique to use to get the symbols onto the sashes that I wanted - eight in total (one representing each of the in-character Gods worshipped in my faction, and one representing the faction itself). After chatting to a couple of friends, and doing some searching on the internet, I settled on screen printing as the most sensible route to take, and found this tutorial and this one. Initially, I thought I would try the embroidery hoop option, especially when I discovered you can now buy Modge Podge in Hobbycraft! But in the end I went for a very quick and lazy stencil only approach, with no screens at all.

Preparing the sashes themselves was a bit more involved than I thought it would be. I bought 4 metres of 100% cotton in a lovely muted cream colour (as I thought white would be a bit too stark and modern for my needs). I tore the material into strips six inches wide, and ironed them out. Then came the endless pinning. I have never spent so much time pinning hems in all my life. Even the excessively long hems on my skirts didn't get that much attention.

It took me a day and a half to pin all the strips of fabric (260 feet of hem!). It then only took me about three hours to sew them all and remove the pins again. Because I was making these for other people, I decided to be very good, and did all the ironing and seam pressing you are meant to do when you sew things. I even top stitched the seams at the shoulder, once I had pinned and sewn the front and back halves together.

For the symbols, I took inspiration from the descriptions of the Gods as listed on my faction's website (www.cplions.co.uk). The standard symbols (things like scales of justice, swords etc) didn't seem exciting enough to me, so I was interested when I saw each God had a bird associated with it as well. I immediately went searching on Google for tribal tattoo style images of the birds in question, and made stencils of those.

The stencils are just OHP acetate sheets, with a sticker stuck on that I'd traced the image onto. This made it easier to cut it out!

The dove in the middle of the above pic actually didn't make the cut, it was too big and complicated so I replaced it with a different design in the end.

When it came to the printing, I kept things as simple as possible. I set up a production line in my kitchen, and prepared my stencils by spraying the backs with removable adhesive spray. I sort of fudged my way through the screen printing itself, using the basic understanding of the technique I had learned from the tutorials linked above.

I bought proper screen printing ink in black, found a foam brush in my box of craft tools, and dug out an old blood donation card. I pretty much just blobbed ink on over the stencil with the brush, then drew the card across to even the ink out inside the stencil and scrape off the excess. It worked pretty well!

The only real pain was the time it took for the ink to dry. I had to do each bird separately, as otherwise the stencils overlapped with the still wet image above. So I did 13 ravens, then waited a bit. Then 13 hawks. And so on until they were all done.

Just to give you an idea of the finished article, I got my husband to try one on. All I did to them after this point was paint the legs of the storks on (as they were very thin on the image and I wasn't sure I could cut the stencil delicately enough). The Lion is on the back, over the shoulder blade.

They turned out so much better than I was expecting, and once we had them out at the event and people were wearing them, I was even happier. No photos, sorry, I was far too busy! They generated some lovely roleplay as well, as people debated over which bird symbolised which God and why.

I have another one to make before the event in August, which gives me only 4 weeks. This one will be posher, made of thicker material (probably white cotton drill, I am going shopping on Saturday to find some), and will have black bias binding around the edge. I'll probably space the symbols out so half are on the front and half are on the back. Will share progress once I get started on it!

It is hard to believe, but halfway through my most recent absence from this blog, our wedding anniversary came and went. A whole year has passed since we got married, and it really doesn't feel like it. Life hasn't really changed all that much! 

We didn't really do anything to mark the occasion, as our anniversary coincides with the start of the LARP season, and so there will always be an event the weekend before! This year, there was also an event on the weekend itself, so my husband was not actually here for the day itself.

I marked the day by finally getting one of our wedding photos printed and framed for the mantlepiece. This was a real bargain, as the frame was £1.99 in a charity shop and the photo was a whole £3 from Snapfish.co.uk! I got luck with the frame, as it's A4 sized and exactly the same colour and style as the two frames I already had on the mantlepiece, plus our beautiful antique mirror we have above.

It is kind of strange having photos of myself and my husband on display in the house. It's not something we normally do. But wedding photos are different, I guess. They have their own rules!

I was also struck with inspiration for a rather long term sewing project. For the wedding, in place of a guest book, we had a "wishing tree" on which our guests could hang butterfly shaped message cards. After the wedding, the cards got packed away in a box, and I've had this ridiculous white tree hanging around my living room ever since. At Christmas we put ornaments on it and turned it into a ridiculous decoration you'd probably find on Pinterest. Now, it lives in the corner on top of the bookcases I keep all my crafting things in.

I decided it needed proper decoration, so I set about making an ornament to mark our anniversary. I dived into my fabric stash, and dug out some purple and dark pink felt, and scraps of the gorgeous pink batik fabric I bought to make LARP kit with a couple of years ago. The end result was this:

A little heart shaped ornament (it's about two inches across), marking our first anniversary. I embroidered the date on the back:

I will of course make one every year, although I haven't decided yet whether they will all be hearts, or whether I will explore other shapes as the years go by. At the moment, the tree still looks pretty bare, as it only has one ornament on it. I reckon by the time we reach our fifth anniversary it will start to look really pretty!

With the new LARP season rapidly approaching (our first event is only a few weeks away!) I decided to take a break from my usual crafty pursuits and learn something new. I've been planning to make myself an in character diary for some time now, but it would involve skills that I've never tried before.

Firstly, I had to write the damn thing! I'm not usually all that interested in writing fiction, but thankfully the act of writing up my character's thoughts and experiences from the four years that I've now been playing her was easy, as I was actually recording memories of events rather than having to make it all up from scratch! I started writing it after getting back from an event, so I was still very much inside my character's head at the time. Before I knew it, I'd written over 30,000 words.

To turn my words into an actual, physical book proved to be more of a challenge. I spent a lot of time on the internet, researching bookbinding techniques and trying to decide what I wanted my finished diary to look like. I eventually settled on the long stitch technique, after seeing this tutorial for a leather bound journal. I had in my sewing chest a suede skirt that I've been holding on to for a long time, waiting for the right project, which I decided would be perfect to use as the material for my book cover.

Printing the pages to create the signatures for my book proved to be another challenge. More research online unearthed this fabulous guide to printing Word documents in book format, and after a few trial and error attempts I finally had my pages printed.



I did a test of the bookbinding techniques on a set of signatures that hadn't printed out right, and then launched straight into stitching my actual pages into my actual book. It was really straightforward, although I did manage to stab myself quite a few times with the needle as the suede was quite thick, particularly where there was more than one layer.


I deliberately left the flap that will close the book quite long, as this is going to be a living document that will grow with each LRP event. I have bound in some empty pages so I can jot down notes during the event, and then afterwards I will type up the diary entry and replace the handwritten signatures with a printed version. The more events I survive, the longer my book will get, but there is room for at least twice as many pages before this one gets full.


To close the book, I have added two ribbons, and attached a gorgeous bead I picked up in my local haberdashery. I'm really really pleased with the finished article, and can't wait to show it off at the event in a couple of weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a new experiment I was undertaking, learning to do English Paper Piecing.

I chose to make a pincushion because I thought a small project would give me a chance to see if I enjoyed the technique enough to do it again, without running the risk of starting a project that I wouldn't finish if I didn't enjoy it after all. I'm pleased to say that I did enjoy it, and the end results are fabulous.

The only real issue I had was when I got to sewing the two halves together and then turning it right side around. But to be fair, I have issues doing that whatever I am sewing, so not a problem unique to EPP!

I love the incredibly neat edge between the hexagons. It's a relatively simple (if fiddly) technique but it produces wonderful results. I've already been nosing about on the web to see what else I could do with it. I'm not quite close to wanting to make a full quilt or anything, but I've already started pinning some great ideas to my Sewing board.

I will have to find another project that uses hexagons, though, as I still have plenty left from the selection I was given last year.

Almost a year ago, I took part in a swap on Ravelry (as part of the UK Swaps group). As the parcel arrived just as we were packing up to move house, I didn't really get much of a chance to play with the contents of the parcel, or spend much time wondering what I was going to do with it. I took a quick snap to share with the group, then put everything away in the box that was carrying my stash to the new house.

The lovely handmade project bag is the perfect size for carrying around my Innocent smoothie hat knitting kit, which lives in the bottom of my work bag for quick knitting fixes in the office. The yarn, four wonderfully soft and squishy balls of Rowan Baby Alpaca DK in three different shades of pinky purples, has been sitting in my stash ever since, and is destined to play a part in the fourth Year of Projects.

However, the part I want to talk about today is that little bag of fabric hexagons, and the Homemade with love magazine. One of the stipulations of the swap was that the parcel had to contain "a new item to pamper/play with". As the lovely person who put my parcel together knew that I was open to trying new crafts, she thought I might want to have a go at English Paper Piecing. The magazine included a pattern/instructions for making a brooch using the technique.

A few days ago, I decided I would give it a go. I'd been doing some sewing at the weekend (nothing too hefty, just replacing buttons on a shirt!) and realised I don't actually own a proper pincushion. The more I thought about it, the more determined I became to make one. That's when I remembered the swap package I'd received, and thought that perhaps a pincushion would be a good small project to try out EPP for the first time.

I spent a good while trying to figure out how to measure the paper hexagons to ensure a neat fit, but in the end I abandoned maths (not my strong point!) and traced around one of the fabric hexies. I then trimmed 1/4 inch off each side, and used that paper hex as a template for all the others. It's might fiddly, attaching the fabric to the paper, but sewing them together afterwards is very quick indeed. I have just a few more seams to do on the second piece, then I'll be ready to join them together.

I have plenty of little fabric hexagons left, so if this is a success, there's scope to do another project before I find myself rushing off to buy a load of fat quarters!

Tomorrow I head off to Buckinghamshire for a weekend of prancing about in a field pretending to be somebody else. As I've mentioned before, I've been working on a new piece of kit for this event, an embroidered vest featuring the symbols of my current nation and the nation I am moving to in game:

Last time I posted, I had just made a start on actually embroidering the design to the back of my vest. Well, with the event looming ever closer, I finally got round to finishing it last weekend.

The embroidery itself didn't take me all that long, in the end. I finished that about four weeks ago! What's taken the time has been figuring out how to sew the chiffon I bought to trim the arm holes and waist with. I don't have an overlocker, so had to come up with another way of preventing the cut edges from fraying. After several attempts to sew the edge after cutting, I decided to do it the other way around.

I drew the shape I needed with chalk, then zigzag stitched around what would be the raw edge, before trimming very close to the outside edge of the sewn border. This seems to have worked, and the finished edges don't look like they're about to start fraying any time soon.

I'm really pleased with how this has turned out. Relatively inexpensive too, as all I've had to buy is a metre of chiffon and a metre of black ribbon.

I'll try and get some pictures of me wearing it at the event, so you can see it with the rest of my kit.

When I came back from the last event in June, I found myself suddenly needing to crochet a giant tablecloth in less than four weeks. Having succeeded at that, I have returned from the most recent event last weekend with an even more complicated project in mind! Luckily, there is more time between now and the next event (August Bank Holiday weekend) so I should be alright.

I've decided I need some more costume. I have one vest that I wear all the time because it is so comfy and goes with everything.

I decided I needed more of them. I don't have a pattern, so had planned to reverse engineer from this one (which was I believe originally from Next, although I got it on eBay). Then I found some old cardigans from New Look that I thought I could adapt for a lot less hassle.

It's a nice drapey viscose fabric, which has the added advantage of not fraying when you cut it! I hacked the arms off just below the shoulder seams, and cut the length down to get rid of the very modern-looking pockets.

I need to find the right material to trim the bottom hem and sleeves, to match the style of the other vest. In teh meantime, I've turned my attention to the motif I'm going to embroider on the back. I've designed a symbol based on my character's current allegiance to two different factions.

I made a stencil and quickly mocked up the motif in paint on a different black fabric, just to check it looks ok in my chosen colour scheme.

I'm quite pleased with it. I've sprayed the stencil (in reverse) on the inside of my vest, and an slowly embroidering the image on using some white and red embroidery thread that I had lying around. So far, I've done most of the lion and it's looking pretty good. I think I might have to match the trim to the red embroidery thread, which could be difficult. It's a much more winey red than the paint I used.

Will share some progress when I'm done with the embroidery!

There is a reason I don't do a huge amount of sewing, and that is ironing. The tedious task of ironing every piece of fabric before you even get to cut out a shape or thread your needle. I am not the biggest fan of ironing; I hold to the philosophy that if you take clothes out of the machine as soon as it's finished, and hang them up, you don't even need to iron your good shirts. So it was with some trepidation that I embarked on the next stage of my lion tablecloth project.

The last time I shared this project I had just finished the main section of the centrepiece:

The plan was to crochet the lion, then sew it to the centre of a large red tablecloth. I found the perfect cloth on eBay, but when it arrived it had two issues. One, it was a lot bigger than I thought, or rather the lion was too small. Two, the cloth had clearly been folded up in its packaging for some time, because it was incredibly creased.

So I had two problems to solve. The lion came first (anything to put off the dreaded ironing). I trawled the internet looking for inspiration for a border I could use to make it bigger. In the end, I sort of made it up as I went along!

The first seven rows are simple chain loops. The rest of the border is stolen adapted from the All Shawl by Doris Chan. Fully stretched out, my centrepiece is now 26" across, which should fit much better into the centre of my 70" tablecloth.

Last night I finally dug up the courage to get out my ironing board and tackle this enormous tablecloth. I won't lie to you, it was not fun. Especially not when my darling husband appeared with an armful of shirts (which, against my usual practice, had not been hung up immediately after washing), so after getting most of the creases out of the tablecloth, I then had to carry on and iron a whole load of clothes!

This evening I absolutely have to sew the lion to the cloth, as on Friday we will be driving up to Staffordshire to go to the next LRP event, where I will be presenting the cloth as a semi-surprise gift to a group of friends. They've seen the first photo, but nothing since! Fingers crossed I have no issues with the sewing element of this project, and I'll be able to share some great pictures of the tablecloth in action when I get back from the event.