Round Up of my Latest Minerva Crafts Posts

Hey folks! 

Still enjoying the heat wave?

Well naturally with all the blasted heat and the summer holidays I haven't actually had much time for sewing and whilst I've really enjoyed spending time with the kid I am starting to miss my sewing machine! 

So here's a few links to some blog posts I wrote way back when for minerva crafts! [Also note to self : get a haircut] 

First up we have butterick 6318 in luxury crepe! Which some of you may have seen on my instagram feed. There's actually one of these on my sewing table right now I just don't have the time to sew it! 

Next we have my review of the habico mini iron! Which I now use for both sewing and travelling! 

Then we have my review of wendy wards new book sewing with knits! I have a lot of projects coming up from this book! Including tee shirt dresses and hopefully some sweat pants! some of you may also remember this cardigan because I wore it all the dammed time during me made may!

and lastly we have this pleated stretch velvet dress. Which is actually making me sweat a little bit just looking at it but it was lovely and warm during winter! In fact I wore this for my sons nativity so it has some nice memories attached to it too! 

Hopefully I'll get some proper sewing sessions in soon! Maybe I'll banish the boys off for a day of golf? Although saying that I'll only miss him when hes back at school!!!! 

But for now I'm going to live vicariously through you all! So whats every one working on? 

Much Love 

Frankie 

disclaimer - the items reviews were sent to me for free however all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Gift ideas for sewists

I think gift buying gets harder and harder the older a person gets. Either they buy the things they want or they've got everything they want so they don't really need anything! Which is why I like to put a little gift guide together every now and again so if necessary you can print it out and leave it on a table to make sure you don't get a hoover for your birthday or a whisk. 

Unless that's your jam in which case crack on. 

But here's some gifts I'd love to receive so I'm assuming you guys would too.

1. Button hole marker

£18.00

£18 to make sure your buttons are always perfectly spaced? And to not have to do complicated maths? Count me in!!! (AHEM momma *smiles*)

2. Scissor set

£24.99 

Scissors? Check. Snips? Check. Thimble? Check. Rose gold? Check!!! Just take my money!!! 

3. Fabric geek T-shirt

£9.99

Why not declare his much you like fabric to the world? I literally can't think of any reasons I wouldn't need this top.

4. Floral sewing machine 

£119

T HAS FLOWERS ON IT!!!! I NEED IT!!!!! I'm actually trying to justify having another sewing machine in my life. I mean its not exactly a bells and whistles machine but it has towers on it so who cares!!!! 

5. Leather wrist ruler

£20

I actually think this is a steal for twenty pounds and can you imagine how useful it would be to have a ruler with you all the time (AHEM Momma my birthdays coming up *bats eyelashes*

6. Sewing machine initial necklace

£15.99

As you may have gathered I love a sewing related necklace and even better this one can have your initial added to it. *squeals*

7. Seamstress pin badge

£7.00

Would you believe I ever made prefect at school? Something to do with being on the edge of normal and being fond of the f word. (Which sounds bad but my head of year found it hilarious and would often remind me that it wasn't punctuation) anyway this seamstress badge is something I would have loved to wear on my blazer!

And that's it! Can you think of anything cool I missed off???

Much love Frankie 

Abakhans Fill A Bag Sale -Thoughts and Fabric Haul Video

Hey folks! How we all doing? I've got two more days of shipping lil man off to school and then its 6 weeks of lie ins so I'm feeling pretty chipper! 

I'm also feeling chipper because I have 32 [I think] pieces of fabric in my dining room and the sun has been shining so I have plenty of opportunities to pre-wash.

So basically on 7th of July I got up at half six in the morning so I'd have enough time to get ready , walk the dog and feed lil man breakfast before heading out to abakhans.

We'd already decided that waiting in line was not fun so decided to get there early. However as it turned out the heat meant that the queues were a lot shorter so we needn't have gotten up early. 

That said getting there early did mean that when we got into the sale room my dad managed to bag the only chair which was pretty useful for when my mum got tired. 

Oh yeah I should have mentioned we went en force!!!! There was a plan of attack from camp knitwits! I went, my momma went, my dad went, my sister went and lil man came too!!! 

As you can see I took the opportunity to have a group selfie. 

It was laid out the same as last time to be honest so there's not much I can say about that. But their were some highlights!

- Lil man shifting through fabric and saying "mummy do you like this?" FYI Mummy did not love everything he picked out..... But he did pick out some cute things.

- falling into the box again.......

- Holding lil man over the box so he could reach the bottom of the box.

- A lady telling me she reads my blog! *waves* HEY LADY! it was nice meeting you let me know what your going to make with that roll of faux fur you brought!

Anyways as I said I got a LOT of fabric , far to much to photograph so I've made a video [spoiler alert Polly our dog makes an appearance] and a bag of 50 zips because this girl is always running out of zips..... Or so I thought until I got home and couldn't get them into my zip jar! 

Now I warn you its a LONG one! So I'd suggest making a brew before you start!

Hope you enjoy!

Frankie 

xxx

Red Floral Newlook 6390

After my frankly rubbish first proper version of the Newlook 6390 pattern I did some serious hacking and tweaking of the pattern. 

Mainly taking ease out if the back seam, shortening the straps and taking a wedge out if the front bodice piece.

And now I'm very happy with the fit. Its definitely worth taking the time to make something fit you properly because it makes all the difference in the finished version and how you feel about wearing it. 

This dress has hardly been of my back in this hot weather. Mainly because it's easy to throw on in the morning and the skirt isn't so short that I feel like my fairy is out.

The fabric is the real star if the show. It was sent to me by the craft cotton company and its one of the most beautiful fabrics I have ever seen. Its got a pattern of vivid flowers on it and everything is outlined in gold. 

To say its so fancy it actually makes a great day to day dress and I've had a lot of compliments but it.

The zip was taken from one of Rikki's old hoodies. I love chunky metal zip because they are indestructible. Well at least they are for me I've not had one break yet.

In fact the only real problem with this dress is that its a pain to find a bra to wear with it. As you can see from my nice bra straps in the below picture. 

There are a few pull lines across the back but I'm not sure if that's just wrinkles from wearing the dress all day or if I need to do some more tweaking.

Happily though this seems to be the perfect length for me. Its long enough to make sure I don't flash my bum when I bend over but its not so long that its midi length. 

I hemmed it by machine because I knew it was going to be washed a lot and I didn't want to have to keep fixing the hem.

I actually wore this dress and demonstrated how to make it at abakhans in Hanley. Which was really lovely. I really enjoy doing the demonstrations because I get to talk to lots of different people! 

That said I've done 2 sewing sessions at my sons school, one for year 3 and one for year 5 and they were a whole new level of stressful! Which I know a lot of people would find silly because its not like having a full time job or anything, but it was 32 children each holding a needle and wanting my undivided attention. Which is hugely stressful for someone who doesn't like children and struggles with new things. That said I'm really proud of myself for managing to get them all to do the task and a lot of them really surprised me with how enthusiastic they were. I've got two more sessions to do year 2 and year 4 and lil man has already asked me if I'm going to do it next year!!! 

In other  news: 

Polly went and snuggled with Rikki last night which is a victory! 

And lil mans teacher came out of school yesterday to personally tell me how pleased she is with the improvement in his handwriting ! 

Much love 

Frankie 

Xxx

A Kimono for Chelsey

It was our next door neighbour Chelsey's birthday last week . 

Luckily for me we wanted a kimono cardigan for her holiday and also luckily for me she didn't find one when she went shopping.

I used the simple sew kimono wrap dress pattern to make it. I've made this once before and I love my version. And I figured seen as me and Chels are about the same size then I could use the same cut pattern pieces as I normally use. (I've seen her in it and yay it fits!!!!!)

Construction wise its really really simple just the shoulder and side seams both of which I sewed on my over locker. 

Then I sewed round all the edges with my overlocker so I'd have something firm to turn over for the hems. I always tend to do this with fine fabrics because it gives a really neat finish and a really small hem.

The whole thing probably didn't take more than an hour to sew. In fact the cutting out probably took the most time because the fabric was so darn shifty. I didn't trust my dining room table not to make the fabric stretch and hang funny so I moved the coffee table and the rug and cut it out on the living room floor. 

I added one of my labels to the back because,e I thought it might be a nice touch. As it goes it actually tricked overtone into thinking it was from a real shop!!! 

Which I'm taking as a win because I guess it means my sewing looks super professional! Lol! 

Anyways it went down really well and I think she liked it! 

In other news : 

Polly is still settling in, so far she likes me and Marcus. She likes Rikki most of the time unless he makes any sudden movements or raises his arms above his head (which leads me to believe that a man used to hurt her, she also won't walk near men and cowers away from them which backs my theory up)

It's bloody hot! I've been enjoying to chance to wear my summer dresses gut the rest of the time I've just been lazing around trying not to sweat.

I went to the abakhans fill a bag sale this morning!!! It was awesome and I got lots of fabric (I'll do a separate post on those). It was a bit stressful though, Rikki was on nights so I was terrified that Polly was going to bark and wake him up!!! And I had to take Marcus with me which meant I was worried about loosing him. Luckily my mum dad and sister came with me so they did a lot of the Marcus watching whilst I did a lot of the burrowing for fabric. 

And he did some choosing of fabrics of his own!! Fabrics for me of. Purse but I let him pick s few things and he actually said he had fun so that's a win!

Much love

Frankie 

Xxxx

Deramores Knitted Unicorn Kit - Review

I love unicorns. They might just be my favourite animal ever. First person to say they are not real gets a smack in the chops.

So when Deramores asked me if I'd like to review their Luna the unicorn knitting kit I jumped at the chance because what could possibly be better than knitting your very own unicorn?

Knitting wise it was really quick to knit up. I'm a fairly slow knitter and I don't have the best concentration span but I found the pattern easy to follow and that it made the shapes I needed it to make very quickly. 

The pattern only uses two stitches so I didn't even need to ring my Nan to help me out reading the pattern. 

I'd definitely say that an advanced beginner could manage to make one up with minimal help from the internet/youtube.

The wool included is the anti pilling Deramores studio DK. It says on the label that its acrylic but it does not feel like cheap and nasty acrylic wool in any shape or form. Its very soft and lovely to use and I'm really tempted to pick up some balls for some baby knitting. 

You get 3 balls of wool in the kit. Each weighing 100g and its more than enough for making the unicorn. [Plus it also comes in a pink colour way!!] In fact Ihave a theory that you could make a second unicorn if you reversed the colours! [Good and Evil unicorns anyone?]

There is a few options for buying the pattern and kit. You can opt for the pattern only for £1.99 , which just means a digital copy of the pattern is sent to you or you can just buy the wool and pattern for £10.99. Or you can get the whole kit pattern, wool and stuffing for £12.99. 

I know a lot of people are not a fan of the whole "digital pattern" thing and for sewing I completely agreed because its just too much of a faff. However for knitting I don't actually mind it. For one its kinder on the environment than a paper pattern and secondly I always tend to save it to my tablet which means I'm less likely to misplace it. Plus because its on your emails there is no chance of you loosing it and never being able to find it again. Or you can just print it off as soon as it arrives in your inbox!

I didn't have any trouble with the actual knitting of the pattern however I did have a bit of difficulty when it came to making it up. Mine seems to have ended up with a VERY long neck [Almost giraffe standards]. I've had a look on line and no one else seems to have had this problem so I think I'm just going to assume that I can't read a knitting pattern properly and leave it at that. 

And another small change I made was to use my usual method of attaching the hair instead of the one they suggested. To be completely honest I had got half way through the head before I read the instructions and realised my method was different to theirs! 

Also my method of attaching the hair makes it quite robust when the unicorn is being played with. This type of hair can withstand gentle brushing and plaiting which is very important to little girls [and big ones] when they are playing. 

For the eyes you can buy plastic eyes from their website but I chose to use some small black buttons that had a shank on the end. I think they worked out fairly nicely and they saved me having to wait for a delivery. 

All in all I really enjoyed knitting up the unicorn and I especially enjoyed how simple the pattern was and how great the end result was. I typically make knitted toys that look a bit demonic so it was a nice change to make something that actually looked quite cute!

As far as the kit goes I do think its good value as all of the wool and stuffing is included. However its not the sort of kit I would buy as a gift because it doesn't include "everything" you need you make it up [knitting needles etc]. The lack of knitting needles didn't really bother me though because it uses a fairly standard size and I have them coming out of my ears! [probably from all the knitting kits I've brought over the years]

Although I wouldn't buy the kit as a gift I would buy the kit again so I could make one up as a gift. In fact If I get a move on I might make one of these for my niece for her birthday. She likes unicorns nearly as much as I do.

So all in all I think this was a very successful make I can see a few more of these in my future.

much love

Frankie

xxx

disclaimer - Although deramores sent me this kit to review for free all the knitting and thoughts are my own.