A throw everything in it Duffel bag!

We love taking little man swimming, and after much trial and error we've found a place where the water is warm, it doesn't cot the earth and that has family changing rooms! Family changing rooms are a complete game changer as far as I'm concerned. Some of the pools we've been previously only had men's and women's and seen as the men's never seem to have a play pen, or well anything I always ended up trying to sort out the baby, then sort myself whilst making sure said baby didn't soak himself all over again!

Now I take lil man into the changing room and start to get him dried off, whilst Rikki has his shower [My hair is far too long for the piddly trickle that swimming pool showers offer so I have a bath when I get home] then once both the boys are ready they go and sit in the cafe and have a drink [£2.10 for a pint!] and I get all the time I want to get ready! [I think the beer helps with the waiting]

I've gotta say I love having the time to myself to dry off properly , apply moisturiser [The chlorine is a killer for my skin] do my hair and apply some make up so I don't look like a troll as we are leaving!

But that does mean I, in particular end up carrying a lot of stuff around!

Enter the duffel bag! 

Previously we've been using bags for life, but that only leaves you with one hang free, so I whipped this up using a certain remnant that I really love! And some scrap pieces of linen!

I top stitched all my straps and added a pocket to the front for chucking smaller bits like my phone and locker money in.

All in all it didn't take very long to sew up at all, In fact I'm thinking of making one for Rikki and one for lil man so we each have one for when we go and stay at families houses etc. I think it might be easier than our usual system of using bags for life and then watching everything spill out of said bag for life! 

I love the fabric combination on this though and the fact that its HUGE! I mean seriously pretty sure you could carry a child around in this! I didn't cut the fabric I used for the mainly body of the bag instead I just whipped out my maths gcse and worked out how big my circle needed to be based on the dimensions! 

I will do a full thing on working it out at some point but for now :

measure your main fabric width,

divide that measurement by 3.14 [pi] and then you have the diameter for your circle! [remember the diameter is from edge to edge of a circle.

I did button holes at the top to thread the straps through the channelling but I'm pretty sure I got one twisted.

And I used some D rings from an old handbag to give it more a store brought feel. Although I have miss judged slightly and made the straps too skinny for the rings!

I like my X top stitching though! Its pretty tidy!

I took these photos with a few towels stuffed in to give it more shape.

All in all I'm calling it a grand success.

In other news I'm still feeling icky, I'm not sure what's up apart from me getting the boys cold anyway I'm trying to combat it all by resting and eating right. In fact as we speak I've got my feet up and I'm watching star wars revenge of the sith. As much as I love the old movies the costumes in the first three are awesome! Particularly the queens! 

Anyway I'm off to rest and try and finish this blooming Miette cardigan!

Much Love

Frankie

High Waisted Circle skirt

I'm not sure whether I like this or whether I hate it yet. From some angles I feel it makes me look really wide..... like a truck.

It's a circle skirt {using my own method} attached to a Clemence skirt waistband that I extended to 8 inches, to make it a high "high" waisted skirt. I didn't have any heavy weight interfacing so I just used some Hessian that I had in my stash. {I think Hessian is the right word, its like potato sack fabric}

The fabric was free from a friend who gave me a roll of this fabric. and the zip is re-purposed from one of lil mans old clothes. I did a lapped zip insertion again but you can't really tell because of how bulky both the zip and the fabric are.   

When it was finished I had to shorten it by about 6 inches but other than that I just did a standard hem. Although it only has one full row of hem stitching, generally I like to do two rows but my bobbin ran out half way and I wasn't in love enough to actually rewind the bobbin for this one project.  Luckily it's not that noticeable. 

There's a box pleat at the front that I put in to use up the excess, I like it though because it means there's less chance of me flashing my pants when I sit down.

Because of how wide I think it makes me look wish the full waistband I've been folding it down by about two inches. At least I learnt something though, If I'm doing something this high waisted I need to curve the waistband to the curves of my body more, so I look less wide. 

In other news I haven't posted for a few days because poor Rikki came down with a migraine on Wednesday morning and was really sick all sodding day! {We had planned to have a romantic breakfast pancake meal but that went out the window after the noises I heard from the bathroom}

So yeah that was awesome, then being the sensible human I decided to sleep in the man room so that if it was a virus at least one of us wouldn't be infected! And then lil man woke up at 3am! YES! 3am with a bad dream and came into bed with me.... In the man room.....on the futon..... the uncomfortable futon......which lil man soon hogged all the his lonesome.

And he made my arm numb........ Life's a blast isn't it?

Luckily everyone's feeling better now and we haven't had a bad dream since. 

Much Love

Frankie 

xxx