Sunday, November 1, 2015
...an engagement card
A few years ago I changed careers. I went from being a scientist to working in the Professional Services within Universities (I added my work sector as I realise that saying I work in the Professional Services could be misconstrued...!!). Not long after I did this, I joined the AUA (Association of University Administrators) and soon after went to conference at Warwick University where I met someone from UCL called Lee Standen. We got on well from the start and when I moved to UCL Lee and I became very close friends. He is a one of my 'important to me' people. A couple of years ago he started seeing Emma, another AUA colleague from the University of London and they make each other so happy, it's just lovely. Anyway, earlier this year, Lee and I went on a training course together and at the pub after, Lee said he was thinking of asking Emma to marry him, which I wholeheartedly endorsed! So after a bit more nudging from me, on their holiday in Mexico in September Lee popped the question to a very surprised Emma! She obviously said yes, and so that spurred me into making an engagement card! The outcome of which is below...
...whiskey
At work I receive many, many emails from the various mailing lists I'm on. It does mean that I don't tend to subscribe to many in my personal life. For those, I rely on my friend Cathy. She gets sent information about a whole load of random events and so when she received details of a whiskey blending taking place at Brown's in St Martin's Lane, well, it was a given that we were going to do it! It was a really good deal and included a 3-course dinner (which is fortunate because I just dread to think what my hangover would have been without the food!).
Anyway, following the first two courses we sat down to a table with the following in front of us:
The evening started with Phil, the Brand Ambassador for Chivas Regal, telling us a bit about the history of whiskey (which as I'm currently engrossed in the Outlander series was a little familiar!) and explaining the different whiskies we had available to blend. There were 5 in total, covering a range of flavours from very light to smoky to ones with more depth of flavour. Following a review of the individual whiskies, the idea was to blend them to give a whiskey which suited our own personal taste.
And so it began...
I started off OK, but then decided I'd added to much of the smoky whiskey. I'd only added a what seemed like a small amount but it was very overpowering! We had a sheet that we were writing in the proportions of the various whiskies we were adding and I decided in my - at this point somewhat drunken state - to remove half of what I'd made and dilute down again with the lighter options. You'll see from this sheet, trying to do sums when you have consumed a substantial amount of whiskey is quite tricky!!
The idea was that we ended up with 250ml of whiskey. I really couldn't tell you from my scribblings if I achieved that, all I can say is that it fit in the bottle!!
I should probably say at this point, that I'm not a big whiskey drinker at all... So I'm unable to say whether or not it was a good blend or not. I can say it didn't win the prize for the best blend on the night, nor did I win the best name for the whiskey, nor could I expect it to appear in this guide...
...but it was a fun evening, at that's what matters isn't it!
Anyway, following the first two courses we sat down to a table with the following in front of us:
The evening started with Phil, the Brand Ambassador for Chivas Regal, telling us a bit about the history of whiskey (which as I'm currently engrossed in the Outlander series was a little familiar!) and explaining the different whiskies we had available to blend. There were 5 in total, covering a range of flavours from very light to smoky to ones with more depth of flavour. Following a review of the individual whiskies, the idea was to blend them to give a whiskey which suited our own personal taste.
And so it began...
Monday, August 31, 2015
...a selection of birthday cards
I finally got round to finishing the 70th birthday card for Tony - ta da!
Anyway, with it being payday last Friday and a bank holiday weekend, I went over to Hobbycraft yesterday to feed my new habit for craft items! I have some birthdays coming up in September so decided to practice my card making skills. They need a little honing I feel.
Anyway, back to the birthday card. it was all going swimmingly, I did my grass with a glue pen and green pigment powder, and stamped out the animals. They were then sprinkled with clear embossing powder and then heated with my heat gun. Before and after below.
I then went on to do the Happy Birthday across the top and to gold emboss it when the heating tool died. Soooooo frustrating. I've used it like 5 times. I tried using my hair dryer on its hot setting but it wouldn't work for the gold and then the gold powder couldn't be removed without messing up the top of the card so sadly I had to start all over again.The hairdryer could mostly do the clear embossing on the brown but for some of it I had to go over it again with a glue pen and add in more embossing powder. I chose not to gold emboss the Happy Birthday this time and to just colour in the animals as planned. I had thought about buying some water colour pens, but they're so expensive I just bought colouring pencils in the end. Anyway, this is the finished card!
I think it's quite cute!
After this I made a card for my Uncle. I'd been looking for ideas for cards for him online last week and I really like a bunting card that I'd seen. So I bought a pack of double sided paper and cut out some pennants:
After that it was a case of adding the sparkly string that the pennants are attached to and hey presto! A card with bunting on it!
My final card is for my friend Shobana. I was a bit stuck on what to do, as whilst I enjoy making things, I don't have the ideas without a nudge. So had a look through my card making book and liked the idea of having a window cut out of the card that I could hang a 'gift' from. So I made the gift first and then cut out the window to the appropriate size and edged it with silver:
For the gift I made a double-sided red square with slightly smaller silver squares inside and used ricrac to tie the gift up. After adding a little red bow that I'd bought from Hobbycraft I hung it in the window and this is the finished article!
I've really enjoyed doing this today. It's made me realise that there are few things that would be helpful such as a fine tipped glue dispenser. Something tells me this crafting habit is going to be one of my more expensive ones...!
I'm really pleased with how it turned out in the end. It doesn't look so good in the picture as it does in real life, I think I've dropped my camera one too many times as it seems to struggle to focus these days.
Anyway, with it being payday last Friday and a bank holiday weekend, I went over to Hobbycraft yesterday to feed my new habit for craft items! I have some birthdays coming up in September so decided to practice my card making skills. They need a little honing I feel.
The first one is for my cousin's daughter Bethany. I had a plan to do an animal card with a basic Happy Birthday message at the top. I practised yesterday and was quite please with the plan. I have decided that on my cards I'm going to put my Andrea makes... stamp in the bottom right hand corner rather than in the middle of the card. This is what my future cards will look like:
One of things I bought yesterday was a paper creaser, which turned out to be a very good example of how much easier things are when you have the right tools!
Anyway, back to the birthday card. it was all going swimmingly, I did my grass with a glue pen and green pigment powder, and stamped out the animals. They were then sprinkled with clear embossing powder and then heated with my heat gun. Before and after below.
I then went on to do the Happy Birthday across the top and to gold emboss it when the heating tool died. Soooooo frustrating. I've used it like 5 times. I tried using my hair dryer on its hot setting but it wouldn't work for the gold and then the gold powder couldn't be removed without messing up the top of the card so sadly I had to start all over again.The hairdryer could mostly do the clear embossing on the brown but for some of it I had to go over it again with a glue pen and add in more embossing powder. I chose not to gold emboss the Happy Birthday this time and to just colour in the animals as planned. I had thought about buying some water colour pens, but they're so expensive I just bought colouring pencils in the end. Anyway, this is the finished card!
I think it's quite cute!
After this I made a card for my Uncle. I'd been looking for ideas for cards for him online last week and I really like a bunting card that I'd seen. So I bought a pack of double sided paper and cut out some pennants:
Then I did a sketch on the card of where I wanted the bunting to drape and stuck on the pennants. I did need to shift them around a bit to get them to drape evenly so they didn't completely follow the initial pencil lines.
After that it was a case of adding the sparkly string that the pennants are attached to and hey presto! A card with bunting on it!
My final card is for my friend Shobana. I was a bit stuck on what to do, as whilst I enjoy making things, I don't have the ideas without a nudge. So had a look through my card making book and liked the idea of having a window cut out of the card that I could hang a 'gift' from. So I made the gift first and then cut out the window to the appropriate size and edged it with silver:
For the gift I made a double-sided red square with slightly smaller silver squares inside and used ricrac to tie the gift up. After adding a little red bow that I'd bought from Hobbycraft I hung it in the window and this is the finished article!
I've really enjoyed doing this today. It's made me realise that there are few things that would be helpful such as a fine tipped glue dispenser. Something tells me this crafting habit is going to be one of my more expensive ones...!
Sunday, August 9, 2015
...a 'new home' card and a mess!
I have some friends that are moving house soon. I decided that they will be the recipients of the first card I make. I'd had grand plans for the first card based on one in my card making book. However, when I started buying the bits to make it, I realised that I would very easily bankrupt myself if I did! Not that the individual bits were that expensive, but along with the other items I'd already bought, I was not only stretching my budget this month, I was properly breaking it. Because of this, I decided to simplify the design. I have two criteria for the cards I plan to make:
One of the things I love about my new 5 in 1 trimmer is the scalloped edge, which you can see in the middle here when I was testing it out.
I decided to use that as part of the card design. I also have the lovely red card in the back of this picture and planned the card to be a cream card, with a red front panel and a gold, embossed key on the front. So having assembled the necessary bits...
...I set about making the card. This was a really steep learning curve. The basics of the doing the stamping and embossing were fairly simple to perfect. It was the measuring and centering I struggled with. There are only so many pencil marks I wanted to put on the card. So having produced my scalloped edge, and my gold embossed key on red card...
...I attempted to combine the two. Not so very simple. I ended up making the pencil marks very small at the edge of the card and tried to line up by eye but managed to get it a mm out. This may not sound like much but on a small card (they're A6) it was noticeable. So I ended up having to make a second set of the above and went for putting pencil dots in where the corners of the red card needed to be. This it turns out works well, especially as I used foam pads to attach the panel to the card, so I was able to take a slice of my eraser that was thin enough to slide under the edge of the panel and remove the telltale dots! This is the finished card...
With of course my beautiful 'Andrea makes...' stamp on the reverse!
Feeling particularly pleased with myself, I then set about making a 70th birthday card for my friend Tony. Last week I also bought myself some fun bits and bobs from Paperchase.
I work on Tottenham Court Road so I'm really close to their flagship store. I'm already recognised by the sales assistant in the art section (I know this as she knew I had a reward card and asked for it as opposed to the person in front of me who she asked if she had one!). I'm fairly sure that Paperchase is going to be named in the papers I file for bankruptcy.
On Friday, I'd done a search for ideas for cards and so have had a basic card idea percolating for the last couple of days. As I said, I like simple, so I did a drawing of my plan for the card.
One thing I can't do is draw! Whilst I may like creating and making things, drawing them is not my idea of fun! Anyway, I'd bought myself some gold and silver gel pens this morning and so using the pale blue card I'd bought in Paperchase I planned the text for my card and set about writing the letters. All went really well, until I realised that (a) I can't measure very well and (b) gel pens take a bloody long time to dry. Longer, it seems, than I allowed as I when I went to erase the pencil ines, I managed to smudge all the writing! Oops! Not to be deterred, I decided that I didn't like the plain silver anyway, there wasn't a great enough contrast with the card and so I used the rest of the card to try out an alternative colour/combination of colours. The result being...
I'd bought some glittery gel pens years ago when I made a scrapbook I made of a round the world trip I'd had and they've not dried out so I decided to use a combination of the blue one and the silver pen. Turns out I still wasn't any better at measuring and I still didn't leave it long enough to dry!
I did like the combination of the blue and silver though which you can see a little better in this cropped image...
Having smudged the writing a second time, I decided to use this card to do a mock-up of the card. I want the presents to be in relief but I didn't want to waste too much of the A4 sheets of glittery blue and shiny silver paper so I used a piece of the silver card that came in the scraps pack that I bought in Paperchase - can I just take a moment to recommend this. It was £1.65 and contains loads of small bits of card. The silver bits are perfect for me for this mock-up and there are so many other pieces in there I'll do loads with it, very good value for money! The mirror and blue glittery cards are actually self adhesive so for the relief, I bought a clear plastic sheet and so I'll make the present boxes from these with the self adhesive sheet stuck to it. For now though, I used the silver card and some of the glittery paper and mirror card for the ribbons on my trial run and this was the outcome...
This was a really useful exercise because my feeling is that the text needs changing. I think the letters need to be a little bit bigger and very slightly lower down the card. A thicker nibbed pen would be better as well. The presents should also move slightly lower down the card too. The scrapbook I mentioned earlier, I went back to the bag that I had all the bits in for it and discovered I owned a whole load of craft items I'd forgotten about. These included a small cutting mat, metal rule, craft blade, stickers and all manner of other fun stuff. I need to do some bows for the presents and the blade will be perfect for cutting them out.
However, at this point, as I messed up the only two blue cards I had, I'm now out of those (I'm going by Paperchase again tomorrow so can pick up some more ;-) ) but until then I've hit a roadblock.
This has been such a useful exercise and today I have learnt the following:
- They will be simple and chic;
- If I saw them in a shop, I would want to buy them.
One of the things I love about my new 5 in 1 trimmer is the scalloped edge, which you can see in the middle here when I was testing it out.
I decided to use that as part of the card design. I also have the lovely red card in the back of this picture and planned the card to be a cream card, with a red front panel and a gold, embossed key on the front. So having assembled the necessary bits...
...I set about making the card. This was a really steep learning curve. The basics of the doing the stamping and embossing were fairly simple to perfect. It was the measuring and centering I struggled with. There are only so many pencil marks I wanted to put on the card. So having produced my scalloped edge, and my gold embossed key on red card...
...I attempted to combine the two. Not so very simple. I ended up making the pencil marks very small at the edge of the card and tried to line up by eye but managed to get it a mm out. This may not sound like much but on a small card (they're A6) it was noticeable. So I ended up having to make a second set of the above and went for putting pencil dots in where the corners of the red card needed to be. This it turns out works well, especially as I used foam pads to attach the panel to the card, so I was able to take a slice of my eraser that was thin enough to slide under the edge of the panel and remove the telltale dots! This is the finished card...
With of course my beautiful 'Andrea makes...' stamp on the reverse!
Feeling particularly pleased with myself, I then set about making a 70th birthday card for my friend Tony. Last week I also bought myself some fun bits and bobs from Paperchase.
I work on Tottenham Court Road so I'm really close to their flagship store. I'm already recognised by the sales assistant in the art section (I know this as she knew I had a reward card and asked for it as opposed to the person in front of me who she asked if she had one!). I'm fairly sure that Paperchase is going to be named in the papers I file for bankruptcy.
On Friday, I'd done a search for ideas for cards and so have had a basic card idea percolating for the last couple of days. As I said, I like simple, so I did a drawing of my plan for the card.
One thing I can't do is draw! Whilst I may like creating and making things, drawing them is not my idea of fun! Anyway, I'd bought myself some gold and silver gel pens this morning and so using the pale blue card I'd bought in Paperchase I planned the text for my card and set about writing the letters. All went really well, until I realised that (a) I can't measure very well and (b) gel pens take a bloody long time to dry. Longer, it seems, than I allowed as I when I went to erase the pencil ines, I managed to smudge all the writing! Oops! Not to be deterred, I decided that I didn't like the plain silver anyway, there wasn't a great enough contrast with the card and so I used the rest of the card to try out an alternative colour/combination of colours. The result being...
I'd bought some glittery gel pens years ago when I made a scrapbook I made of a round the world trip I'd had and they've not dried out so I decided to use a combination of the blue one and the silver pen. Turns out I still wasn't any better at measuring and I still didn't leave it long enough to dry!
I did like the combination of the blue and silver though which you can see a little better in this cropped image...
Having smudged the writing a second time, I decided to use this card to do a mock-up of the card. I want the presents to be in relief but I didn't want to waste too much of the A4 sheets of glittery blue and shiny silver paper so I used a piece of the silver card that came in the scraps pack that I bought in Paperchase - can I just take a moment to recommend this. It was £1.65 and contains loads of small bits of card. The silver bits are perfect for me for this mock-up and there are so many other pieces in there I'll do loads with it, very good value for money! The mirror and blue glittery cards are actually self adhesive so for the relief, I bought a clear plastic sheet and so I'll make the present boxes from these with the self adhesive sheet stuck to it. For now though, I used the silver card and some of the glittery paper and mirror card for the ribbons on my trial run and this was the outcome...
This was a really useful exercise because my feeling is that the text needs changing. I think the letters need to be a little bit bigger and very slightly lower down the card. A thicker nibbed pen would be better as well. The presents should also move slightly lower down the card too. The scrapbook I mentioned earlier, I went back to the bag that I had all the bits in for it and discovered I owned a whole load of craft items I'd forgotten about. These included a small cutting mat, metal rule, craft blade, stickers and all manner of other fun stuff. I need to do some bows for the presents and the blade will be perfect for cutting them out.
However, at this point, as I messed up the only two blue cards I had, I'm now out of those (I'm going by Paperchase again tomorrow so can pick up some more ;-) ) but until then I've hit a roadblock.
This has been such a useful exercise and today I have learnt the following:
- This is not as easy as it looks;
- Regular hand washing helps as you get ink on your hands without realising and then smudge stuff;
- Ink doesn't dry very fast;
- Pencil lines can cause problems so I need to figure out a better way to line things up;
- It will be so satisfying when I get it right!!
...a start on building up my crafting collection
So yesterday I picked up my parcel from the sorting office...
Can you imagine my excitement on opening it?! It was very safely packaged...
And held these fab goodies!!
Of course I couldn't resist trying them out! I'd purchased some adhesive bits from Paperchase...
and so the first thing I did was use the double sided sticky tape to attach my Andrea makes... stamp to the acrylic block to try it out!
I'm even more delighted with the stamp now than I was when it first arrived! Next I tried out my new giraffe stamp. Giraffes are my favourite animals and so when I saw this one, I really couldn't help myself!
How fab is that! I also bought some other stamps and the page below shows you some of those.
The gold ink pad I used for the key is a pigment pad, and I will use this for embossing (you'll see the heating tool and embossing powder above). I was meeting some friends yesterday afternoon so didn't have the time to try that out. That had to wait until the next day...
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
...herself smile
For my day job I'm a Project Manager sort of person at UCL. I say sort of Project Manager because I don't manage projects in a traditional sense but my role means I am instrumental to keeping them on track. That's enough of a description about that! Today was not a fun day and I was so ready for it to be over. How excited was I then when I received the very unexpected email telling me that my stamp was out for delivery today! OMG basically! I only ordered it on Sunday. I'm sorry you don't get a picture of the packaging because frankly I was too damn impatient to open the envelope! This is what I found inside...
Behind that very innocent looking piece of card was this baby!
I've ordered lots of crafty bits from Hobbycraft which includes a block to attach the stamp to and I'll share those items with you when they arrive. But for now, the stamp was used without a handle because basically I couldn't wait I totally cannot resist temptation so if you want me to do something that I want to do, trust me, nothing will stop me! These are a couple of my first attempts.
The first is neater but the second shows that the dots are the same size (I pressed a little too hard on the top one). The green is perfect. I wanted it to match my blog as closely as possible. the picture has come out a little darker than it is in person so it was such a good choice. I'm so excited for the Hobbycraft order to arrive! It just goes to show that:
- Going green is good for you...
- Small pieces of rubber can make you inordinately happy...
- Even a really bad day can get better!
Monday, August 3, 2015
...sew in labels
So once I get going there's no stopping me! Labels have followed the stamp.
This again was the closest font I could find and trust me I looked at a lot of websites! In the end I got them from CottonTrends and I think they were pretty good value. I ordered 72 labels and they were only £13.95 + £1.95 postage which I was impressed with (assuming the labels are good...). The 17 reviews all give them either 4/5 or 5/5 so I'm hopeful! Will post a picture when they arrive. Apparently they're shipping tomorrow so not long to wait!! Exciting!!
5th August 2015
Oh how foolish I was! I arrived home this evening to the delivery of the labels. Imagine my disappointment when I opened them and saw...
Whilst most of the text is fine, the initial A is all wrong. Soooo disappointed! Have emailed CottonTrends and will let you know what they say.
11th August 2015
So CottonTrends have totally failed me. All I kept getting from them was that due to technical constraints the images could vary from the text that is printed. I'm so disappointed!! Stupid CottonTrends company, we hate them. Sadly, it appears that no-one else on their website needed their capital A to look like I needed mine to and they're all absolutely delighted with the fast delivery. I've left a bad review on their website but if it actually makes it onto it I'm dubious. May have to think about a different approach using fabric dyes and the beautiful stamp from The English Stamp Company whose customer service was a-maz-ing!!
This again was the closest font I could find and trust me I looked at a lot of websites! In the end I got them from CottonTrends and I think they were pretty good value. I ordered 72 labels and they were only £13.95 + £1.95 postage which I was impressed with (assuming the labels are good...). The 17 reviews all give them either 4/5 or 5/5 so I'm hopeful! Will post a picture when they arrive. Apparently they're shipping tomorrow so not long to wait!! Exciting!!
5th August 2015
Oh how foolish I was! I arrived home this evening to the delivery of the labels. Imagine my disappointment when I opened them and saw...
Whilst most of the text is fine, the initial A is all wrong. Soooo disappointed! Have emailed CottonTrends and will let you know what they say.
11th August 2015
So CottonTrends have totally failed me. All I kept getting from them was that due to technical constraints the images could vary from the text that is printed. I'm so disappointed!! Stupid CottonTrends company, we hate them. Sadly, it appears that no-one else on their website needed their capital A to look like I needed mine to and they're all absolutely delighted with the fast delivery. I've left a bad review on their website but if it actually makes it onto it I'm dubious. May have to think about a different approach using fabric dyes and the beautiful stamp from The English Stamp Company whose customer service was a-maz-ing!!
Sunday, August 2, 2015
...a stamp
So I would like to start making cards. You'll hear more about this in the coming months as I start this new crafting adventure. In the meantime, I thought I'd design myself a stamp so that I can personalise the cards so people know I made them! I decided to go with 'Andrea makes...' as the name that I will put on the cards to brand myself along with the blog. I also wanted the font to be as close as possible to my handwriting. Sadly blogger doesn't allow me to upload my own text for the blog title (at least I don't think it does - it you know differently please tell me how!) so I've chosen the most similar font as my blog title and I designed the following stamp:
This is way more similar to my handwriting, pretty much the only difference is that I don't loop the stalk of my k, but I can live with that. I've ordered the clear stamp from The English Stamp Company and according to their delivery details it should be here by the end of the week, just in time for the rest of my card-making stuff to arrive! Very excited!!
This is way more similar to my handwriting, pretty much the only difference is that I don't loop the stalk of my k, but I can live with that. I've ordered the clear stamp from The English Stamp Company and according to their delivery details it should be here by the end of the week, just in time for the rest of my card-making stuff to arrive! Very excited!!
...wide leg cropped trousers
Today we received the very sad news that Cilla Black has died. This is particularly poignant for our family as my Mum and Dad got together after going to a Cilla Black concert so I wouldn't be here if not for her. So have been doing fun stuff today listening to the tributes to Cilla on the radio. Fun stuff equates to finishing off a pair of trousers I started making earlier this week! I have a real problem buying trousers as the tops of my legs are very large compared to the rest of them so if I get a pair if trousers to fit my waist and the rest of my legs they are so tight at the top, and if they fit the tops of my legs, they're massive everywhere else. After doing lots of internet research using every search term I could think of including 'wide leg' or 'cropped trousers' and combinations and variations of these I happened upon the following pattern:
I was particularly delighted with the pattern because I have a skirt that I bought around 5 years ago but have never owned a top that would go with it. The top (which is part of the pattern) will be perfect!
For now though, I've focused on the trousers. It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and so with some of my birthday money I treated myself to some new dressmaking scissors...
They are amazing and I was excited to use them for the first time on this project. One thing I was still concerned with though was the legs. As it turned out, the legs weren't the issue! I'm quite round from waist to hip but I properly go in at my waist and I wanted to make sure they would fit. So when I measure around my widest part I discovered the pattern to be around 10 cms too small. So I added in some extra material - you may be able to see the red lines in these pictures...
On pattern piece 14 I extended on the left hand side (foolishly didn't extend into the crotch though too so they are a bit snug around my hips).
My sewing machine is a classic. I was bought it for my 17th birthday (I'm now 41) so whilst it was modern in its day, it's now 24 years old. It's a Brother VX-2013. Good luck if you ever want to find out anything about it. I think Brother only made 2. Mine and one for a woman who needed a replacement part for hers - pretty much the only other reference I've ever found to this model on the internet!!
My mum and sister have been suggesting I have a new one for Christmas but I'm the sort of person who hates to replace things like this if they still work and this does. It starts to get very noisy and wobbles my table sometimes but then every so often (such as for this project) I remember to oil it and it's back to running perfectly again! Maybe it's me that needs oiling occasionally too!
I am also the lucky owner of Janome 8002DX overlocker.
This was a present from my family for my 40th and is one of the most amazing gadgets I've ever owned. These trousers I made in fake linen so it frays quite badly. With the overlocker you get such a professional finish and the fraying ceases to be an issue.
I started making the trousers on Wednesday whilst still on annual leave. It was a really simple pattern to follow with the most challenging part being putting in the invisible zip but I think I did it quite nicely!
I am delighted with them. As I mentioned they're a little snug round my hips but they'll be fine. This is what they look like on:
It's been a long time since I made trousers but this pattern might get me to start doing them again. I think the long version is great so in the coming months I'll probably give the longer version a go.
For now though, I've focused on the trousers. It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and so with some of my birthday money I treated myself to some new dressmaking scissors...
My sewing machine is a classic. I was bought it for my 17th birthday (I'm now 41) so whilst it was modern in its day, it's now 24 years old. It's a Brother VX-2013. Good luck if you ever want to find out anything about it. I think Brother only made 2. Mine and one for a woman who needed a replacement part for hers - pretty much the only other reference I've ever found to this model on the internet!!
I am also the lucky owner of Janome 8002DX overlocker.
I started making the trousers on Wednesday whilst still on annual leave. It was a really simple pattern to follow with the most challenging part being putting in the invisible zip but I think I did it quite nicely!
I finished them off today! I'd stopped on Wednesday because the waistband was supposed to be 2 inches but this was just too big for me, I needed it to be an inch wide. I was tired at the point I stopped on Wednesday and so I was concerned I might end up cutting the waistband wrong so I finished the waistband today, did the turnups and added in the hook and eye and then they were done!!
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