Archie The Wonder Dog

Hello!  I hope you haven't been blown away or had the beck perilously close to your front door this month? It's definitely been a bit wild out there at times... ...and you'd think that would mean loads of sewing, wouldn't you?  Not exactly! I've made another three LV blocks: And I've made progress on my jeans: I've cut out the legs and a makeshift yoke and waistband and pocket linings in canvas, tacked them all together, and have had a fitting session with a friend.  I'm now ready to undo all that, cut out the remaining pieces in denim and make a start on the front.  All of the adjustments seem to be on the back, so I'm going to make up the front and then tack the back back on to see if things like having a zip in (rather than being pinned into them) make any difference before I make any of the adjustments.  A bit more work, yes, but worth it to get a pair of jeans which fit!  Having said all that, when I was in them the other ...

Hello!  Happy New Year!  2020.  Can you believe it?!! This month, I've made a good start on the grand sort out and tidy up of my sewing room which is my focus for the year and I've been through all my fiction books and weeded out the NotWanteds (44 of them) and rehomed them in a local charity shop.  The books which are staying have been catalogued using a web app called Libib  and will, at some point, be sorted alphabetically by author (at the moment, they're organised by author but in a random fashion depending on what I can fit on each shelf).  I've weeded ALL my scrap boxes and rehomed the NotWanteds to various quilty chums around the country.  I've been through the two boxes of destash stuff I'd accumulated since my last destash and rehomed many of the items with more chums around the country (and one chum in Australia!) and have a plan for the remaining items.  Feel free to have a look at my destash account  and see if you would li...

Hello!  Welcome to the December Furtle, which is also acting as (if you wish and only if you wish) a 2019 Round Up Furtle - a dual purpose Furtle, if you like. This month has been an odd one for making, but let's see what I can pull out of the archives. (Is it just me who can't quite believe that the beginning of December was only 30 days ago? It feels more like it might have been 90 days ago but, at the same time, I don't know where December has gone...) I've already blogged about the  penguin hot water bottle cover and two rope baskets (haven't quite managed the third one of those I was hoping, but there's still time left in the quarter, even if there isn't time left in the year!) I've made this month (which feels like it happened last month, at the very least), but I made a last-minute Christmas present for my niece: I bought the fabric from here , the zip from my usual place , and used a combination of this tutorial for straight-si...

Item sixteen on my  Q4 FAL list  was a medium-sized rope basket to keep a pair of shoes/boots in - it's a tiny porch and I'm sick of tripping over my shoes on the doormat! As you can see, it's a bit mis-shapen and coggly, but the fact that it's rope and so doesn't hold its shape* works in my favour, I think. Also, it's never seen from the side (the porch is too small for that unless you touch your toes and look three inches in front of your nose) and it looks less coggly in real life, I think. Here it is with the small one , where the shape (or lack of it) is much more obvious.  (As is the fact that one hank of rope was clearly a slightly different shade!)  It has 80m of rope in it, about 1000m of thread (I lost count!) and took quite a while to make.  It also involved lots of wrestling and sewing with my head (or half of it) in the basket so I could actually see the foot.  All I need to do now is turn the remaining hanks into a basket to st...

Item fifteen on my  Q4 FAL list  was a small rope basket to keep my keys in.  This is the first rope basket/bowl I've made and although it's not perfect (and that's one of the appeals of them, I think), I'm quite pleased with how it looks. I used a piece of navy leather to hide the end and it's definitely something I'd do again, probably with a bit more finesse! It's the perfect size for my keys - small enough to be unobtrusive, but large enough to fit a couple of sets of keys in and not have to fish around. Aurifil spool for scale I had enough rope left from the (20m) hank ( this one, from Yorkshire Trading ) to make a small mat for the porch windowsill - these elephants (made from recycled pop tins) have always lived on it, but their feet leave grey marks on the paint, so it was either make something for them to stand on or paint their feet with varnish (probably the nail rather than wood variety!).  However, someone has spotted its potentia...

Item fourteen on my  Q4 FAL list  was a hot water bottle cover for my niece.  I made one for myself earlier in the year which my niece saw and fell in love with.  Here's mine: For hers, I decided on a slightly different approach as mine is quite difficult to get the bottle in and out of (I should have added more than 1.5" all round when drawing round the hot water bottle, particularly round the neck!) so I thought a pouch style would be easier. Here's the penguin: Here he is with the background added: Here he is with the echo quilting (five rounds was more than enough for me so I embroidered over some of the background stars with dark blue coton a broder but that's in the next picture, not this one): And here he is finished: I added poppers to the flap to made it easy to open/close and now want to add them to everything!   Here's how it looks with a(n empty) hot water bottle in it: All in all, I'm reall...

This month seems to have been a bit of a quiet month.  Mainly because I unexpectedly had a hat and scarf to knit just as I'd nominated my #StickyProdAlong2019 project and sworn I wouldn't start anything else until it was finished. Oops! Here's the hat: I love the crown on this pattern And here's the scarf: Both are knitted with Rowan felted tweed.  The hat is the Iced Hat pattern and the scarf is based on this project  (the stitch is cartridge rib ) but I made it shorter and folded one end over to create a loop for the other end to go through (59 sts, 36.25" long, fold over 4.75").  This has helped reduce the bulk and make sure that Mam doesn't have to deal with dangling or whipping scarf ends while walking Eddie. There has been a lone LV scrappy trip block, which brings the count to 21: Sorry about the night time photo - I didn't press it until late afternoon yesterday! Quite a lot of progress on the penguin hot water b...