Flossie Teacakes

Shop Update

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:28:00 +0000

I always feel a little pained by doing shop updates on my blog, for the whole 'selling' side of things (as in door-to-door pushiness) makes me feel horribly uncomfortable, so if reading shop updates has a similar effect on you as it does on me when writing them, then please avert your eyes and come back another day when I am feeling less like a wizened peddler woman (and please do try to forgive me for donating a whole post to shamelessly plugging my own shop).

The week before last I made up a couple more framed fabric pictures. I wanted to try the Cinderella picture using different fabrics.

I think I like the colours on this one a little better.

For the girl on the swing picture...well...I actually really loved the colours in that the first time around and so made another, almost identical, one. They are both in my shop here.

I also decided to make some more hair accessories boards - I have changed the design of them since the first one I made (which is now nearly 18 months ago...time has gone so fast!).

This blue one is already in the post on the way to its new home. But the pink one is waiting happily in my shop here.

I love this print, and just looking at it makes me feel quite excited because more Heather Bailey loveliness is now available as she has just released her new fabric range: Nicey Jane - I can't wait to get my paws on it.

You may remember that I've made a couple of children's glasses cases as custom orders. I decided to add some of these to the range in my shop.

My own little Teacakes have tested the flex frames for me and they are just right for smaller hands to open and close. You can see more here.

And finally, when lovely Joanne had her little boy I wanted to send her an old fashioned layette of baby clothes.

As both herself and Mr Joleo are more than a little cat-obsessed I knew instantly what I wanted to decorate the clothes with. However, this is the last time it will be referred to as a layette, due to the word unexpectedly enraging Mr Teacakes who claimed it was a ridiculous sewing term ...no amount of Googling could convince him that it was actually a proper non-geeky word, albeit a rather outdated one. I have added the 'Baby Set' to my shop here (yes, it's a baby set now), available in pink or blue, as a design-it-yourself item, so that it can be ordered with whatever theme of decoration that might most please the particular baby and parents in question.

Mr Teacakes has also added a Christmas section to my website, where there are wreaths, bunting and stockings available. There are a mass of new teabag holders, pin cushions and doorstops on there too...as well as the Honeycomb bag, as I am still trying to decide whether to keep it for myself or not, so I suppose whether it gets snaffled up will help make the decision for me.

Anyway, I am now going off on a brief adventure, one which I am very excited about, so I shall report back as soon as I have returned. Wishing you your own fun-filled Wednesday. x

We Make London fair...we make too much...

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:17:00 +0000

Catching up on some blogs on Sunday evening this post made me laugh for its utter accuracy as to the 'morning after' feelings that can come about after a fair. Luckily for us, we came somewhere in between the 'not a sausage' and the 'selling the whole stall out' varieties. I covered my table and travel costs and made a little extra on top of that...but ultimately (like I didn't already know this before I did it) it made me re-realise that I really don't enjoy doing fairs, even when in a beautiful building, surrounded by the nice people. I had the most lovely day with Joanne (pictured above lovingly arranging a doorstop) and Helen, and was utterly delighted to meet throughout the day with my sweet-laden sister, greatly-missed Lisa (who had the sweet surprised look of a mole to find herself out after being holed up writing her book for so long) and her lovely Al, Mary and her lovely little girl, Mr Joleo and adorable baby Fitz and Helen's husband and then her sister, who stole all the height in their family. Rather it's the lead up to a fair that I really dislike and which makes the whole thing feel a bit too much.

I find that in the run-up to a fair I feel that I've never made quite enough and so am constantly pushing myself to make more and thinking 'oh gosh...and I really ought to make a few of those too'. Whereas, in my shop I fill it with the things that I'd want to buy and for custom orders I love thinking about what the recipient might find most lovely, with a fair I lose all my confidence and spend much of my sewing time trying to imagine what might sell well in those few hours that my things are on display for and my thoughts on second-guessing what this well-selling item might be fly around my head wildly making me feel quite dizzy...and because I don't normally think in such a salesy way the whole thing feels most discombobulating. Does that make sense?

What's so funny about this feeling of needing to make more is that when we arrived at 10am and attempted to arrange our combined stock onto the table, we realised that we had an obscene case of overcrowding and many duplicate items had to be removed. We had somehow forgotten in the run-up that we'd taken a table together so that there would be no need to make things in such vast quantities. Oh dear. However, what I did delight in was that with Joanne and Helen to provide some balance, I reverted to sewing almost entirely in red and pink; something that I forced myself not to do at my last solo fair in an attempt to avoid looking insane and like I should have plaits in my hair that reach down to the floor (which is how I imagine the freaky lady who wants to sew everything in pink would look...oh dear, that's me without the hair length or plaits then...sometimes I want to run away from myself).

Anyway, moving swiftly on, I am delighted to have a tutorial of mine featured in the winter edition of the online UK Handmade magazine - their layout is always so crisp and minimal that to have something of mine in their lovely pages feels quite magical to me. It's a simple tutorial for this matryoshka needle case, which can be made either by hand or on the sewing machine and which I was hoping might be a nice Christmassy gifty thing that people would hopefully enjoy making. I only saw it on Friday, so haven't had a chance to read it, but I did see that lovely Pipany is being interviewed, so can't wait to sit down and read the whole thing cover to cover.

I also appear (I'm sorry, I shall go to ground shortly, I promise) in the rather wonderful Sew Hip magazine (December edition) this month - they asked if I would like to be the subject of their 'Introducing...' feature on the back page and I was delighted, not least because I love answering either/or questions (although some of my words have come out a little muddled, so I come across a little oddly at times, but really what's new there...I've just been talking about having floor length plaits). I will hopefully have a tutorial featuring in there the following month...and perhaps an article sometime after that - thankfully both were written and handed in last month, so now I'm left with just the fun part of waiting to see if they really will appear in print.

And finally, Saints & Pinners, who I mentioned at the end of my last post, saw the wreath that I'd shown and asked if they could feature it on their homepage and 'Make This' section of their website...which is most flattering. Hurrah! Bizarrely, both magazines that I appear in this month also feature one of these wreaths on their pages, so they are obviously becoming a very popular thing to make (if you haven't already, do give one a try as they are really easy and are a nice break from the sewing machine). Here's one on my living room door, with newly decorated Christmas tree twinkling in the background - yes, it's entirely silver and white...Mr Teacakes tactfully suggested that this might be the year when I chill out a little and permit myself to invest in some colour, an idea which both appalls and delights me in equal measure. I'll let you know how I get on.

We've had the most lovely relaxing Sunday, full of decorating, funny poems, making things, Christmas carols (replaced quickly by Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker as the whole family seems to have a low carol threshold), mince pies and Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf Stories, which make us all howl with laughter. It has been most restorative and, for me, went some way to making amends for the distracted half-mother that my children had been left with in the couple of days before the fair.

I hope you had a lovely weekend. x

P.s. my doors...I find them distressing - why would someone make a door with lovely solid wood for the frame and then use strange infill panes for the other bits? It makes me feel pained whenever I look at them. I'd really like to paint them a very matt Farrow & Ball creamy colour...but I feel overwhelmed by the prospect of sanding them back if it looks hideous...especially when Mr Teacakes is adamant that they look fine just the way they are. Does anyone else have these doors...do you have lovely pictures of them looking dreamy and wonderful in shades of milk and mushroom that you could share to give me courage?

Anyway, that's quite enough from me...

Feeling Christmassy

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:09:00 +0000

The 1st December was approaching and, with a surge akin to pregnancy hormones, my desire for all things Christmas was insatiable. I had so many plans of what I still wanted to make to take to the craft fair on Saturday and what I wanted to make as stock for my shop, but suddenly these were all pushed to one side as my pinking shears were wielded in order to make triangles of Christmassy bunting, and my rotary cutter was awarded a new blade so that it might help me cut through hundreds of layers of fabric to produce enough strips to crowd into some wreaths.

The wreaths I have wanted to make for well over a year now, having spotted them in quite a few places. They are surprisingly fabric-hungry things to make and it pained me a little to be using up so much of my red-coloured stash, but I am really trying to become less of a hoarder and to take comfort from the idea that even if one fabric is discontinued, something just as lovely might be printed to replace it. That didn't stop me checking that one or two were still available somewhere online before cutting into them to make the second wreath though...it's so hard to be good!

Anyway, I will be taking these Christmassy goodies to the fair, but I will be quite happy if they don't sell, as we don't seem to have quite enough decorations and the gasps of the littlest Teacakes when they walked in one morning to find that I had temporarily hung bunting on the walls were so gratifying that I can see I will be making some more anyway. Zebra-girl is also requesting that I make some year-round bunting for her bedroom.

I have, however, also managed to sandwich in making more framed fabric pictures, a couple of hair accessories boards, a batch of teabag holders. It's amazing what you can do when you have a deadline for making things...however, like Eeyore, I am feeling apprehensive about the fair. The one that I did one rain-soaked evening last December in a tiny country village was fairly dire and so with this as my only past-experience I feel convinced that fairs (for me, at least) may well be doomed ventures. However, what was unexpectedly lovely about last year was that I then had the most enormous amount of stock for my shop...something which I rarely find the time to make...so I'm focusing on that as a possible good outcome. But even more so, a day with my lovely girls and the chance to perhaps meet Fitz and Helen & Joanne's husbands, whom I've heard so much about. Mr Teacakes asked me if I wouldn't just be happier meeting up with them for cake and not bothering about the craft fair aspect in future...I'll report back to you on that post-fair. Anyway, if you happen to be in Chelsea on Saturday, then it would be so lovely to meet you. We will be in the smaller ante room, away from the main hall (possibly due to the expectation of bad behaviour, but I like to think the stalls were given out on a lucky dip basis), but in closer proximity to the cake room which is apparently due to be stocked by the founders of Patisserie Valerie. Not such a bad compromise after all. Today has been spent on last minute prepartions...like making price cards and swing tags.

Before I go, I wanted to tell those of you that aren't on their mailing list that Jo & Fran of UK-based Saints & Pinners are offering a scrumptious 20% off all fabric. I am trying so hard to exercise some self-restraint due to running out of storage space (we'll see how well I do as the offer is good until 20th December...so much time for me still to crack!), but must implore those of you that have a fabric-shaped hole in a cupboard or drawer to snaffle up the lovelies. Just type in SP2 at the checkout for discounty goodness. Has anyone else noticed quite how many wonderful online fabric shops are emerging in the UK in the last few months? I keep a long, ever-growing list of them in my email drafts (currently standing at 35!)...must share that at some point too.

Wishing you a lovely weekend,

Florence x

ps. I did ask Jo & Fran if it was okay for me to spread their offer in this way, and they were more than happy, so please don't let stolen discount code worries plague you if you're buying. x

pps. Do any other blogger users know what might be the problem with photo quality at the moment - I know that my photos are fine because they're crisp in Flickr...but blogger seems to be compressing them in an odd way so that they look fuzzy and dull...any ideas as to what I or blogger might be up to would be so appreciated. x

Too much mustard?

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Back in August when my local sewing shop began getting in their winter stock I practically fell to the floor in a swoon when I saw this mustard-coloured wool suiting. Thinking of winter bags and wishing the last days of summer away, I bought some right then and there, along with a little dark blue to go with it, as one of my favourite winter coats is just that colour (I was unsure if I was making it for myself or not...but illogically I tend to only make things that go with my own clothes). I'd had this weird up-and-downy scallopy effect in my head (I wonder if there's an official name for this technique - I'm sure that I've seen it on children's clothing before. It reminds me of honeycomb though...so for this reason this will be called The Honeycomb Bag) for a long time and couldn't wait to try it out. It made my head ache trying to work out how big the pattern piece needed to be to accommodate my scallops and they took far longer to execute than I could have possibly envisaged (for it needed to be done for both sides). However, I'm sure that I remember that Julia once wrote about giggling to herself as she sewed something that she found especially delightful (I'm so sorry to pin this one on you if it wasn't you, Julia - I can't find it in your archives!), but anyway, I must admit to partaking in a little of this mad laughter, for despite the time-consuming nature of it, the finished effect made me feel quite giddy.

So what a shame then that I ruined the whole bag by making some hideously thick piping for it and then installing a frumpily thick tab on it too. When I'd finished I hung it up on our cupboard doors (this is where all finished bags spend at least a couple of hours, so that I can decide whether I'm happy with everything) and sat feeling rather gloomy...would it be too over-dramatic to say that looking at my own poor workmanship and the bag's ugliness made me want to poke my eyes out with a fork? It stayed there taunting me for a couple of days, and then I put it away in my cupboard of finished Made by Florence shop items (which was a mistake, because it completely ruined the karma of the cupboard for me). Anyway, that was August and this is now. When getting something out of the cupboard this week I suddenly realised that I would either have to snip the bag into tiny bits to obliterate any evidence that such an eyesore ever existed...or would have to gently take the whole thing apart with my seam ripper, install some narrower piping and leave the cumbersome tab off all together. On environmental grounds I chose the latter.

I phoned a dear friend (who is incapacitated having just broken various body parts while cycling DOWN a hill as fast as her legs would turn the pedals...even she doesn't know why she chose to do this, but it just makes me love her all the more and makes me think of the Lotta books) and sat unpicking stitches while we giggled over what a loon she can be at times and the logistics of getting dressed without fully-functioning limbs.

And a couple of hours later I felt as though the bag had been rescued from the brink, even though Mr Teacakes says that mustard doesn't really appeal to him and looked slightly pained when I asked him what he thought of it. But then I have the same reaction to polyester football shirts, so that's fine, I suppose....for mustard makes me happier than a happy thing (NB. luckily Mr Teacakes understands the importance of not wearing this type of shirt at any other time than when actually playing football himself...which makes me even happier than the colour mustard).

Here's some close-up scallop action.

Other sewing this week has been canine related. Long-time readers may remember that a long time ago I made this cushion featuring a Westie dog for a friend of the smallest Teacake. Anyway, they recently asked me if I might rustle up a matching Christmas stocking, which of course I was only too happy to do.

I hung this up in Zebra-girl's room to photograph it as that's where the sun was and sweet little Honey happened to be sitting at the bed head with her paws resting over one of the little cats that decorate Zebra's slipper socks (bought from Monsoon in case your own girlie might like a pair...or inspiration for those of you who can actually click your knitting needles together like Dorothy and her red shoes...I'm like a farmer in wellingtons for that particular activity, which is why the slipper socks are bought, rather than homemade...but oh how I'd love to make stripy cat-adorned slipper socks). I was unsure as to whether she had noticed what was on the socks, and whether the paw was protective or predatory...but she looked so scrumptiously lovely sitting there in the sun that I had to take a photo of her.

Anyway, even more exciting than bags, stockings or cats is that we are off to meet a new baby this weekend - my sister-in-law has just had the most gorgeous little boy and the smaller Teacakes are beside themselves with what cousinish fun might be in store over the coming years. Horah!

Thank you so, so much for spoiling me with so many lovely and kind comments on my last post - I'm delighted that all three pictures have now been sold. If anyone is interested in commissioning one they are priced at £40, including framing and p&p (UK mainland only - overseas postage will come to a little more).

Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Florence x

p.s. for photos that are less grainy and blurry (why do you do this blogger?!) you can visit my photostream at Flickr.

To the ball...

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:41:00 +0000

I've recently felt (well a month or so ago...because there's a slight time-lag in my blogging at the moment) that I had so many ideas bubbling away in the background that I wasn't giving any time to that I just might go into melt-down if I didn't get them stitched and out of my head. With custom orders and trying to make stock for the craft fair (intermingled with going to spinning classes and the gym, which may seem like a self-indulgent way to spend time, but really my days are so sedentary that it began to seem a necessity if I was to have a hope of seeing my 33rd birthday) there didn't seem to be time in the week to set aside vast chunks of it for more experimental stitching that might be less likely to sell.

So one very wet and rainy weekend, the lovely Mr Teacakes let me spend two entire days and nights (yes, it was a this-is-so-much-fun-I-can't-waste-time-sleeping sort of affair) cutting out small bits of fabric, while he and the children pottered about playing board games and watching videos together and occasionally coming in to sit on the floor where I was working for chatting and the nibbling of jelly beans (vegetarians take note - delightfully, the Jelly Belly and M&S jelly beans are all free of gelatine and so are perfect for making up for all those lovely looking jelly sweets that are out of bounds...and the colours and flavours are so lovely that, luckily, my children find them far more appealing anyway). Cinderella going to a ball was first on my list of things that I really wanted to do. I love the fairy godmother and carriage scene and golden thread seemed the only way for me to go to attempt to make it seem as sparkly and magical as the written story is when read aloud.

It took me hours to decide on fabrics...I have the most enormous pile of wheel-shaped rejects, which was a piece over which I seemed to become particularly indecisive. I framed the final picture in white.

My next picture is of a girl on a swing. I think there's something inexplicably lovely about swings, both to children and adults and I know that Zebra-girl loves them (although more recently I just experience horrible vertigo-like feelings whenever I go on one, which I feel so annoyed about)...if only our own tree was strong enough to hang one from. This feels both spring-like and wintry to me, depending on whether you think of the background as sky or falling snow.

This was the picture that I ended up being most pleased with, as I really like the colours.

And because I really love her hair...and would quite like to have hair like that myself occasionally.

I tried each one hung on our own walls to see how they looked...to do this I had to take down one of our existing pictures and was greeted by forgotten evidence that it was me who had hung that picture, as the wall behind is covered in failed attempts to get the nail in properly. Oh dear. Picture changeover was done while Mr Teacakes was out of the room.

And finally, I've felt desperate to do something involving a hot air balloon for well over two years, so it was with complete happiness that I cut out the pieces for the balloon. I decided that this one needed to be a little more boyish and so I changed my thread to silver and stuck to bold primary colours.

There is a little grey cat peeping over the edge of the basket, although dinosaur-boy assumed that this was a wolf. I think I like the idea of a wolf in a hot air balloon floating over the tree tops and roofs tops even more, so I'm sticking with his interpretation.

Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Florence x

**UPDATED** Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and all your lovely comments - they are so appreciated. I'm delighted that all three pictures have now been sold. If anyone is interested in commissioning one they are priced at £40 - this includes framing and P&P within the UK mainland (I am happy to ship overseas, but this will cost a little more). x

Through the letterbox

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Long time readers of my blog may remember that my sister, Laura, edited an anthology of poems a couple of years ago for Penguin Classics entitled Poems for Life. Well yesterday, her third anthology, Love, plopped onto my doormat and is just as lovely. Cloth-bound like the last, with thick creamy pages, it is a delicious treat of a book. And I can't help but be delighted by the fact that this book has page marking ribbons in contrasting shades of red...

Ordered into sections by the different ways in which we might experience love ranging from Suddenly, Secretly, Nearly and Tentatively, through Haplessly, Incurably, Impatiently and Passionately, to Greedily, From a distance, With a vow and Happily ever after. Stopping at The morning after, Treacherously, Bitterly and Indifferently, in between. My list omits so many other thoughtfully titled ways in which we might feel the ups and downs of love.

New favourites have been comfortingly found in the Happily ever after section, most especially one by Adrian Nowlan entitled Parlour Games (which I have been unable to find online to link to), which gave me that deliciously rare feeling of instant recognition, that can come as someone so eloquently expresses a snapshot recognised from your own life - he writes of a couple reaching a silent truce through smirks and sideways smiles over the course of a visit from unexpected guests who had arrived mid-argument in the most perfect and generous way.

I was propelled back to being a 17 year old as I re-read a much studied scene from Twelfth Night, revisited my first year at university when reading an extract from Roger McGough's book Summer with Monika and loved reading of moments captured on paper from the lives of others - In-flight Note by Judith Rodriguez, A Friendship by Connie Bensley and Ironing by Olivia McCannon.

She has included Invisible Kisses by one of my most favourite poets, Lemn Sissay, and for our Mama the book ends with Leonard Cohen's Dance Me to the End of Love. And on turning to the acknowledgments, she has dedicated the volume to myself and my parents....which makes me feel all butterfly stomached and watery eyed.

Just as beautifully bound and almost as lovely, my sister sent me this wonderful edition of Pride & Prejudice last month. After hearing her talk about Austen novels and recalling my own love of Emma, I rued the fact that I still hadn't read Pride & Prejudice, so she ordered me this very special mustard-hued copy, which I read, barely stopping to eat, over the course of 24 hours.

In the same way that one can see how a cliche becomes a cliche because of its very trueness, one can also see why a classic becomes just that - it is just so very, very good. I loved it and entered into the Bennett's world so whole-heartedly that for several days after I found that my speech had become slightly more formal and quaintly phrased (luckily I was able to email Joanne in character and know that she would be most sympathetic having spent nearly two years fashioning an Austenesque dress in which she might answer the door to the postman...how very odd that makes her sound! She will thank me for mentioning that out of context, I know).

Anyway, after a spell in the Austen decompression chamber I returned to my partially normal self and started devouring this wonderful craft book that I was sent pre-publication in October (which excited me no end for the only thing more delicious than a new sewing book is a new sewing book still in its comb binder arriving on my doorstop to peep at before its even arrived at Amazon HQ).

I love the premise for One-Yard Wonders, being someone who hoards her fabric greedily, not able to cope with the idea that a project might use up my entire supply of a certain print. As it says on the cover there are 101 projects and they are incredibly diverse.

I particularly loved the ones where fabric was used in a more unconventional way - like Junie Moon's project which shows you how to cover an old-fashioned pair of bathroom scales with fabric and seal it so that it has a rock-hard totally unfabricy finish, or Danielle Wilson's project which inspires you to fabric line the backs of shelves.

The projects which use fabric more conventionally range from children's and women's clothes, to bags and cushions, to holders and cosies, toys and blankets. There are some really fantastic ideas in there too, such as the beanbag booster seat, which I would have loved when my two were small. The photography is beautiful and many of the pages are edged with strips of lovely fabrics.

Storey Publishing are currently running a giveaway to coincide with the release of the book where one can win free fabric for a whole year - you can find the entry form here (and you don't have to actually buy the book to enter...although the book is so lovely that it's well worth buying - you can find it in hardback here - the paperback is yet to be released).

So much postboxy loveliness that I think I may need to go and lie down. If this isn't the linkiest, longest post that I've ever done then I'm not sure what is...if you're still here and haven't got lost link-following then hurrah! x

A pocket for everything...and one more for good measure

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:32:00 +0000

Well now, somehow an entire month seems to have passed by without a blog post, and part of it hasn't even been my fault! But more on that later, first some sewing, because my stitching archives are nearly three months deep now with unshared makes. A couple of months ago I was asked to make a bag to be given as birthday gift. The colours were to be kingfisher blues on donkey-coloured suiting...so many shades of donkey...so horribly open to interpretation...I was very much hoping that we were imagining the same donkey. I'm not sure we were, but I've since heard from both the gift-giver and the recipient that the bag has been very well-received, and so I'm assuming that all shades of donkey can become beloved.

Anyway, I hadn't found myself wanting for donkeys and kingfishers, but I have to admit that I did try this bag on a few times and became so consumed with wanting one that I rustled one up for myself too. Mine is the one at the top of this post with the more subdued blue piping...let's call it petrol...or dolphin.

And now here is my very own bag (at a jaunty angle as Zebra girl is becoming rather arty if in her photography). It has a much shorter handle than the other bag, as when I know I'm making something for myself then it becomes part of my 'petites range' (he he!) which is more suited to people who are only 5ft 1. Originally most things that I made were cut this way until it was broken to me (very tactfully) that normal people need longer bag handles.

I don't tend to experiment with things quite as much when I'm making them for other people, but as it was for me and it mattered far less if it all went horribly wrong and ended up in the bin, then I thought I'd attempt an internal zippered pocket, which is something I've always wanted, but never found the time to try. Anyway, Lisa's tutorial for this provides all the pointers a girl could need for getting it right first time and I have to admit to having butterflies as I finished the pocket as I was so thoroughly excited by seeing for myself that it really was perfectly do-able. And like an over-decorated Christmas tree I added in a key holder, as well as a pocket for mobile phone, wallet, pens and a whole host of other things that I found it strangely pleasing to make perfectly-sized pockets for. It's not very clear here, but there are actually additional pockets beneath the zip, as well as piped pockets on the other side. I listened to a Damian Rice album six times over that day as I was working so fast that I didn't feel I even had time to get up and change my iPod to something different. By the time I went to pick the children up from school the room was a mess, Damian was starting to grate a little, I was covered in thread, but my bag of many pockets was finished.

The magpie in me is loving these shiny hoops, also from Ms Lam's shop - is there no end to that girl's goodness?

How odd though that it doesn't feel like my bag after all that...it actually feels like my mother's. Last year I made her this bag in very similar material and now whenever I use my bag it feels like I'm borrowing it from her. Hmmm.

Anyway, I did say that there were reasons for my blogging absence. The first is that I suddenly had so much work on, that when not deciding to quite illogically drop it all to sew millions of pockets for myself instead, I didn't have time to blog. At some point I came down with the usual October coldyness which seems to have left me partially deaf, but in amongst all that we took ourselves off to the most wonderful cottage in West Wittering with my parents, where we stayed for several days. The weather was perfect and every day of our stay was spent at the beach playing football, cricket and searching for shells. There was such a healthy sense of competition between the adults that two came home with sporting injuries after making tackles with more vigour than seaside games might usually require. The beach at West Wittering is amazing and every day gave a different look to the shoreline.

Arriving home I was all ready to get back to work and had a long list of things that I wanted to do...which all suddenly became impossible once we found that our Internet connection had somehow broken while we were away and that I would have to spend the next week on the phone trying to work out why it had broken and what could be done to fix it. Anyway, BT have now installed some new cabling somewhere a long way from us, and after something of an Internet detox I now feel quite delighted by the idea that you can have a thought and then google it immediately, rather than delaying the gratification by waiting for 10 days.

But there was lots of of sewing to be done and I am now beginning to make some things for the We Make Fair in Chelsea Town Hall in December, where I will be sharing a stall with Joanne & Helen. I am loving the idea of shared stallship for it means there is so much less pressure to produce a mass of things. We are in a smaller room, that is a little less grand than the main hall, but is apparently very near the tea and cakes, which seems like a good compromise.

What have you been up to? x

Zips and other things

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:29:00 +0000

Back in May 2009, when I was writing this article for Sew, Mama, Sew! I initially started by trying to think of one item that I could make that would utilise every sewing foot...I quickly scrapped trying to tackle it that way and instead ended up using old photos that happened to capture different techniques being demonstrated (or attempted in the case of my rather sorry free-motion embroidery). However, one photo of the discarded pencil case (for that was the item that I decided could cope with such over-footedness) I did use in the article (see below) as it demonstrated well how utterly indispensable and fiercely fine a walking foot can in keeping things aligned and in their intended place.

Anyway, the pencil case (which used the zipper foot, walking foot, quarter inch foot, open toe applique foot, and a standard foot...horay...I find that so thrilling, but have no idea why) looks like this and sat in a box for some time quite forgotten about, until someone spotted its peeky slices of fabric and asked if I could make her several to give as teacher's gifts for Christmas (as it's currently October, I am rather awestruck by the fabulousness of this lovely girl's organisation on such matters!).

Oh walking foot, how do I love thee, let me count the ways...

So here are the pencil cases all lined up and ready to go...the zip colours make me think of rolls of refreshers, so soft, pastelly and happy.

These ones are without the embroidery, as strangely the customer in question didn't have at the forefront of her mind the need for me to use all possible sewing feet in the construction of her pencil cases, and so was happy for them to be left plain.

And finally today is an extra specially good day for us, having narrowly avoided awfulness. On the way home from meeting family for lunch, we were driving along a fast country lane when a deer appeared from nowhere in front of us...as I started to do an emergency stop, three further deer also ran quickly across our path one after the other - it was utterly horrifying for every time I thought we might just miss one another appeared...it felt an absolute miracle that we managed not to hit any and the last only escaped by an inch or so. But as everything seemed to happen in such slow motion my over-riding memory is of how utterly beautiful they were seen so close up - a perfect pale grey down with dappled white spots covering their sides - they looked so serene even in their fright and we carried on our journey feeling that all of us had been rather lucky (apart from Dinosaur-boy who stayed asleep throughout having eaten enough chocolate ice-cream at lunch to allow him to happily hibernate for the rest of the year without the need to surface).

Oh and I must also show you these lovelies which were delivered by the postman a couple of weeks ago - the most beautifully scented lavender bags, filled from this blogger's own garden's supply and I am in love with the fabric - thank you Pomona!

They are now nestled between my winter jumpers, minus one, which Zebra-girl quickly snaffled up for herself.

Wishing you a lovely weekend. x

Rainy day stitching

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:21:00 +0000

The above was something of a peg bag emergency for me, if there can be such a thing. One of my loveliest local customers asked if she might call round to pick up a doorstop that she'd seen on my website...and would it be possible to make her a peg back to collect at the same time. I was in the middle of making a kimono at the time, so the room was rather a thready mess of material that the overlocker was spitting at me (because who actually remembers to attach the thread catcher before starting work), so it was a challenge to clear enough thread-free space to start working on something else entirely.

I'm sure if I'd not had a deadline to work to I could have spent several hours drafting and redrafting a peg bag pattern, but as I only had 1.5 hours to draft and make it, it put an end to any such procrastination and dilly-dallying and made me uncommonly decisive. It was one of those wonderful days when the bias-binding behaved so well that it was almost as if it had bound itself and I'm now dreaming up projects just for the excuse of using more of it.

The kimono is now nearly finished (the making of it having been punctuated by several smaller projects as well as the peg bag) and I have several bags to share just as soon as I'm sure that they have been received. Below is a custom order for an owly pencil roll.

I was particularly delighted to find a Jennifer Paganelli fabric that seemed to me to have obvious owly eyes within its floral pattern.

The little pink and gold tray that it's on, I am quite in love with - purchased at an antiques fair a couple of weekends ago, the lady told me it had belonged to her grandmother. As a sentimental hoarder it always amazes me that people are able to part with these things, so I amused myself by imaging that the grandmother in question might have been a fearsome old dragon who was best forgotten...but her china tray feels so happy I'm not sure that can be true.

Anyway, it's now hideously rainy, so I am planning an afternoon of cosy, central-heated stitching finishing up a few orders and then tomorrow will perhaps venture outside to buy some wool suiting for a dress that I'm about to start work on - I'm most excited about this - it will be my sister's Christmas present and, having become more attached to my overlocker over the last few months, and also having bought this book, which teaches some of the basics of dressmaking that I had previously been guessing at, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. Thus far my sister seems to have been the sole recipient of my dressmaking attempts (yes, the latter found a home with my sister and she has worn it so frequently that the material is now beginning to bobble. How pleasing...sort of), then I am also now drawing up designs for myself, that may or may not see the light of day depending on how this third attempt goes.

Thank you so much for the cushion love of the last post by the way...just in case anyone wanted to make something similar, if I had access to it (I don't - in the colours I wanted this was the only width of velvet I could get purchase, but who knows what vintage lovelies you might have in your own sewing drawers) then I would use much, much wider strips of ribbon and think that this would go a long way to making it a less stressful, impish project.

Birthdays

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:52:00 +0000

In the last couple of days Zebra-girl and both her grandmothers have had birthdays. My own mother was 60 and so I wanted to make her something lovely. I knew that she'd been hankering after some cushions, but felt that making something out of the more muted, unpatterned upholstery fabrics that would compliment their lovely minimal home wouldn't feel quite special enough to mark the occasion. I wanted to blend together all her favourite colours and create something that would be both tactile and simple...which is what eventually led me to come up with the idea of weaving velvet ribbons.

I found it difficult to source my most coveted shades of velvet in the vast quantities that I required them in (that's the problem with possessing colour charts for a range...once you know what's out there you can no longer be happy with the standard shades that your local haberdasher's stocks)...but with an much amended and then re-amended list of most-wanted colours (because apparently half the colours on the chart aren't even stocked by the reel in this country) I finally pulled together 70 metres of the stormy seaside blues, greys and creams that I was hoping for. Seventy metres I had foolishly thought would make two cushions. It doesn't. But if it had I may well have lost the will to live making the second, so that didn't end up being too bad a thing.

The weaving took longer than I'd imagined it might, but it was nice to have a rare piece of lap work to do while I had a friend over for the day...a scientific sort of friend who, after watching me weave for nearly three hours, pointed out a much simpler way of doing it which involves throwing alternate ribbons up and then simply placing the horizontal ribbon down and then laying the alternate ribbons back over it...something I never would have thought of, but which delighted me no end.

After hours and hours of weaving I'd nearly finished when I started tightening and pulling some of the ribbons down a little....and quite quickly I was left with a square of weaving that tunnelled and curved upward at each ribbon edge, that wouldn't be teased back into shape and that could not forgive my meddling in what had been nearly perfect as it was. And so I found myself having to unweave the entire cushion and start over again. It was a dispiriting evening that called for a large mug of hot chocolate and a soupçon of swearing stirred in.

Second time around I seemed to weave a little quicker though and I used my overlocker to secure each edge in place before adjoining it to the reverse fabric. This is the back of the cushion - some grey-blue tweed suiting. The zipper opening allowed me to get the cushion pad in easily, but also seems to imply that the cushion is washable. An implication I hadn't anticipated until my delighted, ever-practical mother gasped: and I can even wash it! Mmm, well no. I simply can't imagine how all those ribbons would react to a spell in the washing machine.

I have had so many projects on the go over the last couple of weeks that my overlocker has stayed out next to my sewing machine, so that I can switch between the two more quickly. It has been incredibly cramped and lends the room a slightly industrial feel, which I'm not sure I was actually hoping for. Some WIPs are piled up on top of the machine which are now all sewn up - I'll hopefully take a few photos of those before they're sent away.

Anyway, more exciting than any stitchery I could show you, are the cakes that Mr Teacakes starts making the moment there's a birthday on the horizon. For Zebra-girl there was a cat (for which I seem to have inadvertently switched my camera to the black & white setting for most of my photos):

And here's some colour:

And then for my Mama (for I started a cake for her myself, but soon saw that there is a very good reason as to why cakes are left to Mr Teacakes in our house) he made this rocking horse (the relevance being that she loves rocking horses). He had just two hours to make and ice the entire cake and in the rush, and under my awful guidance, we chose colours that, in retrospect, are more suitable for a newborn than a 60 year old. How we howled with laughter when we stood back and realised this just moments before we had to leave with the finished cake for her birthday lunch.

Luckily, she liked the idea of being reborn for cake purposes.

In amongst all the birthday celebrations I seemed to lose the ability to sleep and buzzed about the house sometimes for almost the entire night trying as quietly as one can to clean out every kitchen cupboard and reorganise pots and pans. It was a truly productive week and I realised that one would be capable of mammoth amounts if only one didn't need to sleep. But unfortunately the minute the birthdays were over I returned to my bed-loving self, looking a little more baggy-eyed and feeling ready to hibernate for the winter. If only one could.

Back to school notes:

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Such a long time seems to have passed since my last post, that the summer and all its loveliness and then the feelings of elation as the first signs of autumn began to appear, now seem a long time ago...rather than the two weeks that's actually gone by.

After an unbelievably busy couple of weeks for my little shop at the start of the summer, the balance of things didn't seem to be working and I decided to switch off my sewing machine, barr the odd evening, and spend the rest of the holidays with the little Teacakes and, unintentionally, this seems to have led to some sparseness on the blogging front too.

Our week days were filled with picnics (not all of them sunny, and some of them comically windy), bike rides, painting, baking, outings, seeing friends, having water fights and spending wonderful chunks of time with my mama. Somehow it transpired that every weekend throughout August the small ones went and stayed with their grandparents for a night, leaving Mr Teacakes and I free to enjoy a summer of parties, meals out and spending more time with old friends. It ended up being the most perfect summer and by the time 7th September came (back to school date) I realised that I felt more refreshed than I had done for several years.

A couple of days before school restarted I was sewing a name tape into a school shirt when Zebra girl came and sat next to me and said: you don't really sew very much anymore, do you? This made me feel so happy with the relief that the first few weeks of summer, where she and Dinosaur-boy had played while I'd worked each morning, had been forgotten in her mind and that I had managed, in this case, to go some way toward unpicking my mistakes. Her comment also gave me all the permission I needed to allow myself to mentally slip back into stitching mode and make plans for my child-free time. I had several orders to get started on straight away, as well as some birthday presents to stitch and it's been so nice to immerse myself in them, particularly as for the first time ever both children have gone back to school feeling entirely happy.

In a fit of optimistic back-to-school enthusiasm, I also decided that I needed to do something about how sedentary my working week in front of the machine had become. Spinning classes have been attended and trips to the shops are now undertaken on my new shiny black bicycle, rather than in the car, which is almost as fast, even if it's several times more terrifying as cars hurl themselves into my path. I have found that skinny jeans lend themselves perfectly to pedalling and mean that one doesn't have to suffer the indignity of wearing trouser clips or other such foolishness. Unfortunately the cycling helmet is proving to be a non-negotiable sartorial faux pas...but I'm thinking that being without a brain would be a far worse look.

Anyway, I'm hoping that time will allow for more regular posting now, which will hopefully be stitch-related, as I've so many things to show you from the last fortnight. But in the meantime, I hope that you've had the most lovely summers and are finding it as exciting as I am to find that the red-leaved, cosy, pumpkin-filled season is finally upon us.

Thank you also to all those lovelies that continued to purchase a copy of my Tabitha Bag pattern over the summer - your enthusiasm for it has delighted me and seeing some of the pictures of the finished bags has been such a treat - thank you. x

August

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Making me happy at the moment is this makeup bag that I made a couple of months ago in a fit of self-gifting. Knowing that it was for myself liberated my stitches and allowed me to cut corners in a way that I can never bring myself to do when making things for my shop. Yes. I decided that I wouldn't change my top thread for sewing in my label...and that I wouldn't change my bobbin thread to make my top stitching around the zip blend nicely in with the lining. And all because I could. I think this is what is called Sewing Dangerously.

And now, oddly, this green stitching on a pink background is what gives me the most pleasure when I use my makeup bag each morning...which makes me think that contrast stitching may make an intentional appearance on more of my shop things...and also makes me think that sewing for one's self occasionally, when one's sewing is more experimental, is a virtue and not something to feel guilty about (she wrote, guiltily).

Making me less happy is the Sunday Night Feeling that I have from taking the small ones to buy new school shoes today. Oh how horribly fast the summer has been going, but what an utterly busy and wonderful August we have had - there have been parties, picnics, swimming, more meals out than I can remember and the buying of bikes for adult Teacakes, which has seen us whizzing around with Mr Teacakes shouting 'look no hands' in a moment of recaptured youth and with a nod to the Lotta books of my childhood (in which older siblings Jonas & Maria do just that)...we are discovering that there are cycle tracks and trails hiding just about everywhere and that they are all within easy reach if you don't grind your newly-fitted tow bar onto speed humps while getting to them. There have also been funfair rides of the seriously scary variety at Lambeth Country Fair in Brixton (proving that the country really is so much more fun in the city) - when I look at this picture I still can't believe that my small Zebra-girl was up their in the clouds sandwiched between her father and his good friend, Dan. The three staggered off, with the smallest recovering first, and the two men looking a handsome shade of, what I think is referred to on the Farrow & Ball colour chart as, Cooking Apple Green. There has also been the fun of realising that despite the fact that Joanne lives in London and I don't, that we are actually within Popping Distance and she popped over today for only a frivilous couple of hours and joined the Little Teacakes and I for lunch at our favourite cafe and for a dash of fabric shopping, what a wonderful mid-week treat.

And in between all the fun we have been practising, practising, practising every day with Dinosaur-boy to try and help the jumble of letters that he sees sink into some sort of order. We have played word pairs, word snap, word memory game and a whole list of other word-related amusements and just when we were all about to cry with boredom (actually, that may have already happened) Mr Teacakes has stepped in with some of his computer wizardry and put my homely looking snippets of paper and card to shame with these wonderful Star Wars word and number cards made specially for Dinosaur-boy.

They focus on the high frequency words that crop up in nearly every sentence, but aren't necessarily easy to sound out. Each card features a Star Wars figure and beneath him or her (or it!) a quote of something they say in one of the films with the word to be learnt in bold letters. If Dinosaur-boy reads the word correctly he gets to keep the card, and if he doesn't then whoever is playing with him gets to keep the card. Once he's read through all the cards, we then use the ones that have been won to play Star Wars Top Trumps with him, which makes the whole thing feel much more game-like. Combat Ability, Jedi Power, Dark Side and other Jedi traits are rated 0 - 20, which is good for covert number practice too. Happiness is a small boy bouncing onto your bed at 6.30am who actually wants to play a word game.

Ps. I am, as ever, behind with emails. Please forgive me - I am trying to keep the computer turned off so that I can avoid being sucked into it and finding that my holiday time with the smalls has been mysteriously swallowed up. Normal borderline disorganisation will be resumed in September. Blog reading is confined to the 10 minutes in the morning when I am drying my hair, which doesn't lend itself well to commenting as my hair can only take so much multi-tasking while being tamed...but I am reading! x

Appliquéd everything...

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:42:00 +0000

This post is a hotch-potch of appliquéd things that I've made over the last couple of months that I somehow haven't managed to get around to blogging until now.

Above is a Darth Vader t-shirt that I made as a gift for a small person that we know - I'm delighted to report that his love for this t-shirt is so great that he has to be coaxed into allowing it to be washed and parted from his person for even the shortest time. Making it was a huge amount of fun and caused me to stay up until a long way past midnight with the excitement of finishing it - it was a challenge for me as I usually appliqué individual pieces together to make the picture, but Darth required that for certain areas minuscule pieces were cut out of the main applique piece and then each of these holes had to be overlocked around the edges (Some of them are so small that you can only just see them - little slits of red in between the eye areas)...a precision task that was new to me and made me feel utterly thrilled when I finally realised that it was all very 'do-able'. Unfortunately, I had a slight wobble when it was all finished and I was busily steam pressing it at 1am and happened to catch sight of the size label and realised to my absolute horror that the t-shirt was the wrong size! Luckily, it somehow ended up fitting anyway and I am forever grateful for the curious ability of this boy to morph into a child a few years older than himself for the wearing of this t-shirt, to the extent that it actually looks like the right size!

Next is a tractor & trailer bib that I made at the request of my lovely friend Clare, for her to give as a gift to a friend with a new baby. That's the loveliness of custom orders...they inspire me to break away from cakes and ice creams for a moment and come up with other designs that I want to use in my shop once I get around to making another batch up.

I loved this project, also a custom order, this time for a small boy who was new to wearing glasses. The brief was for the case to be funky, but tasteful.

Every time I get an order for more boyish things or I attempt to make up some boy's things for my shop I feel quite disappointed by the blue section in my fabric drawers...so the minute this order came through I finally felt prompted into action to try and rectify the situation and did a little online shopping, for what I had was tasteful, but not really funky. I was so delighted with the little blue, green,red, orange, yellow and brown stack of fat quarters that arrived a few days later...but a little over-zealous in my wish to boyify my fabric stash and so forgot to photograph the loveliness before putting it away (actually, I have come to think of the putting away of fabrics as 'filing'...sometimes this can be fun...other days it is a bore, a little like working in an office. That day it was very good fun).

So anyway, I plumped for making this stegosaurus on what I have come to think of as a background of sputniks.

And finally a blue cupcake t-shirt, made at the request of this lovely blogger, who knits by candlelight and makes wonderful dresses for her daughter...and even encourages me to think that I really might be capable of following a pattern to do the same.

Anyway...there has been some quite alarming fabric accumulation over the last month or so, to the extent that it was necessary to do all sorts of drawer rearrangement and jiggery-pokery to make for stress-free fabric filing this evening. I feel that the make-up of the stash has changed so dramatically that it may be deserving of some more storage photos in my next post.

I hope you've had lovely weekends. x

Things I have learnt about myself...

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:35:00 +0000

One of our holiday highlights was seeing this gorgeous Saddleback pig. At the start of a walk on a very rainy day we came upon a farm yard and as we approached, about twenty of these gorgeous little piglets came rushing towards us snorting adorably and pushing their snouts through the fence toward us. The curly tails, the coarse hair, the sad, but twinkly eyes...all four of us were quite taken with their utter perfection and the thought of seeing them at the end of our walk propelled us up and down a mountain more quickly than on any other day.

We climbed a mountain a day for the first four days of our visit to the Lake District...but on the fifth day I woke and had to confess to Mr Teacakes that the idea of putting on my muddy walking boots for another day of walking actually made me feel physically sick. As I had far surpassed his expectations of how many days of mud stalking I would actually happily participate in, he was more than willing to leave me at our lovely cottage for the day. I had gone truly believing that I might find my inner country girl lurking within....(although Joanne claims that she knew I wouldn't find her, even before I went. She is a wise one.), but actually I think that in the same way that Mr Teacakes finds the rush and buzz of Soho stiffling after a couple of hours, I find being surrounded by mountains on all sides induces vague feelings of claustraphobia. But these observations aside, we did have the most lovely time and luckily the Teacakes possess far more of Mr Teacakes' genes than my own and so continued to approach the climbing and mud tramping with enthusiastic gusto.

The night before we left home I started to feel incredibly twitchy about the prospect of a whole week without my sewing machine, and so found myself wedging embroidery hoops and linen into my over-packed bag. I spent some time embroidering these rows of dresses, but actually, I disappointed myself yet again, by realising that it's not hand-sewing that makes my heart sing - it is the pattern drawing, fabric-picking, hum of the sewing machine and hours spent making edges and lines marry up perfectly that makes me feel truly happy.

So this weekend we had another mini-holiday. One of our lovely friends was celebrating her birthday and we decided to stay in London overnight for her birthday party. A quick search on Last Minute found us booking a nameless hotel near to the party for the grand total of £58. Oh the joy of getting the confirmation email and it being revealed that we had booked some 5 star loveliness!

A couple of weeks ago the birthday girl's boyfriend had contacted me to ask if I would make a kimono for him to give to her - it's so flattering when someone wants to give something that I make as a birthday gift, so I was delighted. He chose this Sister Boom fabric from a selection that I had four metres of (which wasn't a very large selection), which I was really pleased about as it has an enormous repeat pattern, which means that there was more fun to be had in making it work so that the pattern ran centrally down the back...small things like that make me feel so much happier when working with an enormous volume of material which naturally allows less room for paying attention to tiny details.

After a lovely evening with a few too many mojitos we pottered over (actually we didn't potter at all, we jumped in a taxi as we discovered that you really need to start the day unstrenuously after a late night of rum drinking) to Fabrics Galore on Lavender Hill where I wanted to choose some suiting for autumn-winter bags. The wonderfulness of this shop never ceases to delight me, nor do the lovely people who run it and I came away with a very heavy bag. This is their current window display, which looked wonderful in the sunshine with all the butterfly shadows on the wall behind...although my photograph doesn't really do it justice.

Anyway, we finally have some glorious weather, so we are off to a friend's house today to make the most of it. Wishing you a lovely week. x

p.s. The blogger spellcheck seems to have taken leave, so please do try and avert your gaze from the spelling mistakes and typos that will undoubtedly litter this post!

Elephant and Bear en vacances...(& moi aussi!)

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:45:00 +0000

Meet Elephant & Bear. After my recent hedgehog crisis (where kind commenters where left talking me down from the parapet, such was the scale of the disaster, and my sister has since insisted on adopting some hoggy goodness, or should that be hoggy badness?), I am more than a little delighted by having sewn something that I think might actually resemble the intended creatures in my head.

They have been made to go in the little Teacake's holiday bags (bags of treats opened an hour into the long journey). Each one has a little pocket on the bib of their clothing, which I'm hoping might eventually double as a receptacle for milk teeth to be left out for the tooth fairy, for while Zebra-girl has a cloth mouse from France for this purpose, Dinosaur-boy has, thus far, had to make do with leaving his on his shelf for collection, which doesn't seem quite right at all.

They both have bendy, pose-able arms and legs - I found some illustrations in one of the Tilda books that show how this can be achieved with yarn and buttons and was amazed by the simplicity of the technique and have had to restrain myself from spending hour upon hour whizzing the arms round and round just for the sheer fun of it.

After studying how some of the Teacakes own shop-bought bears were made up and looking in books, I felt as though I'd had a small breakthrough with the comprehension of softie construction...bits of the 3D magic suddenly started to click a little more for me and by the time I'd finished the bear, drawing up the pattern for the elephant felt weirdly intuitive. So perhaps it's just small snuffly things that are my stumbling block.

But anyway, the time has finally come for the animals to be packed into their bags and for me to turn off my sewing machine and computer (the latter thrills me more than the former...I did wonder about taking it with me) for a week. I am feeling so in need of a break, for despite the fact that I feel head-spinningly in love with what I spend my time doing, I am now utterly shattered. The last two weeks I have been operating on the extended working hours of going to bed at 2am and rising to sew again at 6am, so that I could write my bag pattern and get all my custom orders made up and posted off before our holiday. Not because I have any impatient customers, but because it makes me feel anxious not to have everything done and all the loose ends tied up properly, in the same way that it would to leave the house untidy when we go away.

One final thing before the creatures and I depart though: Thank you so much for the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response to the Tabitha Bag PDF and to all those that have bought a copy (I am so bowled over by how many of you want to make one - I can't wait to see some of them). For anyone wishing to buy a copy, you are still very welcome to, but if it is purchased after 5pm GMT on Friday 24th July, then the PDF won't be emailed to you until 3rd August.

Additionally, to those that have already bought a copy, you may remember that I said in my accompanying email to the PDF that extra photos were available for nearly every stage should you struggle with any part of bag construction - you are really welcome to email me, should you need to, and I will get back to you as speedily as I possibly can at some point after the 3rd August.

Wishing you all a sunshiny, happy week,
Florence x

P.S. And whooopeeee! As I've been spell-checking this blog post I have just received my first email from someone with with her very own handmade, brand new Tabitha Bag who says that she is delighted with her bag and really liked the pattern - I can't tell you quite how happy this makes me! The newbie pattern writer in me has had to exercise massive amounts of self-restraint not to take to the sofa and leap up and down doing my best impression of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's chaise declaring his love for Katie Holmes. Down on the carpet once again, the other thing that I will pass on is that this particular lovely bag-maker said that compared to other bag patterns she has followed, she found the order that I chose to do things in unexpected, but went with the flow anyway, and by the end completely 'got' why it made sense to do them like that for this bag. As someone who's never followed a bag pattern herself, I've never been aware that my order might differ to convention, but to those that do notice this, I hope that you will bear with it, as it seems to work out well in the end.

Tabitha Bag Pattern PDF

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:27:00 +0000

The Tabitha Bag pattern is finally finished and I want to thank you so much for all your suggestions and ideas about what makes a good pattern...they gave me so much more direction and confidence about the best way for me to do it.

The majority of people seemed to be saying that they preferred PDF because when the wish to sew something strikes one really doesn't have the time to waste a week looking longingly at the letterbox waiting for the postman to arrive with instructions. So that's the format that the Tabitha Bag pattern will be available in.

I've absolutely loved writing and designing this pattern - so thank you to the lovelies that nudged me to do it.

So, for those that are interested in purchasing a copy here are the details:

The Tabitha Bag is available as a PDF.
It has bullet-points for those that like their instructions concise and to the point...
...With notes in between in italics for those who like a more wordy explanation with tips and reassurance.
Each point has one or more hand-drawn black & white diagrams to save on printer ink, with colour photos only appearing when a step might be particuarly challenging to interpret without.

The pattern pieces are full-size and can be printed out on A4 paper (portrait, not landscape, orientation) with no need to enlarge them.
The instructions include detailed explanations on how the pattern pieces should be cut and labelled, as well as an explanation of any terms that pop up during the pattern.
In terms of what level of sewer the Tabitha bag might be suitable for, I would suggest intermediate to advanced. It is a challenging bag to make in that there are so many pieces to it, many of which require being aligned very precisely for it to come together looking perfect.
The PDF will cost £8.00 (that's just over $12 USD) and is for personal use only.

It has taken a huge amount of work to put this pattern together and has been written and tested, rewritten and re-tested several times. However, if you have any problems with it then please do let me know, so that I can smooth them out as quickly as possible.

Once I've received a payment for it, I will email the PDF to you within 24 hours (normally sooner). If you haven't received it after that time then please do email me to let me know, after first checking to make sure that it hasn't ended up in your spam bin, as things sometimes can.

If you get the chance, I would absolutely love to see any photos you have of your finished bag.

Florence x

Colourful thoughts & I'd love your opinion...

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:46:00 +0000

These thread colours are making me feel so happy at the moment. My thread rack is opposite our bed and from early morning the sun shines brightly through our unlined curtains (black-out curtains seem to make me wake feeling bleary), giving me time to mentally sort them from my pillow...these five seemed to me to be the most exquisitely vibrant colours - sometimes it's hard to believe that a manufacturer can get it so very right...it makes me think that there must be men going about their work in laboratories and factories, stumbling upon the perfect thread colour perhaps only once every couple of months and leaping from their chairs with joy when such a thing happens and perhaps gobbling a chocolate chip cookie to celebrate. What absolute perfection - I think they look almost too good to be real.

They've ended up temporarily on Dinosaur-boy's boat for these photos...I don't know where they're going...

Carrying on the sunshine theme...I actually made this yellow teabag holder a couple of weeks ago, but then the weather became so gloomy that it seemed unseasonal to post something so apologetically cheery.

It, and several others, will be finding their way into my shop at some point over the next week or so...but time seems to be going sneakily fast now and I can't quite believe that on Friday my little Teacakes will be at home for seven weeks...there is so much to do before then and my dream of having my hair cut and taking the cats to the vets before the Teacakes are with me all day seems most unlikely to actually end up happening....which will mean waiting seven more weeks for a haircut because the place that I go to is in a wonderful, architecturally beautiful place that in the spirit of restfulness allows neither children or mobile phones to enter the building. But I'm so tempted to try and squeeze them into my pockets on this occasion if I don't manage to make my way there this week (they can go out of pocket to the vets and will hardly be noticed amongst the mewling menagerie in the waiting room...it's just less fun trying to cross roads with two children and a heavy, unsettled cat carrier).

So this week keeping me busy is a handful (well, actually far more than a handful) of make-up bags...and also trying to write the Tabitha Bag pattern that I mentioned in my last post - indecision has been cleared away in time to try and squeeze the writing of it into this last week of the school term...and I'm realising that it may well take the entire week, for not only is it the most complicated, multi-pieced thing that I make, it is a bag that I now know so well that I easily steer around the little quirks in my pattern, knowing where to give or take an extra centimetre or two...but I'm very aware that I need to hone my pattern to iron these things out before I can pass it on to other people to buy.

So while I'm thinking of pattern writing, I'd really love to hear your thoughts on a couple of things. What do you like in a pattern: diagrams or lots of photographs? Bullet-pointed instructions or a tutorial written with hints and tips for how best to go about each step? And finally, are you happy working from a PDF file on your computer, so that you can have your pattern almost as soon as you've paid for it, or do you tend to prefer to pay a little extra and send off for your patterns and have them arrive a few days later on paper? I'd love your opinions (irrespective of whether you'd ever buy my bag pattern).

Sorry for so many samey pictures...sometimes the light seems just too good to not take a whole series of photos of the same thing...but then picking which ones to blog can lead to indecision...so much quicker to just put them all up there!

Thank you so much for the people who've resubscribed through Bloglines (problem still not rectified...oh dear) and for the lovelies who stopped by to check what I was up to when they noticed that nothing had appeared in their Bloglines from me for a while.

Bloglines...or not

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Just a quick weekendy note to say that after I put on my technical hat to do clever things with Feedburner at the start of July, I inadvertantly put in some wrong code...this has somehow meant that my Bloglines subscribers have been cut off. One of my bloglines feeds has now been restored...but the one that contains 134 subscribers is still behaving oddly....

....so if you would still like to be told when I have posted more of my ramblings, then I wondered if you might consider re-subscribing to the feed that has the fewest people on (that's the rss feed), as I'm yet to find a way of solving the problem with the other one.

Oh, and there might just be four posts beneath this one that you've never even read!

Happy Saturday. x

(p.s. in future I won't be attempting any more clever technical things)

More bags

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:51:00 +0000

I have had lots of custom orders for bags recently...it's not easy to become bored of making the same thing over and over when there's still the excitement of seeing each new bag take shape with a completely different look depending on what fabrics have been chosen. First is the confectionery combination of turquoise and brown - how is it that those colours make me think of sweets so much, I wonder, but they do - minty, chocolatey flavoured sweets. I remember having my first After Dinner Mint aged about 7, and falling quite in love with the whispery thin black paper that houses each mint and the lovely sweet, fresh smell that rose from the box the minute the cellophane was pulled back. I thought they were so incredibly grown up. Anyway, this fabric made me think of After Dinner Mints for the entire time that I was sewing.

So it was something of a relief to be sewing something entirely more sober later in the week.

The inky blues and blacks and muted sages in this fabric made a more conservative looking bag, which I love. I have to admit to trying it on in front of my mirror after it was finished, and like Narcissus, I fell quite in love with my own reflection (although, not entirely like him, in that my focus was on the bag, rather than my face) and I eventually managed to tear myself away to pick the children up from school rather than dying right there before the mirror...so actually, the similarity is slight, thank goodness. But let it be known that I thought it looked damn fine with a pair of jeans.

I love this minty lining, but I mustn't think on that too long. Do you see? My life is perpetually interrupted by the linking of inedible visions to sugar-laden goodies.

I've noticed that all my bag pictures tend to be taken either on my cupboard doors, or next to my sewing books. I am limited in that I am terrified of taking them out of my sewing room into territory that may be home to the odd cat hair, and so a pattern has emerged in my limited surroundings: the minute the bag is finished it is hung up on my cupboard doors - this somehow seems the perfect place to look at it from a distance and make sure that everything is lined up nicely. The next morning it seems to find itself moved next to my sewing books above my fabric drawers where I tend to take one final photo before I wrap it and post it off...bags feel a little like the sewing equivalent of babies to me - they are a labour of love that are harder to part with than some other things.

And then after a spate of Tabitha bags, this bag below is based on the Melly bag and was created for a Mother-of-the-Groom.

It took many emails of outfit photos and colour swatches to find just the right shade of olive and lime to go with her outfit, and actually when the chosen fabric eventually arrived I was utterly shocked by the colour of it - the fabric swatches that we had been looking at on the Internet (and indeed on Ms Butler's own website) show this fabric as being a soft sage on an olive background, but in reality it is far more zingy (and even a little luminous). But despite the shop being willing to let me return the fabric, she was happy to go ahead with this more lively proposal...and I'm now so glad she was. It looked far less shocking once it was made up into a bag than it had as a flat piece of material and by the time it came to posting it, I was feeling much more enamoured with it.

In a fit of wildness I thought I'd put this one onto a chair to photograph. The little sash on the chair is a matching band for the lady's hat, and below is the inside of her bag...the dash of cream seems to do much to tone down the intensity of this print.

Anyway, back in May I blogged about the bag that my mother ended up putting her name on before it was even finished (that I've subsequently named the Tabitha bag - you can read why here). I've since had numerous emails asking whether I'd be willing to sell the pattern for it for personal use. I'm hugely, delightedly and suprisedly flattered that other people love this bag design as much as I do and the generous and kind comments that I've had about it have been so appreciated. I feel bad not to say yes instantly to this when I've had so many lovely requests but I'm mulling on it, primarily because it's one of the things that I sell in my own shop...and also because I'd never really considered that selling patterns could be another arm to my little industry (or that I could be capable of writing a pattern in terms that normal people could actually follow - I've only just recovered from shock of the positive response to my make-up bag tutorial...so many firsts here!), so it needs a little thinking about...and I do tend to think quite slowly. Bear with me. x

p.s. I've posted about this here due to my being so appalling at keeping on top of my inbox - I'm so sorry not to have responded to individual emails on this.

Cosy cushions for a rainy day

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:42:00 +0000

I had other things that I was planning to show you today...but they were yellow and sunshiney things, and today the weather is rainy and glum and so somehow posting such summery happiness seems all wrong. So instead, out of order (for I have a massive backlog of things to post about), I will show you this cushion that I've just finished which seems much more representative of the blustery weather: cosy and snugly.

I have been feeling desperate to make some ruffles recently. What only months ago seemed like 1980s hideousness, has somehow infiltrated my thoughts becoming destigmatised by frequent bouts of unexpected thought-exposure-therapy and eventually worked to make itself seem so delicious that a point was reached where I simply couldn't do anything useful until I have given in and satisfied my need to make some cushiony ruffleyness. Sometimes the wish to sew a particular thing can be just as powerful as in an insatiable desire to eat Guyllian chocolates.

So here it is: part gift for Zebra-girl, part shameless self-gifting for me. Sometimes it's even more fun to make the gift than it is to give it.

I'm now adding a ruffler foot to my list of coveted things...ruffling by hand takes time and can be fiddly...but not so fiddly that I feel like I'm entirely rid of my ruffling bug. Next time I'd like to make one for a bigger cushion pad to make it a little less fussy, for one doesn't want to be all ruffle and no cushion.

Thank you so much, lovely blog readers, for your restorative comments on my hedgehog crisis last week - you said so much to cheer me and your suggestions for de-ratting the hedgehog were so wonderful that, with a little cheerleading from the lovely Siobhan (whose comment made me laugh and smile), I don't think I am quite ready to give up on my quest for hedgehoggy perfection...or just hedgehoggy goodness as I'm aware that I may have to set my bar low in this area. So you may see more spikey snuffling here before long, but now I am off to do some much needed tidying up before the Teacakes return from school.

Wretched hedgehogs

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Despite a mounting sewing To Do list I managed to fritter an entire dispiriting, awful day on making a family of wretched, half-finished, troublesome, ugly hedgehogs (I'd only wanted to make one, they became a family only as my reject pile grew bigger). I woke thinking of hedgehogs this morning as the still heat reminded me of a day spent sitting on our front doorstep as a child waiting for our cat Beanie to come home...he never came home but I do have strong memories of hearing rustling from the flowerbed and the flicker of elation that rose in the belief that it was my cat about to emerge from the undergrowth. It was actually a hedgehog, the first I'd ever seen, and I don't think I've seen another one up close since. Perhaps the infrequency of my hedgehog sightings (one every 32 years being relatively low) holds the key as to why I seem to have been so incapable of sewing something that resembles a hedgehog today.

Drawing a pattern for a hedgehog foxed me for longer than I might have imagined...but then I suppose it would - I don't often venture into the realm of softies and I'm not especially good at visualising the flat parts that make up a 3D shape. But then once a pattern had been drawn the sewing and stuffing brought yet further frustration..how to stop it from looking so irritatingly mouse-like...it seemed an impossibility, no amount of putting tucks in around the cheeks could convey the longer snoutiness of a hedgehog. Some were abandoned with only one ear, others without the nose being embroidered on...and so a family of disfigured hedgehogs was born. Standards slipped as I grew weak with the knowledge that this was a doomed project and that every hour spent 'having one more go' was an hour when I should have been doing something else.

How seamlessly a failed softie can repurpose itself into a pincushion...in this case the pins surprised me by helpfully going some way to giving the illusion of spikes...but even in its new utilitarian guise it looks more ratty than hedghoggy.

It is days like this when I lose my faith that I can sew or will ever manage to sew anything nice again...I felt like weeping at 3pm when it was time to pick the little Teacakes up - such a waste of a day: not only in time, but also general happiness and morale. I feel miserable (and a little dramatic - perhaps it's the heat). I will be staying away from stuffed animals for the foreseeable future. I had decided to make one for each for Zebra-girl and Dinosaur-boy's holiday bags (bags of goodies to be opened an hour into the journey - as you can see the blue colourway never met the light of day)...but in this case, I think I may actually buy some. Grrrr. One of those rare times when making things by hand feels all wrong.

When I went to the school I bumped into my lovely friend Tamsin: couldn't they just be mice she asked. That seems like such a reasonable suggestion...but no, they could never be mice when in my head they were meant to be hedgehogs. To allow them to be mice would be to accept my own uselessness. Also they don't have tails.

I'm so sorry to rant. I'm very much hoping that I shall wake up a normal person in the morning. x

Manly iPhone holders

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:49:00 +0000

I'd mentioned the wonderful Arcadia range in my last post...and here's some of it all stitched up. I'd had a couple of requests for some manly iPhone holders and this range, with its miniature prints, is perfect for this type of small item. As so many of you will already have discovered, the wonderful thing about the iPhone is that it's mp3 player, radio, email, phone and internet all in one, dispensing with the need to carry several electronic gadgets around in one's pocket...which is what I am guessing men are forced to do in the absence of any Man Bag.

But luckily for them, in the same way that a man's make-up free face never seems to look pasty and washed-out, a man with his pockets full of keys, money, phones and all the other gubbins that gets taken along never seems to suffer from a bulky or misshapen silhouette. I have no idea how this can be so, but despite this natural propensity to looking good, still one of the commissioning males was not content with mere gadgetry downsizing, and requested that his iPhone holder should double as a wallet also. So on the back I have created a little card and notes holder.

The other man requested that his should have a Velcro flap to keep the iPhone securely in place. I like to believe that this is because he is planning on doing cartwheels and handstands and other things that might potentially cause his iPhone to go leaping wildly from his pocket.

While I was making these I noted down the need to research whether some sort of hand-held miniature sewing machine exists...there are some things that are just too small to fit onto the arm of the sewing machine and it took a frustratingly long time to find a way around this problem.

Anyway, this post is forced into being uncharacteristically brief (addendum: this is no longer the case...as I end up wittering on for so long), for while I am so excited that the little Teacakes will soon be off school for the summer holidays, there is so very much to do before that can happen (I say 'that can happen' as if I have some control over when the school term ends...I don't, just a feeling that all loose ends must be tied before our days become a lazy stream of swing parks and ice-creams). But the next two weeks look set to be overtaken by the anticipation of the children's separate sports days as text messages are sent at lunch time to let parents know whether the weather is just right for such an event: not too hot, not too cold...I'm feeling doubtful over whether the perfect temperature is going to present itself before the end of term, but am keeping my fingers crossed as Zebra-girl tells me that she will be sack racing and few things are more delightful than watching children bobbing frantically along in their sacks grinning wildly, especially when one of them is your own...I am just so poor at shoehorning tasks into potentially fragmented bits of time that I find this kind of uncertainty most unrelaxing.

Sunday Stash

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:59:00 +0000

Somehow nearly two weeks have passed since my last post and I'm having a where-to-start sort of moment because I have so many things to blog about. But it's Sunday, the sunshine is unbelievably zingy, and I am feeling a little weary after a family game of pyjamaed dodge ball...so I shall save ordering my thoughts until the week...which promises to be no less hot, but at least I will be dressed and perhaps have a modicum of sprightliness about me. So instead, I will fall back on a Sunday Stash post and share with you the lovelies that came through the letterbox from Sew Mama Sew a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't believe it when I opened the packet...I'd never seen fabric cut and then lined up with such precision that it actually looked more like a sheaf of brightly coloured papers, than fabrics. The temptation was to leave them that way...

But they were too delicious not to unfold and gaze upon properly and then put into colour order. Which could be done with wild abandon when I realised that no amount of folding and refolding could recapture how perfectly aligned they'd been.

And then for some local loveliness: there are not often things that make me gasp with delight in my nearest sewing shops...so imagine my excitement to walk in and find myself faced with these stacks of Arcadia fat quarters filling the cubby holes. I have fallen quite in love with the colours and clean lines of these prints. Although I'm finding it hard to source solid cottons that co-ordinate exactly with the minky browns and limey yellows that are used in this collection.

But I've still found ways to cut into them and am loving how versatile they are - I have had a couple of requests for Man Products and some of these prints lend themselves perfectly for being made up into just such a thing...but more on that in the week, for a sundress is calling me.

Unsuitable for dogs

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:54:00 +0000

With a custom order for a couple of pencil rolls to make up, I finally found myself prompted into action on redesigning them before I made a new batch last week. My mother, who is the font of both wonderful frippery and downright practicality, had long ago told me that, despite the opportunities for pleasing ribbon-fabric coordination, she didn't think that a pencil roll that required fastening with a bow was at all suitable for small hands or their busy mothers. I think that she is wrong in some ways because one happy customer told me that her child's pencil roll doubled as a coat for their small dog and that her children had spent many happy hours being delighted by seeing the dog trot around in a spotted pencil roll jacket, the bow tied at her tummy. It is my firmly held belief that any other fastening would not have so welcomingly accommodated even the smallest of canine girths.

However, not everyone has a dog and it will only be a fraction of pencil roll purchasers who have hopes that their roll might be dual-purposed in this way....which is why I have heeded my mother's wise advice and redesigned my rolls to have velcro tabs. I had felt a little sad that this didn't allow me to have the happiness of choosing ribbons, but actually, I made my own fun in trying to find little pictures or nice fabric swatches to go on each tab.

And how could one not go foraging for little details like this when one has been set up so nicely to think that way by the thoughtful manufacturer who chose to produce inspiring selvages like the one below - it's so lovely I can barely believe that it actually exists and resides in my house.

And one of those sweet little houses and trees found their way onto the front of one of the pencil roll holders - I would have loved this when I was small. It reminds me of some yellow and red hair bobbles that I had that were made from a plasticised fabric and featured a hot air balloon...how I would love to still have those (to look at, not to wear...no weirdy pigtail regression here!)....there's something so lovely about very miniature things.

Some of these will find their way into my shop within the next week...which I feel I can now say with much relief, having lost my shop (and email - horrors!) for 24 hours due to strange server problems. But it's over now, and I can breathe again. How oddly attached one becomes to one's website - it feels like an extension of myself and for it not to be there felt tantamount to suddenly being told that my ear lobe had gone missing. Mr Teacake tells me that despite the fact that I pay nothing for his web services, I am somehow more demanding than any of his real clients. Mmm. This is probably true...but I have deemed this to be the prerogative of the person who maintains a constant supply of pistachio nuts solely for his nut-eating happiness.

Happy tulips...

Anyway, there is so much more to tell, but not quite enough time to tell it in, so I shall leave you with this photograph of the wonderful matryoshka tape measure that my sister surprised me with last week.

I am off to do some measuring with it...and tomorrow, we are off to the hospital for Mr Teacakes' operation on his hand. Thank you so much for your well wishes for him. x

Stitchery from the small ones

flossieteacakes@gmail.com (Florence) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:38:00 +0000

A couple of weekends ago I was photographing the roses when Mr Teacakes came and stood beside me. Before I could turn to look at him properly I caught a glimpse of our shadows on the lawn and let out a delighted squeal, for in my somewhat wild imagination, we temporarily looked like a Rob Ryan picture (to Mr Teacakes we looked like two silhouettes of ourselves...and I can see how that might seem to be so to one less prone to flights of fancy!) I had a split second to take this photo before he began to un-rob-ryan us and I was left staring at him using the deep shadow pool to make animal silhouettes.

Anyway, with making your own fun in mind, I have meant to blog about these monster kits since my sister bought them for the little Teacakes at Christmas time. I am not often fond of kits, as they often feel too prescriptive, a 'craft' that lacks the opportunity for creativity and can lead to the small one feeling frustrated when it inevitably doesn't resemble quite what it says that it might on the box. However, these monster kits are something quite different and the antithesis of all that is bad about craft kits.

Inside the bag are a random and rather jaunty collection of fabric shapes and you are invited to use them to fashion your own monster. This is right in so many ways - for by its very definition, a monster is a creature of the imagination that can look any way you might conjure it to be, and so they were able to set about positioning their fabrics with gusto, actively eschewing two symmetrically placed eyes or a properly placed jumper. Fabric shapes were traded, possible combinations giggled over and finally, fantastical one-eyed, underpant wearing monsters were created. Dinosaur-boy's monster reminds me of an elephant, while Zebra-girl's has just enough of a feel of 'human' about it to make it even more ghoulish.

Best of all, I found no need to sit on my own hands or superglue my own lips together to prevent myself from making 'helpful suggestions' - I could relax into the realisation that these monsters did not have to resemble anything on the packet for me to feel that our sewing session had been successful. Dinosaur-boy was four when we made these and stayed immersed in their creation for nearly two hours, his mouth pursed in concentration as he formed each lovely stitch.

I suppose these kits could be stuck together with glue...but that would feel all wrong when there's the opportunity for some hand-sewing. And I can see that there could be an argument for making them from my own stash of left-over fabrics...but somehow this was nicer...I know that if I made the kits myself then I would cut pieces with a purpose for them in mind and feel anxious when I saw the carefully shaped underpants that I had cut out being used a hat. It's hard being a control freak.

This week I seem to have sewed at a snail's pace and am staggered at my own lack of productivity - how did it take two whole days to make six pencil rolls? I think it may be the distractingly lovely presence of Mr Teacakes working in the same room in between hospital appointments. SQUEAMISH READERS: PLEASE STOP HERE. One of Mr Teacake's games of football ended in disaster last week when he collided with the goal keeper as he went to shoot and broke his finger. His appointment with the hand specialist this week confirmed that he has broken his knuckle and finger very badly and will need an operation to have metal pins put in it, in the hope that he will recover the use of it. This is no small thing for him when his job designing websites relies on him being able to click a mouse all day and his guitar requires that he is in possession of all his fingers.

He is also distraught that this will mean he can't play football for the time being. I have implored him to wear a padded foam bodysuit and crash helmet once he returns to the pitch, but oddly, he does not seem keen on this idea. Instead he just speaks of me fashioning him some kind of attractive fabric finger support. I have no wish to branch out into the realm of personal injury sewing though, so will continue with my pencil holders and buy him a consolation ice cream instead.

x