Recycled Jumper Quilt

I was inspired by the rugs the Made in Merri team made for our retiring school Principal and I decided to give it a go. Mine looks like the cheap knock off version but it's been great to try the techniques gleaned from those group crafting sessions.

The jumpers were felted in a hot wash, ironed and cut into 12 x 12 squares.

After playing with colour combos and contrasts, placing the squares on the kitchen table, I settled on patterns and gathered up each row in order and pinned with a number of which row it was.

With the sewing machine I stitched each row together....


Then the rows were pieced together on the machine. As it wasn't for a super duper important gift I wasn't as neat and super duper as the Made in Merri crew.


Then I backed it with linen, straight stitch around the edge.

My final (maybe)* step was to edge it with left over rib. The made in Merri gals made BAIS binding for their quilt and maybe they even STITCHED IN THE DITCH - far beyond me I'm afraid. Instead I overlocked ribbed bands together then attached to the quilt with the overlocker before turning the rib over and hand stitching it on the other side.

 

My plan is to keep going with these and hopefully sell the cheap knock off rugs at the school fete next year.

*Made in Merri ladies did a quilting stitch by hand around some squares and I still may attempt this just to hold the back and front in place.

pom pom head band - a proper tutorial!

Everyone wants pom poms sprouting from their head now so I whipped up a stretchy pom pom headband for the kids and thought I'd redeem my laziness and do a tutorial - all proper like with words and pictures and numbers and everything! So here it is.

fake fair isle

I was wishing I had a little jumper with  a fair isle yoke. I can't make one quick enough...in fact I'm not sure I can make one full stop.  So I embellished this second hand number into fake fair isle....

'cos, yeah...I'm gonna fake it 'til I make it.......which might be years...or never!

Presents

Lovely Josha, a friend of the twins, is having a birthday. He is a truly remarkable kid with strong ethics and sense of justice. He is in nature club at school and loves crafting as well. A boy after my own heart - in fact he won my heart ages ago! He's a gem.

He hates things made cheaply in Asia and loves hand made so this is what the girls and I made him for his birthday.

This is a heat bag with removable cow cover. The cow is based on a combination of drawings the twins did - it was quite hard with all the wonkiness! The heat bag I made from some lovely liberty print cotton and filled it with pearl barley. The cover from scraps of corduroy and recycled jumper felt.

Because Josha loves nature we also made him a terrarium.

It has a little trophy in it because we all think Josha is the best!

Here is Josha earlier in the year getting crafty at the fete.

Learning to stitch

I have been remiss - all this encouraging other children to get crafty with my re-sew-cool sewing kits and I hadn't even bothered to teach my own kids to sew. I know! Bad mother! On the weekend they were imploring me to help them make softies and Sunday turned out to be the perfect rainy afternoon to get crafty in the back room.

Pepper and Wanda drew a picture of the critter they planned to sew. (Yes, for identical twins they have very different drawing styles.)

 




















I helped Joe with his shape. Then we selected felt and got cutting and stitching. Pepper didn't have the patience to wait her turn and so just got started with glue - which is perfectly cool I think. She stitched the outer seams.

Joe showed surprisingly good concentration and managed to sew on a button.

Wanda was very patient and tenacious. She even put a pocket on her softie.

  Wanda has called her creature "Pom Pom", Joe has called his owl "Parsley" and Pepper has called her bunny "Hermione".

Best of all - all of the softies are made entirely from recycled materials. 

* and just a postscript: after we finished I gave Joe a hair cut! He doesn't look like a wannabe Paul Weller mod now!

tiddely pom pom poncho

 A snuggly poncho from a recycled jumper/sweater.

You will need: 

1 large jumper/sweater

coloured wool

sewing machine

fork

scissors

Here is the jumper I started with. First up I cut off the sleeves - they became matching leg warmers. Next I cut the neck because my little girls didn't like the rolled neck ( I did!). I zig-zagged the edge, folded it, pressed it, pinned it and sewed it on the sewing machine with a straight stitch.

Measure the jumper on the person you are making the poncho for. Let it fall and drape how you want it to sit. Mark where the elbows are with a pin. Mark the length you want in the centre of the jumper.

Now lay the jumper flat and carefully cut from the just outside the neck in a straight line to the elbow mark.

REMEMBER TO PRESS WITH AN IRON before you cut or sew it! 

Make a curved (or straight for a triangle poncho!) line to the centre measurement and cut. Repeat on the other side - fold in half to match.

With right sides together, straight stitch the side seam to the elbow mark. 

Finish seams with a zig-zag stitch. DO THE STRAIGHT STITCH FIRST TO KEEP IT FROM GOING WIGGLY!

Press the curved hem with a steam setting on the iron. Pin the hem. 

Sew with a straight stitch then a flat zig-zag to prevent it un-ravelling.

Now the fun part! Raising the cute factor to the power of POM POMS! These little pom poms are made with a fork. That's right. A fork. Yeah! It's revolutionary! We've all done that, right? Just in case, here is a link.

Place the pom poms where you want them and hand stitch them in place using a wool needle. 

Now rug your little one up all snug!

A farewell quilt.

As you have probably guessed from the previous post our retiring school principal, Dionne, is an extremely well loved and respected member of our community. Some of the crafty parents at the school wanted to put our efforts towards creating a keepsake for her. This is what eventuated.

A sumptuously warm plum coloured quilt made from recycled jumpers.

With so many crafty people participating, was it a case of too many cooks spoil the broth? Never. In fact we proved the other adage to be true: many hands do in fact make light work. 

We enjoyed each other's company, shared our skills and talents - along with tea, sunshine,stories and cake. And their was plenty of warm unspoiled broth too.

Justine washed the jumpers, and then, with my industrial cutting machine, I was naturally in charge of cutting the many 12 cm x 12 cm square (under strict advice from task master Karen to be accurate! Yikes...no pressure.) 

We met at Jenny's warm light filled house and lay the squares out on the huge bench. Next thing multiple hands were rearranging and changing contrasting squares in a fairly hilarious felty crafty game of tetris!

Each row was labeled and stacked then the dueling sewing machines were brought out and lifted onto Jenny's generous dining table (I must point out that everything at Jenny's place is larger than life and of generous proportions - from the huge welcoming front door, to the huge sun-filled windows, to the huge old dog, Betty and most of all to the huge generous nature of Jenny herself.) 

Karen, an experienced professional maker, backed the quilt with a natural coloured linen and made her own bias binding from wool suiting.

Then all hands were on deck for hand stitching leaf designs and squares.Jenny finished it with a hand embroidered message in the corner and a colour co-ordinated bag to keep the quilt in. 

As you can see, Dionne loved it.  

And we loved making it. I learned so much from these women. Community-minded crafty company - the best.

School Fete Enviro Stall!

With the Autumn sunshine predicted for Melbourne tomorrow, the Merri Creek Primary School fete is looking like it will be a ripper! And it needs to be. The funds we raise at our school fete are really important. For a start, it means that the school can afford to keep and maintain our wonderful elm trees. And then there's all the other stuff like educating the youngsters...

I've had a great month getting involved with the environment stall. In fact I've been so busy plarning* and pom pomming and plastic-creating that I've had no time to be here, in blogland. Who would have thought that plarning, pom pomming and plastic-creating would be so labour intensive? (Oh, I must admit I have had time for tennis. And goodreads. Please don't be jealous bloggies! I promise you are my first and only true love.)Hello blogland! 

When I catch my breath after tomorrow, I'll post more about what we've been making. The Enviro Stall coordinator, Kasia, has been - please excuse the daytime-tv-gushiness - an inspiration with her innovative approach to recycling!Stay tuned....


*plarning is turning plastic bags into yarn for crocheting/knitting etc.