Creeper Crochet Blanket - Complete

Talk about a long haul! I started this project in October of 2011. It has nearly been a year and a half!

I'm very happy with the results. Afghan blankets take a lot of effort to make, it turns out.

I cheated with the last row - I couldn't find any more aqua so I just replaced the aqua square with the light green.

The border uses this crochet puff stitch edging tutorial, and turned out pretty good. I was going to use black, but I figured it would look to harsh so opted for the dark green instead. Turns out it was a good decision as the puff stitch uses a lot of yarn, and I didn't really have that much black.

I'm pretty excited to test it out when the weather gets a little colder!

A Quaint Garden

I've always wanted to plant a herb garden, and today I did!

My flatmate Scott bought a small greenhouse recently, and had planted about six chilli plants in it.

Six chilli plants and a little herb garden

My herb garden consists of coriander, thyme, chives, and parsley.

It will be so handy to have fresh parsley and coriander on hand all the time! Hopefully I can also make some pesto with the basil. Yum!

Low Carb Maple and Walnut Ice-Cream

I've been hankering for ice-cream lately. It's Summer, and it's hot, and all I want apart from to sit on the deck all day is some gosh-darn ice-cream!

I was initially going to make Keto mint choc chip ice-cream courtesy of Caveman Keto, but then my mind wandered to the sugar-free maple syrup I had sitting in the pantry.

This maple syrup uses Sucralose. After a bit of digging, I found that Sucralose produces pretty much no insulin/blood glucose spike.

Source

That's good enough for me!

I then found a Maple and Walnut Ice Cream recipe. Note how there is no extra sugar - the sweetness comes from the maple syrup. I prepared the custard as per the instructions. I couldn't resist taste-testing it along the way (more than a few times, I'll admit).

However, I still had a conundrum that needed solving. I had no ice-cream maker! A quick Google search led me to David leBovitz' freeze-and-stir method.

This method takes a long time, and it hadn't reached the right consistency when I wanted to go to bed. So the final result was a little icy, but still delicious! I would compare it to store-bought maple walnut ice-cream. Except, sugar free!

Yum!

Mint Seersucker Dress - Hemming

Part One • Part Two

So after buying some extra yardage, I cut out the rest of the skirt sections. Instead of three sections, I cut four, so that I could easily insert the side pocket.

Here's the finished bodice:

I think the bust it still a little off. I'm probably going to tack down the facings as they are only slip-stitched to each other.

So the part that has been the most tedious of this dress has been the hemming. Four metres of bias binding, then four metres of hand-stitched slip-stitching. It took about six hours all up...I don't think I'm even exaggerating.

The good part is it looks neat, so I'm pretty proud.

I didn't have any cream binding left, so I used a dark green that I had left over from the Butterick 50s Dress.

I love pockets in dresses, so I added one!

A technique I've used a lot in this dress is stay-stitching, which keeps the inner fabric peeking up and showing on the outside. I used it on the pocket, neckline, and arm holes. The pocket looks good, but the opening is too large. I should be able to fix this fairly easily by just sewing in the right spot.

I have actually gathered the skirt (that also took forever) and sewn it to the bodice, but it needs tidying up. The gathering stitch is peeking through in one spot, and a bit of gathering got caught awkwardly so looks off. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of this part!

There's not much left to do, apart from finishing a few bits and pieces, sewing in the zipper, and stabilising the waist.

[META] New Blog Design

Well, it's finally done!

Once I figured out that you only have to do all the complicated stuff if you want your blog theme to be compatible with every single widget, I managed to churn this out in about a week.

It looks a lot more appropriate for the content!

I have to add a home button or breadcrumbs or something, the usability is not too flash.

Needlebook and New Bits and Bobs

I was getting annoyed with the current storage solution for my sewing needles: the original packaging. I had no idea how to store them and ended up stumbling upon a concept called a "needlebook" - basically a fabric and felt wallet in which you store needles.

I decided to make my own one based loosely on this needlebook pattern by Ever Kelly.

I picked up some fat quarters when I was out shopping yesterday and chose a cute vine pattern to use. From my stash of buttons I chose a cream one little triangle indents.

This needlebook would not have taken so long if I had focused more when attaching the snaps. Before sewing the whole thing together I attached the two snaps. After turning the piece, I realised the snap was on the wrong side! Durr!

I then proceeded to sew the thing on upside down (sigh). I finally got it right on the third go, though.

While I didn't have felt, I had some wool scraps lying around that did the trick. I cut out a few squares and sewed them on to a fabric backing.

Then I had my first go at embroidery! Eek! It was so fun that I've decided to look into more techniques, and hopefully be able to add little pieces to the clothes I make in the future.

I used some interfacing for the back piece and the tab to give it some stability. Along with the topstitching, I stitched two lines down the middle to simulate a spine.

This is far better than keeping the plastic packets or losing them in pin cushions!

A gift I got for Christmas was a $50 Spotlight voucher (thanks Chris!) so I put it to use yesterday. $68 worth of supplies for $18 - not bad at all!

I bought a few embroidery skeins. There were so many colours - I was overwhelmed! I also re-purposed a body lotion container to hold all of my thread.

Along with the embroidery, I bought:

• Bobbins with a plastic container
• A small embroidery hoop
• A tool for stamping rivets (plus some rivets)
• Beeswax
• Some fat quarters
• White elastic
• Clear elastic
• Black millenary elastic
• A large, clear ruler 

Basically all the things I've been thinking about buying, but never have because I didn't really need them. All except for the clear ruler which has proved invaluable already!

Mint Seersucker Dress

I was spending the day with Louella recently and re-discovered her stash of vintage sewing patterns. I found one in my size and she let me borrow it. We spent the rest of the afternoon at Whitecliffe mocking up a toile. It needed a few adjustments, mainly along the bust, and the waist was too small. The waist was easy to fix; the bust, not so much. I busted out my Vogue Sewing book which has a heap of helpful pattern adjustment tutorials.

After making the adjustments, I went fabric shopping (personally my favourite part!).

I found some delicious mint seersucker and bought it right away! I also got some off-white bias binding and various other notions. It wasn't until I got home that I realised that this will be the third green dress I've made, and I've only made three dresses! I really need to branch out.

I cut everything out using the adjusted pattern pieces. This stuff was really hard to draw on with the tailor's chalk. It is slightly stretchy, and the chalk doesn't transfer very well to the fabric. 

I pulled out a fabric remnant to use for an in-seam pocket that I can hopefully just chuck in there. I love pockets in dresses!

This is going to be a dress where I do everything properly. No cutting corners or being lazy, and making sure to plan where everything is going to go before starting to sew. The toile helped a lot in that I knew how to sew it before I used the fashion fabric.

This probably sounds bad, but it completely blew my mind when Louella informed me you can finish seams before you actually sew them! Before sewing the bodice together, I bias-bound the edges. This helps avoid the awkward binding into seam intersections that was happening on the last couple of dresses.

Seams that weren't really going to be seen were zig-zagged (and hopefully correctly). I bound the outside of the facing because I love binding things.

I finished the bodice section in a couple of days, then started cutting out the skirt sections. There are four, and they are about one metre squared. I managed to cut out three, then realised I only had half a metre left! I figured I had converted the yardage incorrectly to metres, or used the wrong yardage altogether. While the bodice has been completed for a while, I only managed to grab the rest of the fabric before Christmas. Soon I'll get started on the skirt, and I'll be able to show you the finished dress!

Christmas and Mishka's Capelet

My last post was a documentation of the capelet I made for my niece, Mishka. Christmas has been and gone and the capelet was well received! She wore it until she started getting grumpy (as toddlers do).

I'm happy to say that it fit well, despite it looking a little askew in the photo. After an adjustment it sat correctly and looked pretty darn cute!

Christmas also meant a lot of baking, cooking, and crochet. I left everything to the last minute (as you do) so didn't manage to make all of my family presents. However, the baking turned out spectacular!

Cupcakes with buttercream icing

Using my birthday present (the cupcake stand),
the cupcakes and ginger slice were
presented beautifully.

My mum (who knows me too well!) bought me an amazing companion cube cookie jar! Naturally I had to make cookies to fill it up with, so I took the opportunity to use a birthday present I got a while ago - a cookie making set with recipe book and cookie cutters. I made some passionfruit snowmen with little apricot noses. Too cute, and sooo tasty! Normally I find cookies made to be cut out to taste bland and awful, but the recipes in the book are far from it.

Weighted companion cube - weighted with cookies!

Dried apricot makes a rather cute snowman nose

Yum!

Ah, I almost forgot (how could I?)! My favourite gift was a Kindle from my boyfriend! It has pretty much increased my time spent reading about 200%, plus I'll get the opportunity to make a kindle case!