Complete: A Christmas Cambery

Q. What do you get when you cross the Sewaholic Cambie bodice with the Christine Haynes Emery skirt?

A. A Cambery dress of course!

so here is my Christmas Cambery dress, a combination of patterns that I am sure to use again.  This pattern combination came about due to an engineering challenge that i set myself...failure to buy enough fabric for the really gathered and voluminous cambie skirt!

I have made up the cambie before however can't really wear it because of 'slight' errors that were incorporated when assembling the pdf pattern - somehow the waistband ended up about 15 mm too short and thus leaves me with a dress unsuitable for christmas dinner. I do really like the dress so after the festive season i'll throw some pictures together.

So based upon my previous cambie make I decided that this would be my Christmas dress of choice this year and when I saw this fabric decided that they would make a great match. I had enough to make the bodice and a skirt and some of the lining. The fabric was bought here at the village haberdashery and was £4 per fat quarter so that helped persuade me that only 1.5 m would be enough for a dress. Which it was, just not the Cambie.

The awesome lining material used for the pocket bag

In terms of changes, I removed my usual wedge from the back and made the dress up as per instructions only using the slightly different skirt and only one pocket...BIG mistake! I miss my second pocket :'(. The front two lining panels and sleeves are made up with the reindeer fabric however the back two are the same fabric as I used to line my minoru. There's still some left which will make an appearance soon no doubt!

I think I need a hook and eye here...

In terms of changes for the next time, I plan on removing 1 cm from the back length.  The bodice bunches a little however nothing compared to my coco so not such a drastic change. I love the sweetheart neckline and think it hits just at the right height.

I love a good christmas party dress especially now I can make my own  :-)

I hope everyone is having a great party season I went for my second Christmas dinner the other day - a Japanese restaurant in Glasgow's merchant city, last official trip into town completed! I'm  kind of glad that i'm avoiding town right now after such sad events yesterday - the only thing to take from this is that we as a city will get through this - we always do. People here have great community spirit and look out for each other no matter what.

Take care guys. Stay safe.
Jen xx

Ohio Star Quilt

Today I have a mini quilt table topper to share :-) - although it seems to have come out a little bigger than I was intending!

This mini quilt came about quite by mistake - when I was in buying fabric for the advent calendar I shared the other week - i bought a 50 cm (x 60" wide) length for the back but it was too narrow! The lighter holly print was originally destined for the back. But when I was in that day an additional print caught my eye. The red was in a precut fat quarter sitting at the till and was bought out of complete impulse! Taking all this into account the total outlay was £7  or £0 as I prefer to think of it because I salvaged a mistake.

I wasn't entirely sure what I would make with these however as i had a good length of both i reckoned some good could come out of them if used together - so after losing a few hours to pinterest I decided that an Ohio Star would be awesome!

I followed the instructions in the August edition of Sew magazine and used my own dimensions cutting the 4 red and 4 white squares to 6" square and the remaining squares to 6.5" square making each up into two 6" HST's.

Some of the points don't look so pointy after quilting...

Usefully I had a length of wadding left from the advent calendar as well as a good amount of the awesome green Christmas print which was more than enough to use for the backing and for the binding.

The binding was cut 2 inches wide and not on the bias - I hate making this stuff enough as it is!! Haha. I think the method I used here was the French binding method... I pinned 1/4 inch from the raw edge of both the quilted sandwich and the strip of binding and folded out in the opposite direction from the quilt at the corners and then back over on itself and along the new edge. I then spent a few hours waiting for the hungover boyfriend to surface hand stitching 1/4 from the raw edge on the back with the raw edge tucked under. My hand stitching won't win any awards but I'm pleased with the results and far prefer this method to my previous topstitching method.

Some squinty lines of quilting and some of the better slipstitched binding

For the quilting part I used the stitch in the ditch method following the piecing lines on the top. I did however find out how to drop the feed dogs so I think the next time I quilt something I'm going to give it a shot. This is also a pattern I want to try again only this time with a repeat and for a double quilt size. Maybe only with one print too

The Corner needs a little work but im pretty happy

I hope you guys like my most recent project - I have no idea what to do with it though right now it's just sitting on the settee casually chilling after being photographed! Also would you believe that my phone takes better pictures in poor light than my camera? Have a good week guys

Reverse of the Quilt

JCS xx

Completed: Advent Calendar

Hello world;

Just a quick and easy make from me today - a quilted advent calendar. I really love making these things. I made up a whole pile last year but I felt that my dad was missing out as he was the only one without after last year production line efforts!

For this advent calendar you buy the panel which comes with a number of doors which you cut out and sew on yourself- I really love all the designs and it was really hard to choose which one I wanted so it was a proper 'close eyes and choose at random" effort!!

I think this was a great project too to see how my sewing has progressed over the course of the year:
The boxes are far less wonky than anything I put together last year.

 These boxes aren't so square (although they're not all that bad) however the quilting is definately neater around the window and the tree

 I think the detail which goes into these panels is fantastic :-)

The only thing which was difficult for this particular panel was which lines to pik out and quilt? I decided to go with the windows adn the tree and the tree trunk...which you can see on the back of the quilted panel..

 I made a bit of a mistake when buying backing fabric for this so this was the second fabric I chose - which i think is good because I like this one better. The designs are brilliant - especially the stag which really stands out.

 I even have a little left over to use on another project

as I mentioned in my last post, this weekend I went to the hobbycrafts christmas fair - to be honest I was a bit disappointed with the offerings this year - I only came away woth 1.5 m of fabric plus another 3m which has been put away for me for christmas:

This is a poly viscose I picked up at the Remnant Kings stall (£6.99/m) - im not usually into this type of fabric but this one had a fantastic drape :-)

I also picked up an awesome pair of earrings at the Christmas crafts fair that was running in conjunction. I know they're not sewing related... but they're awesome

Has anyone else started sewing christmas gifts yet?

Have a good week all
JCS xx