Saturday 22 March 2014

The Jean Repair Method

I thought that I would eventually grow out of making rips in my jeans from climbing trees and falling off my scooter. But even though I've stopped climbing trees, falling off scooters, (or riding them for that matter!) I still manage to rip every pair of jeans I own. Having not the money for a new pair (I spent it on a camera!) enter my cute and (pretty cool) jean repair method! It fixes the rips so that they still look cool and ripped, but they don't gape open and the holes don't get any bigger. Win-win situation here guys! I did try to get a photo wearing them on as they do look better on.



And it's really easy to do. Cut a patch of fabric that will fit over the hole with space all around it, and cut a piece of bonda-web to the same size. Then position your fabric sandwich so that the flattened jeans are first, then bondweb, then fabric face down lined up with it. Iron until stuck. See how you get the rips and the fabric peeping through.


Then taking a colour that goes with the jeans in thread (mine had yellow stitching) and sew running stitch around the edge of the holes. The stitches add some texture so they don't have to be tenny-tiny but if they are too huge they won't hold when you wash them. Pretty and done!
 

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Spring Time Biscuits

Spring has come very softly this year, with some days cold and grey as we are so used to, and then I
go outside on the next in bright sunlight likes and the birds are singing! It's strange how I always forget in winter what it's going to be like in spring, how it feels to go outside without a coat on, like coming out of hibernation again. In fact, spring's fleeting presence made me so excited I decided to celebrate... with food of course. Sweet, pretty food to be sure: tiny little biscuits with pretty coloured icing!



The recipe for the dough and icing is here. On the blog post I've called them cookies, but spring has come to England and thus I have to call them biscuits. I always use this recipe as the biscuits always taste good and keep their shape well, and they keep pretty well too. My younger brother and sister helped and we had a lot of fun deciding what shapes to make for our little springtime scene.


The only changes I made to to the recipe were coloured the green icing using natural green food colouring and the pink with pink lustre dusk for extra shine! I first piped around the edges of the cookies and then flooded them with icing. The icing has to be quite thick for this to work well. I don't really know why I put it on a paper background, but I did.

Friday 14 March 2014

Vintage-Style Card Making

Recently I've not had much time for blogging (or to finish sewing that potholder!) so it was lovely to have ten minutes yesterday with beautiful sunlight and some time to create. The weather has been so changeable recently: from mist and cold to beautiful sunshine and warmth! I started out scrapbooking some vintage-style items I had been saving for a while but it soon lead on to the idea for this card. I thought I'd practice my photography and document the process. The finished card is far from perfect, I would change a few things, but what I wanted to show is the process of creating a card from some random craft items.

I started with a blank card, some lace, a luggage tag, vintage layered sticker, and some washi tape. I gather a lot of things with the same theme ('vintage-style' for instance) and then see which ones I use.

Next I lay the items over to card to work out where each will go and in what order. I find that this is better than layering up as you go along but I'm sure you could pull that off nicer than I could.

Now I start to build the card. Glue is my worst enemy because its so easy to get your fingers and card dirty but its also my best friend because it's an invisible way to attach things like lace as it dries clear.

I like to add a little extra length to my lace when I cut it to the sides of the card so that I can fold it over and glue it on the back to create a neater finish.

Trimming the luggage tag down to fit to the card at the right angle is a little tricky, I think I tweaked mine too much because it's ended up a bit small. If you can notice, the pattern builds up layers that are either going straight across the card or at an angle.

Finishing touches now. The message is written with a pencil first and then I go over in pen. And at the last moment  I decided that a bow would balance things out nicely.


So finished it is. Next time I would change a few things, but I hope you enjoyed watching the process.

Monday 3 March 2014

Pancake Day

Tomorrow is pancake day (hooray!) and although I'll not be the one making them this time, I thought I'd just share some recipes. If you're going to go for the traditional english pancake, simple with lemon and sugar, I've used this recipe from Delia Smith before. The lovely Poires au Chocolate blog has complied lots of recipes for crepes which look delicious and perhaps go a little bit further in terms of style, taste, and difficulty.

However, if you want to go for something different, can I suggest my puffy American-style pancakes? These are really good eaten with maple syrup and strawberries as suggested, but also with streaky bacon or melted chocolate! The recipe is here.