Christmas Bunting

I've finally managed to complete a Christmas decoration! I've been meaning to make some Christmas bunting for years, and I've finally gotten around to it. I used the blanket stitch on my sewing machine, along with a bit of machine embroidery thread. If you want to know a little bit about appliqué, I should hopefully be back in here in the next couple of days with a tutorial.

You Sew, Girl! - Wrap Skirt

I picked up this Echino Chelsea fabric for only $10/m during Frou Frou's closing down sale. Which is good, because I got a bargain, but also sad because it's another great fabric store that is no longer around. The fabric is double-gauze, which is lovely and floaty and soft. Perfect for summer weather.



I didn't use a pattern as such, I followed Nikki's instructions in the pattern-free clothes section of her book, You Sew, Girl! I think the skirt is better suited to a more structured type of fabric (like a quilter's cotton, or maybe some linen), but I think I got away with using the gauze for this project.



The fabric was really narrow, so in the instructions, Nikki advises a centre-back seam as an option, but I wanted a fairly long skirt and the longer it is, the wider it is at the bottom and it was just a little too narrow. I also wanted my lions to all be the right way up, so I ended up making it with two side seams instead.



The only thing with this was that I'm not really sure I had the grain of the fabric right on the two over-lapping front panels. My concern about this caused me to procrastinate a lot, and this skirt ended up taking me a couple of weeks to finish, which is silly because it is not really that complicated.



The skirt has a facing around the waist-line, and along the front edge of the skirt, which takes a little more time than this skirt, but makes for a much better finish.

Resistance is futile!

I became really excited when I saw that the next Aneela Hoey fabric line for Moda was going to be based around my favourite little fairytale girl, Little Red Riding Hood. I really like her girl on a tree-swing from the Sherbet Pips range, but as yet I don't have any. The new line is called "A Walk In The Woods" and is due for release in February or March.



I became even more excited when Amy Badskirt told me that Quilt-Jane had pre-cuts in her store. The prices are also AWESOME! I couldn't decide between the jelly roll or the layer cake. I put one of each in my basket and they both sat there for a weekend whilst I ummed and ahhed and finally decided I had to have both.



They are destined for a quilt (and probably some other things...?) for Amélie's room.