Remember me…?

Well, it has been an awfully long time since I said hello from Peggy’s Pickles – 16 months to be precise!

Although the lack of blogging suggests I have been completely consumed with nappies, sleepless nights and games of peek-a-boo (all of which have happened in abundance), I have in fact been quite productive on the sewing front as well. I don’t have that many photos but this is a list of all the things I have made since my little boy was born:

Baby quilt, done a local sewing course, embroidered cushion cover, scout woven tee x 2, sorbetto top x 1, drafted my own pattern from an existing jumper and made the jumper, made the jumper again for my sister, learnt to knit, knitted a scarf (which will never ever ever ever be done again, my word – the stress), two thirds of a granny square crochet blanket, t-shirts x 2, renfrews x 2, Clover trousers x 2 (although one pair may not count as they have stretched beyond all recognition), done a Craftsy course and…

        

                      made a hoodie with a very big hoodie, self drafted trousers

                       

             Lucy Tunic for my niece (not the cardigan!), an owl pin cushion

                         

Wedding present pillows, lots of Flashback Skinny Tees

                        

Minikrea elephant trousers, Oliver + S Sailboat jumper and self drafted trousers

         

Baby sling, and tee-pee (my fave!)

And lots and lots and lots of baby trousers!!

This leads me on to make another announcement (no not more babies) – I have started my own business!

You can find my shop on Folksy here: http://folksy.com/shops/LittleBiscuit

In a nutshell, I am designing and making baby clothes from up-cycled fabric. The shop opened today and I will share the story of how it came about in my next blog post. In the meantime, do go and have a look and pass it on to all your friends!

Hello Everyone!

Things have been very quiet here at Peggy’s Pickles for the last few weeks as we had a very early arrival!

Technically he still should still be in my tummy, but three weeks ago our little son decided he’d had enough and wanted to see the world.

A tough few weeks have followed with 8 days in intensive care, but he’s home now and we’re all muddling through.

It means I might not be doing much sewing for a while, but will be back as soon as I can 🙂

A little bit of help

With my belly reaching gargantuan proportions, but still having things I want to get done, the whole fabric cutting situation needed a big rethink. So who should come to my rescue but Dave!

Normally it is best if I leave the room when Dave does anything DIY related as I’m not very good at biting my tongue when I can see a ‘better’ way of doing things. But in this case, I had to be present, and the whole exercise proved that we do indeed have a strong marriage – bringing up a child should be a breeze now!!

Although Dave did tackle the pattern master, when it came to measuring it was the tool box tape measure rather than the sewing box tape measure that was used, just to keep things a bit more manly.

Hopefully I’ll be able to show you what all this was in aid of soon!!

Jack Sprat would eat no fat…

… And his wife would eat no lean…

No, it’s not baby brain finally taking over completely, it’s my favourite textile design from an exhibition I saw a few days ago at the Fashion & Textile Museum, London.

Called Designing Women: Postwar British Textiles, the exhibition shows the work of British textile artists working after the Second World War, and how they radically changed the industry with their modern designs.

The exhibition mainly focuses on three women: Lucienne Day, Jacqueline Groag and Marian Mahler. Ever since finding out about Robin and Lucienne Day at Uni and then learning more on my Masters, I have admired their work for its influence and simplicity, its use of innovative materials, and the fact that they seemed an awfully glamorous couple!

So this exhibition was a good chance to see a large selection of Lucienne Day’s textiles in one place.

Here are some of my favourites from the exhibition. Considering these were mainly done in the 1950s, I think they’re still remarkably modern. I’d definitely have them in my home!

Calyx
Lucienne Day
1951

Calyx was Day’s most popular design, and launched at the 1951 Festival of Britain. It was manufactured by Heal Fabrics, who initially were skeptical of the avant garde design. However, after winning awards and international acclaim they soon embraced this new modern style.

Too Many Cooks
Lucienne Day
1959 

Miscellany
Lucienne Day
1952 

Fall
Lucienne Day
1952 

Magnetic
Lucienne Day
1957

Composure
Paule Vézelay
1967

The textile design above is by Paule Vézelay, who I had not heard of before. Her designs however were some of my favourites in the exhibition, I love the bold colours, and the shapes are far less fussy than some work done by the other designers. Nice and simple!

The exhibition is on until 16 June if you fancy it, and a full price ticket is £7. While the textiles are undoubtedly nice to look at, there is quite limited information and interpretation so I did leave a bit disappointed, and felt like I didn’t really find out too much about the period or the designers themselves. For that you should go and see the monster British Design exhibition on at the V&A at the moment!

Image sources
http://designmuseum.org/design/robin-lucienne-day

Gathers

Last term in my clothes making class I found out why my gathers never really worked. Although I may be the only one who didn’t realise how to do them properly I thought I would share with you what I learnt!

I am using a sleeve from my Mum’s maternity top to demonstrate.

The three stars show where the tailors tacks are. To create a gather, you need to sew two lines (not one as I had previously thought) of long stitches, without reverse stitching the start or finish of each line. This is known as basting (another thing that I thought only applies to turkey’s at Christmas for quite a long time :-)).

These lines of stitching should be between the left and right tailors tacks. They should also be within the seam allowance (normally 1.5cm on commercial patterns).

To create the gathers, you take hold of the threads at one end of the stitching and gently pull them. You can spread the gathers evenly using your fingers or a pin. By sewing two lines of stitching, the gathers lie much flatter and therefore sit better when you join them with another piece of the garment, in this case the sleeve joining the sleeve hole (not sure that’s a technical term!).

I hope that’s helpful to anyone else who, like me, was only doing one line of gather stitches, and then finding it very difficult to make them look nice!

Pyjama Party: The Worst / Best / Funniest thing I have ever made…

For those of you who read other sewing blogs, I’m sure you can’t have missed the fact that today is Pyjama Party day!

This is the grand finale of a sewalong run by Karen at Did You Make That?. After a frustrating week last week of not being able to make very much because the little person growing in my belly gets in the way, I decided making pyjama bottoms might be the perfect pick-me-up as they would be simple, not require too much bending over and cutting time, and apparently after the baby comes you live in jammies for a few weeks.

This is the pattern I bought.

Having been swept away by the couple on the front of the pattern envelope, I had another idea. PJs for me and Dave!! (Not matching though, hopefully we will never reach the matching stage)

Now, I’m not sure about the etiquette of having a BOY at the Pyjama Party. Do I need to get parental permission? Do we stay in separate rooms even though we’re married…?

Unfortunately though, two pairs of PJs weren’t meant to be due to the very late arrival of the pattern in the post (yesterday). Instead I have just made Dave’s as a thank you for how brilliant he’s been in looking after me whilst I’m pregnant. I am pretty sure I haven’t always been the easiest person to deal with, and it requires a man of great patience to run to the corner shop late at night without a whisper of a complaint, because I have a ‘craving’ for Coco Pops.

So, Dave’s PJ fabric. Now this is where it possibly starts to get a bit silly. The options were traditional tartan, or something a bit more ‘interesting’. Having been let loose on Goldhawk Road (a street in London with lots of amazing fabric shops) unsupervised, take a wild guess which I went for.

SHARK ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Again, I must point out that I was shopping alone.

When the man in the shop found out I was being such a loving wife, he promptly said he would specially wrap my fabric up for me. (He meant the cellophane bag you see in the picture above, not the tissue paper and ribbons I’d been imagining :-))

Now, sharks aren’t neccessarily the most relaxing choice for a pair of jammies, but never fear Dave, Peggy’s got your back. She’s not scared of no sharks!!

Thankfully this was a super easy pattern with only one pattern piece, so they didn’t take too long to make. The tricky part was the fact that Dave was away while I was making them, so I had to guess a bit with which size to go for. Now that I have Dave and his measurements back, I should have gone for the smaller size.

 

And that is why I have decided these are the ‘Worst / Best / Funniest thing I have ever made…’ The fabric is awful / amazing, and the fit is veering on the clown-like, but they make me chuckle every time I see them. And that has never happened with anything I’ve made before!

Dave reading his grown-up book, in his grown-up PJs

I would say don’t worry, no-ones going to see you in these Dave, but now I’ve written a whole blog post on them!

(Thanks Karen for a great sewalong, it has made me laugh a lot, although not necessarily in ways I was expecting :-))

Image source
http://onlinecraftmall.com.au/Simplicity-9871-Sewing-Pattern-Its-So-Easy-MissMen-Sleepwear-P1592598.aspx

Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend

Yes, I firmly believe in the above phrase (Dave, that’s aimed at you. Did I mention I’m going to be getting a person out of me in a few months time? :-))

The reason I have quoted the song made famous by Marylin Monroe is because Dave took me to see a small exhibition (see, you brought it on yourself Dave) at the Getty Images Gallery just behind Oxford Street at the weekend. The exhibition commemmorates 50 years since the death of Marilyn Monroe through photographs and a display of costumes and dresses worn by the star.

It was obviously the dresses that we went for, and here is a selection for you to see. One of the things I thought was lacking from some of the exhibition was being able to see an image of Monroe wearing the dress, so I have tried to do that here instead.

  The Prince and the Showgirl

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Some Like it Hot

Bus Stop

Niagara

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

There’s No Business Like Show Business

The exhibition is open until 23 May, and although it’s small I’d recommend popping in to have a peek!

Images Sources
Please click on each image to be taken to where I found it.

The Best Parcel EVER!

Over the weekend possibly the highlight of my blogging career happened – I won a competition run by another blogger!

Joanne over at Stitch & Witter reached her 100th blog post, and to celebrate hosted a giveaway which I won – WOOOOHOOOO!!!

And in the post today arrived this pretty little package…

Full of pretty little things…

I can’t wait to make the pattern when I am a bit less lumpy, and will be on the lookout for white gloves and a parasol to complete the outfit as per the model in the middle (although she appears to have mislaid her legs – I will try not to do that).

Thanks Joanne!!

Lustgården footstool

Whenever I go to a different country I always like to try and buy some fabric to remind me of the trip. This is what I did when I went to Stockholm a while ago, and found this fabric.

It was about a squillion pounds to buy a metre, so I spent half a squillion on half a metre as I liked it so much! This did however means I had a silly small amount of fabric and couldn’t think what to do with it.

The fabric was designed by Stig Lindberg’s in the 1950s, and is called Lustgården (Garden of Eden). Lindberg was a leading Swedish postwar designer, also producing ceramics, tableware, industrial design and working as a painter and illustrator. I saw an original version of this fabric in the National Museum, and then was able to buy some as Design House Stockholm now reproduces it to the same original standards.

The fabric itself is really thick and heavy, more suitable for upholstery than clothing which is why I had my predicament of not knowing what to make with it. However, as we start to get the nursery ready a need became clear!

We already have two nursing chairs, handed down from my parents, which we had been using as normal seats but they can soon be put to their proper use! However, I imagine it would be nice to be able to put your feet up once in a while so I found instructions for a footstool in the Liberty Book of Home Sewing.

And this is what I made!

Not a very tricky make, apart from getting the blimming polystyrene balls into the lining, and then getting that into the cover. It looked like it had snowed indoors and I have a feeling we will be finding little white balls for years to come!

The only other niggly thing that happened was that I marked the fabric with tailors chalk to cut it out, then changed the cutting line and now can’t get the tailors chalk out. You can just see a white line all round the top in some of the photos. Does anyone have any tips on how I could get rid of this – rubbing it vigorously with a stiff brush hasn’t worked!

Because of the fabric design, and the shape of the footstool it is like a little story is being played out as you turn the stool around.

‘Oh what a lovely spot for a picnic!’

‘Just chillin’, listening to my own private flute player…’

Some shenanigans going on around that tree on the right if you ask me…

‘Look at me! I’m juggling white doves!’
(I had to chop most of the doves off, but that is actually what it looks like he is doing!)

And after all that excitement, me and the baby took the footstool for a little test run. It works perfectly!

Image source
http://www.scandinaviandesigncenter.com/Products/gbp1/Scandinavian_Fabrics/Fabrics/13522/Art+Collection+fabric+red

RIP Sewing Room

I think I’m about to write a post that makes me sound very unreasonable, but here goes…

Yesterday was a sad day at Peggy’s Pickles HQ, as The Sewing Room is no more 😦

Until yesterday I had everything I needed in one room.

My sewing machine, with a nice view out of the window…

Plenty of room for all my patterns and books and things I don’t really need…

And the ironing board, mirror and mannequin within easy reach.

And probably most importantly a wooden floor – perfect for cutting out fabric.

Then yesterday I go to the gym, and come back to find this.

And this.

IN A DIFFERENT ROOM!!!!!! WITH CARPET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Much to my sadness, The Sewing Room has been relegated to a corner of another room to make way for The Nursery. It is fair to say I didn’t think this whole thing far enough through – I knew I’d have to give a lot of things up with the arrival of this child, but The Sewing Room? Really?!

However, as Dave pointed out I may have reacted a little hormonally (pretty sure that’s not a real word) when I got a bit upset by the whole thing :-).

After sleeping on the whole situation, I can now see it’s not that bad at all – I have the lovely task of getting The Nursery ready, I got to sort through all my sewing stuff and uncover things I forgot I had, and I get to hunt for new shelves and things to make The Sewing Corner as lovely as The Sewing Room once was.

RIP Sewing Room, you will be missed 🙂