For those of my overseas readers who don't know what a giraffe is, in Cockney rhyming slang a giraffe is a laugh and that is what I think some of the crafting magazines are doing at the moment. They are getting lazy and slapdash.
Last week one of my friends had a baby, a little girl who arrived on Thursday evening... I found out on Saturday morning and knew then that I had the perfect excuse to make a giraffe from a pattern I had kept from a magazine. I leapt to the kitchen, found the greaseproof and started to trace... well, yes it did look small but then things always look bigger in magazine pictures, don't they? And well, they seemed to have been a bit generous in the amount of fabric needed but no, I pushed on and then realised that one of the pattern pieces was missing but I can sew, I can draw (OK, that is a lie but I do have a pencil, ruler and rubber) and I can guesstimate the shape of the missing part. So I sewed it up, hmm the ears looked smallish but let's be honest there was no way I was going to be able to sew up the horns without blood being shed, much swearing and causing untold woe to my dentist as I gnashed my teeth. The pattern was too small...it should have been enlarged by 200%.
I went back to the drawing board photocopier, took six separate copies to ensure that I captured everything and then spent 15 minutes sellotaping it together and retracing the pattern. So, as is my want, I then read the pattern, next pet hate no indication of the seam allowance, that is until we come to the ears and the horns, when I am told to cut 1/4" outside the line, err could they not have drawn the piece the right size like all the others?
Anyway as you can see I made them up... as one of my friends remarked, "Ooh that little one looks just like that Greek horse!" Hmmm, well I suppose if a barge painter had got at him, there might have been a resemblence but I hope that David Attenborough might just recognise him...
Now here is my gripe, why are patterns not checked properly? Seams and sizing are Sewing 101, it's absolute basics, does no-one at a magazine try making it before they publish? Then we come to knitting patterns, there is one writer in particular, and yes, Debbie Bliss I am looking at you, whose books always seem to have addenda floating from them... How difficult is it to check numbers and quantities?
Whilst I am on a roll, why am I seeing so many patterns pulled from published books? Recently I spotted the same cushion in two magazines in the same month by the same maker, really frustrating when you have shelled out quite a bit of cash for something I already have on the bookshelf. Lovely to have them occasionally but more than three in every issue is taking the proverbial... come on publishers there are lots of talented people out there... use them.
And talking of talented people don't forget to look at Handmade Monday to see what some of the really great original crafties have been up to.
Love to know if I am the only one who is driven up the wall by this... or if, as I suspect, I am just a grumpy old woman!
