From Russia, via Leigh-on-sea with Love - the Matryoshka Skittle Tutorial

OK, dear reader you know that above everything I am totally honest with you... and today I publish one of six skittles to go with the Pentagon ball for tots.

So what inspired this... was it the lovely cotton Matryoshka fabric, the dolls from a Moscow market or the tweezers... you've worked it out, haven't you?

Yep, it is the tweezers.. this morning I lightly swept my hand over my chin and OMG... there was a hair, well step forward tweezers (which my OLDER, yes BIG sister stuck in my Christmas stocking) and, yes, it was my tweezers, in concert with my hairy chin that inspired this week's tute!

You will need - to make six skittles:
3/4 Yard of cotton fabric - I used Moda
Scraps of fabric (I used left over pieces from the ball
Felt - brown, cream and pink
Buttons
Thread, pins, sewing needle, scissors (pinking shears would also be handy)
Ribbon - I am using Jane Means ribbon
Toy stuffing
Paper, ruler, compass and pencil
Liquer glass and champagne flute
Iron and ironing board... I use an ancient Morphy Richards and a huge John Lewis board!

We are going to start with creating the three pattern parts, draw a line 4" long at the bottom of your paper, then draw a perpendicular line 7.5" tall at the centre (at 2" in).  At 4" up the perpendicular, mark and 1.25" on either side, 6" mark a point 7/8" on either side... now join the dots up.  Place the champagne flute so that the rim sits on the top of the perpendicular line and draw around it to create the curved top.  To create the shawl, draw an horizontal line 3.5" from the top of this pattern piece, trace around it and you have your shawl piece

Next comes the base, you are going to need a combi oval / circle or indeed a circal with a 4.5" diameter widthwise and 4" height wise - to achieve this set your compass 2.25". Now draw a line 4.5" long, find the centre point and put the compass .25" above it and connect the ends of the line with a semi-circle, repeat this for the other side and thus you have your circal.

Iron your main fabric and pin the skittle sides onto it and cut four.

Now if you are cunning you will use a fabric which does not have a repeat, so you can save on the amount of fabric that you use.  Cut out one base.

Now, cut out four short tops... now this is where I made a mistake, but so you can see and also so I can demonstrate another thrifty technique I am going to share it with you.  Iron over a very small hem and sew it... you will notice that my shawls are joined together in one continuous line of sewing, this is call chain piecing and saves on the amount of thread you throw away.

Pin the shawl to the body.

Sew around as close the edge as you can... and then sew over hem you have created... bang goes my saving!  So in future just iron it rather than sewing an extra hem.

Pin two sides together and sew up to the top using a 1/4" seam allowance.

Around the curve, cut out small triangles to ease the fabric around the curves so that it will sit nicely.

Turn the body and shawl right sides out and press open the seam.  Place a small wine glass over the shawl, to ensure that it fits, now draw around it on your cream felt.  To make the hair, repeat this on the brown felt, chop it in half into two semi-circles and trim to give your doll the Anne Stallybrass hair style from the Onedin Line... Did I mention that like Helen Mirren, she also went to my school!

I satin stitched the brown felt fringe onto the face... don't sew the top of the head... I told you not to, now just do as you are told... sighs.  If you prefer, use a small blanket stitch like we used in the embroidery tutorial last year.

I used small blue buttons for the eyes but if you are risk averse, then large french knots will do the job.  For the cheeks, I tried a 5p but that was too big, so I found a smaller button to trace around for the cheeks

Sew the cheeks in place by sewing up through the centre, and down through 12 o'clock, back up through the middle and down to 6 o'clock, back up through 3 and then 9 o'clock, repeat this for the space between 12 and 3, 6 and 9, 3 and 6 and finally 9 and 12.  Finishing touch a line of back stitching to create her cheery, peasant smile.

Pin the face over the seam of the front of the doll and use cream cotton to zig zag around the face and brown to go over the hair.

 Pin the back and the front together, leave a 2" gap below the shawl and the sew down to the base, this will be our hole to turn it through and stuff it.

To cover the join between the shawl and the body use ribbon - I used about 18" and trimmed it to fit.  Start by leaving a long end just below her mouth and use a small running stitch to hold it in place and sew back round to the front.  Fasten off securely and tie a bow, trim the ends... this time I used pinking shears to trim off my Jane Means ribbons.  You have to hand sew this as the aperture is too small to fit and sew with your machine.

Get the iron out, turn the skittle inside out and press the seams open, the take the base and fold it in half lenghtwise and width wise and press those creases into the base.  Pin the crease against the seam on all four sides, the ease the fabric between the seams... you will find it easiest to have your pins horizontal than vertical as this will help with easing.  Remember easing is a battle between you and the fabric to make it fit into a curve, and you will win!

Sew the base to the skittle and then trim the excess fabric with your pinking shears, otherwise cut little triangles but do not cut through the seam... it is not unknown for this to happen, even with experienced seamstresses!

You are now on the home strait, pull the skittle through the gap in the side seam and gently fill it with your stuffing... little and often rather than big and brutal as this will give you a much softer finish.  Just like the ball last week, whip stitch the opening shut.

Now look at your amazing skittle... she is rather lovely don't you think?

If you want to just make it as an ornament, I would put some heavy interfacing on the base to stabilise it.  I had another thought that you could reduce the pattern size on a photo-copier and create a proper family of stacking dolls, how cute would that be?

Well, by the skin of my teeth, I have just made Handmade Monday... so click on through and see what this talented group have been up to during the last week.

I spy with my little i... this week's i-pad cover tutorial

I would really like an ipad, but unfortunately due to the redundancy last year, it is not going to happen for a while yet, but it does not stop me from being ready with a cover for it when I get it.  So this week we are going to make an ipad cover, a Kindle cover or even work in miniature for an i-phone (measurements for these are at the end of the tutorial) and we are going to use fabric from Moda's 30s playtime collection which is just yummy.

Model i-pad is lent by Miss Weston 's technical consultancy :)

 

So let's get cracking, irons and ironing boards at the ready and off we go, you will need:
An outer fabric, an inner fabric and wadding measuring 24" (L) x 13" (W)
Sewing machine
Thread
Pins
Scissors and tape measure or rotary cutting wheel, mat and ruler
Iron and Ironing board
Button (decorative or self covering)
Chopstick
Snap Fasteners (Big ones!) or Velcro
Water Soluble Pen
Decorative buttons or fabric scraps

First iron your fabrics and cut out identical pieces from the inner and outer fabric and from the wadding.

We are going to quilt the wadding (you will probably have some left over from the tea cosy or needle roll), if you are lucky enough to have a machine like mine you may have some quilting stitches on your machine... I used a Serpentine stitch which gave me the curvy stitch.  Another option is straight lines, using a water soluble pen place a dot every two inches around the edge draw a diamond pattern linking these dots and sew along the lines.


Do this with just the outer fabric and the wadding, the polka dot fabric really helped me as I used the dots as a guide for my Serpentine stitch.

Now once you have quilted your fabric, it will shrink, the more you quilt, the more it shrinks in size, so check that you still have enough fabric to play with, in case you need to adjust your seam allowance.  


As usual we are using 5/8" seam allowance, pin the outer fabric to the inner fabric and sew them together. Then trim down your inner fabric to match the outer fabric, it will be about a 1/4".

Fold the quilted section over and measure 9" from this seam and lightly press it.  At this point you might decide to applique a design onto the cover, or sew a pattern in buttons, if you choose to do this do it on the front fabric between the fold you have just pressed and the seam.  I suggest that it looks better on right hand side facing you, in fact I am sure that I read it in a survey in a magazine at the hairdressers, so it must be true!


Now you are going to read this through thoroughly and then do it... cos if you are like me, you will run off on your own and get it wrong.  As my mother would say, "I had a little girl/boy like you before, so I know that I am right!"  


Sew up both sides of the quilted section up to the seam between the inner and outer fabrics, ignore the flap.


Measure 9" from seam on the inner fabric, sew up just one side to the seam.  Then on the other side, sew up two inches, leave an opening of four inches and then sew up to the seam.

You should now have two pieces of fabric flapping in the breeze, this is good, pin them together, find the centre point and mark it 5/8" in.  Mark a spot an inch above the seam (marked as A and B on the pic) on each side, draw a line from seam on the left hand side to the first point then a diagonal across to the centre point, another diagonal to the point on the right hand side and then onto the seam.

Sew along the line, the trim the excess fabric and cut the corners to remove the bulk of the fabric for when we turn this.  Your cover will now look like a Y shape.

Using the four inch hole, start pulling the fabric through the hole.  On the seam of the inner fabric, where the hole is, fold it through and iron it into place, sew a seam as close to the edge of the fabric as you can.  Tuck the inner into the outer sleeve and iron into place

Slip your ipad into place and let it drop to the bottom of your cover, this push the lining into place.


It is now decision time, how do you want to fasten your cover... this cover is a girly cover but you have a couple of other options, eg a buttonhole in the triangular flap and a large attractive button.  Or maybe you and your machine do not do buttonholes, you can cheat use another method, sew the button onto the top of the flap and put velcro on the inside of the flap and on the front of your cover.  I went with using the Days of Wine and Roses flower and sewing that onto the front flap and then sewed a large snap fastener onto the case to close it.

Now if you want to make it for a Kindle you will need a piece of fabric 19" (L) x 7.5" (W)
when you fold it will be 7.75".  The formula I am using is 2.5 x L +1.5 (seam allowance) x W +1.5 (seam allowance) +.5 (quilting shrinkage).


And for a phone 14" (L) x 5" (W), when you fold it you will need it to be 4.75" from the seam

Finally, this is my notebook and my sketches so that you can see how my addled brain works out how to make these patterns up... usually I do this at my local coffee shop or at three in the  morning in my bed but I reckon I forget to update the book at that time!


Right, you know what comes next, hop on over to Wendy's fabulous Handmade Monday to see what the gang have been up to this week.


PS - The good news is that this cover has already been snaffled up by a chum who fell in love with it when she saw it :)

The 1930s are just bang up to date!

I did something bad today... you know how it is... I wanted to walk past, but I just couldn't help it... I went into Belle Fabrics (aka to us oldies as Richardsons) in Leigh-on-sea, just to see if they had something that I might be able to use for this weekend's tutorial.  What a mistake, they had just had a delivery of Moda Fabrics... I mean, how was I to know but by then I was in and there was no escape.


Moda have just released a new range called 30s Playtime which is based on the floral and chintzy ranges of the 1930s and have been designed by Chloe's Closet for Moda.
Now this is just a taster of a Jelly Roll pack, usually a selection of fabrics 2 1/2" x 44/45" and taken from the same range.


I was really taken by:

But then I spotted: 

And then:

And one of these literally made it to the cut for the Sunday's tutorial... we will be making a cover for your ipad... or Kindle... or you can scale it down for your phone.


Now oddly enough I also got an email from MoDA (the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture) and they have published a fabulous book to coincide with their travelling exhibition on the work of the Silver Studios and even better it is reduced in their January sale.

 The book was written when Keren Protheroe was researching the work of the women designers who worked at the Silver Studios... elements of their art remains and sometimes, you  do not even know who they were but what they have created is still used by people like M&S designers to influence their fabrics today.

Imagine being told that you can only use so many colours to create a design and yet create the illusion that you have used a full palette.   They even have letters between the studios and the designers discussing their work and pay!

So, if you see that the travelling exhibition is coming to a spot near you, gussie up your skirts and get there as fast you can, it is small but I promise you that it is really worthwhile.


PS I have no links to Moda or MoDA, I just like em and know you will, too!