Day: 15 September 2008

craft, patterns, sewing

Brown floral hat

I’ve been pattern testing again!  Thanks to Nikki, I now have a new summer hat.

Brown floral hat - outer by you.

The fabric is from Joel Dewberry’s Ginseng line, and is decorator weight.  There are three layers of interfacing in the brim, and the brim is topstitched as well to help it keep its shape.  I hand-stitched the binding into place – I’ve learned my lesson about attaching binding; I’m never happy with the finished result unless it’s been hand-stitched into place, even though it does take much longer.  The lining is also hand-stitched in place.

Brown floral hat - inside lining by you.

I really, REALLY love this hat pattern! I wear hats all the time in summer, trying to protect my lily-white skin (yes, I am very pale – my legs are so white that the glare is almost blinding).  I’ve made cloth hats before, but as usual Nikki has that something extra in both the drafting of her patterns and the instructions and tips that go with them.  This is definitely the most successful hat I’ve made.  It fits perfectly!

Brown floral hat by you.

See, check out that grin!  Nikki is having a give-away for the pattern over here.  I expect that the pattern will be released any day now.  There are many more hats in my horizon – maybe a whole collection with varying brim widths?

by thornberry
craft, sewing, this is ...

This is … what I do with a spare 10 minutes

Coincidentally, my previous post was also about what I managed to achieve in a spare ten minutes!  But really, if I do have a “spare” ten minutes, I am probably doing pretty much the same thing as Nikki has described: reading bloglines, trawling Amazon craft books, or drooling over fabric from online fabric stores. 

Actually, it is difficult to define what a “spare” ten minutes would be!  I never get everything done that I have to do or want to do, so in some ways no time is spare.  But ten minutes that I have a modicum of control over?  Well, I managed to finished these little zippered pouches in ten-minute bursts over a two week period.

Zippered pouches by you.

Ten minutes if I’m out somewhere?  I pull out the crochet – I rarely travel without it – and hook a row or two!  Although I am trying to use the odd spare ten minutes to chill out a bit – just have a drink and stare into space a little.  I’m not very good at chilling out.

Thanks again to Hoppo Bumpo for a great theme (her post on what she’d do with her spare ten minutes really resonated with me!), and to Handmaiden for guest hosting and Three Buttons for coming up with the whole meme!

by thornberry