Hello and welcome to MadeByPin.com. I’m a wife, mom, granny and maker. I started this blog in 2011 in order to complete my huge pile of UFPs (Unfinished Projects). I finished many of them but also started a lot and the pile hasn’t really diminished. Join me and follow my progress or get in touch with the stories about your own UFPs.
Stitching It All Together
I just listened to a podcast about the Missouri Star Quilt Company
If you are thinking of starting something new for 2019, I urge you to listen and find out about how the Missouri Star Quilt Company started and grew into one of the biggest quilting supplies company in the US.
Click the play button on this link to listen
Super Cute Skirts for a Toddler Girl – guest post by Crafty Roo!
My little boy and I had a toddler party to attend this weekend for a friend. She is turning two, and like last year, I decided to make her some clothes. I didn’t have as much time this year (goodness knows why not) so didn’t have time to make anything as complex as the ruffled top I made last year. So, simple skirts it was.
I found a pattern on the internet I liked and made it up. My toddler was safely in bed. Mistake. I tried it on him the next day and it was like a long pencil skirt. Something wrong happened, I think in the measuring. He didn’t like it as he couldn’t climb.
Anyway, I found another pattern – http://www.danamadeit.com/2011/04/a-simple-skirt-a-simple-tutorial.html – and quickly emailed my friend for her little girl’s measurements.
Here’s what you do – take the waist measurement and DOUBLE it. This will give you a nice full skirt. Then, take the waist to knee measurement and add a couple of inches for hems and waistband.
You should then have a rectangle of fabric.
Now, I went a bit wrong here in the making up, but the original instructions should be easy to follow.
My little boy was happily eating his snack as I was making these up – and he does love the sewing machine (phew) – and he can eat a lot so I managed to run up all three in snack time. Just about. These fit much better – a perfect size for a two year old. I made the fleece one a bit biggger as it is August here and thankfully we don’t have much call for fleece but we will in a few months time.
Beautiful, right??? (takes a bow, gets gold medal chocolate from bread bin).
These are really really simple – even when I went wrong I was able to rectify it quickly and you would never tell from the looking at it.
No Fat Tea Bread – Bara Brith
My mum made this the other day – it is really delicious.
For conversion to cups please click here
350g mixed dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, dried apricot, mango, mixed peel whatever you have)
140g light muscovado sugar
300ml hot black tea
300g self raising (all purpose) flour
1 egg
Put all the mixed fruit and sugar in a mixing bowl and stir in the hot tea.
Cover and leave for 24 hours.
Next day: Heat oven to /150c/300 f/gas mark 2
Grease and line a large loaf tin with baking parchment.
Beat the egg and stir it and the flour into the fruit and tea.
Pour into tin and bake for 90 – 100 mins. It is ready when it is well risen.(If you put a skewer into the centre it will come out clean.)
Allow to cool slightly then remove from the pan and cool on a rack.
‘Stack and Whack’ Quilt – guest post by CraftyRoo!
hello!
Crafty Roo bringing you this week’s make – a stack and whack play quilt for a baby.
I have been making quilts for some time and wanted to try a new method. I had a birthday last week and received many crafty books, one of which was Kirstie Allsop’s Craft. In this book, one of the first projects is a stack and whack quilt. It looked quite easy and interested and I wanted to see if I could use this technique as opposed to cutting blocks or strips which is how I usually piece my quilts.
Anyway, the book suggested making a template. I didn’t do this and wanted to get straight on with my cutting. I made a stack of five fabrics. I then cut two squares through all five layers, each six inches by six inches. Then I made four cuts into each square, giving five smaller piles of fabric for each square (10 in total). I labelled these carefully. Each pile of fabric was cut slighly differently, giving different shapes.
You then leave pile one as it is, take one piece the top of from pile two and put it on the bottom, take two from pile three and put it on the bottom, take three from pile four and put them on the bottom, put four from pile five on the bottom. Do this carefully and you will end up with five unique squares. Sew these together so you end up with ten complete squares.
Lay these out so that no two of the same fabrics are next to each other. You will have one square left over, which you can use on the back, if you like, or to make a matching cushion.
If I was going to do it again, I would cut bigger squares to start off with. Using only six by six squares made it very fiddly!
That is as far as I’ve got! I’ll try to update this with my next steps.
59. Another Birthday Card
It is my friend Julia’s birthday on Monday. She loves dogs, so I thought I’d make her a personalised card.
Those of you who followed this blog in its first year will recognise the method – it is a papercut. I drew a design in pencil then cut it out with a craft knife. I then stuck the design on to a contrasting backing paper with Spray Mount.
It would probably have been better to have drawn the design on the reverse of the paper so I didn’t have to erase the pencil marks; but being no Leonardo Da Vinci, my brain power does not stretch to mirror writing.
58. Fabric Mice
Before I start this make, I’d like to say hello to the 1st Tunstall Brownies. Their leaders have been in touch to say that they have managed to work out nearly the whole of next term’s programme from ‘makes’ on this blog. Please send me pictures of how you get on and I’ll post them here.
This week’s make was just too cute for me to resist. It is featured in this month’s ‘Mollie Makes’ magazine, which our library subscribes to.
All the instructions of how to make are in issue 11 and a pdf pattern is free to download at the magazine link above.
I had a lot of fun making these two. They will be raffled off at our next library bake sale to raise funds. I’m calling them ‘The Library Mice’
Here are some pictures of them. The first one before clothing and the second after they were dressed.
They were a fantastic way to use up bits of scrap fabric and wool. You will see my first attempt at knitting something in a long, long time above too.
Addendum to Make 54: The Lion Hat
Here is a picture of the hat in action on the slopes
57. Valentine Card
Some days crafty things just don’t go right. I was full of enthusiasm to make some Valentines cards and had found one online that I thought I would have a try at making.
Take a look at this one
Gorgeous and relatively simple, I thought.
Not so fast…
I gathered the equipment together
and marked out the lettering.
Then I carefully cut around the solid lines and folding at the dashed lines. This took a while. I was engrossed in listening to Danny Baker on the radio that was mistake number 1! I wasn’t concentrating on the card and glued the wrong side of the cut out piece:
How can I fix this? – mistake number 2. I should have put it in the bin at this point. I decided to put glitter on the glue and make it look like I meant to cover the front with glue.
The pot of glitter had not been opened before and was covered in tape. I took much too long trying to get it open – mistake number 3. By the time I had finally got into the glitter the glue was almost dry.
But I carried on – mistake number 4. Glued it to the card and found that I had cut the heart too big so it didn’t fold properly – mistake number 5.
At this point I decided to try making a different card.
This one is much simpler.
Cut 2 hearts the same size from some pretty paper. The picture below shows enough for 3 cards.
Here comes mistake number 6. I had drawn the heart shape on the reverse of the design and found when I turned it over that I had missed the design in some places – the white stripes in the picture above.
Stick one heart to the front of the card.
Then stitch the matching sized heart on top of this one.
If you look closely you will see mistake number 7. I accidentally got some purple pen marks on the large top heart and had to disguise it by going around the whole heart with a purple outline.
As I made these 3 cards, I refined the method. On the last one, I glued some tissue paper to the reverse side of the top heart which hid the print on the underside.
I also made mistake number 8…as I was finishing off the stitches on one of the cards, I snipped off the thread too close to the card and cut off the knot I had carefully made to secure the stitching so the inside has a loose end. If I had more time and wasn’t making so many mistakes today, I would cover the stitching on the inside with another layer of card in a contrasting colour but I’m going to stop while I’m ahead.
56. Apron
I’ve been meaning to make an apron for a long time as mine were looking particularly scruffy. Luckily some very nice people saw them, took pity on me and made me some so I didn’t have to. One of them even has Made For Pin appliqued on to the front.
However, after coming across quite a few people who wanted to learn to sew, I decided to put on a class at the library where the participants could learn and sew an apron at the same time. It was lots of fun, if a bit frantic at times, with varying types of machines and all different sorts of bobbins and threading systems.
Here is what we did:
Start with 1m of fabric.
I used a lovely Ashley Wilde cotton twill fabric that is 143cm wide. I bought it at the fantastic Fabric Warehouse.
If you are using fabric that is narrower then buy extra length for the straps and pocket if you want one.
We started by folding the fabric lengthwise so that the selvedges were parallel.
Fold one side in so that the folded fabric measures 33cm from fold to selvedge.
Measure 5cm down from top of fabric and draw a 16cm line from the fold towards the selvedge. If you don’t want to mark the outside of your fabric, turn so the right sides are together.
I cut out a plastic guide for the next step but you could equally draw freehand or use a large curve like a round tray or something similar to draw out the armhole. Draw the curve from the end of your 16cm line to the selvedge. Make another straight line from the top of the curve to the top edge of the fabric.
Cut out from the top of the fabric along your last line, around the curve of the armhole and then straight down staying close to the selvedge.
If you have used a 1m length of fabric then just cut to the other end of the fabric.
Now cut 3 ties from the remaining fabric. Make them not less than 4 cm wide and as long as you need.
Press each tie so that one short edge and both long edges are folded towards the middle, then fold and press in half lengthwise so all the raw edges are hidden.
Press the raw edges around the whole apron in and then fold over again and press to hide the edge. Fold the top over at the line you made and press.
Stitch all the pressed straps and apron edges starting at the left underarm, up the left armhole, across the top and down the right armhole.
Once you turn to go down the right side, stop to add a tie. Tuck the open end of the tie under the folded and pressed side seam and fold over on itself like this:
Continue stitching over the top of the tie, down the right side, along the hem and up the left side. When you get to the same place on the left side as you placed the tie on the right, stop and add a second tie. Continue stitching over the top of this tie up to the bottom of the left armhole where you started.
Measure and cut the third tie to the length you need for around your neck. Sew the two ends to the inside top of the apron equidistant from the armhole edge.
If you have any fabric left you can cut out a pocket, fold and press the raw edges. Stitch along the top edge then pin to the front of your apron. Stitch in place around the 3 remaining unstitched sides (assuming you’ve cut a rectangular pocket).
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