Robot Steve!

I am a pretty bad blogger, I would like to say that it is because I am have been so busy being all arty farty sorting through fabrics, and sketching up ideas of all the amazing ideas in my head. But that would be a lie. In fact, I have spent way too much time watching TV series which are probably too shameful to admit...

I have, however, created something completely in my own head which was, for myself, not a bad attempt without using a pattern. I could explain how I did it, but I don't really know how I did it. I like to practice with the idea in the back of my head "I can do that". Generally it works, if it doesn't, I just pack it in. Try it sometime... you might surprise yourself.

NB. I have also attempted to sew a dress using a pattern from another dress I owned and didn't really like the length of- this has somewhat worked... it looks like a dress but at this stage I cannot be bothered using the attitude "I can do that" with the details of a nice hem so I will just leave it at that for now.

VALENTINES DAY

Meet Steve. The name given to a rather fat robot that I (yes, in my own head) created. I made this for my partner on Valentines Day. Some might say "pathetic" but I really wanted to make a robot and give it to someone so I decided he would be the perfect guinea pig for it.

aka Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Steve only took me about 2 days to do which is a pretty good effort! I managed to whip up the body pretty quickly once I cut out all the bits and pieces on the sewing machine, and even sewed on the details on his front chest with a machine as neat as I could.


















Some of it had to be done by hand such as a little bit on the lower chest for the gauge and the face (mouth and to sew on buttons- some machines do buttons, but find its less fuss doing them by hand). I also embroidered on my name on the bottom :)

As I said earlier, I didn't use a pattern, just made it up so you can sort of do the same thing and just play around with it. I did however try to draw it as a 3D image to begin with to work out where the seams would be and the shapes I had to cut out to create the whole piece. This does help a lot. If you look closely it is just squares and rectangles all pieced together with the arms and legs sewn into the body seams then just turned inside out. Obviously you have to leave an opening for the stuffing and then sew the final gap with a hand whip stitch.

Square and rectangle shapes which make up the body. Arms and legs are just two rectangle pieces sewn together and then stuffed.

Arm sewn into the shoulder seam of Steve (Make sure you do it with the body inside out to get the neat finish with no stitch showing).

Legs sewn into the bottom body seam- small gap left to turn body right side out.

Steve is pretty easy to make and you can make it as complicated as you like with the design. All you really need to do is cut out some squares and rectangles to create a 3D shape. I always think that looking at other soft toys you can work out how they put it all together. That's pretty much how I came about with the theory "I can do that"!

Enjoy!

Hello Blog World...Lets make a baby ball

I never really liked the idea of a blog, but I thought about it and the Melbourne summer has been one amazing shitness that "cabin fever" has been a natural re-occurrence for everyone living in this city. It was then, while I was sewing, I thought, what a nice idea to be able to archive most of your thoughts and ideas for the whole world to see... ! At the moment I am working on another Softie. For a friend's baby. I spend a lot of time making things for babies of late. Its about the only thing at the moment I am able to figure out by looking at the pictures, at this stage. I would post some pics of the progress (yes I know you are dying to see them) but my camera is at the hospital. 

At the beginning of last year, I was able to run a straight stitch with my sewing machine that had been divulged by dust underneath the stairs without f@$king the whole thing up. I was stoked. So I will post up some "creative" things I have done thus far that may also inspire you should you ever find yourself with a lot of spare time.  I am no where near where I would like to be, but I do pride myself on creating some cute little cross stitches that are actually fairly simple to do with your own design.

To start you off I have tried to explain as best as I can how to make a Baby Ball...  

It takes a while to do and is great to do while you are in front of a movie and are in complete hibernation with NOTHING else to do. Patience is a virtue for this project...

1. The first step involves taking a piece of paper and creating a pentagon shape as accurately as you can! Next, cut out 12 of these (the ball will be finished with 12 pentagons shapes all sewn together). 

2. Next step involves gathering your material. You only need scraps for this. I just went to Lincraft and bought a few Fat Quarters which are handy to have around anyway when sewing soft toys and they cost barely anything. The great thing about them is they are already mixed up for you so you just need to sort out the material combination you want.

3. Next step involves cutting around your 12 paper pentagon shapes with the material you choose. Pin your small piece of scrap fabric to the pentagon paper (paper on the wrong side of material) and just cut around the paper pentagon adding on 2-2 and a half cm for seam allowance. 

4. You should end up with 12 pentagon fabric pieces which will all have the each of the 12 paper pentagons pinned in the middle of the fabric. This is simply going to hold the ball in shape when putting it all together. 

5. Fold the edge of the fabric piece over the paper and sew down the edges with any colour thread. Don't worry about sewing through the paper or making it neat and pretty, this will be ripped out and is purely there to hold the paper in place with the fabric making it easier to sew with. Do this with all 12 pieces of fabric pinned to the fabric. 

6. After the edging is all done, you can start to piece the puzzle of the ball together. It is easier to do one half of the ball (sewing 6 pentagons together which will look like a flower centre with 5 petals around the flower centre's edge). Ensure that you are doing a whip stitch to piece each pentagon together. They should be right side facing eachother and the edges touching to whip stitch. You want to make sure that when the ball is turned right side out, you cannot see any of the stitching.

7. After you have created your two halves of the ball it is time to join them together continuing with a whip stitch. Do this ensuring that it is done inside out. See the picture below as to how it should be beginning to look if you are a little confused! 

8. Once you start sewing it all together you will see that the ball is starting to take form. Keep joining all the edges up until you have gotten to the very last edge which will be just one side of one of the pentagons. Leave this open. You will need soft stuffing which is easy to get at any sewing shop. Start filling the ball in with this, pushing it all in. Don't make it too tight though as it won't be very soft then. If you want, add a jingle ball in the middle of it. I find it makes it a little more exciting doing that than being a noiseless ball of fluff. Once you have stuffed it and feel content with the shape of it, blind stitch the last edge of the ball. And Voila! It should look like a ball. If it doesn't you didn't follow the instructions properly.