A Marathon Of Sewing

One of my friends recently ran the London Marathon and said that it was enjoyable! I find this hard to believe as whereas I'm more than happy to dance for 4 hours, I can't think of much worse than running for 4 hours (or longer for a lot of people!)

It's not that I haven't tried running, I went through a very organised programme of running last summer with some of my old housemates, but the problem is that I find it very hard to pace myself, and so end up running too fast, then tiring myself out, and then resting for a minute or too, then back to running too fast. Whilst this wasn't too much of a problem in our local park, this would never work in a marathon situation as you'd have to mostly keep pace with the people around you.

Sewing on the other hand, is a completely different matter. I can quite happily sew methodically and at a constant pace for hours, usually until my sewing machine starts to smell a little like it's overheating, and then I can always switch machines to give one a break for a while.

Now I know that a full marathon of 26.2 miles is a very long way, but I'm sure I've easily sewn that distance at least once. This does sound like I'm being ridiculous and massively exaggerating, but if you actually stop and work out some things then it's not all that crazy.

For example, I'm currently working on a single bed size patchwork quilt, which measures 190cm x 90cm. In sewing 20 pieces of fabric together for the top, then bias binding stitched twice around the edge, then quilted in 7 strips, this amounts to at least 30 metres of sewing which is quite a lot of going through my little machine!

Although this seems like a lot, compared to my own patchwork quilt which has a lot more pieces of fabric and a lot more top stitching, this has more like 100m of stitching! Hence why it took me a month to make! Times that by 420 (amongst my many projects) and you get the 42000 metres which makes a full marathon! Maybe I should get my sewing machine a medal? Or sew one?

Breakfast Superheroes!!

Back in October I was showing off some of the latest things I'd been sewing, and mentioned that I'd been asked to make a superhero mask and cape, but then never uploaded any pictures! How rude of me! Anyway, I'd made it for the Mini Boden Nightwear shoot for the Spring 2013 collection and the finished pictures are awesome!!

Spring 2013 - Mini Boden Boys Nightwear



A Splash of Colour

I imagine that most people have been enlivened by the short splash of sunshine we experienced on Sunday. It was invigorating, we went for a walk in Richmond and it was so lovely to be out in the sunshine and still be warm!!

My boyfriends parents came to visit for the day and brought us a lovely housewarming present of some Pantone mugs in a beautiful variety of colours. These look absolutely amazing hanging up in our kitchen and are lovely and light to drink out of.

Along with my bunting (renamed 'Festive Flags' as the boyfriend banned bunting from our house), some other colourful tea cups and my beautiful tea jars, this makes our kitchen a bright and happy place to be!

Pantone mugs can be found at amazon, and the beautiful tea jar comes from http://www.williamsontea.com/

I'm in Stylist!! (Well sort of)

I love getting my free Stylist Magazine every Tuesday night on my way to dance class, and then reading it on the way home. Their interviews are so interesting and I love the 'Elsewhere' in the world page. So I was very excited when I opened my copy of stylist a few weeks ago and saw a silk hairband that I'd made, on a model, in a Boden advert at the front.

Ok, ok so it's not quite as exciting as I'm making out, but there is still something that I made appearing in Stylist magazine, which was exciting enough to make my rainy Tuesday evening a very happy one!