Hello, it’s been a while. I hadn’t realised quite how long until I came back on to start this blog. After finishing by 12 in 2020 challenge I lost some of my blogging mojo. I think partly staring at a computer screen all day for work means I don’t have any motivation to do the same thing in the evening too. I’ve also become a trustee of an awesome charity this autumn and that has taken up quite a few of my evenings too.
Anyway, on to sewing. I’ve completed four projects this autumn. The only connection between (three of) them in that I’m continuing my mission to use up my fabric stash, although I probably shouldn’t mention how much I have added to it recently too!
A Christmas present bag
The first project I made was a bag for a Christmas present for a family friend. It was from the Cath Kidston Sewing Book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cath-Kidston-Sewing-Book/dp/1849493820. I have used this pattern before for A new bag. I find this a fun pattern to make, all the pieces are rectangles, it comes together easily and looks interesting when it is done. This time I added in an internal wallet and a button flower on the outside. The whole thing was made from fabric in my stash. The spotty outer is the table runners from my wedding, the lining the lining from the The ‘thank you for carrying my sewing machine across York’ skirt and the button flower fabric from one of the Christmas shopping bags.
The end result is useful too. I originally used mine as a baby stuff bag, and do still take it out and about. It’s also useful as a sewing bag, with lots of pockets so you can keep things separate. My current project is sat in there at the moment, just staring at me, asking me to stop watching Christmas TV and finish it up!




More Crochet socks
I’ve already blogged about these socks twice before. My daughter has a pair and so do I. the monkey was asking for a second pair of bed socks so I raided my draw of leftover yarn and made these. Somehow though they managed to end up fairly different sizes whilst I could have sworn I did the same thing both times. Ah well, tension I guess, and she hasn’t complained!
The original blogs are Socks for a Monkey and Cosy Socks.

A Woodworking Apron
The larger monkey in my life (also known as my husband) is big into woodworking and various other heavy duty crafts. Our garage is one massive workshop with a washing machine stuck in the corner. He spends a lot of time working out there and has been saying for a while he could do with a heavy duty apron to protect his clothes. Whilst hunting through my stash I found this great red stripe fabric. It isn’t actually that old as I bought it to make our nephew a cooking apron last Christmas (another make I never actually blogged about), and it is surprisingly tough so was ideal for a woodworking apron too. I’d clearly massively over bought for an apron for a 7 year old as there was enough to pretty much made a whole second apron. I added a strip of some very old fabric at the bottom. It is at least twelve years old as I made bags with it when I first got back into sewing. This apron probably would have been fine without it as I ended up chopping most of it off when we agreed on the length, but I actually quite like the interest at the bottom. I self drafted this apron based on his measurements and a bit of trial an error as we went along. The only real issue was working out how wide the top could be without it bagging.



An Angel Gabriel nativity top
The monkey started school this year and her foundation year do a nativity play. She loved the whole thing and was very excited that she had some lines. She was part of ‘angel group one’ which is basically Angel Gabriel (there was a reassuring lack of lobsters and other random nativity animals in this production!) and the instructions that came home from school were that they weren’t doing full costumes, they were just asking the children to come in a particular coloured t-shirt for their role. Angels were yellow or gold. Now the monkey didn’t have a yellow top, but I do have a massive length of yellow fabric, which was too good an opportunity to miss – make a top for nothing or hunt online during lockdown 2 – it was a no brainer really.
This fabric was a new purchase – I’d done a pot luck bolt ends order from https://www.dalstonmillfabrics.co.uk/. I got 20 meters of fabric for £30, it was a bit of a gamble but it ended up being really worth it as I got some fabric which is ideal to make my current project (which was proving a challenge to find) and about 5 others too. The monkey went wild with it all, after she’d turned it into a den she then went through it all demanding dresses in most of the fabric. She hasn’t got any of those yet, but has got a top for an angel! I drafted this myself too using the pattern I’d made for my 2020 take 12 challenge – #4 – copy of a top. I got the neck wrong as I’d overestimated the size of her head but otherwise it worked well.
