Playtime at last!

Half term at last! I love the October half term break, because we're really ready for it after a busy start to the school year and it's a perfect time to relax, pottering about at home and spending lazy mornings in our pyjamas all cozy and dry - our favourite thing to do at this time of year while it's blowing a gale outside.

With a blissful week ahead, with very few plans, I decided it was an ideal time to work on some ideas that have been brewing and to play with my new old sewing machine. However, because my little helper is also at home she soon decided she needed to be involved, which meant my help and advice was sought and my own projects took a back seat for a little while.

So, let's see what the Minx made, starting with Saturday when she designed and made herself a new bag.

Made from scraps of patchwork fabric and three cheap tea towels! I helped with cutting out and little technical bits like pinning but she stitched every bit of it herself.

Once that was done, I was allowed a little craft time to finish of some small projects that I thought might be good for workshops at some point.

On Sunday, my lovely daughter once again felt that some mother and daughter sewing time was in order and while I finished off those little flower brooches she got busy with the Bondaweb.

Luckily, once she'd finished this lovely mini quilt she was happy to leave me alone to finally get to play with the lovely old sewing machine I picked up from a local sewing machine shop a few weeks ago, and had not had chance to use until now.

Here she is, my 53 year old Singer 201k - as yet nameless but already much loved.

I've wanted one of these models for some time now, having done a lot of reading up about them. Something I love to make is bags and purses but my little modern machine isn't happy stitching through thick layers of fabric. This old girl eats thick fabric for breakfast, such as four layers of leather:

Or six layers of upholstery weight fabric:

That's not all she can do though. I'd also read that these machines are particularly good for free machine embroidery, again something that my little modern machine struggles with.

So, yesterday afternoon I found out how to drop her feed dogs and we got cracking.

There'll be lots more of that happening around here from now on!

Then we come to today and we were all up surprisingly early, thanks to the clocks going back, so I got cracking on a day of proper sewing, doing what I love to do the most. Bags and purses. These are just three of the six I made today!

Isn't the sheep fabric on the bag brilliant! It's a teatowel by Mary Kilvert that Trashy bought me for my birthday this year and it was far too gorgeous to be used for drying dishes :)

There'll be more playing as the week goes on, in between days out and Hallowe'en sleepovers. not to mention helping my daughter to make a mini tepee for a homework project!

Moogs xxx