Sewing

Since we hit The Bers my list of 'things' to sew and make has got longer and longer and pretty soon I am going to run out of time.. The joys of procrastination!!

The number one thing people ask me to make and buy is still bunting, and I had a great project last week with an order for 'Cameron' bunting, specifically in yellow and blue, with triangle flags.

I use Bondaweb for my applique detail - in this case the lettering.  It uses the same principle as wondaweb, but comes in a big roll and feels like tracing paper.

The biggest lesson with Bondaweb is to remember to do everything backwards, so that when you iron it onto the first fabric, and turn the fabric over and cut out your deisgn to iron on to your second fabric, its facing the right way!

I have been doing this for a long time now, so I have a lot of templates.  The alphabet for example, I have ready printed in upper and lower case.  To remind me to do it backwards I have notes all over the templates.

In the beginning too, my flag sizes weren't quite right for the size of my lettering, so now I have ready cut templates to the flags to size.

Setting up for a bunting making session doesn't take a lot of time these days.  Good news for me!

 Once I have cut out my applique detail, again in this case the detail is letters, I peel the Bondaweb back off, stick it to my second fabric and iron it on.  Hey presto.

 Then its just a matter of the applique sewing, and then the flags are ready to be sewn together and turned the right way for pressing.

 I generally always make my own bias binding these days, seen here as the 'ribbon'. I posted about the day I learnt to make binding here - very exciting for me!

Then its just a matter of sewing the triangle flags inside the bias binding.  And Roberts your mothers brother!

Go and take a look at our Folksy shop The Tangled Muse and our website www.tangledmuse.co.uk You never know when you might need some bunting!

A-mused Mandala

Come and join us at Tangled Muse and have a go at making a Mandala..  You know we love our Mandala's!!  Should be a great morning, I'm really excited!!

Competition

We are running a competition on Facebook, to WIN ANY ITEM WE CURRENTLY HAVE FOR SALE, ABSOLUTELY FREE! (Including custom/made to order items)

To enter, all you have to do is like our FB page 'Tangled Muse', and share this poster to your timeline. (winner will be selected by random.org) You have until 8pm next Sunday (22nd July) to get init to win it.

Have a look at http://folksy.com/shops/

TangledMuse to start choosing your prize!

Thanks for 'sharing' the love, good luck! x x

Inspiration

I have been writing this blog post for the last week, but it got so long that I cut and paste it into word to edit and then I left it and now re-reading it it went so far on a tangent I can't remember what I was trying to say.  I started off thinking about inspiration.

Sewing inspiration
I don't get inspiration from nature, from light, from moods or from colours or from any of a million things that inspire other people.  I just don't.  I can't think about stuff like that, I need a purpose rather than a 'whimsy'.  Making people happy inspires me.  If it's your birthday and I know you will really enjoy or appreciate X then I will make it for you, no matter what the learning curve or hours.  But randomly ask me to create and design something that is not for a purpose, then I flail around directionless.  So this is what I have been trying to make tangible for Tangled Muse.  Rather than finding inspiration to sew items to randomly put in the shop, we came up with the idea that Tangled Muse is an identity, and I can sew for it (her, in my opnion).  I didn't create Tangled Muse, I have merely contibuted a teeny part to the bigger whole, so really I don't get to say who or what it or she is, but frankly, this is my blog and I want to share how I see Tangled Muse, so that you can gauge a picture of who I am sewing for.. 

Sleeping Giantess at The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall

The tag line for Tangled Muse reads 'Ancient roots and modern shoots of local craft'.  Given that I think of Tangled Muse in the feminine, I conjure up this image of the Sleeping Giantess in Cornwall.  She has recently been put there by local artists, but the image has pretty ancient roots.  So this is who I see when I think of making something for Tangled Muse (TM).  She looks pretty serence, I think we would get on.  I reckon she can run, wild and free - although she is perhaps too unwieldy for a bike!  I think she enjoys nature, celebrates the seasons and probably does Yoga regularly.  So this is MY interpretation of TM.  I apologise profusely to Lucy, Dave and Holly if this really isn't how you see TM, but I really am just getting my own inspiration across.  So with this image of TM in my head, I had a go at some lavender bags, and actually, I'm pretty happy with them.

To get the ball rolling I decided that TM would probably prefer more natural fabrics, but they needed some added funk.  So I have started up-cycling some long too big cream linen trousers.  Then I literally used the TM logo as a template and despite the fiddly, minute branches, it appliqued up a treat.

A little button, some lavender and I was thrilled.  This is the first thing I have made specifically for Tangled Muse where I felt that I had got the tone right.

I found some amazing resin beads that have seeds and wheat heads set into them, they felt good and Earthy and I thought that TM might like a heart-felt Om sitting in her window.  Again stuffed with Lavender.

So there we go, I am on a sewing roll.  I made a fab little turquoise heart yesterday but I forgot to take a pic before I sent it off to the land of stock, so you will have to wait til it appears in the shop.  I have many more little trinkets up my sleeve now that I know who I'm making for.


In the midst of the ramble I wrote and then didn't post, and because you know I can't blog without talking about it, here are my thoughts on sporting inspiration:

I started cycling because Paul started cycling and I sure as hell wasn't going to get left on the sofa.  The Thornhill Loop as we call it, doesn't leave the estate and when I first started cycling I couldn't mange 1 loop.  1 loop is just under 3 miles.  10 mins on my bike and I would stomp home crying with frustration, sweating, out of breath, full of can'ts and won'ts.  How I hated cycling.  Seriously.  It was this thing that had taken Paul outside and given him a sense of purpose and I just didn't understand it.  So I kept doing it, determined to understand my nemesis, to stick at it and not get left on the sofa.  I dreaded it, hated doing it and we all know the saga..  but somewhere I got fitter, quicker and better and over a period of time I realised that I didn't hate it anymore.  I now openly, smugly, happily admit that I LOVE CYCLING.  I just do.  All of it.  Everything about it.  Even the lycra damn it.  After the Thornhill loop became a bit samey, a bit boring, I started to stretch my legs on a 9.5 mile loop out through hedge end.  We call this loop 'the little loop' these days - it certainly wasn't in the beginning!  Anyway, the little loop has become my time trial loop.  The loop I do when I don't have a lot of time and I want to stretch my bike legs and see how fast I can go.  Today I did the loop averaging 15.2mph.  A new personal best.  So happy with that this morning.

Well, a strange thing is starting to happen with running too.  Paul and I noticed it yesterday, and it was only as I wrote it down in a draft text to Lucy that I realised the truth of it.  I don't hate running anymore.  More than that though, I feel quite comfortable with it.  I can see the light at the end of the cycling tunnel luring me down the running tunnel.  It doesn’t seem all bad.
If I started cycling for Paul, then I started running for Lucy.  Sadly that is the truth of it.  At no point was I doing it for me.  I would happily still have been sat on the sofa.  But the fitter, leaner, quicker I get, the more I realise that now I do it for myself.  These days I am starting to inspire myself, for myself and it feels pretty good.

July

With Litha, the longest day over, we are now into the downward sweep to Winter.  We are already into the dark half, waning our way back towards the shortest day at Yule and it doesn't feel like the summer has arrived yet.  The days are wet and grey, and not particularly warm.  We are sleeping with our eiderdown over our duvet at the moment and I am still waking up cold in the morning.

The garden has been really slow to get going, the veg is crying out for sun, but finally my tomatoes and courgettes are gearing up for a glut, all the peas and beans are flowering and my lettuces are starting to ball up.  Yay.  I am overdue photos and will rememdy this as soon as there is dry day.

The children are looking forward to the summer holidays.  Lochie has just 3 weeks left at school, then they have nearly 7 weeks off before he and Brenna both go to school.  Lochie seems quite emotional at the moment and I wonder if he is nervous about moving up a year.  He recognises that his birthday will fall after school has gone back after the summer, and has asked if we can take him to the National Science Museum in London, to see the dinosaurs - having said yes, he is now busy planning it.
Brenna is very excited about going to school and we had confirmation today that she will have the same teachers as Lochie had this year.  Of the two of my older kidlets she is by far the more confident swimmer and I love watching her in the water. 
Niamh is becoming more and more independant and her vocabulary is coming on with singular words like 'hot', 'up', 'sss' (yes) and 'popo' (poo poo).  She understands everything and follows direction beautifully up to a point, where she realises and then is quick to be cheeky and run off.  Both Brenna and Niamh are fiesty and are very good at arguing about nothing in particular - by arguing I mean Brenna yelling 'No Niamh!' and Niamh growling fiercely!

Paul is very happy with his new bike and has upped his RAB training.  He will be off in 11 weeks!  If you would like to sponsor them, all money raised will be split between the British Paralympic Association and UNICEF UK, please go to their fundraising page here.  With all the bike problems he has had, I don't think his head has been in his training as much as he thought it would be, and I am very proud of him - it takes some mettle to go out at 6am on a wet and windy Saturday morning, when you have been training hard all week but still need to get your mileage up above 80 in one session.  The children and I are encouraging him as much as possible, and trying to make going out and coming in as easy as possible - I might not be on the bike with him, but I like to think we are team regardless - I hope thats ok Paul, we love you so much!!

Tangled Muse is crammed with new products at the moment - go and take a look at our website http://www.tangledmuse.co.uk/ and our shop http://folksy.com/shops/TangledMuse

My parents came to visit us last Saturday and I was thrilled when my Dad bought a ticket to participate in the Oct 66 mile sportif I'm doing!  I have 14 weeks to get my own mileage up - although not quite to RAB standards, lol.  Since the triathlon 10 days ago, I took last week easy and have now decided that maintaining my current fitness is important to me - I ran 37.5k in June!  I HATE running!!  Ha ha.  I can ride my bike, I can run 5k, so I have decided that I'd like to improve my swimming, which is frustrating because our pool is closed for improvement til 22 July.  I can wait though!  I paid elsewhere to swim this morning and did 32 laps in sets of 2 breast stroke (b/s) and 1 front crawl (f/c).  I really want to improve my f/c technique because my breathing is all over the shop, meaning I can't sustain the pace because I'm out of breath.

We went to the local Skyride yesterday and absolutely loved it.  I will leave you with some pictures of us all on our bikes.  Well done for reading this far x x

The girls in their chariot.  I pulled them in and Paul pulled them home.  They are quite a weight up a hill!

The Christie Clan

My babies

Brenna and Rae Rae

Girls against Boys with Chez

Niamh, put your hands up if you love cycling!

Holly and family - hello Holls!

Sew and sew

Despite all the mad triathlon-ing I have been doing a bit of sewing, here and there.

 For Fathers day the children requested a bicyle for Paul, and so I did the best I could - sadly I love the back the best, I love that the stitching on the back is still most definitely a bike!

 This is Mr Mouse, a gift for my brother in law, and a partner for Millicent, the mouse I made for my sister birthday back in April.  (Speaking of my sister, they have found out they are expecting a boy!!)

This is just a little stuffed heart, a small token for folksy.

And I'm loving these - 2 pairs of cut-offs up-cycled into Yoga bags to hopefully sell on Tangled Muse.  They were a great project and I have many more pairs of trousers to up-cycle!!

Sew triathlon terrific

We had our first bunting order through from the Tangled Muse shop this week, so I got to do some legitimate sewing - my favourite kind.  The order was for Christmas trees, a bit of a head bender in May, but I soon got into the festive swing and am pleased with the results.

Despite lots of exciting ribbon and button shopping, none of what I ordered was quite right to hang the trees from and as I seem to always say 'the ribbon can make or break the bunting', I finally settled on making my own bias binding from some cotton quarters.

Speaking of Tangled Muse, we are now a .co.uk website - go and take a look at the great collection of art, photos, felt and textiles on offer!!

http://www.tangledmuse.co.uk/ to browse everyones work

http://folksy.com/shops/TangledMuse to make a purchase or place an order

Allan, Paul's Dad, came to stay at the end of last week and he kindly painted the girls bedroom a gorgeous shade of pink. Bebe is so thrilled with it, and I have to say I am in love with the colour too - I'm delighted to finally get their bunting up - and the bedding my parents bought the girls finishes it all, so everyone is VERY happy!

Paul smashed his first triathlon last Sunday, he was such an inspiration!! It was an exciting morning and I was delighted with the amount of people that turned out to support him :-) His bike time was astonishing, and he averaged just over 19 mph! My heart could burst with love and pride for him x x

 

And after the inspiration of seeing it all, Lucy and I went and did our own version, as a training run, in our tri suits last night at gym! 400m swim, 6k bike ride, 5k run... Delighted.

The Tangled Muse

I have been lucky enough to get involved with a craft collective, with some very talented people who don't mind my bold and slightly child like simple sewing antics.  The main site showcases all the bits and bobs, and then the folksy shop is where you can get your happy little hands on art, photos and bunty bunting amongst other curios.  Its very exciting and I'm thrilled to be a part of it all!!
http://tangledmuse.weebly.com/index.html
http://folksy.com/shops/TangledMuse
PLEASE GO AND HAVE A LOOK!!

The sewing maching hasn't been in action as much over the last 10 days because of camping (mentioned below) and the packing and unpacking shifting a family of 5 takes.  However I did make a yoga bag, complete with pockets and fully lined.  I am really pleased with it.

I was signed off by the physio on Tuesday, which I was delighted about because despite an ongoing weirdness in my toe, I feel great.  My back feels good people!  Finally!! And yesterday I ran straight through for 30 mins.  If you look at my last post, I mention gritting my teeth at 7 minutes and then 14 minutes..  well there was no teeth gritting at 30 mins - just lots of sweat!  I covered 3.8k in the 30 mins and now need to work on my time, I think I will be happy if I can manage 5k in 40mins.  Since I couldn't even run FULL STOP in January, I am astounded by my progress.  The scales were kind as well this morning and I have lost 2st since I started this shenanigans :-)

In other news, we spent the Beltane weekend camping at the Sus Centre and it was COLD.  We had a great time nonetheless and I will leave you with a selection of photos.