My Sewist Secret Santa gift and other cool pressies

Yay, my gift arrived today!

With a cute card (how did my Santa know I love cats I wonder?!) with a little note explaining how he/she had missed the last post before Xmas, oops! Oh well, I certainly don't mind as it's lovely to receive a present at any time!

And this is what was inside:

How cute! I'm excited just thinking about what I can do with it... Thank you SO much, Secret Santa, I'm well chuffed! I'm not even going to try and guess who my Santa actually is btw, it will hurt my brain too much...(I've been ill all week and only just starting to get better)...

It was my first "married" Christmas this year, spent with my in-laws. I was thoroughly spoilt with lots of gifts, including:

Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing

Cambie dress pattern

I also got knitting needles, crochet hooks and wool - no excuse not to learn now! With them came a book called The Knitter's Bible and in fact, I've already started knitting my very first woolly scarf! I received fabric and other sewing supplies, a really fluffy and warm dressing gown and my favourite gift:

So all in all, a very good haul, eh? I hope none of the family got my horrible cold as a present from me... Best get on and do some crafting now!

My new sewing area - eek!

Ever since I started sewing, my dream was to have a dedicated sewing room. Unfortunately our house is just too small. The bed, ironing board, shelves and wardrobe take up the spare/guest bedroom and I would hate to have threads and bits of scraps all over my bedroom floor. At the moment, we don't even have a dining table to work on! We have a coffee table that's usually covered in "essential" rubbish so even that has been difficult to utilise. So, I've been known to sew on the floor. Yes, the actual floor. As in, the sewing machine would be on the floor, I would sit cross-legged and control the foot pedal with my knee. Not so great for my back!

On a slightly different (but soon to be related) note, we have a lovely bay window in our lounge that gets loads of sun in the summer months and gives a great view of our garden. Ever since we moved in, I've been saying to Mr Sabs that I would to be able to sit in the window to read or chill with Mini and Merky who like curling up on the windowsill to watch the birds.

So my lovely hubby came up with a brilliant idea - why not combine the two things and have window seat cum sewing area? Genius! So he spent a couple of weekends knocking up a shelf and supports and I'm proud to present the finished article:

We used to have long, floor length curtains which were a real pain to draw so last weekend I made them shorter and used the cut-offs to make little curtains for underneath the window seat - partly to make it look nice and homely and partly so we could hide all our crap there!

The cats love the new area (hence the cat bed and see saw) - it's wider than the old windowsill so they can sleep there and they like hiding behind the curtains too! I think it'll be lovely to have them right there when I'm working on my clothes.

With my machine set up. Obviously I will move the bouquet of flowers when I'm next working!

I'm really pleased with my new sewing table and can't wait to use it. The plan is to make upholstered foam cushions to go along the shelf so we can use it as a proper window seat but that will be easy enough for me to remove when I want to sew. I'm very grateful to Mr Sabs for the idea and execution... Reckon we make rather a good crafty team!

(Mini) sneak peek

Mini seems to like my polka dot fabric!

Finished: Long sleeved T shirt

Based on the Lydia pattern from Burda (as a downloadable for $1), I made this T shirt mainly to see what it would be like to work with jersey. It was ok. Yes, only ok. I used my machine's stretch stitch for the first time which I found tricky but manageable. I did think halfway through that I probably should have used my walking foot but I just couldn't be bothered to unscrew and put it on by that point.

There are some puckers at the neck because I used binding rather than facings. To be honest, I'm not completely enamoured with it and will probably wear it as a base layer under things rather than on its own. It might be the material rather than anything else, it was stretchy but not soft and warm like I thought it was going to be. The top is very comfy tho - I wore it out to dinner last night under a short sleeved jumper dress (sorry, forgot to take a photo) and it was quite cosy.

I'm thinking of making some knickers from the leftover fabric once I get some stretch elastic/lace!

In other cat news, I found Mini lurking in the greenhouse...

...Merky eating the breadcrumbs I'd left out for the birdies...

...and both tinkers fascinated by the smell of our bikes after we'd been out for a ride through the fallen leaves in the park! No idea why!

Nose to the grindstone

I'm on call today. Went in at lunchtime and saw all the patients that had been admitted up to 4pm - proper on the ball today, me. But then I had a lull and an hour spare. So I went back to my office and downloaded a pattern for a long sleeved T shirt for the green jersey fabric I bought yesterday. Printed it out, taped it all together and cut it out!

It's the downloadable Burda Lydia pattern...I would actually love to try the Renfrew from Sewaholic but I'm too impatient to sew something and just wouldn't have been able to wait for the pattern to arrive in the post! So I'm all ready to pin, cut and start sewing tomorrow night after work. Just hope I don't get disturbed tonight (it's a 24 hour on call) so that I have a clear head in the morning...

Oh yes, I had more help from Merky last night as my Sureau dress fabric was drying. Cheers mate.