This Moment

Soulemama has thoughts on Bali, rather than 'This Moment' so far, but here are my happy beach moments...

Vintage Embroidery CD Case

The girls have recently discovered a renewed love of CDs. They've both always loved listening to their choice of music in the car, or occasionally an audio book; but not since Nursery Rhyme days have they particularly wanted to play CDs at home. At the moment though, they are regularly alternating, mainly up in their bedrooms, between ballet music, Disney songs and girly pop CDs, with the occasional audio book thrown in still too. And there are very frequent night time 'concerts' performed whilst dancing on the bed. Unfortunately, they are still just as bad now at putting CDs away in their cases as they were back in Nursery Rhyme loving days, and said cases never seem to be in the place they're sure they left them.

I spotted an idea for a CD holder in this book, which seemed like a perfect way to get over the missing case problem and encourage them to keep their CDs safe.

As you can see the idea in the book is to use tea towels for the project, but embroidered linens seemed like an excellent alternative to me, and another good way to continue reducing my stock pile. There are some interesting and pretty ideas in this book, but personally I find the instructions impossible to follow - but you know me and instructions, so it quite possibly is just a 'personal' thing! But it did mean that I just used the idea and did my own thing with the actual making.

Slight lack of photos along the way, since most of the making for this was done when Sam was off on his travels with my camera. And I'm sure I didn't come up with the slickest or neatest way of making it either. So I'm not going to go through it step by step, but will try and explain the basic construction idea, and if you are interested in making one for yourself and it doesn't make sense to you then please shout and I'll try and be more specific.

I started out making a 3 layered piece, with some old wool blanket in the middle to give it a little sturdiness and a piece of old flannel sheet on the reverse. These layers were just sewn right sides together along 3 sides and then turned out before neatly ironing under and sewing the last side. I also added the lace 'tie' and the words - which just sum up the girls use of their CDs right now!

The 'wallets' for the CDs are all napkins, 2 trimmed down to the size I wanted and then sewn together and folded up on themselves to create the wallet. I machine sewed down the middle, to split each into 2 CD compartments, before sewing them into the base of the holder, sewing just down each side. I started with the top row of wallets and worked my way down, overlapping as I went. After each wallet row was sewn in, I added a few hand stitches at the bottom, in the middle seam, just to anchor the middle to the base. If you don't mind a line of machine stitching showing up on the front of your holder, you could just machine sew along the bottom of each wallet section. (Or you could plan ahead more meticulously than me and create your inside section in full before sewing your 3 fabric layers together in the first place!)

So with this design, each of the CD wallets are 'loose' within the holder.

It may be pure novelty factor which will wear off in the near future, but I'm happy to report that, at the moment, the girls are both using the holder and I'm not coming across stray CDs lying out on bookshelves next to CD players any more. The lace tie does keep them reasonably secure in the holder while they're being carried around, but if held upside down (as Maria, in particular, seems to sometimes do) then CDs do fall out of their inner pockets. So I think I will add either buttons and mini ties or velcro to the wallet openings to secure them completely. Possibly having the outer tie running vertically, rather than horizontally, might have worked with this problem too.

I hope that isn't quite as confusing as it maybe sounds to me right now, and that it gives you a good starting point if you do want to make one.

Sally.

This Moment

Late again, but here's a link to Soulemama's moment, and here's mine - 2 photos but the same moment (they both wanted their own individual photo rather than one joint), with a quick explanation this week since they won't make sense without and I'm not always great at replying to comments (sorry!). We're just back from a quick trip to London to catch up with Harry's family, and while the boys were off busy with something else, we took the girls for a very last minute, spontaneous trip to see 'Wicked' .

{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

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It's about time

It's not an embroidered tablecloth or napkin but this did use part of a vintage table runner kind of thing, so still good for reducing my stash of linens.

I needed a little 'Thank You' present for someone, and it's a thank you for their time more than anything, which somehow made it feel all the more appropriate to spend time making something for them.

A dandelion 'clock' seemed appropriate too.

And always good to have a reason to rummage through my tin of old buttons!

The top is just hemmed, folded over and sewn down to insert a piece of driftwood for hanging.

Short and sweet tonight, and now I'm off to spend some overdue time catching up on everyone else's doings in Blogland!

Sally.

Take 5

1) I thought it was about time I shared some yoyo love.

 

I've been hand sewing these here and there for the past couple of months. The plan is to use them on a quilt, and I'm itching to start the quilt, but I'm being quite disciplined and want to finish Maria's quilt first.

There's a little pile on the left not spread out, I got a bit bored arranging them towards the end! I counted them back into the box though and there are 106 of them. I think this might be enough - especially as I could easily get more than a bit bored sewing them all on the quilt when the time comes!

 2) Speaking of Maria's quilt...

Not very speedy progress to report, but I have got one more block done. This one is a 'pocket block', with a little bird hiding inside.

He still needs an eye.

3) And an update on fish sewing too...

The daily sewing resolution has slipped quite a bit, it's not been the best few weeks and there have been a good few days when I haven't made it to the sewing machine at all - which in turn adds to it not being the best few weeks! Last week I started to try and get back in more of a sewing groove, and it was great to have the fish as an easy and quick project to pick up and get me going again. Something that needed minimal thought and effort.

So generally I think it's been more daily therapeutic practice, rather than the daily creative exercise I was hoping for more. And that maybe shows with the fairly boring fish that have come out of it. But I'm OK with that, and hopefully they'll start to be a little more adventurous at some point. Today's fish was slightly more that way and is one of my favourites so far...

Still very simple, but I like the black and white effect.

You might also see a connection between the colours of all these fish and the colours of those yoyos! They've all come from very small scraps left over from yoyo making, and it's great to be able to use such little pieces so immediately.

This shoal was all from the edges of a napkin, the centre was a solid red which I used  for yoyos, but I didn't think the stripey parts worked so well in a yoyo.

The girls have been quite intrigued by seeing a growing pile of fish, and when I explained the thinking behind it they really liked the idea. So much so that I cut them a good supply of small oblongs of pale, sea coloured paper and they can draw a fish (or sea creature) whenever they feel like it and stick it up on their own background - just the bottom of a cardboard box.

I think quite possibly they may help provide some fish pattern/shape/design inspiration to me along the way.

 4) I haven't shared any thrifted finds with you recently, and there have been a few! Some gorgeous embroidered tablecloths...

I do have quite a large number of embroidered table cloths and napkins now, and I've been trying to come up with ideas to use them - so I don't feel guilty buying more when I spot them at bargain prices! Especially as, although I very much like my quilt top from embroidered pieces, I'm still too scared to quilt it so making more quilts in that way is not so likely in the near future. I've come up with a couple of projects so far, one all finished but I'm afraid I have no photos as yet, so that will have to wait.

Another interesting thrifted find was a little bag of haberdashery goodies. My favourites from this were some old, small, square self cover buttons and these 3 giant safety pins.

These are each just over 15cm long and I think I'm going to enjoy coming up with novel ways to use them. Any thoughts out there? What would you do with giant safety pins?!

 5) I'm trying, and not really succeeding at the moment, to adjust to wearing reading glasses. It's not something that is filling me with any kind of enthusiasm. I have nothing against glasses generally (although personally, on me, I don't much like them!), but I think the depressing element is very much that they are a clear sign of aging. My body is starting to deteriorate! Obviously this is inevitable and natural and has been happening for quite some time in lots of little ways, but suddenly needing to wear glasses does make it all very real.

You don't get to see a photo of them on me - very few people have actually seen this sight. And, needless to say, the children are among the privileged few and all laughed like crazy hyenas!

But as much as the aging element is depressing if I allow myself to dwell on it, what's causing me even more grief is the practicalities of using them. I only need them for really close up reading, anything other than that and they make my vision blurry. So it feels a real pain to use them unless it's a concentrated period of reading and nothing but reading. And even then I'm struggling to get used to having the frames in my peripheral vision - they irritate me! I'm sure it's just a matter of perservering and eventually getting used to them, but any words of advice or comfort or sympathy will be much appreciated!

Sally.

This Moment

Sam was away on a school history trip last week, to Belgium and France to visit World War 1 sites, and he took my camera with him. This, in part, explains my absence from these parts, and I did feel surprisingly lost without a camera. Anyway, he got back late yesterday, slightly tired, starving hungry, with extremely muddy boots and clothes, 7 very muddy pieces of shrapnel he'd found in the Somme area, a (happily intact) camera full of photos and a head full of poignant images, information and memories that I think will stick with him for life.

And although it's a few days late for Soulemama's weekly moment, it feels appropriate to post some of Sam's photos on here, as his moments. These are just a few of his photos, ones which seemed to have stuck most in his mind...

This is an Allied cemetery.

This is the grave of a 15 year old, just a year older than Sam.

Sam was very struck with how different in appearance and feel the German cemeteries were from the Allied cemeteries. The one above is German.

This small area within that cemetery has, apparently, 22000 bodies buried in it.

Their names are written on both sides of these stones, which, as you can see in the photo above, surround the area.

These are trenches, they would have had sandbags piled up either side and then the corrugated iron coverings, but even so they seem surprisingly small and shallow.

This is a reconstructed trench - incredibly narrow too.

This is a memorial on the site where the famous Christmas football was played.

In some areas the opposing trenches were a couple of miles apart, but in others, as here, they were unbelievably close.

This is a huge memorial to French soldiers who were lost in the war but whose bodies were never identified.

Each of those sections of the wall in the photo above have names written on just like these here.

Here is a photo of just a section of a French cemetery.

They visited underground bunkers and tunnels, some of these have drawings made by the soldiers - the one above is of a Mammoth.

This is a huge crater at the Somme, you can just see poppies at the centre, but, to give you an idea of scale, these are large poppy wreaths rather than single flowers.

This Moment

Here's a link to Soulemama's moment, and here's mine...

{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

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