Sewing – Page 2 – Koali's life

sneak peak

I created the pattern for this little koala this afternoon. What it is for will be revealed in time.

Christmas baking and sewing

I’ve done a bit of sewing and baking over the Christmas period.

These are the shortbread and fudge I made for pressies.

I also made a choc mint checkerboard cake and a white chocolate and raspberry checkerboard cake.

My SIL plays the bass clarinet and there was no ‘instrument’ hero shirts available so I thought I would make a patch to put on anything wanted. This little present took a lot of hours of work and tears and I still wasn’t fully happy with any version. We went through many disasters such as running out of thread, losing location, patterns corrupting to name a few. This one is actually the first one I did. Andrew did the artwork for it.

I also made a pair of thomas boxer shorts for my niece and some towels and hankies for my parent’s in law and again forgot pics in the rush.

Christmas overalls

They are complete before Christmas – just 😉

Samuel is now size 4!!! and is toilet training well so it was time to move from baby overalls into little boy overalls. We are off to see Santa tomorrow so I hope they fit.

Looking at the pictures, the left leg looks longer than the right. It isn’t noticible hanging but I might fix after their trial run tomorrow in case hems etc need to be adjusted anyway.

GoochieGoo launched

My formal trademark certificate arrived on Friday.

I wanted to put a label on the clothing I created for Samuel and other friends and GoochieGoo just seemed perfect to me. I wanted to put it on the clothing as a label but was worried that someone would see the name, like the name and use it formally stopping me using it. So after much debating, I decided to trademark the name. I’m looking forward to a whole range of new creations with the cute prominent label.

It might seem crazy to go through the process and money when not actually running a business, but I think it is worth it to provide the last finishing touch to an outfit that I spend a lot of time designing and creating. For those who are looking to create a trademark for the first time I highly recommend the Headstart program, they were great at answering my questions and really efficient.

And because i’m a geek, I started to set up a website for goochiegoo last night.

Learning about knit embroidery

Reading a lot of the embroidery information, knits take a lot of work to get right… so naturally as my second/third embroidery attempts I decided to play with knits.

The items I am experimenting with are for an experimental pattern themselves so there isn’t a worry about messing up.

This was a free pattern. I backed the pure cotton knit with a heavy interfacing and put a ball point needle into the machine. It took a while to get the hoop nice and tight but not stretched. Next time I think I need to get a slightly heavier interfacing as it was still very thin. I started with tension setting 3 and tried increasing it but that made the bobbin show more so I went down to just under 2 which worked a lot better. Tight close stitches are not suited to knits and the machine got stuck at the top of the left trunk ripping the fabric a little. The machine seems to cope better with horizontal stitches over vertical stitches. Once I get the software I will be able to trial a few stitch combinations.

Again a free pattern all on the under 2 tension. I’vd discovered I have to initially hold the bobbin thread to prevent the thread coming through as seen with the white tipped spine. The other white bits in this piece were when the top thread unhooked from the first tension holder, something I will have to watch and work out how to prevent.