Paper Carrier

 

This bag is a birthday present. I got the measurements for a bag needed to hold the old newspapers between a sofa and a wall in a small home office until they are ferried to the recycling bins. We had talked about the colours; black and white going well with the same colour curtains.

The handles needed to be relatively short to allow for carrying in the hand. I used an old IKEA canvas fabric and lined the bag with black sheet fabric in order it to not to look dirty after the first lot of papers had taken the residence.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough of the lining fabric for the bottom of the bag, so it was made of the outer fabric. Pretty, but no necessarily practical. So I sewed an additional plastic coated bottom, which can easily be wiped down.

The giftee was of opinion that the bag night be too nice for its purpose. What? Of course one should have nice recycling facilities, that makes it easier to recycle!

Bathroom Remake Ta-Dah!

 TA-DAH! Here it is. The bathroom. We used all the two weeks of our Easter Holidays to get it functioning and a bit of time each side of the holidays to prepare and do the last little bits. This was not a simple cosmetic revamp, but a total "rip everything out and put it back again" -job. And what's more, it was redoing bits that had been done badly. We had few hitches, but it was a learning experience and we now have a lovely working bathroom.

We did it in MOMO spirit - Modest Modern. Partly because we had a modest budget, but also because we did not feel that a full blown "luxury hotel suite"-style would have suited the house. Ours is a modest Victorian terrace and we wanted the bathroom to mirror it.

                      BEFORE                                                  

                     AFTER

 
The toilet has been changed to a normal, traditional white one instead of hugely wide beige throne. This has made cleaning around that corner easier, it was a really annoying job before.The little radiator with a towel rail above has been removed and replaced by heated ladder style radiator-towel rail. The walls are now white rather than magnolia-cream-something. The floor is essentially the same colour, although even the "before" floor was installed by us as an emergency measure instead of a smelly carpet.

                                                     BEFORE                                                                                                                       

   
                      AFTER

The bath was changed from a beige plastic monster to a plain white enamelled bath. The screen is now a folding one, which makes climbing into bath/shower easier. Before we practically had to stand in the toilet to make it. The mixed tiling was changed to one style, sand beige-grey big tiles and we did tile whole of the bath area.

Again the cleaning is SO much easier because I don't have to have my heart in the mouth while the screen is hanging outside the bath or banging against my legs and bottom in order to access the shower end of the bath. The old screen was actually not intact either and it was hanging wonkily. I had all sorts of ideas of having some natural pebble tiles, but realised that the amount of grout would mean that the cleaning would be a nightmare. Although the look might have been nice, I want to my everyday life be easy and simple.

                     BEFORE

                                                                 

                     AFTER  

 

The sink area was very dark and was fitted with a sink with a gap of 2mm between the sink and the wall. Why is that important? Well it's big enough to have muck gathering, but nigh impossible to clean. I leave the result for your imagination. The mirror was ok as such, but I was desperate to have space for all the tooth brushing stuff and such easily accessible, but hidden, so we bought a cabinet. I am now hopeful for the sink area to keep tidy. you can also see the patterned tiles in action. They are slightly lighter coloured in reality.

I bought a metal soap holder for the wall, but in the end didn't like how it fitted into the space. The walls surrounding the sink make it a bit tricky to dress this corner.At least we have a light fitting above the mirror cabinet. The soap dish was something I had already in the house. I filled it with some smooth pebbles, so the soap keeps dry. It works and looks nice.

                     BEFORE                                                                  

                     AFTER

The stand under the sink had a cupboard with two doors and a shelf. One of the doors actually came off, because the cabinet had been soaked due to the leak inside the wall. When I removed it, I also found a mushroom growing out of the cabinet wall. Charming! As the bathroom is narrow, I wanted draws under the sink to maximise the utilised space. IKEA had the most reasonably priced units. I was totally amazed what some firms were asking for similar cabinets. And no, the materials were no better... I also like that the sink is just a part of the moulded top. It makes it easy to clean. You should think I am obsessive about cleaning, but actually I don't like it, so anything which makes it easier/quicker is good in my book.

                     BEFORE                                                                       

 

 
                               AFTER

The old shower looks unusable in the picture, but in the reality, we had just taken the head off to use with our emergency shower arrangement. Our "luxury" was to buy a new shower with a nice big head and a separate hand shower utility. The only bad thing about it is that it is too good. Eh?!? We stand far too long under it as it is so lovely! We also have bath taps in the same end, so when in bath, nothing drips on your head. The bath taps are a modern take of Victorian taps, again very plain style. The good thing about them is that they are easily turned with toes.

If you peek on the right of the picture above, you can see that the door glass is covered by a blind inside. It was an ok idea, but I found the blind looking really out of place, heavy and big on the door, so did not want to replace it with a new one. Instead I went for a granny option; a curtain wire and a curtain made of a lovely vintage table cloth. I am so happy to have found use for this piece of loveliness in my house. It looks sweet from both in and outside. This is how it looks from the hallway, coming up the stairs:

 

Yes, the hallway and the stairs are our next project. As this is my favourite door at the moment I need to show you the effect closer by:

 

I love it! It's like a fine old lady and makes me smile every time I see it.

Well done if you made it to the end of my bathroom report. Anyone else having a show and tell of bathrooms? Leave a link if you have, I would love to see!

E Coli Happens or Ei menny niin ku Strömsössä

Just to keep things real. It is not all crafts, baking and sunshine here in the hut.

I was struggling yesterday to make our ten day food plan. This is by the way one most effective ways of reducing food waste and keep the budget under control in my opinion and experience.  I was begging suggestions from my family as my brain just wouldn't yield anything interesting and easy enough and made it in the end with a herculean effort.  I even compiled a shopping list for this morning. Pleased with my staying power I ripped the old menu off the fridge and threw it into the kitchen bin, put the new one on and used an extra magnet to hang my shopping list overnight on the fridge door. Or that is what I thought...
This morning, almost ready to roll I was grabbing my list just to realise that it was the old menu. The new one was where it should be, so the shopping list was naturally in the BIN! And as  I was a lazy bone last night, I threw it in the mixed waste bin.

AAARGHHHHHHH!!!! I had to fish it out under tealeaves and other waste, so that I didn't have to do all the thinking and checking the ingredients again. (I did copy it out rather than using the manky copy for shopping!)

 Note to self: Use recycling bin for ALL writing paper waste.

Paperbin

When we moved to our new house a lot of stuff got re-arranged and many of the baskets ended in the kitchen holding food in the open shelf arrangement. We used to have an African basket for our paper bin. Now it houses a lot of dry goods in the kitchen.

It was a frustrating thing to have to carry all the paper waste downstairs, so quite a lot of it ended in the mixed bin for a while. I decided  that enough was enough and certainly I could make one with what I had at home.

I used old IKEA black and white cotton canvas and some heavy weight interfacing and made this:                                                                                                                             

    



































It has worked very well and even though I was slightly worried about Husband's reaction to the psychedelic pattern, he was cool with it.

I think this was a pleasing way of decreasing my stash and solve a sorting problem.

Christmas present review part one

I started in good time making my presents, yet it felt that I was working awfully hard to the deadline of sending them away. I don't know how that came to be.

One of my sisters wished to have a wash bag and/or make-up bag, so I made both for
her. 

 

I lined the wash bag with red waterproof fabric with polka dots from IKEA. I like their oil cloth as it is matte and slightly thinner than many of its counterparts. This makes it easier to sew.  I have previously made even a little rucksack of it and it worked beautifully. (I don't think I blogged about it...)

It is not that difficult to sew a wash bag, but it does take some time. I have to be extra careful of not making any mistakes as picking the stitches from plastic doesn't work! I was really pleased to find some turquoise ric-rac from my stash to give it a little kick.

I also added a face cloth in the same theme. I don't think I have blogged about these, but they are a great way of using good bits of ripped towels. As a bonus everybody can recognise theirs when they have different colours and appliques. I will show more of them later.

 

My other sister had not wished anything and we don't normally exchange gifts. I wanted to surprise her with just a little practical home made present. I made her a new shopping tote and decorated it with some crocheted "snow flakes". These were again a thrift shop find and one of my trusty go-to when  wanting to doll-up something.

The little bag on the side was my  moment of genius. You see how very handy it is? It fits perfectly in your bag.

 I really detest plastic bags as they are blowing in the wind and ending up in places they should not be. I have been using reusable bags for long and now I have gone one step further; I bring my own vegetable bags as well. So I sewed a set for my sister to take with her. I did make five, but at the point of photographing the fifth one did not have the string - I ran out of it and had to grab the moment, because the sunlight or even just reasonable photographic light have been in a short supply here.

This post became rather baggy, but that was largely the theme of my gift giving this Christmas. More to follow!

Baby Yogi

I go to a yoga class weekly and this winter one of the ladies gave birth to an adorable little princess K. The Yoga teacher was collecting money to give something to the newcomer and asked me if I was up to making the baby a present as it would be nicer to give a unique gift.

I think that it is a hoot sewing baby things, because so little goes so long. We agreed that I would make one of those baby sleeping bag dresses, as they are handy. I was very sure that I had a pattern for those somewhere, but alas no. So I got to the Ottobre site and had a look through their back catalogue. Luckily there was one in 5/2006. I had thought of making an apple green one, as the project started before the baby was born. I had eyed a lovely jersey for it, but when the pattern arrived, it said to use cotton fleece outside. That was not widely available and at this point I luckily knew that we had a princess and went for fuchsia. I still made the lining of the said apple green jersey and comforted myself with the fact that if the Mum really hated the colour, she could use it inside out, and nobody would probably notice.

Because the sewing of the sleeping bag was just so easy I felt as if I had cheated, so decided that we needed to give a bit more. I looked in the same magazine and found a pattern for this.

I used a thrifted XL ladies' cardigan as the main material and the skirt bit is Marimekko jersey from my stash. The little princess goes to mums&babies yoga class and has reportedly been admired in her personal yoga gear.

Hello Again! and Re-make three: Retro Skirt

Sorry about the far too long hiatus. There was a really long spell of drab grey days which made any picture taking impossible and then my computer went into coma. It took a turn in intensive care unit aka Elf Husband's hands (how good is it to have a helpful in-house computer nerd?) and is now functioning again, yihaa!

This garment was one of the things I was lucky to rescue from my Grandma's wardrobe. She must have made it in 60's. It was so neatly sewn. I took it for its retro fabric and thought maybe making something out of it as I was convinced that I could not squeeze myself into it. I got inspired later to try to make a skirt by cutting it up in strips. When I tried it on the skirt fitted. It was only far too small over the shoulders, yihaa! I simply cropped the skirt off and sewed the waist and made a couple of darts at the waist to give it form. Time used: 5 minutes or so.

While I was doing this I noticed that the lowest button had had an accident either in the making or using. It was patched, really neatly, so that the pattern matched.

I wore the skirt for half an hour and I had the same accident happening to me, just one button up, where the fabric wasn't reinforced. I could have just given up at this point, but I had realised that I WANTED this skirt.

I then put extra interfacing behind the buttons and used some fabric to enforce the button strip. Next thing to happen? The button holes started ripping. So doing the same on that side too. Now I have a really nice retro skirt and no other bits have given up the ghost. And I like it!

What can You Get for 50 pence?

A bunch of colourful dishcloths in cotton! I bought a toddler's hoodie knit in the local charity shop, cut it in pieces and sew it them together in dishcloth sized pieces.

This is one of those obvious things I hadn't thought of before I saw this done in Jokkemaa. I had before read about using your old t-shirts as dishcloths, but I am ridiculously attached to my "knitted" shop bought ones. So this is the obvious solution. I get cheaper, recycled dishcloths and as a bonus they are in pretty colours. Jokke's are far prettier than mine. Even if you don't understand the language, it's a good place to go and get some inspiration, the pictures are worth it, Jokke is extremely productive and creative crafter.

And as a bonus for this production I got a cute zip as well!























Heart hair clips were made for my friend's littele girls. Very simple, very cheap, well under 50p a pair...