Mrs Tiggy-Winkle

When I was very young, my favourite story was that of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and I have a fondness for her which has endured over the years.

How lovely to live in a place in the country and to be able to spend the day drying the washing outdoors and having the satisfaction of beautifully ironed linen...

On days when there is not much to smile about, I only have to see Mrs Tiggy-Winkle standing there with her ironing to feel that all will be well and if I want to add a spring to my step, I can wind the key to this music box and listen to 'Oh, what a beautiful morning' to feel that everything will go my way.

Cushions

Those who read my last post will know that I was in the process of replacing some worn-out cushion covers and recycling the zippers.  I seem to have perfected my technique for inserting an invisible zip.

The secret is to stitch the seam on a long stitch, insert the zip and then unpick the seam.  

One invisible zipper.

Three cushions completed in record time and I'm very happy with the results.

The Three Rs

In this instance, we are talking about Reduce - Reuse - Recycle.

The question was what to do with three cushions with covers which were beyond repair?  For a long time, they had been stuffed in a bag until I had the time or energy to do something with them.  Now that we don't have the space to store them, it was time to put the cushions back into use.

The answer seemed to be to salvage what I could and throw the rest away.  As the fabric was torn and frayed, I could not salvage it.

I removed the zippers and put them to one side - ready to recycle.

This is the fabric that I chose to recover the cushions.  It is another remnant, which I bought at the church flea market some years ago.  At the time, I liked it, but did not have any ideas as to how I would use it.  It picked up the red theme of the original cushion covers, which matched the zippers perfectly.

I will be back with the finished cushions in my next post.

Rocky Road

We had been invited to have lunch with some old friends, so I decided to make a sweet treat to take.  After a special trip to buy chocolate (much as I am a chocolate lover, I did not have 300g of dark chocolate in the cupboard), I set about making Rocky Road bars from Nigella Express.

I made them on Wednesday evening, as lunch was yesterday.  In the morning, I cut them into pieces and dusted them with icing sugar before carefully packaging them in lots of foil.

There was only one problem - I forgot to take them with me when we set off for lunch!  By the time I realised, we were a long way from home, so we ended up making an impromtu stop at a bakery to buy something instead.

Lunch was enjoyable and it was lovely to catch up with friends whom we have not seen for a long time.  The only dilemma was what to do with all those chocolate treats once we returned home.  Fortunately, I discovered that they can go in the freezer, so after a lot of self-control (well, a couple of small treats), most of them made it to the freezer.

Fabric Find

This morning, I went to the church flea market that I mentioned last weekend.  My aim was to find fabric or craft items which I could use.  They had quite a lot of fabric and I had to dig through boxes under the counter, but it was worth the effort.  I bought this piece of upholstery fabric for $3.00.

The design is Delihla by Kingsway fabrics and features a pretty daisy design on a pale blue background.  When I measured it, I was pleased to find that I got 2.8 metres.  

One of the projects that I have in mind is to recover the chair pads for our dining room set.  I made the original covers about 18 years ago, so it is certainly time for a change.  I haven't calculated the amount of fabric required, but I am fairly confident that I should have a sufficient amount for this project.

Flea Market Fabric - Cushion Cover

I've always had a fear of machine stitching zippers in place.  I had some bad experiences attempting this in the past and lost my nerve, resorting to hand sewing them instead.  This time, as it was for a cushion, I felt that I should try this again, as I wanted a professional finish and a strong zipper.

I purchased a zipper foot for my machine, but still ran into problems with the alignment.  I found an online tutorial here, which proved very helpful.

After a couple of attempts and a bit of unpicking, I got the zipper in and finished sewing the cover this afternoon.  I think it looks great and there is enough fabric left over to make a second one, which is now cut out and ready to go, once I buy another zip.