Some more sewing adventures!

A few weeks ago my digital kitchen scales broke. So what? I hear you say. So, apparently my baking mojo has broken with it. Even since I have not been able to double check my measurements with my scales, everything I make has seemed to be fatally flawed. I know that I could just go and buy another one but i’m so close to finally paying off my credit card debt that I just don’t want to splash out that sort of moolah for a good set of scales. And so, I have been resorting to my other hobby to keep myself occupied. Sewing!

So I bought some super fluffy pink flannelette fabric

of course it had to have bunnies on it

and made myself some pyjama pants!

Mum brought me back the tshirt from the Magnolia Bakery in New York last year.

Excuse the total mess behind me.

In case you couldn’t see in the pic, I cut the fabric upside down.

Oops!

but of course its all a-ok because it means that the bunnies are the right way up for me!

p.s. totally loving mums fleecy cupcake pjs. Might have to whip myself up a pair!

and of course, wearing warm fluffy pjs requires disney. Lots of disney.

Apart from the slight problem cutting the fabric, I was very pleased with how these turned out. This is the first garment i’ve made and i’m still teaching myself all the bits and pieces involved. Of course, I couldn’t stop there. I had known for months that a big costume party was fast approaching. With a theme of ‘medieval’ I was a bit stuck as all the ebay costumes were sexy wench, sexy viking or medieval princess and were either super expensive or just a bit boring. My boy and I never really dress up for parties so, seeing as this was a 30th celebration, we thought that we would surprise everyone and go all out. I didn’t want to go down the ebay route so we tried to figure out some different ideas to fit in with the theme. I have to say that I think my suggestions were pretty good:

  • space vikings (with lots of silver and glitz)
  • ninjas (because who says medieval has to be european? And i’ve always wanted to go to a ninja party)
  • samurais (same as above)

Finally I came up with the idea of Odin (King of the Gods) and Valkryie (female spirits who took the souls of the valiant warriors to eternal bliss with Odin in Valhalla). I won’t post a pic of the boy up here but it is safe to say that our costumes were so complete that no one recognised us when we arrived. I do have a picture of the beard and wig he wore which will give you a bit of an idea…

He wore the same hat as in the picture there and the wig looked just as good in person as it did on the box.

I call that a win! I went down the anima/manga influenced Valkyrie with an electric blue and gold colour scheme.

I whipped up a skirt out of electric blue velour (never again as that fabric is so tricky to sew with!)

cut out some gold velour as a cape

Used a bit of gold spray paint on an old belt and some boots

popped on a blonde wig

and…

voila!

Of course every good valkyrie spends time stitching extra elastic onto Odin’s beard…

I also made a pair of arm warmers out of the extra blue fabric as it was a super cold night but I can’t find a good pic of them at the moment. Overall I was pretty pleased with how the outfits turned out and I’m racking my brain trying to come up with other places to bust out those gold boots. Any ideas, my lovely readers? And what was the best costume you ever wore to a party?

And now for something completely different…

Well, kinda different. Those who follow me on instagram (bakerbowie by the way!) might have noticed that my pics are not always cooking related. While I always maintain that the best thing to chill me out after a stressful day/week/month/year is to get in the kitchen and start cooking, I have found another hobby that seems to do the trick on the stress front. That hobby is sewing. And yes, I am aware that I am utterly predictable in my love of all things pink, sweet, girly so to imagine my sewing on would not be that big of a stretch.

Don’t worry, I am still cooking and have a few goodies to serve up in the next few weeks, but I want to share a few cute (simple) projects that i’ve been working on. It all started with a cardigan that I ordered from Asos a few months ago. While it looked lovely on the model, it looked pretty plain on me. When will I learn that what looks amazing on an online model will almost NEVER look the same on an ordinary human being?

It looked like this.

Cute collar, but pretty average everywhere else.

So I hopped on etsy to look for some buttons to brighten it up. Who knew that changing the buttons on a cardigan would completely change it? Now that i’ve let you in on the not so secret admission that i’m totally predictable, can you guess what kind of buttons I bought? Bows you say? Absolutely.

See? Cuteness magnified about 100000000%

So, while I work on my sewing machine skills which are pretty average, I though that I would start small by customising some cardigans. I went out and bought myself a few more to experiment on. At $10 a pop, how could I just stop at one? So I bought five.

Don’t judge. I know that you wouldn’t have passed that up!

I added swarovski buttons

sugar sweethearts? Nah, plastic buttons, but cute nonetheless!

And I like their use of the imperative.

HUG MEEEEEE!

So yes, all my sewing things are pink too…

which is nice when i’m sewing buttons on a pink cardi

because we all know that matchy matchy is the way to go!

these ice-cream buttons are just so damn cute it hurts.

It hurts in all my cuteness glands.

By the way do you like how even my sewing is cooking/food related? Thought you would!! So what do you do to chill out, lovely readers?