Something pretty special happened...

his mum, my dad, me, him, my mum, his dad. 

On Sunday 21st October 2012, my incredible boyfriend proposed to me outside Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the south bank of the River Thames. I don't think I actually said yes, I was too shocked, but had I been able to speak I would have done, it's all a bit of a blur really, a wonderfully happy blur.
The surprise didn't stop there though, with the promise of champagne my new fiancee led me to The Swan bar where we were greeted by a wall of cheers from all our family and friends who had been waiting with baited breath to celebrate our engagement with us. It was the most overwhelmingly special day. Chris is the best person I know and I can't wait to be married to him. And now, because I'm feeling super loved up and mushy, here are some more pictures of us...

Cheeky trip to Paris

The train gave us free ice lollies, it was awesome.

Dressed as cats for our friend Kat's birthday!

Thoughts on Inspiration and Productivity.

I am a planner and a list maker, the trouble is I'm not so good at ticking things off those lists. I find this problem is even worse when it comes to craft projects. I have endless lists of clothes I want to make and crafty things to make for our home, and I think part of the problem is the huge amounts of inspiration that is available out here on the internet, in blogland. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about all you wonderful, inspiring, creative lovelies, I think you're great, but the wealth of sewalongs and challenges and inspiring makes can be pretty overwhelming sometimes. I imagine for some, super organised people, this wealth of inspiration is an incredible thing, but I am not organised, I am a scatter brain and, sometimes, downright lazy!

So, what is the solution to my never ending lists and projects that never end? Firstly I'm going to have two lists, sounds crazy I know, how can more lists help? Well, one will be for all my ideas and will probably go on growing forever and ever. The other will be a few projects I must complete before I can start ANYTHING else, well anything crafty that is! This is my current 'shortlist':

1. Christmas quilts
2. A small art project to hang in our bedroom (I've already started this and will be posting about it soon)
3. A Christmas gift for my sister, which will probably be a quilt, I am really enjoying making my Mum's quilt at the moment.

Finally, just to prove I haven't been completely un-productive over the last few months, here's a sneak peak of something I made quite a while ago but STILL haven't managed to photograph properly!

Can you guess what it is?

How do you keep on top of all your projects and ideas?

Alice x

Quilts By Christmas.

Thanks to Elise for the great logo.

I'm joining another sewalong/sewing challenge. I found being part of Karen's Pyjama Party such a great motivator and I'm hoping Elise's Quilts By Christmas Challenge will do the same. Elise's Blog is choc full of inspiration, I constantly marvel at how productive she is and when I saw this beautiful quilt I knew I wanted to make one myself and when Elise posted a brilliant tutorial I knew that I could make one myself! I now have plans for two quilts; one for our bedroom and one for my Mum for Christmas. If I get those finished before December I will also make one for my sister but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, I've never made a quilt before! I made digital plans for my quilts because I don't have the space to lay out the real pattern pieces and get a nice random pattern. These are my proposed quilts. 

This one is for our bedroom, the representations of the fabrics I'm using are pretty crude but this will be so helpful when I'm putting it all together.

This one is for my mum. I've got all the fabrics for this one chosen and I've started cutting the patterned fabrics (I'm waiting for the block colours to arrive in the post) and I'm really excited to start putting it all together. 

Have you started any crafts for Christmas yet?

Alice x

Hello. Do You Like My New Look?

Hi friends. It has been a long ol' time since I last posted round these parts. Let me start by saying a long overdue and a huge THANK YOU for all the lovely comments on my latest creation, each one meant so much to me and made me giggle with girlish glee. I am so pleased you liked it!

I've had something of a reshuffle over here. My old blog design was really thrown together just so I could get it out there so yesterday I spent pretty much all day some time designing a new blog banner (I used GIMP if you're interested). My chap very kindly drew me the logo (he's talented like that), because when we were thinking of blog names, I liked 'The Pin and Thimble' best because it sounded like a lovely old country pub, I love old country pubs. Hence the pub sign inspired logo. Apart from the banner, I decided to keep things simple and fresh and let the posts speak for themselves...hope you like it.

I'll be back soon to show you something I finished ages ago but haven't had time to photograph. For now here are just a few instagram snippets from my summer (you can follow me @alice_fearn)

1. An impromptu dinner date with my chap at one of our favourite restaurants.
2. Chap looking especially dashing...
3. I loved the clangers growing up so this book display made me super happy.
4. I'm not a sports fan but London was super cool during the Olympics.
5. Trying out the cupcakes at a new local place: Chocolate and Orange = YUM.
6. This is my cat Lily, she is old and she smells but I love her. Also she lives with my mum.
7. Summer skies are beautiful.
8. I lived in these shoes all summer.
9. Again, not a sports fan, but I couldn't miss seeing the Olympic Torch!

It's been a pretty great summer and I have more pics to share but I'll save them for another time. My best friend is moving in with me and Chap today so I'm off to help with the unpacking and then drink wine and eat pizza. Have a great weekend lovelies.

Alice x

Finished Tie Dye Picnic Skirt

Hi friends. Here is the finished product from my adventures in tie dye: A Picnic Blanket skirt made using this excellent tutorial from Tilly.

I really enjoyed making this skirt, the tutorial instructions were super clear and easy to follow, and the skirt itself is pretty simple to make, very satisfying for a beginner like me.
I used my tie dyed fabric for the body of the skirt and some more of that cheapy white 'cotton' for the waistband. Originally I wanted to use bright turquoise buttons, but as the grey colour turned out so pale I went with some cute baby blue buttons instead.

Because the material is a little bit too see through I decided to make a slip for this skirt.I used this fab post from Tasia and whipped one up in just under 2 hours.

Almost exactly as this picture was taken someone came out of our building (the pictures were taken in our block car park) pretty embarrassing but hilarious too. 

I made the slip out of the same fabric as the skirt (minus the dye) and added a pretty grey lace trim which you can see better in this picture:

I love this slip, it's so fun to be wearing a cheeky bit of lace under a fairly everyday outfit. I'll definitely be making more of these to go under other skirts! 

So.. what did I learn whilst making these garments?

Lessons Learnt on The Tie Dye Picnic Skirt:

1. I need more practice and patience when it comes to sewing on top of gathers: on both this skirt and my crescent skirt, I struggled with getting the waistbands sewn straight, what with all the gathers I had to sew through, the waistband on this skirt is a little wonky as a result but a little practice should fix it for next time.

2.How to make buttonholes: I love the buttonhole foot on my machine, it's so clever. It took me quite a few practice goes (and a little swearing, I can't lie)  to work it all out but it was so worth it. Hurray for buttonholes!

3.Polyester hates dye: ok, so I kind of knew this already but not to what extent, although I do love how they fabric turned out, I was pretty surprised at just how much the colour didn't take to the fabric.

4. Dye garments after you've sewn it up: I cut out my three skirt pieces first and then tied each one separately, this means the stripes don't really match up at the front, never mind, I know for next time!

I can see more of these skirts in my future, they are so easy to make and so cute. Thank you so much to Tilly for sharing this excellent skirt pattern, and for free, so very generous!

Alice x

Adventures in Tie Dye

Phew, it's been a while. I'd love to say that it's because I've been super busy doing all manner of exciting things, but that would be a lie. I just haven't been feeling the creative vibe these past few weeks so have had nothing to blog about! This week, however, I feel I've got my mojo back and have been making fun crafty plans and getting stuck in. For my first project, I've been playing with tie dye. My only experiences with tie dye is from summer camps, where we turned all our white clothes psychedelic! Whilst that was a LOT of fun when I was 9, I've gone for something a little more muted this time. I wanted big white and grey stripes (you know I love my monochrome) so I gathered my supplies...

I used a cheapo white cotton, Dylon hand dye in Antique Grey and loads of rubber bands. Tying up the fabric took a ridiculously long time, probably because my stripes were almost 3 inches wide!

All tied up and ready to go!

After what seemed like an eternity I was ready to dye. I mixed up my dye, per the instructions, and plunged the fabric in. i gave it a good stir and then left it to work for an hour (giving it the occasional prod in between bouts of washing up, living the dream y'all). Now I had the sneaking suspicion that this 'cotton' had some kind of polyester content, it was only £2 a metre after all, but I now suspect that polyester is the bulk of it's content. The dye did not take well. This dye is meant to come out as a mid to dark grey, it did not.

See, definitely pale or light grey. But you know what? I kinda like it, I think it turned out pretty cool. Now all that needs to be done is to sew it up into it's intended garment.
I've starting doing some sketches of possible garments using the croquis that came with a Simplicity Pattern Runway pattern I bought recently (more on that another time). It is so fun, I'm going to try and do it for all my projects. Here's the lady I drew for this project:

I'll be posting the finished skirt as soon as it's all sewn up and we can see how closely it matches the picture!!

Hope you're having a lovely weekend.

Cheerio
Alice x

Finished Crescent (wearable) Muslin.

It's finished!! Phew that took a while! I cut a size 8 but it's a bit too big, I can get my arm between me and the waistband quite comfortably! I think I'll make another wearable muslin, possibly in navy in a size 6 and, assuming that's not too small, I'l make yet another in my kingfisher fabric.

Apart from the roomyness, I'm very pleased with this make. I struggled with some of it at times but  persevered  and it's all turned out well.

I used a cheapo cotton (which I don't think is all natural, probably a poly blend) that was only £2 a metre. It was really easy to work with and I really like the colour. As with my Lonsdale dress, I'm documenting what I learn from each project (totally forgot to do that with my PJ's, oops) so her we go.

Lessons learnt making the Crescent Skirt.

1. Gathering: I really like the gathers on the skirt and I'm so pleased to have learnt this, relatively simple, technique. It's amazing what tugging on a few threads can do!

2. A new zip technique: I don't know if there's an official name for this technique but it terrified me at first. After a little patience and some trial and error, I got that zip installed and I was so proud.

3. When sewing is making you angry, walk away: As I mentioned, the zip took quite a but of patience. When I first read the sewalong posts I was baffled and cross about being baffled. So, I left it alone for a few days. I know if I hadn't I would have ended up making, potentially un-fixable, mistakes. After that I took it super slowly, stopping for a break every time my brain was finding it all a bit too much. I really felt like I'd achieved something when it was finished.

My proudest sewing moment to date!

4. Using bias binding on the hem might not always be best...I think in this case it made the hem too heavy so it doesn't hang perfectly. Next time I'll try ribbon or bias binding that's ironed out to be single fold. I do like the way the contrast of the black binding looks though!

5. Facings: I had no idea what a facing was until I made this skirt. Now I do. Score.

I'm a big fan of this pattern. I think the waistband is really flattering (probably even more so when it's the right size!!), the pockets are really handy and the fullness on the skirt is lovely and girly. Plus, it's classed as an intermediate pattern so I feel VERY smug that I, a proper beginner, managed to finish it, although I should mention there is no way I'd have done it without Tasia's fabulous sewalong. Thanks Tasia.

Cheerio for now. Alice x