Bags and Bags of Lavender

I finished my first Use It or Lose It project!

Lots and lots and lots of lavender bags:

 

That's not even all of them - I had so much dried lavender to use up I made a massive 29 sachets!

Lots of happy hours of hand stitching later I've got lots of scented goodness to add to our wardrobes and chests of drawers to keep them smelling fresh and help deter those pesky clothes-nibbling moths.

In a bit of magical de-stashing coincidence, I had exactly the right amount of that moth and butterfly print fabric to use up all the lavender. Hurrah!

 

I've just got a few small scraps of the fabric left now, plus a pile of these thin strips...

... which I am totally planning to use in another de-stash-y project soon.

Use It or Lose It: A Crafty Challenge for 2015

I've been doing lots of decluttering this year and I've found that one of the hardest things for me to clear out is the stash of random crafty stuff I've kept because "I might be able to make something with that sometime!"

So I've decided that in 2015 I need to either get on and actually make stuff with the supplies in my stash, or admit to myself that I'm never going to use them for anything and just get rid of them.

This will be a slow, ongoing process but I'm hoping to have lots of crafty fun along the way and (fingers crossed) a lot more space in my studio at the end of the year. I'm rather looking forward to the creative challenge of coming up with projects to make with my long-hoarded supplies and I will, of course, be blogging about my progress!

Thanks to taking some time off over Christmas, I've already made a start on my first de-stashing project: making lots of lavender bags.

I'd been keeping two huge bags of dried lavender (harvested from my mother's garden) which was waaaay more lavender than I thought I'd ever need but so lovely and scented and potentially useful that I'd not been able to bring myself to just (gasp!) throw it away.

So when my sister mentioned this Christmas that something she owned had been nibbled by moths, I offered to make her a big batch of lavender sachets to help keep the pesky creatures at bay. It's been a while since I made some lavender sachets to proect my own wardrobe so I'll also be making some for myself.

I'd planned on using some scrappy fabric like an old pillowcase to make the sachets. However, looking through my fabric stash I found an old dress my sister had made many many years ago and then given to me in case I wanted to use the fabric for something...

... it's been sitting untouched for about ten years, it belonged to the sister for whom I'm sewing the lavender sachets, and the print is a pattern of butterflies and moths. Perfect!

As well as using up some long-forgotten-about fabric and a big stash of dried lavender, I'm also using some odds and ends of ribbons (mostly the sort of loops I'd cut out of new dresses and kept because "they might be useful for making something!") to add to the smaller sachets so they can be hung on coathangers.

Three de-stashed birds with one crafty stone = an excellent start to the challenge!

Simple Sewing

Thanks to some pesky moths, one of my woolly sweaters now has a row of little holes in it! Very annoying.

Luckily it was the only woollen garment being stored in that particular cupboard, but in case the moths decide to go hunting for more delicious knitwear to nibble on I've been speedily sewing a stash of lavender sachets to keep them at bay.


Dried lavender from my mother's garden + some bits of old pillowcases found in my scrap box + a few hours watching old movies = lots of simple sachets to stick in cupboards, drawers and suitcases under the bed. I've also sewn a couple with ribbon loops attached so I can hang them in my wardrobe.

They're very plain and functional but I quite like them that way, possibly because it's really satisfying using up old scraps like this (waste not, want not, right?), or perhaps just because they're so different to the normal colourful things I sew.

365 / 65 - sewing in someone else's house

So we went out for dinner last night, rather mucking up my plan to spend the whole evening sewing and cutting out lots of new pattern pieces. Ah well.

Good food, lovely company and I did manage to get a little bit of sewing done during after-dinner chitchat... embroidered a few more moustache pieces, finished a cherry blossom pin (and cut out the backing piece for another), and finally finished a moth brooch! Hurrah! :)

Here is the moth in all its fat, fuzzy glory:

Crafting 365 / 40 & 41 - winged works in progress

On Saturday night I attended to my work-in-progress box. It is somewhat overflowing, and I really ought to try to tackle at least some of the contents instead of just making exciting new things... so I spread out the contents of the box (covering my table completely) and set about making myself useful. Whilst listening to some Agatha Christie on BBC7 (such addictive tosh, just marvellous) I sewed a lot of little eyes onto a lot of little birds:
These birdies were all cut out and had their wings stitched on aaaages ago and have been sitting neglected in my wip box along with several others (I had a bit of a bird-making frenzy a while back, you see). They will all become ornaments or mobiles of some kind eventually but for the moment it is enough that they can see :)

Then last night I got distracted again and started something new. Actually it's something rather old from my to do list - and something the boyf is always nagging me about. I made a moth brooch for a swap with Seaurchin earlier in the year and the boyf has been on at me to make more ever since. Other, sparklier things have taken precedent (so many sparkly distractions) but now I am finally turning my attention to the little furry winged creatures:
... that's the first 2 layers stitched on, there are 2 more yet to go (the detailing on the wings) and of course then they will actually need turning into pins (one destined for the lapel of my boyfriend's coat). They're sitting on an upturned placemat - I have so many wips spread about the place at the moment that I have quite run out of handy trays and box lids and am resorting to placemats instead!

In other news, I think I am becoming obsessed with grey and blue, clouds and rain, and also umbrellas, thanks to a combination of the weather and the cloud pin I made the other day... I got a treasury on Etsy for the first time in ages and guess what theme I have picked? You can see it here while it lasts...