After watching an episode of The Great British Sewing Bee about the Make-do-and-mend period of WW2, I decided to have a go at sewing a pair of play shorts using 2 x tea towels. That’s right. Tea towels and it worked. The only down side is that you generally have to pattern match which I didn’t do on my first go.

Took 2 hrs from start to finish including copying the pattern.

Kwik Sew 3398 Pattern

I had never sewn in a fly before. Turned out it wasn’t as tricky as I thought it would be.

The blue shorts are store bought and I used them to recreate the same type of waist band.

I saw this pattern while trawling eBay. I snapped it up for a bargain price of $6 including shipping.

I love this pattern. The pinafore only has 3 pattern pieces and can be sewn together including cutting in 2-3 hours. It’s a pity I don’t have a little model to show it off.

The only challenging part was sewing on the buttons which are back to back to make the pinafore reversible. If anyone has any tips, pass them my way.

Ok, now back to the banner. *Le Sigh*

With a couple of birthdays coming up this month, I wanted to knock up a colourful birthday banner. Each rectangle measures 10 x 13 inches. Each one takes 40 minutes to do. Let me do a quick count… that’s 13 letters and then another small banner each for each person. It will be a miracle if I get it finished in time.

I made this cute cushion for the lounge after noticing my last remaining cushion was now a cream colour bordering on grey instead of it’s original crisp white.

I simply googled ‘cushion with zip tutorial’ and followed the first result to http://www.heytherehome.com/how-to-make-a-zippered-pillow-cover/ and it worked. It’s not how I’d normally make a cushion. I’m so used to invisible zips that I was stumped for a few seconds (3.5 seconds). After a few unpicks, it worked!

Oh, the cushion insert was a new, unused bed pillow. Just cut in half and sew the end shut. Et voila you have a cushion insert.

1.5hrs later. Finished size 45cm x 45cm