I have to be honest...

I have to be honest. I might have sewn a few bits before. 

1. Some rather sensible cushions in a lovely Laura Ashley floral. (My mum held my hand)

2. Some rather ridiculous but really brilliant bear outfits.

The cushions were beautiful. When they were finished I was a little bit in love, they were so neat and pretty and that was entirely down to my Mum. I made them in response to the new enormous brown leather sofas in my rented flat, which when unadorned looked suspiciously like giant piles of poo.

The beautiful fabric and my newspaper pattern.

The final product at two years old + a bit of poo sofa.

Apart from the piping, they were fairly simple. One large square for the front and two rectangles for the back to form an overlapping opening for the stuffing. I drew the pattern all by myself, but drawing rectangles isn’t very hard. The piping was another matter. I’ll do a separate post on it later as describing it is a bit wordy and I really want to talk about bear outfits. 

I look a bit miserable here. Also I didn't imagine I was going to write a blog about this so I didn't think to take a nice full length photo of just me. But you get the idea, we all looked daft as brushes.

The bear costumes were originally for a festival in Kendal, there were five of us going and originally I was only going to make two of the bears. However as the date loomed I found myself making a panda, a koala, a brown bear, a black bear and a slightly different brown bear (I ran out of ursine inspiration). There was some very frantic sewing. Some actually on the campsite. URGH. 

Each costume consisted of a hat with ears and a strapless minidress of sorts, a tube roughly the circumference of each bear’s widest point (hips or bust) in stretchy fleece. The dress had a little fat tail and a contrasting faux fur belly. The belly was only attached along the top and bottom and made a great, if wildly unflattering pocket or muff. 

The sewing wasn't top quality, I did it by hand in a hurry and faux fur and fleece are not summer fabrics, even up north. However they were so much fun to make and wear! And that's how these two projects planted a seed (quite a slow growing one) that I'd quite like to get better at this sewing malarkey, so here goes nothing...