Day 3 of Tour de Couture - All about the bunts

More bunting.  I am giving in and calling this week bunt marathon.

I have all of this to break down - 1 dress, 1 shirt, 2 sheets and several metres of mauve and white gingham (not pictured).

I would love to be in a position to say the cutting is done by the weekend.

Day 2 of the Tour de Couture - more bunting

A busy day with family obligations meant that today's Tour de Couture achievement was again bunt cutting.

A need a lot of bunting - this may become a common post.

Today I broke down two shirts and some scraps of fabric donated by a friend.

To maximise the number of bunts per garment I am happy to have some evidence of the fabric's former life showing.  I find it quite charming, really.

In the photo below you can see part of a shirt pocket and some of the sleeve stitching in two different shirts.  In other bunts there are seams and buttonholes.

Tour de Couture

While many of my fibre friends start the Tour de Fleece today, I have too much sewing to do.

Welcome to the Tour de Couture.

Since 2007, spinners have been participating in the Tour de Fleece.

The brainchild of blogger Katherine Matthews, the tour is immensely popular with spinners and knitters (hand –cyclists) alike.  The organisation is now in a Ravelry group .

I have been intending to participate for years but there is always something to prevent me.  This year it is wedding preparations.  I have WAAAAY too much sewing to do to indulge in spinning.

So I am the sole entrant in the Tour de Couture.

Every day of the Tour de France I will sew or engage in sewing preparation.  A majority of this sewing will be related to our wedding which is 5 months away.

Today I cut out more bunting.

Our decorating colours for the wedding reception are purple, green and white.  I have been gathering old textiles in those colours.  Many donations have come from friends, but most have come from the free clothing bins at our tip shop.  I am choosing mostly cottons in all shades of purple green and white, laundering the (mostly) garments and sheets and cutting out bunts.

When all the bunts are cut which will be when all the fabric runs out, I will sew the bunts onto strips of old white sheeting.

The larger scraps left from cutting the bunts are becoming other wedding decorations but they will wait for later posts.

Crafting from Stash - Christmas Edition

At Christmas, I like to give small gifts to the volunteers and staff teams I work with.  Usually about 20 gifts.  This year, I also had about that number of people in the medical and care teams who have been treating me.

40-ish is a lot of small gifts to buy and the cost certainly adds up.

This year I found a use for several stashes of second-hand and reclaimed supplies to create lavender sachets.

I made about 40 tea-bag sachets from Christmas print fabric that I'd picked up at op-shops during the year.  Each was trimmed with a reclaimed shirt button and a piece of thin ribbon rescued from purchased tops and dresses.  You know - the bits of ribbon that make the item secure on a coat hanger.

The only element I had to buy was lavender, because our lavender is the ornamental French variety rather than useful English. Each bag only needs a decent teaspoon full, so it wasn't a huge cost.

I modified this tutorial by Mademoiselle Chaos.  My teabags are only one sachet, not a folded piece to make two, and I changed the hanging system to create a ribbon loop and lost the silly tag piece.

I figured these are a sweet, seasonal token.  They fit neatly into a small Christmas card making giving them easy as well.  The investment of time is about 10 minutes a piece (not the 5 quoted in the tutorial) and the money invested minimal.  If the recipient threw it away within seconds I wouldn't loose any sleep over it as I would with a knitted item.  Some of my colleagues have hung them in their cars, and others over coat hangers to ward off moths in the cupboard.

Be warned, though - these are addictive, and I have MANY ready to be filled with lavender and finished as little gifts during the year.

Burping Babies

Apparently burp cloths are a thing.  I don't remember them being a thing 19 years ago when I was last involved in baby raising - we had old nappies to throw over the shoulder or lap for burp time, but there are fewer of these around now.

I do seem to remember my mother making some for my sister-in-law when my nephew was wee - he turns 16 this month.  Mum raided my stash and used vintage flannelette which had come from a friend's grandmother's stash.  It has to be at least 40 years old now.

I had many metres of mint green and a slightly fewer metres of white and it is so much softer than anything I could buy in shops now.  But plain flanelette isn't very visually appealing.

My research showed that a cute print on one side and flanelette or a soft knit on the other is the done thing. I found a simple downloadable pattern and then lengthened it by two inches in the middle because one thing I do remember about burping babies is that it can dribble a surprisingly long and sitnky way.

The children's print fabric in stash was quickly used up so I cast about for other fabrics.

And I had a lone fat quarter purchased secondhand.

1 fat quarter - 2 burp cloths

 I've been saving lovely cotton fabrics from shirts rescued from the free bins at the local tip shop.  I harvest the shirts for buttons and other trim but can't bear to throw away gorgeous fabric with a lot of wear left in it. The fabric was intended for hankies or other small projects but if the fabric is soft enough for hankies it's soft enough for burp cloths.

Fine cotton from woman's pyjama top

This soft cotton twill was a large Pierre Cardin man's shirt.

Burp on that, baby.

Getting a Grip

The stationery section of any shop is always worth checking out.

The local $2 shop (Hot Dollar, Woden Plaza) had a packet of 5 pencil grips and umpty ump pencil topper rubbers for ... wait for it ... $2.

The supermarket stopped carrying the pencil grips I've been using for a couple of years so I was very pleased to see these.

Not for use with pencils, obviously, but for knitting.

While this solution doesn't protect the needle tips, it does prevent stitch slippage. These work well on 2.25mm and larger needles.  They will stay on the 2mm needles, but not as securely.  That's ok, most of the socks I knit are on 2.25mm needles anyway.

The pencil toppers might work as point protectors on larger straights, or perhaps I could join two together with a length of elastic for a combo dpn point protector/stitch holder.  Hmm - will get back to you on that.