Friday 7 August 2015

My biggest project pre sewing machines...!

As I mentioned in my introduction I am heavily involved in Girl Guiding. As you probably know us guidey types LOVE to collect badges! Then we like to put them in little piles and hope the badge fairy comes and sews them onto our blankets....
Sadly this rarely happens!
My blanket is my pride and joy and the little history of my guiding life, all 22 years of it and I'm only 27!
My blanket started as a little pink fleecey thing I bought cheaply in dunelm as a guide, before I really realised how much I enjoyed guiding. It soon ran out of space and it infuriated me how all the badges were out of date order that I had earned/gained them so I set about making a new one.
I borrowed my sisters sewing machine, which I know now the tension was all out and that's why it kept getting in knots, and a fair amounts of wonder webb was involved and 3 meters of orange fleece fabric from Boyes near where my grandparents live.
I cut a hole in the middle like any good ponchos and decided I wanted to make a hood for it. please bear in mind this was at least 6 years ago so I had very little sewing knowledge despite having all the books... So after some reading and googleing I made a hood! I then couldn't work out how to attach it to my blanket as I couldn't get the blanket in to sew it, so I wonder webbed it and hand sewed a sort of fleece collar around the edge to keep it neat. Suprisingly it's still attached! but at least now i'll know how to fix it!
I then hemmed all the edges, which was pointless as it's fleece and won't fray, but who was I to know! and made a pocket shape and ironed that on too.
Then I had the monstrous task of re-sewing all the badges back onto my blanket! Luckily, if you look at it that way, I then lived on my own in a 1 bed flat and I couldn't afford the heating so one winter was spent hand sewing each badge back on whilst it was on my lap. Nice and toasty I was too!
Waiting for the badge fairy.....!
These days its a panic rush to get it all up to date before going on a trip! This last time (before taking the girls to sleepover at the sealife centre!) I tried putting them on  with my machine!
The square ones are easy with a lovely zig zag though badges are getting all shapes and sizes now! So I started using my free motion foot and just wiggling around the edge of the badge. No where near neat, but stays on my better than my hand sewing! Though the main issue is shoving my huge blanket through the machine!!
Now just to re-sew all my dodge hand sewing/wonderwebbing......!






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