I’d say I’m sorry about that but really? I’m not. Things happen. Things don’t happen. Ya know. Life.
But I have just updated the privacy policy to align with GDPR (hey, I’m only 6 days late!). And some other bits and pieces, like the Welcome page and the About Me page, so I thought I’d pop over to here and give y’all a thrill.
Are you thrilled?
For the record, I keep almost no data on anyone. My digital data is kept by Conscious Crafties. Anything physical I have is under lock and key and I have the only key.
So your data is safe with me.
So what have I been doing?
Some of this. Some of that.
Some of the other.
I’ve been knitting and crocheting and turning 49 and planning Adam’s 9th and just general living.
As most people who read this blog know, my son, Adam, now 6, is Autistic. As is common with ASD, he also has some physical issues, including a fine motor delay.
This delay means he cannot button buttons or do hook and eye fastenings. He has just recently nailed snaps and zips but even those can be a struggle at times.
The other thing you may know is that Adam is tall for his age. Very tall. As in just over 48 inches tall. Yes. Four feet. At 6 years old. Never forget; I’m only 62 inches myself. So yes, he’s nearly to my shoulder.
In any case, this means that I could not find any school trousers without hooks and eyes for him this year. Luckily some of last years trousers were fine in length at the beginning of the school year. But, as he always seems to do, 4ish weeks into the school year he had a growth spurt and those trousers went from fine in length to borderline to nearly flood water length in the space of, I swear, a week. Or maybe even a day.
It’s been suggested I stop feeding him, but that seems a bit drastic to me. 😀
So I needed to solve the problem of how to get a hook and eye off and a snap on. I took a seam ripper to one of the pairs of trousers only to find that Marks & Spencer has some magic way of inserting the halves of a hook and eye through the fabric so I would have to cut the fabric to remove them. I made a face, sewed the seam back up on my machine and started thinking.
And this is what I came up with:
Snaps over hook and eye.
So, how did I do it? Let’s see!
First I gathered some stuff:
Fabric, measuring tape, thread, needles, pins, snaps, seam ripper and cutting matt. Not shown: cutting wheel and yard stick.
Then I cut the fabric to size. I realized long after I was done cutting that it would have been neater if I’d allowed a bigger seam but by the time I realized that they had all been cut out and zigzagged stitched and I didn’t have the time to start over. Note: Yes. I used Avengers. No, it’s not technically part of his uniform. But since no one would know but us? I thought it would please Adam. And it did. 😀
Measure twice. Cut once.All cut out with my wheel cutter, which is photobombing at the top there!Close up of zigzagged edge.
Snaps in position for hand sewing. Yes, one of them is backwards. Again.
Next I hand sewed the snaps to the fabric pieces. Top Tip: Check you have the snaps the right way around. Then check again. And then again. I had ripped them out more times than I care to admit.
And finally, I machine sewed the strips over the hooks and eyes.
Snap, well, snapped.Snaps over hook and eye.
And when a small but very tall boy tried them on? Perfection!
This will be the first in an ongoing series about how the creative people in the world get to their finished product, from first thought to finished piece.
A Pocketful of Dandelions is a fantastic blog that is written by Vickie.
http://www.apocketfulofdandelions.com/
Vickie describes herself as “…a 40-something wife and mum from Hampshire. I’m a crafter and a self-confessed makeup horder. I write a little bit about everything I love, including the adventures I have with my daughter Bubs…”
Vickie just recently started filming both her unboxing of scrapbooking kits and showing how she uses the kits (and tons of other stuff!) and uploading to her YouTube channel.
What I love about her videos is that she doesn’t just show you the beginning and the end with maybe a tiny bit in the middle of where she puts items, but actually discusses the items, both ones that she used and ones she decided against, and shows her placing things around the page until it looks the way she wants.
Interspersed through out are her tips and tricks for layout and using various embellishments. For example, at 3:46 she is seen putting foam tape on the back of her central photograph and says she does this so she has room to put embellishments behind it. Granted, I’m not a scrapbooker, but that would never have occurred to me. I would have put the embellishments on first and then put the picture on top!
Happy Scrapping – Don’t Look Down!
This way she can place the picture and then see how various embellishments will look behind it.
She also mentions that she sorts her embellishments by colour rather than subject and we get to see her sort through her box of blue ones.
Watching her get to her final page is fascinating and her soft English accent is lovely to listen too as she talks through her whole process.
So head on over to A Pocketful of Dandelions and check all of her things out. You may learn something. I certainly did.
You can also catch up with Vickie on Twitter @vintagevicshop
