Stuff I did when I wasn't here (with apologies for title nicked from The Bloggess)

While I've been cracking on with keeping the shelves filled at the Emporium, you may have noticed I've been a bit quiet recently (damn, I hear you cry, she's back). This is because I've been beavering away with various other creations in the meantime. So to prove I'm not lazy, here's what I've been up to...

This spring has been frock-coat-ageddon as I've been helping with costumes for various plays at my local haunt the South London Theatre. April saw my most ambitious task yet as I made a tail coat for the character of Branwell Brontë in Polly Teale's Brontë. It helped that a) the director of the play is an all-round sewing ninja herself and chose and cut the pattern, so all I had to do was fit it and sew it together, and b) the character in question was being played by Significant Otter himself, so I had a live-in model to stick with pins.

Still, it was pretty tricky considering I very rarely dabble in clothesmaking. Significant Otter is, basically, shaped like Johnny Bravo, which resulted in lots of extra fitting around the waist and some serious shoulderpad action up top. And I have resolved never to work with velvet again, mostly because of the quite ridonkulous amount of fluff and fuzz it created in my sewing machine, on the floor, in my hair and all over my pyjamas (yes, I sew in my jammies, what?). Turned out rather dashing in the end though, I think:

Picture by Philip Gammon. (NB this was part of the play, not an emergency onstage hem repair. Honest)

Buoyed by this, and while waiting for some fabric to arrive for some custom orders, I decided to have another crack at making something for myself. My sartorial leanings are eclectic but generally err towards the vintage. The problem with genuine vintage patterns, however, is that they can be fiendishly difficult to make and fit - something I don't have the time, patience, or dressmaking experience to be doing with. The joy of bags and purses, you see, is that they don't have to fit actual humans. Give me a complicated buckle fastening or a folded strap and I'm all over it, but ask me to grade a dress pattern and it's tantrums and tears before bedtime.

Enter my saviour: Eliza M (www.elizamvintagesewing.co.uk). The UK-based Eliza M creates patterns based on staple vintage styles that do away with all the complicated stuff and are simple enough for beginners and intermediate sewers to approach without fear.

This was my first experience with an Eliza M pattern but I will be buying many more - I really can't recommend her enough if you have vintage tastes but modern skills (i.e. you are not an actual sewing wizard like Anne on the Great British Sewing Bee. Incidentally, does anyone else think that 75 years of experience is basically cheating? She was like a sewing Yoda).

I chose the 'Pussy Galore Blouse' (stop sniggering at the back), and a cheap, £6.99 a metre cotton lawn from my local haberdashers in a cornflower blue with white swallows (or possibly ducks. or geese? pigeons, maybe).

The pattern itself comes in a clever A4 slip folder which means no more stuffing bits of tissue back into suddenly-too-small envelopes. I was immediately heartened by the final instruction:

Clearly, these are my kind of peoples.

The instructions are for the most part simple and clear, although I had a bit of an argument with the facing on the inside of the neck, which at one point turned into an Escher-like puzzle and I was in danger of creating the worlds first Mobius-blouse. However it resolved itself eventually and I came out the other end with an Actual Thing:

It's got arms and buttons and everything!

The fit is a tiny bit off, but that's more my own inexperience than anything, and I did mess up the collar a bit, but it doesn't show because of the whacking great bow at the front covering a multitude of sins.

All in all it took me a couple of evenings and not all that much swearing at all. I'm now mulling over which of the Eliza M trouser patterns to attempt to complete the outfit.

So if you've been scared off vintage dressmaking because you wouldn't know a princess seam or a pintuck if it smacked you in the face, fear not! Eliza M is there for you. Go for it, my sewing paduans!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In other news.....this is the fabric I was waiting for. Yup, they now make Star Trek fabric. Bow down in awe.

The middle one is currently available as a made-to-order phone cover , but if you have a burning desire for a Star Trek/Star Wars purse, Kindle cover, bag, teacosy (maybe not the teacosy), then head on over to  https://www.facebook.com/lemurlady and get in touch.

Make It Sew - the playsuit edition

While it is terribly good fun being an Internationally Renowned Sewing Superstar (in my mind), there is a definite correlation between how many things I stitch to sell to happy customers and how little time I get to make anything for myself. I recently had to sheepishly buy a handbag from an actual high street shop (I know), and my resolution to stop buying clothes from Primarni that I could just as easily make for myself is resulting in a somewhat threadbare wardrobe.

Look at this smug young thing. Ugh.

So I am especially grateful to the 'Make It Sew' group that have continued to meet up since our original 'Sewing Bee' that I blogged about back in December last year. With a capacity of 5 (the maximum amount of machines that one normal domestic living room and a baffling array of extension cables can host), we spend a happy day once every few months eating cake, drinking buckets of tea, and working on our own personal projects. For me, that means a ban on anything Emporium-related.

My chosen project last weekend was something for my summer wardrobe. Apparently there is a slim chance that the sunshine might return for a brief visit later in the year, and even if not I plan to chase it to France in July and pin it down for at least a few short sessions on the sunlounger. I had a whole load of fab hibiscus print fabric left over from when I had to buy two lots of it having left the first batch in a pub (long story), so I decided to make a 1950's style playsuit so I can catch some rays, Tiki style, while reclining elegantly under a wide-brimmed hat with a cocktail. Or at least some cheap pink French wine from a box.

Catalogue pose...

I used McCalls 6331 which is an easy-peasy pattern and one which I would highly recommend, despite the fact that the photos on the cover make it look like a Tampax advert.

It did turn out rather more obscenely short than I'd hoped, but since my intention is really to wear it as a more modest version of a swimsuit I shall grin and bear it. I think it would work in a variety of fabrics - I'd quite like to make a nautical version one day.

Incidentally I'd totally recommend this type of pattern for someone new to sewing. There are no fancy techniques, it comes in very few parts and goes together really quickly. Even I only had to put the zip in twice, which is a personal best.

Go on, have a go. It's not rocket science, you'll have created something totally unique to you, and you'll feel great when it's finished. Everyone's a winner. Apart from Primark - which is as it should be.

What's yellow and black and can't reach the pedal?*

I'm on the right. With the machine that is apparently glowing like it came out of the TARDIS

As should be fairly obvious by now, I enjoy sewing. It is among my top five favourite activities. The others shift according to mood, but currently include eating cheese, drinking Manhattans, and watching the Argos Christmas advert with the blue aliens. However there is no getting away from the fact that machine sewing (much like watching the Argos advert), is generally a solitary activity. The common sewist (I know the word is 'sewer', but I can't get past the effluent connotations), is typically to be found alone, hunched over in the glow of their machine, swearing quietly.

The crafts of knitting, crocheting and even embroidery are enjoying somewhat of a renaissance currently, due partly to their portability to and from clubs and knitting circles and the crucial realisation that these get-togethers can take place in pubs. Wine plus handcrafting may result in the odd dropped stitch, but driving your Bernina when under the influence can be a great deal more painful.

So imagine my joy when, this weekend, I found myself part of a rather lovely sociable get together of machine sewists. It can be done!

My local theatre group, the South London Theatre, is about to put on its annual pantomime. As usual, the pantomime involves an inordinate amount of small children (a concept I find almost as horrid as the idea of pantomime itself). And, as society dictates, small children have to be dressed when on stage - in this case in a variety of medieval peasant garb. Tunics a'plenty.

After years of solitary and frantic sewing every winter, someone had the bright idea this year to gather together all the people who could drive a machine in one place for an afternoon and wrestle with mounds of Lincoln Green material whilst enjoying tea, chat, and swapping gossip.

Granted, the hum of the sewing machines can reach a rather deafening level when you get all four of them going at once, and the vibration is enough to require all pincushions to be sturdily anchored to the centre of the table, but on the whole we were the happiest little pantomime-costume sweatshop you ever did see.

Everyone was fairly experienced, but we also all went away having learned at least one or two tips and tricks from our fellow machinists. I learned that you can sew over pins, if you do it carefully enough, which will save me, I have calculated, 21.2567675 days per year unpinning as I go along. Caroline learned how to mitre ribbon (but only in one direction - we'll have you an ambi-mitreer before long, Caroline), and in turn taught us all that it is possible to use one's knee to press the pedal if there is not enough room on the table for your machine and you have to put it on a chair. We all learned that we have even larger capacities for tea-drinking and mince-pie-eating than we thought possible.

We have all agreed that we had such a lovely time we will regroup in the new year, each choosing one pattern to work on and taking advantage of the moral support, tea and companionship to move on to even greater crafting heights. I might even work out how to get a hem straight.

How about you, fellow crafters? Have you got involved in any 'Crafting Bees' yet? If not, what are you waiting for? You just need some like-minded friends, and in the case of machine-sewing, someone with a sturdy table and understanding neighbours. Oh, and of course your group needs a name. You can't have 'Make It Sew', though. That's taken.

*A sewing bee! I'll get my coat.

Oh, hai Internets! Long time no blog.

In my mind, this is what the ice sculpture will look like.

So today I remembered I have a blog, and that it's been a metric eon since I updated it.

Well, lots of things have been happening in the world since we last spoke. Ice ages have come and gone. Huge gangs of disaffected yoof attempted to set fire to London in pursuit of new trainers. I finally finished watching every single episode of The X Files (can I get a 'hell yeah'), and Lemur Lady's Awesome Emporium has been going from strength to strength.

Turns out people seem to like my goodies, so I have been spending more and more time sitting, tongue-out-for-balance, at my sewing machine, batting away the cats and creating new items of awesomeness for all my lovely customers.

Oh yeah, and I'm getting married next month. That'll be where all my time's gone, then.

The wonderful thing about a wedding, to a crafty sort of a badger like me, is that the DIY possibilities are endless. The bad thing is that, well, the DIY possibilities are endless.

So far the handmade bunting has gone out of the window, figuratively speaking. 150feet of the stuff has been duly purchased from an ebay crafter with much more time on her hands than me. Paper chains, ditto. Handmade 'Woo Yay' flags (a la Offbeat Bride), origami bouquets, handsewn garter - all consigned to 'good idea at the time' pile.

On the other hand, I've been keepin' it crafty. My flowers and hair thingy (this is the official term), are from Etsy, my cake toppers and place cards were specially made by Folksy sellers, and my dress is being run up as we speak by my wonderfully talented mum (from whom I learnt all I know. Including the bad habits).

But I do still have my own to-do list. It's more modest than it originally was, but with just over 6 weeks to go it's still bringing me out in cold sweats. Once I've got the four bridesmaid's boleros cut and sewn (seriously, have you seen how much these things cost in the shops? How hard can it be?), I've just got 100 muslin teabag favours and boxes to create and label, a TARDIS shaped card box to make and a three tier cake to bake and ice the night before. All while keeping the Lemur Lady stuff ticking over. Simples.

Excuse me. I just have to go and run around in a panic for a minute.

*returns*

Ah, that's better.

Since some of the details are still secret-squirrel, I will be posting pictures, links, and thanks to all the wonderful and creative crafters who have contributed to the Wedding Of The Century once the day is over and I have sobered up and picked the confetti out of my hair.

(Incidentally, the best thing about the whole wedding stuff so far has been having cause to say "Of course, the dinosaur ice sculpture will need to arrive through the side doors during the table changearound". Brilliant.)

Off piste.

I promise both myself and my house look less moody than this in real life...

One of the - admittedly extremely few - drawbacks to my newfound and still quite baffling mild success at making stuff and selling it is the fact that I can't keep any of it myself. I'd love a skull handbag, or a Viewmaster Cushion, but if I just hoard everything I will a) never get any money for it and be back at square one and b) have a house even more full of mismatched cushions and handbags I don't really need. Not that there's anything wrong with having loads of handbags. Really. In fact, everyone should have at least a dozen handbags. And they should buy them all from me. Ahem.

Sometimes though, I come across something that's just so god-damned amazeballs that to see it go to someone else would just make me weep. Such as the truly epic Robert Kaufman horror movie material I bought last week. Normally I tend to buy fat quarters and half metres of fabric, but this time I new it would be so cool I had to buy a full metre (I know, easy tiger). And then when it arrived, I couldn't bear the idea of chopping it up and selling it on.

So. A metre of fabric, covered in awesome Hammer horror monsters. Frankly, I was happy just to wrap it around myself like a blanket and sleep under it, but I knew that it needed to be seen by the wide world. So I decided to make a dress.

I've only ever made one dress before, and that was a fiendishly complicated 1950's job, which turned out OK (against all odds), but was entirely pattern based. This time I decided to fly solo.

How hard can it be?

Well, not very, it appears. Even I managed it. I folded it in half, sewed it together up the side, and put a length of elastic at the top to hold it up. So far, so good. Then for a waist, another length of elastic, this time sewn straight onto the back of the fabric with a zigzag stitch. I have no idea if this is how you are meant to do it, but it seemed to work. A hem at the bottom (courtesy of my eternally patient Significant Otter who pinned it up while I stood on a chair and made picky comments), and ta da! A tube dress is born!

I love these so much they have their own shelf. One day I may get them a spotlight.

It needed a belt to hide the fact that it is, basically, a sack, but I'm still pretty chuffed. I added a couple of straps to make a tie-up halterneck just in case the elastic were to give way under the enormous weight of my heaving bosoms (yeah, whatever). 

And the best thing? For the first time ever, I have an entirely co-ordinated skirt and shoe ensemble. I know! I'm a proper grown up!

Playing at Post Offices

Right at the beginning of this blog I said "I'm not Etsying or Folksying". Well, that's now only half true. In a U-turn that I would compare to something to do with politics if I knew anything about politics or could be bothered to think of an example, I have given in to the capitalist machine and started to put my wares up for sale.

This partly came from the fact that, as mentioned in my earlier post, I can't stop buying pretty fabrics and making stuff from them. After a while, this becomes unsustainable. That's just maths. Having had some nice feedback from a few friends who have received items of mine as gifts, I was finally convinced that maybe I could try and recoup some of my outlay by garnering a few pennies from the paying public.

Also, I've always wanted my own shop. Like Emily in Bagpuss. Damn I hated that smug little bint. How did she even get a shop? How was she paying the business rates? What, if anything, did she ever sell? I digress.

Actually, there was a time before I wanted my own shop. When I was very little my mum had a friend who worked in Debenhams and I thought that was the most impossibly glamorous thing in the world. Debenhams smelled of perfume and the leather from new handbags, and everyone had to wear a silk scarf as part of their uniform and use tills with an immense and unfathomable amount of buttons that were incomprehensibly exciting to a small proto-nerd like me. When I grew up, I wanted to work in Debenhams.

A thing. From my shop. Maybe someone will buy the thing.

Sadly Debenhams isn't like Grace Brothers any more and the excitement of the till system has waned, but I still have a deep-rooted sense of unfulfilment that I never got my own shop. I want a tea-and-gift shop, where I would sell all sorts of wonderful kitschy things and serve tea from real china and have book clubs on Thursday afternoons and go next door to the bookshop every day for long liquid lunches with my friends Bernard and Manny and develop a new laugh with a turn and I'd be a summer girl.

But since apparently I can't live in an episode of Black Books I'm doing the next best thing for now.

Because I am an expert in digital marketing and computermabobs, I have managed to get a clicky box thing on the right of this page to link to my little shop.

It's called 'Lemur Lady's Awesome Emporium'. Because I like things that are awesome and I also like saying the word 'Emporium'. That's the sort of sound business judgement that will make my tea shop a success. One day.

Insert 'it's curtains for you' pun here.

A few people (who are either kind, or mad, or both), have asked me why I haven't written anything for a while. The answer is that I haven't done anything worth writing about. If I'm honest, I have spent most of my recent free time watching a lot of The X Files.

The SO and I decided to re-watch the whole nine series and two films of this landmark of 1990's sci-fi in order, from the beginning. This was nearly two-and-a-half years ago, so a large proportion of our own relationship has panned out against the backdrop of Mulder and Scully's adventures. Together we have enjoyed the heady, hopeful early days of seasons one and two, when the monsters were plentiful and Scully's hair was big, helped each other through the dark times of the baffling government conspiracy mire that marked four and five, and struggled into the light of season six, when it got good again all too briefly before plunging back into the confusion of season seven, as Duchovny left to embark on his glittering Hollywood career (how's that working out for you, Duchovny? DUCHOVNY!!). We're now halfway through season eight, getting fed up with Scully's pregnancy and wishing Mulder would return and bring the spark back. (I realise the relationship metaphor got lost somewhere along the way there, which is probably no bad thing).

So what with all the ups and downs of that, I've not been up to much.

 It's sort of difficult to get an interesting picture of curtains, but here they are.

I did make some curtains. Let this be a warning to you from someone who has been there and survived - don't do it. 'How hard can it be?', thought I 'they're basically squares'. (Everything is basically squares when you come down to it, I've found. Scale that up and you can make anything. 'Taj Mahal? Yeah mate, piece of piss. It's basically squares, innit?').

So with 15 metres of Ikea's finest material staring at me, I set off to make six curtains for our unnecessarily big lounge windows (we had wooden blinds, which the cats had recently discovered could be used as rope ladders to swing on while re-enacting the Pirates of The Caribbean for the benefit of passers by. At least I presume that's what they were doing, nothing else would explain the destruction they had managed to wreak). After cutting, hemming and ironing one, I started to get bored. After three, I lost the will to live. And by the time I got to number six all that was keeping me from tears was the sheer grim determination of a woman possessed and the promise of a gin and tonic at the end of it all.

Apart from all the hemming and ironing, and the patience of a particularly patient saint, you also need a large area of floor to lay it all out on. I have a large area of floor, but it is generally full of cats. So extra time needs to be added for shooing the cats away, hoovering the floor, cutting the material, shooing the cats away again, retrieving your tailor's chalk that they have decided to take with them for a snack, then hoovering the finished curtain again because despite all your care they have still managed to somehow will their fur onto it from another room.

Still. They're up now and seem to have turned out OK. They're pretty much curtain shaped and the right way up. I'm nursing a mild hangover as I write this and they are doing a good job of preventing the sun's evil rays from burning into my retinas so they fulfil their primary objective.

Now. More X Files. Come on Agent Doggett, Scully's up the duff and Mulder's still gone, it's just you and me now.

my name is lemurlady and i am addicted to pretty patterns

Since my first tentative forays into sewing only a few short months ago, I have developed a problem. It's not recognised by the NHS and as far as I know there aren't any treatments available, but it is becoming a serious concern.

I am addicted to shopping for pretty fabric.

It all started with the awesome dino-fabric, then I moved on to the harder stuff - woodland animals, skulls, retro 50's prints....I don't know where it will end.

Websites such as http://www.fabricrehab.co.uk/ (which sounds like it should be a source of help, but only feeds my addiction), are like catnip to me. I trawl through the pages and just need to own the stoned owl print, or the psychedelic butterflies, or that autumn leaf pattern that looks oh-so-temptingly like the sort of thing they printed on dinnerware in the 1970s. Must own!

Problem is, there's only so many cushion covers and bags I actually need, and only so many polite friends offering to take them off my hands. But I can't stop, not while there's still robot fabric I don't own http://www.fabricrehab.co.uk/fabric.php?product=1473&cat=7 (oh bugger, I was only joking then, but now I really want it. Argh).

Still. I have made use of some of it. I made this bag from some fabby voodoo-skull cotton, and luckily a friend has very kindly accepted it as a present and appears to be very happy with it, so at least I'm sharing the love (and the awesome skull print).

I've got another one of these on the go, with the same pattern but with a white background to the skulls and black canvas.

For something nice and mindless to do this evening, I decided to whip up a cushion cover from a woodland animal print I'm particularly fond of. The plain brown back has a pillowcase-style opening so it can be taken on and off (much easier than zips and none of that zip-imprint on your face when you get drunk and pass out on it. Don't pretend you don't know what I mean). It matches nothing in my house but frankly when you've got cartoon mooses colour co-ordination becomes redundant. I'm especially enamoured of the bear that looks like he's just remembered he left the gas on in his bear-house.

I made the pattern up as I went along and I'm pretty pleased with it (yes, I know it is essentially just a square but humour me, I'm only a beginner. There was a lot of measuring, honest).

So. If you need any cushion covers or small satchel-like handbags let me know. Might I suggest something with robots?

Bag Lady

A while back I got some very cool fabric with dinosaurs on it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with it, other than make everything out of it because all things are made at least 350% better with the addition of dinosaurs. Science fact.

I finally decided to start off with a bag. I cycle to work, lugging everything there and back in very uncool panniers. This means that at lunchtime, if I want to pop out to take advantage of the vast array of high-end shops on Clapham High Street (ok, Neros and Boots), I have no handbag and have to wedge all my stuff in my pockets. With this in mind, today I embarked on my first bagmaking project, using the dinosaur print and some canvas to make a basic satchel, with pockets for my phone, Oyster card, and MP3 player, and a big main section the right size to take a book. Everything I might need for my lunchtime adentures, and all in a bag that can fold up tiny and light and stick in the pocket of my panniers. Yes, I am this sad.

I also made a little purse out of some dinosaur scraps. Scraps of dinosaur fabric, that is, not discarded scales.

Surprisingly, they actually turned out not too bad. Hurray for dinosaurs!