These shots, taken by my son, are somewhat bleached out as the sun was bright in the background. However I think you can see the beach cover-up that I made. The pink lacy fabric was the last of a bolt of clearance fabric at work. I bought a string of pink pompoms to go along the bottom edges which adds a nice bit of weight to it.

I actually screwed up part of the construction. My plan was to cut a neck hole and bind it with satin bias binding. Well, it was late, I was tired, and I accidentally cut a hole that was twice as big as I wanted. Hmmm, measure twice, think three times, cut once!

After a lot of swearing that Tai Chi Man could hear upstairs, I ended up cutting right across and sewing up again, and rather than use the bias binding, which just didn’t look right, I hemmed the neck edge with two rows of stitches. Do you know how tricky it is to sew fabric that is more holes than anything!?

Once that project was out of the way, I started on the next project. Thanks to my friend cancelling our gym date yesterday, I ended up having a whole day at home. I did a bit of yoga in the morning and, apart from making and eating dinner, spent the rest of my time sewing or crocheting.

The results are these:

An apron, oven gloves and towel hanging loops. I used an older apron that I made a few years ago as a template, with a modification. I narrowed the top part as the last one I made tends to gape because it’s a bit wide. This apron is just one thickness, not lined, but I did add a pocket. The oven gloves were a “wing-it” thing as I didn’t use a pattern. If I’d had some purchased wide bias binding I would have used that, but I didn’t. The method I used was to layer fabric with regular cotton batting and Insul-Brite (batting with a reflective metal component) for the main piece, and then make the hand pockets with two layers of fabric. All raw ends were enclosed before stitching the hand pockets to the main piece. Thank the sewing gods for a walking foot.

It’s a somewhat amateurish result but usable!!

The towel loops, designed for hanging tea towels on an oven door, are made with Stylecraft Special DK in Duck Egg, which just happens to match one of the colours in the fabric. Brown buttons completed the look.

I’m glad I took advantage of a couple of nice mornings last week to go kayaking, as I was working all weekend. You could say that Monday and Tuesday were my ‘weekend’ though Monday entailed going to the dentist (fillings where my gums have receded a bit and also some chipped teeth at the front, lots of numbing which took hours to wear off) and grocery shopping. We have a number of places we like to buy our food – there’s Superstore for the usual weekly shop, Costco for certain other items like avocados, tomatoes and big stuff, bulk food store for raisins, oats, flour etc. Then there are the smaller places like Mediterranean Market for olives, artichokes and sundried tomatoes, and the health food store for certain specialty items and supplements. Also I buy instant coffee at London Drugs these days as I am avoiding Nestle as much as possible and we like their own “Brazilian” brand. So all in all I spent five hours on Monday, visiting the dentist and six stores, spending oodles of money on stocking up the fridge, pantry and cold room.

The fact that Tuesday was an at-home day was a wonderful gift!

Well, today I have to work, though I don’t start until 11am. So I’d better sort myself out and think about what’s for dinner in case I need to prep anything.

Enjoy your day and talk to you again soon.