Making the Seasons: August

Each month, when I introduce my Making the Seasons post, I waffle on a bit about how important it is for me to make time - even when I'm stupidly busy - to do something crafty and creative, about how good that is for my mental health and general well being, and it's absolutely true. I really do think that and never have I felt it so much as this month. I'm up to my eyeballs in dust and renovations (which, ahem, may have slightly slipped from my control...) and about to go back to work next week, and feeling a little overwhelmed by life if I'm honest. 

I had plans this week of a day sewing quietly with Radio 4 on in the background, perhaps making my dress, then doing some baking, maybe a little yoga...instead I am right in the middle of ripping up flooring and general mess and so I decided that what I would love to do would be to hand stamp some fabric and make a new peg bag and ironing board cover. I don't know why but it did, and still does, seem like a good idea.

The idea came about when I was distracted in IKEA last week by the fabric section. I had been looking for something to replace my horrible burnt, stained ironing board cover (I have a really bad habit of leaving the iron face down on the fabric while moving the clothes around, rather than moving it to the rack at the end, if that makes sense) but couldn't see anything just right. So, remembering I had half a jar of fabric paint left over from Angus's blind, I bought two metres of plain white cotton and decided to do some more potato stamping.

I love these lines of semi circles and the potatoes give the perfect amount of irregularity to the rows. With this paint, you simply iron the paint onto the fabric to seal it, and then it's good to be used and washed. Remember to put scrap fabric under and on top of your freshly stamped piece to avoid the paint seeping into your ironing board cover or staining your iron while you seal it. 

To make the cover, I just cut the fabric into an approximate ironing board shape plus a generous seam allowance and sewed a deep hem all the way around leaving a gap at the top for the elastic. Then, once the elastic is inserted into the hem with a safety pin, you pull it tight and knot it, simple as that. 

I fancied a smaller print for the peg bag so I used a pen lid and deodorant lid as my tools and just stamped them into an ink pad, and stamped away on the fabric.

I played around with a mixture of rows, interlocking circles and dots, and then heat sealed with the iron in the same way as the paint.

While I am loving the absence of colour here (so quiet! so calm!) I do feel that this peg bag is a little blah and would be enormously improved by a bright yellow or pink ribbon trim along the opening, but I didn't have any to hand. I may yet buy some and hand sew it on. That's if Ziggy doesn't grab it off the washing line and chew it to pieces first, like he did the last one. 

I am enjoying this suggestion of domestic bliss in the form of these everyday, utilitarian objects, all clean and new.

I am also enjoying the benefits of a closely cropped image, because when you zoom out...

...it's still a building site, and there's still a big pile of ironing to do and a never ending amount of washing to peg out on the line.

Please do pop along to Lucy's beautiful blog, Attic24, and read her Making the Seasons post. I am so enjoying this monthly project and can't believe this is the tenth post!