Under the Sea Mural

This evening I completed a mural which I have been working on for a while (a total of around 12 hours work spread over free moments on evenings and weekends). Its been a lot of fun to do, and I hope to do more in the future.

Hanging Pocket Storage

I've been looking for some hanging storage but haven't been able to find one that I like so I decided to make one. Here is how:

You will need: 

Fabric (twice the size of how large you want the finished product to be) I'm using a PVC coated fabric for extra rigidity.

A coat hanger (with horizontal arms)

A small amount of thick ribbon

Thread, pins, and a sewing machine makes things much quicker!

Cut the fabric in half (I will call them A and B).

Take piece A and lay the coat hanger in the centre of the top edge about 5cm from the edge.

Cut a slit the size of the central part of the hanger.

Cut a piece of ribbon to the same length as the slit and fold it in half to line the edge.

Pin it in place and repeat for the other edge.

Sew both pieces in place.

Decide how many rows of pockets you want and work out how tall each row needs to be. (Remember to allow for a gap at the top.)

Cut piece B into strips, allowing about 3cm extra per strip for hems.

Pin hems on one edge of each of the strips.

And stitch.

Lay the strips on piece A in the correct positions.

For the bottom strip fold the unhemmed edge under piece A and pin.

For the other strips turn them wrong side up with the hemmed edge pointing downwards and pin them in place.

This way the pockets will be formed when you fold the strip upwards.

Stitch all of these into place.

Fold the pockets upwards, turn the whole thing over and pin hems around the left, right, and bottom edge.

Fold the top edge over so that the slit is on the top seam, pin this in place.

Sew the hems.

Decide how many pockets you want in each row, measure the width and mark out the divisions.

Sew straight lines from the bottom edge up to the top of the top row of pockets.

Slide the coat hanger through the slit.

Finished!

Totoro Mural

I painted a mural of Studio Ghibli's Totoro.

He and his other forest friends are climbing up the stairs.

Fashion Inspiration 2

Next on the list is The Lord of the Rings! The idea is that you wouldn't necessarily know that the outfit was based on the character at first glance.

Frodo

Gandalf

Gollum

Aragorn

Eowyn

Gimli

Fashion Inspiration

I saw a post at the weekend showing outfits based on characters from the cartoon Adventure Time, and I thought it was a great idea.
The website she used was Polyvore which is a kind of digital collage website.

The Toothfairy

Jack Frost

The Easter Bunny

Sandman

Santa

The Boogeyman

Bruges

At the weekend I visited Bruges with my mum and sister. I made a video of our trip: WATCH

Beautiful Skies

I am very lucky to have quite big windows and so I often notice the beautiful skies outside. This spring has been particularly good because of the strange weather we've had.