A Christmas Dress

Every year I have bought the kids an outfit for Christmas, the last two years I have gone with hand made, but from other people. 

Super Simple Butterfly Clips

Hey guys,

You all know how much I love my big shot! Well ever since Madeleine became obsessed with butterflies I knew I had to make her some hair clips. So easy and every single one comes out perfect with the Big Shot!

Sew Jereli Pj Pants

I made some PJ's for the babies. My lovely friend Toni from Sew Jereli gave the pattern away for free on her blog. Now I will say the pattern is really easy to follow....if you read it.

These are my second attempt, my first attempt happened around the time I had no hot water, so in my defense, I was a little distracted. I cut all of the legs  the same and to make matter worse I had folded the fabric so one pair had the print upside down.

I was devastated and I had a little whinge to Toni about my mistake, which lets be super clear, was in fact ALL my fault. Anyway god bless her, she talked me round and I managed to sew them up, they might be upside down but at least it wasn't a waste of fabric and hey, they're pj's no one else is really going to see them

I don't have a photo of the messed up pairs because the kids really like them and as soon as they're washed they want to wear them so it was a win after all. Madeleine loves her good pair, she call them her baa baa black sleeps, it's very cute!

When I tried again, in a better frame of mind and remembered to read, these turned out gorgeous and I am so delighted, thanks Toni, for the pattern and for all your help, but mostly for not blatantly laughing at me for being such an idiot!

Go check her out, she makes lots of beautiful things for little boys over at Sew Jereli and she is just a lovely person, also grab your free pattern here!

Thanks for reading

Mel xo

Be Delighted Every Day, Follow Mellywood's Mansion!

Triangle Poncho

I know you a lot of you are getting some cooler weather in your part of the world, but even here, as the days warm up, the evenings can get a little chilly, so I made this sweet little poncho for Madeleine.

I'm currently on a huge yarn scrap busting mission. I had one and half balls of the pink yarn and one of the white. To make this I used about a ball of pink and a quarter of the white.

You can make this with any scraps you have lying about, with the easiest pattern, as follows

For the front

Grab your desired size needles and cast on one stitch.

Then at the beginning of every row yarn over to make another stitch and knit to the end

Cast off when you have your desired length.

Repeat for the back

Decide how big you want the head hole and stitch the rest together to form the poncho

Do take note of how many stitches if you plan on changing colours throughout the pattern to ensure the back matches the front.

I made a sweet little felt embellishment using my Big Shot.

DIY Delight of disaster? Delight, I think it's rather sweet and I am slowly getting rid of my HUGE yarn stash.

Thanks for reading,

Mel xo

Be Delighted Every Day, Follow Mellywood's Mansion!

My First Dress!!!!

My very first dress, made for my gorgeous baby girl from my very own hands...I'm so excited.

I bought this pattern from Etsy shop Heidi and Flinn after reading here how great her coat pattern was, so thanks Amy . It truly was easy to follow although the bows scared me big time and I didn't want it to be "Christmassy", so I decided just to put some yo yos on the waist band. The kids were watching Oz the Great and Powerful while I was making it and Elizabeth says "Oh you're making a Dorothy dress, which I guess is kind of similar.

To all my sewing blog friends who regularly take pictures of young children, Props to you, seriously I have enough problems with pictures without having a 3 year old running every which way and teenage brothers who decided it would be fun to teach her how to pose as the Leaf Busters Lady. 

For my international friends check out this ad and you'll know why we collectively as a nation wish she would get someone else to do her ads and why I don't want my daughter copying her.

But I did manage to get a nice one in the garden.

Out by the cubby house. Sun in her eyes, poor love!

It's a great dress for whirling and twirling.

By then she was so sick of Mummy and the camera there was only one thing left to do....

Run to Daddy and cry!

DIY Delight or Disaster? For my first real attempt at making clothes I am pretty delighted, there are a few mistakes but (hopefully) only I can see them. Since then I have been spending a lot of time on the machine, I can't wait to share my next clothing attempt, which resulted with me practically crying (real tears) for help and the lovely blogger who walked me through...stay tuned, you'll all get a laugh out of what went wrong!

Thanks for reading,

Mel xo

Be Delighted Every Day, Follow Mellywood's Mansion!