On knowing where to draw the creative line... or not

It's an anxious day for this mama today with our little girl having a small operation (day surgery) and our big girl having her first day of Year 1. But more on that tomorrow...

Recently I've made a few presents for friends' birthdays, one of them for a 40th (and I'm joining the club this year too - yikes!). My friend loves clothes and accessories so I wanted to give her something I'd made especially for her. I decided on one of my 'no sew jersey scarves', which I'd been enjoying wearing myself til the weather started to really heat up here.



So I made one in this soft magenta jersey, adding a bit more detail with extra knotting.



Then I decided on a little zip purse to go with it in this lovely cotton print. I lined it in a burgundy cotton, adding a pink zip and a beautiful green and pink ribbon as a zip pull.



* A little tip to stop ribbon fraying is to run a thin line of glue (I used super glue) along the raw edge and let it dry. If you've accidently applied too much or the edge is a bit ragged you can trim the edge once the glue is dry, as long as you don't go beyond the glued area, or it will fray again.

Once the purse was finished I placed it with the scarf and... ARGHH! That horrible feeling hit me where you know you've gone too far. It was too pink, too girly, and altogether too much really.



I had a feeling that probably the scarf and purse would look fine separately, but in order to make it a more stylish gift I went back to my stash and cut a lovely piece of mushroom/chocolate coloured jersey and made a new, simpler version of the scarf. Then I took the bright ribbon off the purse and replaced it with one that toned in with the new scarf. I briefly considered unpicking the whole purse and re-lining it with an oatmeal coloured linen to further tone down the whole thing, but dismissed this due to time constraints (and to keep my sanity!).



On a whim when wrapping the present, I added the pink scarf in. I sheepishly told my friend what happened and, you guessed it, she preferred the pink anyway! Hmm, maybe I should have trusted my instincts first time around!!

No-sew jersey scarf

If you've been following my blog posts lately it probably seems like all I've been doing is sewing, sewing, sewing, which is partly true, but this project was happily sewing-free, a nice change.

This project I've had in mind for a while now - to make a scarf from jersey fabric with cut and knotted ends. My incentive to actually do it was my newly chopped boy-short haircut, and therefore my newly breezy neck area! I love the feel of jersey and thought a scarf made from it would be useful on our slightly chilly days, which are still happening, interspersed with freakishly hot days! So there's no putting away the cool weather clothes yet when every day is like weather bingo.



I used a piece of mid grey, fine, soft jersey from my stash. When I bought it I planned to make a top with it but had since decided against it... anyway, it's gone to good use as a scarf now.



To construct it basically I cut a length of the fabric about 30cm wide, from selvedge to selvedge, then cut both ends into strips about 25cm long. Each strip was tied in a knot at the top, then each 2 tied at intervals down, if you know what I mean (see pics below). I finished with tied knots at the bottom of each strip. As jersey is a knit fabric the edges don't really fray so they don't have to be finished in any way (hence the 'no-sew').



It's pretty wonky and far from perfect (I was too impatient to measure anything) but I like it anyway, and can see myself throwing it on at any opportunity in future.


And a bit of black nail polish helps banish those 'frumpy mum' feeling days :-)