anna bananna

Fits waist 50-55cm (19-21 inches)

This is for little Donya. It is the same style as the ‘hot pink tutu‘ and made with the same colours, in a different order, plus a little bit of gold..

A little while ago I hinted at this. Now it’s finished. It’s been finished for a while, but I wanted to wait until the Christmas period was in full swing before sharing.

The plan had been to embroider a band of snowflakes at both ends of each piece of cloth. When I realised just how long that would take me and, not having a magnifying glass, just how sore my eyes would be, I stopped at one at each end.

I made the snowflake pattern on Excel with squared cells, then printed it out to follow. When I started working on the fabric, the pattern had to be altered, as the warp and weft were not equally spaced.

The fabric comes from the fabric market here in Cairo and is a double woven cotton. I found it in the top of a little shop I went in not expecting to find anything. Downstairs was full of synthetic nasties. I was about to leave and the seller started talking. I asked for cotton just for the sake of proving to the seller that he didn’t have what I wanted. He told me to come up a rickety staircase and at the top, behind some dusty rolls of fabric, out came this brilliant white double width cotton.

The cloths will be used on Christmas Day. Not before – I’m too worried about spots of red wine!

There’s something in the pipeline. It’s taking time, but soon, very soon, it will be here.

A yellow cushion to add some colour. A dragonfly to add a dream.

Mr S wasn’t too happy with the spare bed being covered in scraps of fabric. I can’t say it bothered me all that much – far easier to know what you have when it’s all spread out I say – but hey, I choose my battles wisely. So, time for a scrap bag made from a remnant. I had the bright embroidery thread and was dying to use it on something that would be mine.

I searched fonts online, found some interesting ones (dafont has rather a lot), but then decided to just go for my own scrawl.

I embroidered it after I’d finished the bag. I’ve no idea if that was the ‘proper’ way to do it, but it worked for me!

Mr S and I get through a lot of paper napkins in an average week. Sometimes we’ve moved over to the fabric ones, in a bid to be a bit more environmentally friendly, but then we get confused over whose is whose. In a bid to untangle our germs (although, I’m not sure it really matters that much!), out came the needle and thread.

The flower was freehand. I just started and waited to see what came out. Mr S’s request, a bike, needed a bit of thought, so I drew it first (but didn’t let him see until it was finished):

Feeling pretty chuffed that I’d taken a good step in reducing my carbon footprint, a second pair had to be made so the first could be washed! Out came the needle again. Well, actually, it involved a trip to the haberdashery to get the blue thread, but that’s hardly a chore! Mr S (of course):

And not forgetting me: