Simply embellished! And a birthday surprise.

It all started with this basic, but nice, denim jacket. I picked this up on Dollar Day at Laverton Lighthouse a couple of months ago.

I’d been inspired back then by a couple of refashions involving denim jackets and teatowels, and I’d been keeping an eye out for an appropriate teatowel (or placemat, napkin, tablecloth… just napiery in general) but nothing had really caught my eye.

That was, until I spotted this little cushion last week at Vinnies, for only $3. I realised immediately where it was fated to go! I was even more pleased when I got home and looked at the inner tag – obviously my silk radar was switched on that day, because this little baby is silk!

So I took it home, took the stuffing out, gave it a wash, and set about unpicking the embroidered silk upper from the rest of the cushion cover.

Once that was done, I pinned it in place – I didn’t bother doing any trimming to size at this point. The silk was backed with cotton voile, and sewn together around the outer edge of the piece – I figured doing any cutting at this point was asking for trouble.

With great excitement I decided to stitch this with my newly-serviced vintage Pinnock sewing machine. I’d been talking about getting this machine serviced so I could use it for ages, but hadn’t gotten around to it. My housemate (aka The Style Consultant) had sneakily snuck into the sewing room, removed Mr Pinnock from the case and taken it to be serviced for my birthday. He had even refinished the wooden base and fixed the dent in the cardboard cover. I didn’t notice the machine was gone, because he left the case & cover in place, carefully replacing the various bits of debris that had been living on it (what, not everyone keeps half-finished projects an every available surface? Yeah, right!)

So after a few practice seams, I carefully used a straight stitch to sew the silk onto the jacket!

I had a little bit of difficulty keeping a straight seam – the needle appears to be permanently on the left when it’s in straight stitch mode. I don’t have a manual for this machine so I’m kind of learning as I go. So I had to align my eye and my brain 3mm to the left to get the stitching line in the right place.

Not the best picture, I’m afraid.

And here we have the finished product!

And another one, just for fun.

Mr Pinnock was very smooth and quiet in comparison to Ms Janome, but that may have something to do with the heavy base and the serious steel body allowing for less vibration. I have decided to give myself a little sewing challenge. The incredibly talented bunch over at SewWeekly set themselves a weekly challenge (I’d never make that deadline – it can take me a week just to decide what thread I want to use) and I follow with awe the fortnightly historical challenges over at The Dreamstress.

I think it was somewhere on Sew Weekly that I read about a Vintage Sewing Machine Challenge, where you make a garment from the same year as your sewing machine. This tickled my sense of whimsy, and I think I could handle something from the early 1960′s. Although I haven’t been able to precisely date Mr Pinnock, the gorgeous advertisements I found on the National Archive lead me to the late 50′s-early 60′s.

Women’s Weekly April 1958

So I’m off to trawl through my vintage patterns and pattern magazines to see what I can find from that era. Watch this space! (Be aware, thought, it could be months before this challenge actually eventuates. I don’t like to rush these things

 

Gluten free seedy bread in the bread maker

Gluten-free bread making is challenging. Likewise, bread made in the breadmaker – my breadmaker, anyway – is a bit hit and miss. I’m usually happiest making a sourdough loaf, kneaded either by hand or in my trusty Braun mixer, then baked in the oven.

But I am a gadget girl and a few years back, I scooped up a bargain on eBay – a Breville breadmaker for, if I remember correctly, about $50.

So today I decided to use up some of the many odd flours I keep buying on impulse in the health food shop, and make a loaf of gluten-free bread in the machine. I don’t have to follow a gluten-free diet, but I do think it’s healthier not to eat wheat, wheat, wheat all the time.

I liked the look of this recipe by autumnmakesand does. I didn’t have all the flours she used, so instead my flour mix consisted of:
175g brown rice flour (in place of the millet and teff)
75g lupin flour (instead of the oat flour)
100g sorghum flour
50g tapioca flour (“arrowroot” is often actually tapioca)
25g potato flour (recipe says potato starch, but I used what I had)
1 tab (8g) xanthan gum
1 1/2 t salt flakes

I made a few other substitutions – a light olive oil in place of the canola oil; a tablespoon of white chia seeds soaked for 10 minutes in two tablespoons of water in place of one of the eggs – so two eggs, plus one “chia egg”; 1 teas of rice wine vinegar, instead of the tablespoon of vinegar in her recipe; and 2 teas (7g) of dried yeast. I also added a quarter cup of sunflower seeds and 1 tablespoon of sesame seeds to the dry mix.

My bread machine doesn’t have a program with a long rise, which is what she suggests, but it does let you set a custom cooking program, so I played with the times to create a program that mixed for 25 minutes, rose for one hour 55, skipped the punch down (two rises, with a knock back or punch down in between, is great for gluten-based breads but a destroyer for gluten-free ones, at least in my experience); and baked for 35 minutes. The baking time was a guess based on the times the breadmaker gave for other loaves. Just in case that wasn’t enough (and because I like the crustiness you get from oven baking) I turned the oven on to heat to 200C towards the end of the baking time.

I followed her method for putting the ingredients into the breadmaker. When it had been mixing for about five minutes, I used a spatula to scrape down the sides, so all the dry mix was then incorporated, and about ten minutes later,  smoothed out the top a bit . Just before the end of the mixing cycle, I sprinkled on another two tablespoons (14g) of sunflower seeds. I think it’s important to do any of these playing around steps before the rising starts – after that, every time you open the lid you let heat escape.

This is what the bread looked like once the breadmaker was done:

I removed it VERY carefully from the baking bucket (I’ve had gluten-free breads shrivel in front of me when tipped out – but this one was actually quite sturdy) and gently removed the mixing blade from the bottom.

I decided to give it ten minutes in the oven – here’s the final result:

 

I Like this bread. Sure, it’s not the same as a wheat or spelt based bread, or even a rye, but for a gluten-free bread it gets a big thumbs up. It’s quite dense, but not sticky or gummy, as some gluten-free breads are. It’s not crumbly, or eggy, and it has a gentle flavour that’s vaguely reminiscent of a rye bread. It’s also surprisingly bendy for a gluten-free bread:

It is a touch sweeter than a “normal” bread, but I had some for lunch with a mustard-based spread, ham and tomato, and it was just fine. And it is really rather more than fine schmeared with some butter or dairy-free spread and a good swipe of golden syrup!

 

 

Zipped up tee!

Here we have Exhibit A: a cosy but unattractive stripey skivvy. (A girl can never have too many stripey shirts, after all!) I picked this up at Vinnies about  a month ago, from the $1 rack!

I drew myself a new neckline.

I chopped off a bit of the sleeves, used my serger to finish the raw edges, and then turned them under and used a plain straight stitch on my regular machine to stitch that down.

After cutting the new neckline, I salvaged the turtleneck to use for a binding for the neckline.  I cut it in half lengthwise and joined it together to make a longer, narrower piece. I pinned that piece all around the neckline, right sides together, and serged them together. At that point I realised I didn’t need the binding piece to be quite so wide, so jumped back onto the serger to a) make it narrower and b) finish the other edge. Then I folded it over and stitched it down with a straight stitch. And ironed it of course! It’s weird, but I really like ironing. It’s very satisfying to apply heat and steam and get a perfect press.

Much improved, but I thought it still needed a little something.

I tossed up a few ideas at this point. I was really keen on sticking an owl on there somehow (who doesn’t love owls right now?), but I’m not kitted up for screenprinting, and I didn’t think I’d be able to applique onto the stretch fabric with any success.

After wandering through the stash for a little while, I came across my bag of salvaged zippers. Eureka! I zipped that baby up. I mucked around with the placement a bit, until I liked how it looked, then just sewed them straight on using matching thread and my zipper foot.

Not bad for a $1 bargain shirt!

Sewn to the tunes of David Bowie’s awesome new album, The Next Day.

 

Just call me Typhoid Laura

In preparation for an overseas trip later this year, I decided to get up to date with my vaccines. I was all good except for Typhus which had run out a couple of years ago, and I decided to get a flu shot as well. The doctor lady sold me on the oral typhus vaccine, which lasts longer and is more effective. Now you have to take it on an empty stomach, so when the possums had a massive territorial dispute in the ceiling last Sunday morning at 6am, I leapt staggered out of bed and took the first one.

A few hours later I had a bagel for breakfast. A few hours after that my tummy was so upset I went back to bed and pretty much stayed there.  Needless to say, neither the assignment nor the sewing planned for the day went ahead.

But here’s something I prepared earlier! Meet Hilary:

She’s a little shy, but if you wait quietly….

She will come out and say hello.

I made Hilary from a magazine pattern, I won’t mention the name of the mag here because the instructions were pretty frustrating, referring to pattern markings that weren’t on the pattern, things like that. Maybe that was how it came to be in the op shop in the first place…. anyhoo, I managed to muddle through. Ain’t she cute?

She was a gift for some friends of mine who are expecting. I actually finished her a couple of weeks ago, but of course I couldn’t blog her until I had given her to her new owners!

 

Anzacs. A week late.

i made Anzac bikkies. That’s all.

Oh okay, you want the recipe? I used this recipe. Changes? It’s me so yes. Wholemeal spelt flour. And added 15g ground flaxseed and 20g white chia. Done. Off to eat another one.

 

Makebake birthday cake (it rhymes! – and it’s grain free)

It was the littlest makebaker’s birthday earlier this week, so when she flew in from interstate for a visit yesterday, I made her a cake. Any guesses as to what sort of cake it is?

Nope, not banana, although there are fresh banana slices in between the two layers. It’s actually a flourless honey cake. And when I say flourless, I mean totally grain free. And dairy free. Win-win for folks with food intolerances. I used this recipe (you have no idea how close I came to actually throwing my laptop at the wall at this point in the post. Windows 8 is just +##%$##. Grrrr. I can’t actually get it to operate the create link function on WordPress. Not just a WordPress problem. So many things Windows 8 won’t let me do. Okay, I’ll stop now. But Grrrr. Finally resorted to inserting link via iPhone app)

Making a double recipe needs 3 cups of almond meal/flour. I had brazil nut pulp left over from making nut milk (not my fave, to be honest; macadamia milk on the other hand – yum!), so I thought I’d use that, and make almond meal myself using some of the big bag of blanched almonds in the freezer. But I suspect I didn’t leave it long enough to come to room temperature, as it wouldn’t grind finely, but instead ended up something like grains of sand:

So in the end I used a mix of brazil nut pulp, almond ‘sand” and coconut flour. Which brings me to interesting cake diversion/drama number two. I’d popped a jar of coconut oil in warm water so it would liquefy. Which it did. Unfortunately, the jar tipped over and the lid wasn’t completely airtight so I ended up with jar of watery oily coconutty stuff. But since the recipe said to “pour the batter” and my mixture was more like cookie dough, I added some in anyway until the mixture looked more cakelike, then popped it into the pans and into the oven.

Twenty five minutes later, and I was feeling optimistic:

And indeed, the birthday girl seemed to rather like the end result:

It’s frosted with a Nuttelex-honey-icing sugar frosting (inspired by the one on comfy belly website, but with loads of icing sugar added).

best eaten on the day if you are using fresh banana as it will go brown – but the birthday girl said she thought fresh strawberries would also go well in or on the cake, and I think she’s right. It would add a nice bit of color too. Of course, I’ll never be able to make this cake exactly the same again, as who knows what the water to oil ratio in that jar was – but I’m very happy I found this recipe. Thanks Erica for sharing over there at Comfy Belly (where you’ll find lots of good recipes if you are following a Paleo/GAPS/SCD or gluten-free diet).

 

Going green with refashions!

I like to think of my refashioning habit as my way of reducing my ‘consumer footprint’. Maybe it makes no difference at all to the amount of water used or pollution created during the mass-production of the world’s clothes, but maybe it does make a difference.

Anyway, I went really green with this one! I found this voluminous skirt at Savers a couple of months ago. As usual, it takes me a while to a) decide what it’s going to be and b) actually get around to making it.

 

It is a maxi-length skirt in a large size, made from a polyester knit – not my favourite fabric but I couldn’t go past that print.

I used a batwing-style jumper as a pattern, pinned all around it and then cut out around the pins (leaving a seam allowance).

 

My ‘new’ secondhand Huskylock got used for the first time!

Whirr!

I serged up the two side seams, and finished the sleeve openings with a wide binding. Then I cut a curve for the neckline:

….and did a similar wide binding which ended up looking somewhere between a really short cowl-neck and a really loose turtleneck.

 

I used the serger for those too, and just serged the bottom edge as well. All together, six rows of serging! One of my quickest refashions ever. I love the Huskylock!!!

Excuse my squint! The sun chose to come out just then!

I’m really pleased with this one! It was so quick and easy with the overlocker – normally I avoid knits when possible because Ms Janome doesn’t seem to like them very much, but now the possibilities are endless!