An afternoon’s crafting

When an email arrived with a subject line of "Crafty fun at 'Sew Over It' sewing cafe" I have to admit that I let out a little squeal of excitement without even reading the contents. I've read about So Over It many times before online and always dreamt of being able to escape there one afternoon to properly indulge myself. I've even seen the founder Lisa Comfort on Channel 4's Kirstie's Vintage Home. The idea of actually going there, for a "mums" afternoon was an amazing one. So much so that if I'm honest it took two reads of the email before I properly took in why I was being invited there!

How can you not love a place that has this as wallpaper in their loo?

So last Saturday I left Mr C with the children and sat relaxing on a train into London (with a magazine which I even managed to read from cover to cover!) heading towards Clapham and a chance to meet up with the other mums that had been invited to a craft afternoon organised by Growing Up Milk Info. At first I was a tad sceptical as to how the idea of a craft afternoon fitted in with Growing Up Milk, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Whilst we were busy crafting (and more on the crafting in a minute) there were some incredibly passionate discussions ongoing about breastfeeding, formula bottle feeding, where mums (and dads) go to get trustworthy information about bottle feeding, making sure your toddler has a healthy balanced diet, how to deal with fussy eaters and the differences between boys and girls. 

It was honestly a fascinating afternoon of chat, discussion and at times debate. The sort of discussion that I'm not sure would have happened if we'd just been sat around a table somewhere. The fact that all of us were busy doing something with our hands whilst talking just seemed to make the conversation flow much more easily and I came home with some excellent suggestions to try out on Master C's fussy eating and also a book recommendation to help me hopefully better understand some of the gender differences that I am starting to notice between my two. 

Anyway. Enough chat – on to the crafting…

Our project for the afternoon was to decorate a plain tote bag, making use of many of So Over It's gorgeous fabrics, buttons and ribbons. The lovely Lisa was on hand to help with our designs or any sewing help that we needed.

My design came from wanting to incorporate a love heart (Valentines is coning up after all) and the patchwork skills that I've gained from the cot bed quilt that I'm still in the process of making.  I selected nine different fabrics and cut a 12cm x 12cm square out of each.

I then sewed them together on the machine to create a 3 x 3 grid. With seam allowances on the sewing this mean that the middle square ended up being about 10 x 10 cm. 

I then ironed Bondaweb to the back of the patchwork squares and on it drew a large heart shape which I then cut out. All I then needed to do was remove the backing paper and iron it to fix it on to my bag.

I finished off the decoration by adding a piece of red tape ribbon around the top edge. I attached this with a simple red zig-zig stitch between the two white stitch effect lines on it and I really like the finished look. I'm really proud of my finished bag – and it's great to have something physical to show for an afternoon's fun.

Huge thanks to Growing Up Milk Info for organising such a great afternoon and to Sew Over It and Lisa Comfort for hosting us.

Finally – isn't this the coolest (and prettiest) toilet sign ever!

Disclaimer: I was invited to attend the #GUMIcraftday by Growing Up Milk Info and they reimbursed by train fare to London. I was not asked to write this post, but I love writing about crafting and particularly enjoyed the way that conversation between everyone there flowed so easily whilst we were all busy making.