December’s Minerva Craft Make – Pressing Sleeve & Ham

A very belated happy Christmas and new year’s greetings to you all!

I’ve been so crazy busy making people presents this year (like staying up till 3am on Christmas Eve to finish sewing hems etc.) that I needed a break from all things craft for a few days but this month’s Minerva make was exactly the kind of project that I needed – it eased me back in with something quick and simple and entirely back to selfish sewing which, lets be honest, is most of our favourite kind of sewing isn’t it?!

I also made something that I’ve been needing to do for a while… sewing a pressing sleeve and ham!

I love this kit from Minerva- maybe even the most of all of them so far, because they go together SO well – the printed cotton is my favourite fabric ever – I spent the whole time cutting and sewing it saying ‘ooh I just LOVE this fabric!!’ And I chose the wool based on the price, as it was on sale and just hoped it wouldn’t look awful but it’s perfect – the colour match is lovely and the texture is exactly what I needed – yay!

I did both the ham and sleeve together as they were exactly the same construction and it saved time so I cut everything together, then sewed everything, trimmed it all then turned both lining pieces, sleeve and ham pieces right sides out before the fun/messy/nightmare bit – filling them with sawdust… Yes that’s right – sawdust –which I ended up filling and hand sewing over the bath because of all the mess I was making… first time for everything!

I’m not going to lie- I didn’t enjoy the amount of hand sewing here – I am so so bad at it – upsettingly so, and so now my lovely curved ends are a bit pointy and jagged –grrrr… I wish there was a way I could machine sew everything!! 😉

Oh and that reminds me this was my first project on my brand spanking new sewing machine that I got for Christmas – the Pfaff Passport 2.0 is my new best friend!!

My lovely family, fiancé and his parents all lumped together to get me my dream machine for my present and I couldn’t be happier!! So everything sewed up like a dream – the whole kit was fantastic so massive thanks to Minerva for giving me a chance to make it! Oh and guess what – I have enough of the fabric left over to make a mat for my new sewing machine too! 🙂

So there you go my very own jagged little ham!! 😉

I do have SO much to blog – I am way way WAY behind but I thought I better warn you that I may go a bit quiet for the next few months because my wedding has fully taken over – it was always a dream to have a completely DIY wedding but now we are 3 months away I realise just how much we have to do and I might go a little crazy making 7 bridesmaid dresses, amending my own wedding dress, making hundreds of paper flowers and lots of other bits and pieces!! 3 MONTHS!! So, yes I might be a little less bloggy for a while – I will still try and be very instagrammy though so do find me there.

Sew much love to each and every one of you!