Love to the Martha

I have been doing a bit of sewing for myself recently. I have found it quite tricky to find some nice nursing tops so I started looking for some patterns for nursing tops to sew for myself. So far I have made two but have a feeling more are to come in the future. 

The first top I made for myself was with muslin fabric and one of the more crazy prints I have bought, was surprised to find some matching fabric in a shop. Was a match made in heaven as the orange fabric was the same shade as the butterflies!

The Martha is a german pdf patttern made by das milchmonster and there is a translated version of the pattern about. I like the martha pattern as it gives you options on hem length, collar and hood. My first version I made the long length and second the shorter version. 

Funny how odd the booby holes look like, they do work though :)

My second martha was a really quick sew although as I used a fabric with slightly different qualities it has a tighter fit than number one. I learn something new with each garment I make!

All in all this pattern gets two thumbs up from me for the flexibility of the pattern, both nursing and non nursing options and all the extras, The parts come in separate files so you can decide before you print what you want to make and save a bit of ink plus the instructions have plenty of good pictures :D

Can´t wait to make my next Martha!

First chalk paint job

We started looking for a house back in the spring and at the same time I kept walking past this shop window with a charming table on display. I kept hoping that we would find a house with a hallway where it would fit in well so I could buy it and do it up.Well we bought a old farm house from 1904 and it had a perfect place for it at the bottom of the stairs. A few days after we moved in I drove to the shop and bought the table!

Now I have never worked with chalk paint before and I hadn't seen the famous make of chalk paint in my area of Denmark so when I eventually found an own brand chalk paint I got very happy. I looked up what the best way was to do when using the paint and then went ahead and painted!

So here it is, the table in it's new home. I treated the top of the table with some clear bees wax and for now at least there is no varnish on the table and I didn't distress it at all. I am really pleased with this project!

Retirement gift

 You have to excuse my absence recently, my life has been rather busy (buying house, baby, renovating..). But I thought I would take a moment to show you the retirement gift I made for my in-laws for when they retired back in May.

Shopping first

I found some nice chopping boards in my local grocery store and tried to figure out which one to buy. In the end I chose a long black handled one. So I bought it and took it home to start on the layout of the cheese board we were planning.

Getting a bit cheesy

Now we had come up with some suitably funny names for four sections. I used a carbon paper to transfer the text to the wood and then a soldering iron to burn the text into the wood. This is the wattage I used (I used a less powered one first and it didn't do a thing).

And this is the result after a couple of hours work :)

I put some olive oil on the cheese board as a finishing touch. It was a hit with the in-laws and they have informed us that they use it quite frequently.