I consider myself a garment sewer but occasionally I will make something a bit different. Over the last two days I’ve made some things that are a bit out of the ordinary for me.

First up is a knife roll for Archie to take on a road/camping trip. I was a bit hopeful I could use some colourful canvas from my stash, but it wasn’t to be – instead I had to use some black canvas left over from making my Tessuti apron and some curtains for my sewing room at our holiday place.

I was provided with the knives and some discussion about style ensued. I wanted a big overlapping flap so the knives wouldn’t work their way out, and Archie wanted a velcro strap to secure it all.

I laid it out with the knives, checking that he’d never want more. I cut the fabric to size and hemmed each edge. Then pressed in the knife blade edge and the flap edge, and drew on the shape of the knives, including their length so they wouldn’t disappear into the pouch. I sewed round the chalk marks, and added a long velcro strap to secure the whole thing.

Archie declared himself very happy with the roll, but wouldn’t allow me to add a label or embellish it in any way, which was very disappointing. I did think of putting in a secret label and may still do this, just because I can! All of this came from my stash, which is pretty satisfying.

The second make was also for Archie’s camping trip. He’s going to sleep in his car and wanted some fly screens to put on his front windows so he can have them open without being eaten alive by mosquitoes, midgies or sandflies. He produced some flyscreening and made a template of the windows. I found a roll of magnetic strip in my stash and he made the first one. His brother questioned whether the netting was fine enough to keep out the smaller insects, so we were faced with retrofitting some mosquito netting. He had glued the magnetic strip to both sides of the flyscreen so I sewed the mosquito netting close to the strips on each side and then zigzagged with a small stitch.

Archie cut the excess netting off and fitted it to the car. The second one was made with the two fabrics held together. Another successful make – not that I did too much on these except provide annoying advice.

My last effort was making a swoop bag for the Duplo. A few years ago I bought a brand new Mexican tablecloth in an op shop. I remember it cost $5 which at the time I thought was a bit much, but it’s a pretty cloth, and ideal for a Duplo bag as it’s round and made of sturdy cotton. I foraged for a lining fabric and found another thrifted fabric, which I had to piece to make it big enough to match the size of the tablecloth. I put buttonholes at the quarter marks on the tablecloth, joined the two pieces together, right sides facing, turned them the right way out. Then it was just a case of topstitching a casing for the drawstring and threading it through.

I joined the ends of the drawstring with zigzag, and added hot glue activated heat shrink to cover the ends.

All that was left to do was to add the Duplo and draw up the strings.

I’ve got quite a lot of Duplo but it doesn’t look like much here as that tablecloth is really big. Lots of room for more though!

I thought I’d show a little video clip of Miss G getting her blocks from a box. I thought it might be easier to find more interesting blocks if they were on a mat. Of course the cleanup will be quicker too – hopefully!

I love the accompanying noises!

I couldn’t wait for her to try out the mat. All went well for about five minutes and then this happened.

And it got worse! We had a conversation about looking after her toys, not sure she took much notice. So much for the quick clean up!

However, I’m happy to report that a second session resulted in her playing quietly on the mat – possibly something to do with bribes from Granddad!