Happy birthday!

Not to you, unless it is your birthday - then happy birthday!  It seems like the world and his wife has a birthday this month, so I got busy.

A simple wooden shaped "thing" for a friend's son.

A flocked fairy and toadstool for my sister-in-law.

Tool charms and scrabble tiles for my fake uncle.

Paper flowers for my fake aunty.  Her birthday is the day after her husbands.  I have a real aunty and uncle whose birthdays are the day after each other too.  Strange.

A stamped hedgehog for the husband.  A bit soppy maybe but it's hard making men's cards and I do feel soppy about him!  Most of the time.

I also stamped a champagne bottle inside the card.

No waffling today.

Are you sick of the jewellery yet?

Yep, I've been making jewellery again.  I seem to get on a roll with it and that's all I do for a few days, then I go back to sewing or crocheting!

We were sitting on the sofa a couple of weeks ago, hubby and me (yes, that is grammatically correct...) and he suddenly stated that he wanted to make something.  I was a bit shocked.  He decided he wanted to make jewellery and demanded some patterns.  Well, I don't have any patterns for beaded jewellery, the only book I have is Boutique Bead & Wire Jewelry which involves twisting wire.  Oh, I do have another that hubby bought me on sale from TK Maxx but he couldn't get his head round that as I didn't have the exact beads shown in the book!
 

He decided he wanted to make the bracelet shown above.  He cut the wire, got his beads ready and started twisting.  After the first flower, the wire broke.  And so he gave up!  I realised afterwards that he'd been twisting the wire too much, it did look beautiful and neat - that's the perfectionist in him - but the wire can't handle it.  I felt the need to make the bracelet then!

Here it is with the necklace I made last week.  I can hardly believe I made them, I'm really proud of this.

Feeling inspired, I got to work on another piece.  I took an old bracelet apart and salvaged the blue crystals and pearls.  Together with white pearls and smaller crystals from my stash, I made this set.  The beads are "floating" due to the crimp beads which hold them in place.

 Check out the arty shot!  OK, it's not an arty shot, it just happened to be by the window.  Why do we have books on the window ledge in the dining room?  Because our house is jam packed with books and there's no where else to put them.  To put that in context, we have a 4 bedroom, 3 story house + attic + cellar...  It's Mr CA, he has literally thousands of books and he'll never part with them.  I have hundreds of books but only keep the ones I love, the rest go to the charity shop, or back to the charity shop in a lot of cases.

I'm really rather pleased with this.  How English did that sound?  Take that plum out of my mouth and put down the silver spoon! 

I'm running out of things to show you - I've got some cards, but that's it.  You'll probably be getting a WIP post, and that will be a long one!

Giveaway winner

It's time to announce the winner of the Tilda fabric!  But first, there's some waffle for you to read...

I asked people to tell me about crafts they've tried, crafts they do and crafts they'd like to have a go at.  At some point I'll probably give you some stats on this as I'm a bit geeky like that.  A lot of people said that they'd tried almost all the crafts going.  I started to think that this was a bit unlikely and so I made a list of all the crafts I could think of, including some from your comments.  I've come up with 162, plus three which were mentioned and I'm not sure what they are.  165 - have you really tried them all?!?  I've put them all into a handy page for reference: click here.  I'd love it if you would go over and have a look and tell me anything I've missed!

I didn't include some crafts, which, although they can be considered crafts (and I do consider them to be), really hold no interest to me - cooking (I do it most days and hate it!), baking, gardening (I have a concrete yard!), photography (I hate taking photos) and writing.  

Inspired by Christine over at 52 Crafts 52 Weeks, I'm going to work my way through that list!!  So, the three crafts I didn't know - can anyone inform me?

Tole painting
Tiling (I thought this was mosaic but some people listed mosaic and tiling)
Lead lighting

Oh, and my favourite answer for crafts people would like to try?  Weeding!  Great answer!  I do actually enjoy weeding.  As I said, I have a concrete yard with a couple of soil borders.  The soil is clay and nothing except weeds will grow.  I've tried growing things in pots but the snails get them.  However, there's nothing I enjoy more when in friends' and family members' back gardens than a spot of weeding!  Bizarre I know.

OK, you still with me?  Nope, you all scrolled down to see who'd won, didn't you?  So, without further ado...

(I can't get the random org widget thing to show the result in the box, so you'll have to take my word for it), I had 464 comments and the winner was...

Number 403 (oh how I wish I'd numbered my comments...)

Which is... Georgie! who said "1) I have a slight craft addiction, and love to try new things -- from macrame in the 70' to jewelry making in this decade! 2)But I always come back to sewing and knitting -- they just make my life more peaceful, you know? and 3) I am really interesting in learning to weave, and have dreams of a big loom in my living room!
Thanks for sharing this fun time!"

Well done Georgie, the Tilda will be winging its way to you as soon as I have your address.  I can't find an email address for Georgie so I've left her a comment to contact me.  If I havent' heard from her by Monday, I'll draw again.

Thanks everyone for participating, I'll be coming to visit you all over the coming months/years!  And thanks to the new followers, it's great to have you, for the right reasons! 

For the 463 you that didn't win, here's some details of another giveaway for you.  Homespun is doing a Block of the Month Stitch Along.  I saw it in the last issue of the magazine that I got, but any Australians out there have probably had it for ages!!  Anyway, Leena of the Stitching Cow is giving away a kit to complete her wonderful project. 

Fancy a go at the stitch along?  Or fancy winning the quilt kit?  Go to the Stitching Cow blog.  Block one was in Homespun (Leena is giving the magazine away as part of the prize), and you can get blocks 2 - 5 here.

Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day

    Giveaway is now closed

Hello and welcome!  If you are visiting from Sew, Mama, Sew, then I'm very happy to have you and I wont keep you long.

I entered all the giveaways on the last giveaway day but didn't win anything.  I have, however, won loads of stuff since then so I felt it was my turn to give something away.

So, down to the bit we're all really interested in - what am I giving away?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Tilda!  I know it's hard to get in some countries so I hope you like it.  Now, I must apologise for the small amount here.  There are 4 fat eighths, 3 of them in the latest design, just released.  I would have loved to give away a fat quarter bundle, but the price of fabric in the UK is horrifying.  We pay about $16 for a metre of Moda and an incredible $29 (£18) for a metre of Tilda.  Not cheap!  However, these fat eights are metric so you will get more than you get in a fat eighth from the States or Canada.  Australians, you're with us on the metric I think?

Anyway, stop waffling.  So, what do you have to do?  Not much.  First of all, please DO NOT follow me.  I don't get all this "follow me to win" business.  I want people to follow me because they enjoy reading my blog and seeing what I've messed up recently.  I will notify the winner by email, so there is no need to follow.  Having said that, I'd love it if you bookmarked me and came back next week, or next month, when the giveaway day and catching up on your blogs etc is all done.  Then if you want to follow, I'd love to have you.

So, in order to win the fabric, please leave me a comment below and answer the following questions:

1. Which crafts have you tried?

2. Which crafts do you regularly do?

3. Which crafts would you like to try?

Answer the three questions in ONE COMMENT.

Please make sure that if your blog isn't linked to your email (never recieved an email reply to a comment you've left on someone's blog?  You're not linked) you leave your email address in your comment.  If you don't want the spambots to get you write it like this:

myemailaddress (at) wherever (dot) whatever

I will post internationally.

1 comment per person please.

Entries close on 10am on May 26th (UK time.  No idea what time that is elsewhere, but it gives you a while!).  I'll chose a winner on the 27th.  Or maybe even the 26th if I get over-excited which is likely.

I'll use that random number chooser thingy to choose a winner if I can figure out how.

Go ladies, go!

And if you have no idea what this Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Business is, then pop over to the blog to see hundreds of other giveaways.

fluffy and blue

Last week I showed you the recipe book cover I'd made from my latest copy of Australian Handmade (my latest copy, but not yours in Oz, it's a few months late).  Well, I spotted loads of projects in that issue that I want to make and I just so happened to have the materials for one of them.

As you know, I love to crochet and this project seemed right up my alley.

I crocheted this scarf (called Ice Blue) in the magazine using a couple of balls of Sublime Kid Silk Mohair that I had lying around.  The pattern used 2 different shades, alternating between every few rows, but I chose to do it all in one colour.

Made up of a shell pattern, it was super-easy.  I only went wrong a few times as I was watching TV the entire time I was making it.  The only issue I had was with the yarn.  If you have to undo mohair, it's a nightmare.  The little tufty bits get stuck on each other and the whole thing tangles.  At one point I had a ball of tangle rather than a ball of yarn and I had to get Mr CA involved in untangling it.  It took us over an hour!

Guess what? It's another bag!

Ladies, let me introduce you to my first project for May for the Craft Book Challenge.

You'll never guess what it is, nope, not a crocheted washcloth, the other one, a bag! 

This is from Sew Liberated.  It was one of the first sewing books I bought and this is the first time I've used it.  The pattern was really well written and very easy to follow.  I'd highly recommend it.

The outer fabric is from Amy Butler's Lotus collection, one of my bargains from the Craft Show.  I love this fabric, but then I love anything blue.  The lining is just a bog-standard plain yellow.  The pattern called for piping and so I made my own again to match the lining.  I sewed the piping using a zipper foot as I've always done.  Today I went down to the Husqvarna shop in search of my prize for Monday's Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day and wandered over to the foot section (as I have a Husqvarna!) with the idea of buying a piping foot as I do seem to be doing a lot of it.  Lo and behold, I have that little foot in my collection!  Looking forward to trying it out.

It closes with a magnetic snap.  There are no pockets inside this bag.  There weren't any in the pattern, and although I could have easily added some using The Bag Bible, I chose not to.  Mainly as it's been so long in the making (not down to the pattern, just me procrastinating), I just wanted to get it finished.

Ta da!  You like?

Pretty, sparkly things

Morning ladies.  I decided not to post yesterday and instead reposted my post from last week due to all the Blogger confusion.  Wow how bored was I with a whole day I couldn't get on Blogger?

My posting has become a bit erratic, I was trying to stick to a post every two days, but I am so busy both in and out of work that although I have a few posts worth of completed projects, I just haven't had time to write them up!  I will definitely be posting my giveaway on Monday though, so don't forget that.  Hopefully next week I can get back in my routine.

So, without further ado, pretty, sparkly things need introducing.  My mum asked me to make her a necklace / bracelet for her sister's birthday and I jumped at the challenge.  I wanted to make a few so she could choose one.  You will have to excuse the photos, the ones on top of books were taken on a cold, dark, windy day as I had to get the jewellery to my mum.  The better ones were taken the following day which was sunny.

So, we're starting with a crap photo!  I found this butterfly on a horribe old tarnished gold chain in a charity shop.  I immediately scooped it up and started making plans.  I added some green and pink lampwork beads, some large acrylic crystals and handfuls of gold seed beads.  This was the necklace my mum ended up selecting and my aunty loves it.

This didn't really fit the brief of green/blue, but I was really in the swing of jewellery making and it just kind of happened.  I picked up the fabric and yarn covered beads at the craft fair and added crystals, seed beads and tiny pearls as before.

I really love these beads and have some more of the fabric ones but I stupidly only bought 2 of the yarn covered ones.

Blue was next on my agenda.  Flat oval beads, lampwork beads (I love lampwork so much) and pink pearls, joined on curled wire with jump rings and an extension chain.

And then a matching bracelet.  I think I'm going to try to sell these...

I do have some more jewellery to show you, and some sewing, some crochet and some cards, but I think I'll leave this post here.  I'm feeling pretty stressed recently, just general anxiety over nothing much in particular and if I have some posts lined up, I think I might be able to relax a little more...  well, that's the plan!

On an unrelated note, does anyone have any idea what LinkedIn is?  I've had a couple of invitations but haven't had time to check it out.  If it's another social networking site then I'm just going to delete.

clickety-click, klackety-klack

I had the urge to knit, but I couldn't face knitting with yarn.  I really don't know what the problem is there, I really enjoyed knitting until I learnt to crochet, now I see knitting as a bit of a chore.  I do still enjoy knitting with wire.

I made another wire and bead bracelet with purple beads on lilac wire.  Yes, the photo looks like blue beads on silver wire, but it's not. 

And for an even worse photo, see below!  I knitted this little flower from wire and really enjoyed making it.  It's quite large, about 10cm / 4 inches across.  I'm not sure what to do with it.  I'd really like to make it into a necklace but I'm not sure if it's too big for that.  I could of course make it into a brooch, but I prefer the necklace idea.  I've been making a lot of necklaces recently, I'll show them to you soon.

Wow, that photo really is crap, and it's the best one I could get.  I used two strands of wire, one blue, one turquoise so it's not as dark as it looks.  The wire in the middle is copper coloured.  I spent some time after I'd finished it bending the petals up to a pleasing shape.  I haven't forgotten to weave in those ends, I left them to make it easier to attach it to whatever I attach it to.

I wanted to show you my attempts at crocheting with wire, but once again I've forgotten to take a photo.  I was after some advice from any wire-crocheters out there.  It's a dc (US sc) stitch with a bead on each one and after my first round, the stitches have started breaking.  As they are the on the other side from where I'm working, there's not enough wire to repair them.  I'm going to have to start again and wondered if anyone had any tips?

I'm joining in with...

at http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/2011/05/may-giveaway-day-3/!  Make sure you're here on Monday 23rd May as I'll be posting a giveaway... it'll be open internationally and it's going to involve some European fabric...

Magazine addiction

I believe I started my last post by telling you I'm addicted to crochet, well, I'm starting this one in a similar way.  I'm addicted to craft magazines!

I subscribe to the following:

Making (UK)

Crafts Beautiful (UK)

Simply Homemade (UK)

Mollie Makes (UK)

Homespun (Australia)

Handmade (Australia)

Crafts 'n' Things (USA)

I also buy Homestyle Sewing whenever it's available.   I started with the subscription to Crafts Beautiful.  I'd been buying it for a while so decided to subscribe.  The very next issue they started their "card promise" and now it's essentially a card making magazine with a couple of patterns for other crafts shoved in the back.  I'm going to cancel my subscription as soon as my year is up.  I subscribed to Homespun as everyone seems to talk about it.  I do enjoy reading it and made the wonderful sewing machine cover a couple of times.  There are other projects in there I'd like to make.

By far my favourite is Handmade, what a fab, fab magazine.  All my copies of the magazines seem to arrive over the last week in the month, I flick through each and put them aside to read through later.  I'd been a bit disappointed  with the month's haul at the end of April, nothing really struck me in any of them.  Then Handmade arrived.  Wow, so many projects I want to do.  I flicked through, then set to work straight away on one of the projects, I'm now midway through the second from the same issue!

So, what is it I made?

This recipe book cover.  My friend loves purple and love cooking healthy meals as well as baking cakes, so I thought this was perfect.  I really enjoyed making this and it came together so quickly.

There was just one problem.  It would appear that A5 is a different size in Australia as it is in the UK.  I didn't think to check against the A5 notebook I had when I'd cut the pieces and it was only when it was all finished that I discovered it's about 3 inches too short for the book!

I headed off to Staples with the cover, but nope, they're all pretty much the same size.  Luckily I have a Bind-It-All and so made a notebook to put inside, that took me as long as it took to make the cover!  I want to make more of these but I'll have to amend the size!

 

The recipe book needed something to go with it so I whipped up a quick tea towel.  I pieced some 3inch squares from scraps of the fabric then drew a larger cupcake onto Bondaweb, ironed it to the fabrics, cut them out and attached to the fabric, finishing off with a zig zag stitch round the edges and for the cherry stalk.

I added a hanging loop to the top.

And here they are together (minus the notebook which hadn't been made at that point), I think they make a nice little set.

So, any magazine recommendations for me?

experiments in crochet

My name is Wendy and I'm a crochet addict.  There, I've said it.  Since I learnt to crochet last November, I just can't stop.  I spend hours looking for free patterns and tutorials and then trying them out - with mixed results!

Do you want to see what I've been crocheting?

I found this great tutorial, here, for a crochet bowl.  It's made using two strands of yarn.  Now please ignore the colours as I wanted to use up so yarn I had in case it didn't work.  I love the shape!

Then I used this pattern to crochet this cute little baby hat.  I used a Sirdar snuggly yarn with sparkly bits in it that you can't see on the picture.  Love the little flower!

My final experiment wasn't so successful.  I found this pattern for crocheted slippers and had to give it a go.  I have so many pairs of slippers, I have to have them scattered around the house so there's always a pair convenient, but some off them fall off all the time and have caused me to fall downstairs!  I thought that if I was making them, I'd be able to make sure they fit.  The pattern gives different sizes.  I started with a 5-6 as I'm a 5 and I think that's a 6 in the US so I thought I'd covered all bases.  The resulting base was so tiny a three year old would have struggled to fit it - OK, so I'm exaggerating, but it was tiny.  So I tried the size 9 pattern.  This is it.  I can't get my foot in it.  It's tiny.  I must be crocheting far to tight as I'm using the right yarn and hook.  I'll try again with a larger hook.

I've gone wrong on the toe bit.  I realised I had after I'd done the final row, that's why it's so misshapen.  Ah well.  It's only made using budget DK yarn (£1.50 for 100g) and the pair I make for myself will be from some Sublime Merino wool I have in a lovely blue.  I've just got to get the size right first so I'll try again with this yarn and a giant hook!

I've got my eye on a lovely hat pattern and I'm waiting for some yarn to arrive so I can crochet a fab bag I've found.  More crochet coming this way very soon!

Coasters and placemats

Good morning.

I'm afraid this is likely to be a bit of a boring post as it's basically about 5 sets of coasters and a set of placemats.  Feel free to doze a bit as you scroll through at high speed.

I recently tried to make some coasters from Quick and Easy Patchwork Gifts.  I blogged about how I'd had trouble with the pattern and didn't think it was done in the best way.  Lots of you agreed.  I decided to make more coasters, but to do them my own way.

 

I cut 40 5inch squares of fabric from some layer cakes I had, then I cut 20 4.75 inch squares of wadding.  I put the fabrics right sides together, put the wadding on the back and sewed them up leaving a turning gap on one side.  after clipping the corners, they turned beautiful, no messy seam like before. 

I then quilted them using my wonderful walking foot.  I really do enjoy this process, despite having to unpick 3 of them as I hadn't noticed it was messy on the back from skipped stitches - time for a new needle apparently!

I didn't do matching fabrics, all four the same on each side, I mixed and matched for a more interesting effect.

I love these blue ones, I love those birds.  I think it's Moda Freebird?

And these pink ones are Moda Boutique. 

One thing I noticed was that the coasters were very wrinkled after I'd turned them right side out.  I think I might have left too small of a gap.  On some of them, you couldn't tell they were wrinkled after I'd quilted them, but on others I think you can see the wrinkles but I can't iron them, can I?  Will it flatted the wadding?

Picture of a wrinkly coaster under my walking foot above, and the whole stack below.

Check me out being all artistic!!

Mum had requested more placemats. She likes them large (12 x 18 inches) and plain, just one fabric on the front, one on the back and a double row of top stitching.

I had made a note of the fabrics she chose, but can't find it.  I think the brown one is Moda whimsy.  Can't remember what the other one is at all!

This time I did contrasting top stitching instead of matching.  I really should get some top stitching thread for this, but I didn't know it existed until Nancy told me about it!

I think I'm going to take a break from placemats and coasters for a while, though I do need to do some placemats for a friend who's requested them - they'll be pieced though and I might even experiment with FMQ.  Does anyone know if I should use my darning/free motion foot or my walking foot for FMQ?

rainbow all the weather, rainbow!

Only my British readers of a certain age are going to understand that title!  It's another cold day here in the Midlands, at least it's not as windy as it has been the past few days.  I'm back at work today, the holidays are over, but I've just discovered we get another day of at the end of May - yay!

When I saw this rainbow purse over at Sparklepetal, I knew I had to make one.  I bought some cheapo acrylic wool in bright rainbow colours and got crocheting.  Sparklepetal told us to use this tutorial from the fabulous Attic 24 to make the flat circle using half treble stitches.  It was supposed to come out at a diametre of 5.5 inches.  Mine came out much smaller, so I started again using trebles and it came out the perfect size. 

The colours in this picture look terrible, I blame the crappy weather this weekend. That red is actually a bright pillar-box red.  I then followed the directions to sew a lining and sew up the purse.  It was really easy to follow, great tutorial Sparklepetal!

Here's the finished purse.  In hindsight, I could have done with blocking the circle before I sewed it and maybe I should have used a red zip, but I used what I had to hand.

And here's the red spotty lining.  Lovely!  I did find slip stitching the crochet to the lining a bit tricky, firstly because of all the pins being in the way, secondly because the sides of the zip are hard to get to, but mainly because I'm really crap at slip stitching!

I've been hard a work sewing and crocheting up a storm this past weekend so I've got loads of posts lined up for you.  You are going to be sick to death of me!