improptu felting

I felt a little down one night, so I went to see my friend after work.  She soon sorted me out - she got out the felt and got me working my arm muscles!

She had bought me a notebook so I can do some journalling and had intended to make me a cover, but decided I could do it myself.  The above arrangement is the wool and tops laid out in my chosen "design".  I went for really bright colours because I love them!

Then there was rubbing with hot water and soap, more rubbing, turning, rubbing, turning rubbing, then rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling....  When I got home I soaked it in a little vinegar to get rid of the soap and laid it out to dry.  

It is still laying out to dry.  It IS dry, it's been dry for ages... I just haven't had the time to make it into a book cover yet!

Felting is so good for stress release, and I'm sure it must count as exercise?

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?

Christmas cards - done! Birthday books - done! Placemats - done! Embroidered picture frame - not done!

Good morning everyone,

I'm sure there's noone out there as everyone is participating in the excellent Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway day!  Follow the link to go to one of 3 pages of lists of blogs having giveaways.  I wish I'd known as I do have something I could have given away, but now it will have to wait.  I've got through 2 lists already, just the third to go!  I love finding new blogs so it's a real treat for me, even if I don't win and I probably wont!

I finished my Christmas cards this weekend!  Remember the trees made up of buttons and gems?  I turned them into cards for the parents and my step daughter:

And everyone else will be receiving a super-simple The Snowman card.  I'm usually quite glitzy with my cards and add loads of embellishments, but I had so little time this year that I thought I'd try simple.  I'm quite pleased with them.  The metal greeting adds a special touch.  Here is a shot of some of them.

All the same but slightly different.  And here's a close up of one of them:

Continuing with some papercraft, I also made 3 birthday books as presents on Saturday, again, all the same but a bit different, depending on which alphabet stickers I had!:

Here are some shots of the inside pages (pretty rubbish shots, I'm not getting the hang of this photography lark):

I said shots, but there was only one!  I'd taken 3 pictures of the same pages... you'll have to believe me when I tell you I did do all 12 months!

I showed you some coaster I was making for my brother for Christmas a while ago, and in the last post I showed you the tea towels I'd made, well now I've finished up the placemats (I'm guessing you've realised it's all a matching set!), there's just coffee cosies to go and I'll show you them all together.  I'm quite pleased with these.

The sewing went a lot better than with the coasters - they aren't as wobbly as they look in the photo, it's because they're soft with the wadding inside.  I didn't iron them when I'd sewed as I left almost a whole side for turning to avoid having to iron and ruin the wadded feel to them.  The top left is a back view of one, it's not an odd-one-out!

Next up is the first bit of work I've done on my Craft Book Challenge in a long time.  I've been working on an embroidered picture frame from Quilt A Gift (see my Craft Book page for more information) but it's been hard going as the instructions are not great.  I had to sew the back piece twice as it never stated in the instructions what the seam allowance was, or even if there was one!  So I threw the first one and did my own measurements for this version.  I've whipstitched the felt hearts in place and embroidered the vine (I've finished the last corner since I took this photo - I was planning on blogging yesterday but brought the lead that connects my husband's phone to his computer rather than my camera lead!!) and now I've just got to sew on some little beads as flowers:

The photo goes in the middle, under the ribbons, and I have a photo frame to put it in.  It will be a picture of us at our wedding and is for my husband's grandma - the only grandparent we have left between us.  I really hope she likes it.

Here's a close up of the stitching:

What do you think?  Would you be gutted to receive a photo of someone else for Christmas??

Snow glorious snow, but not in this post

In a previous post I showed you how to mess up a simple coaster, well this week I've gone one step further and messed up a notebook cover.  So, here's how to turn this:

Into this:

Looking a little "loose" and "crinkley"... It's a present for my dad (and I forgot to turn it the right way up!) who has just been made Chairman of the local branch of CAMRA after years of organising the Beer Festival.  Coupled with his footie team's colours, it is him all over!  Except he's not loose or crinkly...

I covered a little box with the fabric and put a little cushion inside to hide the mess in the bottom, this is to hold the drawing pins I covered for him.

It didn't turn out so well as the fabric glue has made it kind of dirty.

I finally got round to doing something with the Forever Friends bear I stitched, I made it into a drawstring bag.  It didn't go as well as last time as it has a bit of an unintended pleat in the back.  I didn't photograph it for you as I was already feeling pretty rubbish about my lack of sewing skills by this point!

I spent a couple of hours stitching up this Spitfire design for my father-in-law's birthday card.  The design came from one of the 15 old cross stitch magazines I picked up for £3 in a charity shop.  He was in the RAF as was his father who was a Paratrouper during WWII so I thought this would be appropriate.

I also finally did something with the Angel Friends stitchery that I completed a month or so ago.  I made it into a cushion.  This cushion has a zip in the top!  My first ever zip!  It was really easy...  unless I've done it wrong, I don't know what my major fear of zips was.  There is however a mistake in this cushion - the zip is at the top!!

Finally this weekend I got started on some knitting:

I've still got some more pieces to go.  Can you tell what it is?  This was my first attempt at moss stitch and that also was pretty easy, though I did mess up one bit of the pink part...  I got confused with the stitches and decreasing.

I've been feeling a bit down about my lack of sewing ability this weekend.  The notebook was a disaster and I'm sure it should have been a lot easier, then everything else seemed to go wrong too.  Maybe I should give up and go back to making cards.

Fabric covered notebook tutorial

I was searching for tutorials when I first discovered craft blogs, so it seems fitting I should share one with you.

This is for the fabric covered notebook from my first applique post.  I used an A6 notebook and it used about 3 quarters of a fat quarter.  Of course, a larger or smaller notebook will use more or less fabric.

What you need:
Notebook
Fabric
Fabric scraps
Embroidery thread and needle
Spray glue suitable for fabric
Bondaweb

How to do it:

First, lay out your chosen fabric, on the reverse draw round the edge of the notebook, turning it so that you include the spine and back. Make a mark where the spine will be. Cut out leaving about 20mm around each edge.

Cut out 2 small pieces of your applique fabrics and iron Bondaweb onto the back. Cut out 3 hearts and 3. squares from the fabric. Peel the back off the Bondaweb hearts and place on the contrasting squares. Iron to set.

On your main fabric, cut inwards where you have marked the spine to be and cut off all but a little tab. We're going to Bondaweb this tab back on itself to stop it fraying.

Pin the edges in place around the line you've drawn on the front only, this is so you can see where to place your design.

Position your squares with the hearts on the front of the main fabric and iron to set.

Now, sew a blanket stitch around the square in a contrasting embroidery floss. Do not not the ends, just hold them when you start stitching, and leave them free. They will be held in place by the glue in step 10.

Sew around all the squares in contrasting floss.

Sew a back stitch around the edge of the heart in a contrasting colour. I did the blue heart in aqua with it's aqua square stitched in blue, I did the aqua hearts stitched in blue with their blue backgrounds stitched in aqua.

Complete for all 3 hearts.

Put your main material face down, tuck all the embroider floss ends onto the squares. Spray glue all over the back of the material and press your cover down.

Put your main material face down, tuck all the embroider floss ends onto the squares. Spray glue all over the back of the material and press your cover down.

And you're done!  Now make hundreds in different colours!

Applique

Having fallen in love with the idea of sewing, I wanted to put some of the fabric I'd bought to good use.  I love notebooks and have loads of them lying around, so I decided to cover one with fabric and applique a design on to it.  I used my blue spotty material again, and added some hearts which I embroidered onto.  Here it is:

This is now my craft journal.

I used the same technique to make some birthday cards:

 - You'll have to go to the bottom of the blog to see this picture as no matter what I do, I can't get it to move here!

Then another notebook, for my mother-in-law this time:

And then branched out and tried another shape for cards:

I thought these little attempts were quite successful, so, being the impatient fool I am, I thought I could do anything and this led to my biggest challenge yet!  My goddaughter will be two next month and I wanted to make her an alphabet chart.  I had bought some 6" x 6" squares of fabric and thought they'd be a good base for the squares with the different appliques in.

And so, armed with fabric pieces, bondaweb and embroidery thread, I got going.

"A" was quite easy, I managed to draw a simple apple shape (I really can't draw as you will find out!) and applique it from red fabric and a bit of brown.  It's done in blanket stitch with the stem in satin stitch.

Then for "B" I decided to try a bird.  I got a bit adventurous here and tried out a feather stitch on the wings.

"C" took me a bit more time to draw as I couldn't get the shape right, but once I'd stitched it with running stitch and added button wheels I felt it looked like a fairly respectable car!

For "D" I used the template of a dog from "Applique for Little Ones" by Sylvie Blondeau.  His patch is in felt and his ears are double sided so they would hang.  They don't really but you can lift them up if you want!

I found a template on the internet for the elephant and outlined it with a lovely Pekinese stitch - this is the stitch that fired my interest in embroidery and got me scouting the internet for stitches and ideas.

I thought "F" would be easy, but I'm not that pleased with this little flower.

"G" was a nightmare.  It took me ages to find a word as I wanted it to have a "g" sound as in gate, not as in giraffe.  This girl template came from "100 Applique Motifs" by Deborah Green.  I adapted it a bit to look the way I wanted.

Then came "H".  What have I started??  I tried to make a house, but the more I work it, the less it looks like a house!  I started with 4 windows and cut them out of the house, attempting to fold a seam back to leave a neat edge.   It didn't work.  I think I need to try again with 2 windows.  I'll keep you updated!

Oh, and you may be wondering why there are no letters on this alphabet chart?  I'm going to sew them seperately and add some velcro to the back so she can match the letters to the pictures when she's a bit older.