burn that bunny

A couple of weeks ago saw me and my lovely mum attending another jewellery class at The Bead Shop Nottingham.  It was basic silver-smithing, focusing on soldering using wire.  We were given some copper wire and shown how to make links.  Then we were left to it... immediately an idea formed...

Oh what a surprise, I made a bunny!  I am over the moon with this necklace.  Usually in the technique classes I don't go home with a finished piece, but I knew exactly where I was going with this one.

First I made the circular links.  Form a link from 1mm copper wire, cut and file the edges, solder, pickle, rinse, sand, hammer flat, hammer to add texture.  I REALLY enjoyed this technique.

I made 4 links in total, then I tackled the bunny.  I formed the shape I wanted and then filed the points that were to be soldered.  It's the bit between his ears.  Of course, I formed the shape, it all fit perfectly, I then fiddled with the neck and the ears moved.  It took me ages to get them aligned again!

We also learnt how to make ball-end head pins.  These are bits of wire with a ball or a flat circle on the end so that you can thread on beads.  I made 6 and then went downstairs to raid the shop for crystals.  These were 15p each, but they are Swarovski and they are stunningly beautiful in the flesh.  Or in the crystal.  

I also picked up a large white Swarovski opal for the bunny tale.  It's simply wired in place.  You can see the join where I soldered him in the photo below, but I don't mind that.  He's also hammered to add texture.

I also bought a trace chain and cut it up to form links between the components.  I made the jump rings too and was planning on making the clasp, but the trace chain came with one so I just used that.  Apart from the chain and clasp, it's entirely hand made.

What do you think?  I love it, it's one of the best things I've ever made.  There's only one problem with it...

Bunny tends to fall sideways when I'm wearing him... I wonder if I need to wire the chain to his ears tightly instead of having him on jump rings?

I'm joining in with Something Old, Something New, this will be my "new".  I'm also linking up with Fiona's Something New for 2014 as although I've soldered lead before, I've never soldered silver or such delicate items.

splash mat

I've been sewing up the chair cushions for our dining room, so I needed a leader and ender project.  If you haven't come across this method before, it's a way of wasting less thread.  Instead of cutting the thread after each set of chain piecing, you have a little pile of squares or HSTs that you can sew and then leave on the machine, ready for the next set of piecing.  Did that make any sense??  

Basically, whilst sewing some of the blocks for the chair cushions, I didn't want to get confused so sewed two pieces together for each block, cut them apart, pressed them and got the next piece ready.  When I'd finished the first set, instead of cutting my thread, I sewed together 2 mini charm squares and left them on the machine.  When I was ready for my next set of pieces, I just carried on sewing - no big lengths of thread left dangling.  

Very quickly those mini charm squares became this.  A very simple pattern, I used a Happy Go Lucky mini charm pack and an FQ of one of the prints.  I arranged the minis in colour order and sewed them into columns, each was then sewn to a strip of the FQ and finally a border of the same print was put on.

I sewed it right sides together with an old towel, turned through and top stitched.  I then quilted it using lines 1/4" from each seam, using the colour of the minis in each row.

This was a progress shot - does anyone else have a cutting table that looks like this??

Because of the right sides together and turn method, no binding!  Hurray!

The pattern I chose meant I didn't have to match up loads of seams, especially difficult with precuts I find, but my rows were wonkier than I thought, see the way the quilting curves?

I couldn't get a decent shot of the different colours of quilting, especially as the towel I backed it with is blue.

I love the finished product, shown here on top of the bunnies' run as there isn't a great deal of light on the floor of my kitchen.

And it does it's job well.  The previous one used a lot of white fabric and gets dirty so quickly, this won't show the dirt so much and now I can always have a mat down when one is being washed.

See, told you there's not much light on the kitchen floor. 

chair cushions

One of the items on my FAL list for the first quarter and this quarter is chair cushions for my dining room.  It's also my ALYOF goal for the month.  Yep, I really want to get these done!  The chairs are quite low and being a short-arse, I need a cushion so I bought the cushion pads and the fabric about 2 years ago.  I pieced together one panel.  I can't find the damn thing!  So I had to work with what I had left, about half a layer cake of Lily and Will (so I used half on one panel?!?) and some yardage.

First up were these Plus blocks by Holly DeGroot in Love Patchwork and Quilting issue 1.  I love this design, I could make a quilt like this...

I've seen Friendship Stars around blogland recently and love the design, I found this Friendship Star in 501 Quilt Blocks.  I probably could have used a bit more brown in this one.

Next I made some flying geese, following the cutting instructions for Fast Geese in 200 Quilt blocks.  I then arranged them and rearranged them until I liked the design.  Having said that, I've just noticed in the photo that the bottom right block and the bottom middle block use the same fabrics... that looks a bit weird...

Look!  Look what I did!!  I accidentally used some bunny fabric!  If I'd spotted it, I would have saved it for my bunny quilt.  Damn!

The flying geeses were not without their errors.  I sewed 10 sets right side to wrong side.  Ooops. I unpicked and resewed, then when I was sewing the blocks together, I discovered I'd done the same thing earlier.  It's staying like that!

This little pile is the offcuts from the flying geese.  They are destined for the fourth and final chair cushion...  Then I just have to quilt them, cut them out to the pattern I've drafted and sew them into chair cushions around a piece of foam.  No trouble there then ?!?  Why do I do these things to myself?

more project bags

Last month I made a project bag using this tutorial  by the lovely Vera of Negligent Style, you can see it here.  I made the first one to check I knew what I was doing, then I planned to make a whole rainbow of them.  I've since been contacted by Vera to say I made the bag wrong, which shows how bad I am at following instructions.

I wanted a whole mix of shapes and sizes and a rainbow is always nice!  I sorted through my zips, finding them in all the lengths and a rainbow of colours, I dug through my scraps, only having to dig into an FQ for the yellow bag.  These went so quickly.  I didn't do them production line style as each one used different coloured thread, even so, they take about 10 minutes.

The smallest is 4" x 4" and the biggest is 16" wide.  They should fit a wide range of projects.

Each has a ribbon loop, so I've hung some of them on a book ring and they're hanging off the curtain tie back knob, full of stitchy projects.

I'll fill some more with sewing projects upstairs, they'll help keep everything together in one place.

I'll use the smallest ones for jewellery projects started but not finished.

Wonder how long it'll be before I have more WIPs and have to make more bags?

Plea for help

I am interrupting the regularly scheduled blog posting to ask for some help.

I have just discovered a new line - Jubilee by Bunny Hill Designs.  It seems a number of these fabrics have bunnies on them.  I can only find three of them!  I've found the bunnies medallions in mauve, the bunny damask in mauve and bunny damask in light grey, but it seems these fabrics were printed in 7 colours?  I can't work out if they're a new line or an old one!

So to all my UK friends, if you come across this line in any UK online shop, can you please let me know?  Comment on any post and I'll see it.  UK only as I can't afford US postage.

Thank you!!

El Mosaic

I think I showed you a snapshot of this when I was working on it?  It was a kit I got for a birthday or Christmas that was waiting for me to start it.  The tray was provided in the kit, along with the tessarae which are tiny tiles for this piece.  I traced the design onto a sticky sheet using the carbon paper provided, peeled the back off and stuck it to the tray.  I then peeled the top off in sections which gave me a sticky surface to put the tiles on.

This mosaic was different to the house number kit I did as that used glue to stick the tiles down. Also, you could cut these tiles with normal scissors, and I had to cut loads of them as the pattern is so curvy.

Now I just need to grout it and paint the tray.  Jojo asked why I didn't paint it first.  The honest answer?  Piss Poor Planning.

Save the Stitches - can I save MY stitches??

You may remember that I've done a bit of blackwork embroidery.  It's a technique I really love.  It's done on evenweave linen (or Aida if you prefer) and consists of straight stitches in a variety of combinations to make filling designs.  It doesn't have to be black either.

I came across a wonderful blackwork blog, Blackwork Journey.  Elizabeth Almond is writer of the blog and a pattern designer.  She has designed a huge blackwork project where sections are released one at a time.

I've had in mind to do a larger sampler-style piece of blackwork for a while, so I bought the recommended materials and got to work.  Above is one of the blocks.  Each of the squares has a different filling design and metallic threads and beads will come into it later.

Stitching this is a little fiddly as it's 28 count linen, that means 28 threads per inch.  It's small.  Very small.

See what I mean?  And that could be a problem... it was pointed out to me that it should be stitched over 2, whereas I've been stitching over 1.  I'm just awaiting confirmation from Elizabeth but I might have to rip out this 4-5 hours work.... 

Update:  Yep, I did it wrong.  Cue lots of cursing...