Knitting basket

Way back in 2010 I made myself a crochet bag.  I have just spent 20 minutes hunting for the post about it, but can't find it anywhere. You're just have to take my work for it.  I also made a shorter version for mum which you can see here.  

At the Festival of Quilts, she asked me to make her a taller version with pockets round the outside.  We chose the fabric and then of course, I did nothing!  When my sewing motivation returned at the end of the year, I got right on it.

There are two things crying out to me in this photo.  Firstly, it looks out of proportion.  Funnily enough, in person it doesn't.  Maybe it was the camera angle.  Secondly, fabric direction.  Yes, I messed that one up!  It is lined in the same green spot fabric that I used for the top of the outer pocket.  The pockets go all the way round and I've separated them with lines of stitching, leaving pockets of various widths.

I think the proportions look better in this photo.  I used the same pattern as for the first ones, but only the measurements and the base template.  I put it together in the way that made sense to me, and of course the pocket was my own invention (clearly not a new one!).  It stands quite firm as it's got a layer of fusible fleece and a layer of medium-weight interfacing.  It's not quilted as mum's not a fan of the quilted look.

The inside is possibly not as neat as it could be, but the lining isn't baggy so I call it a success!

brooch and bracelets

One night at the beginning of January (I made so much over the Christmas break it's going to take me a while to show it all!) I felt in a jewellery mood.  I have a little plastic box with WIPs, half finished projects and components I've bought for a particular design.  This one took my fancy. It was a bag of different sized lucite flowers and a donut sieve.  I should have taken a photo of the sieve, but here's what it looks like.

My first experiments with threading a size 10 seed bead and a flower onto a headpin didn't seem to be working so I switched to 0.4mm wire and wove in and out, that worked much better though the wire snapped a lot!  The photos I took were terrible, so the one above is blurry and the one below is in the distance!

I've glued a brooch back on so I can wear it on my cardigan.  It had been snowing outside when I took the photos so it was all a bit wet.  The bunny run is the best place to get pictures in these conditions, and it also has the bonus that you can play a game of "spot the bunny poo"!  Not a difficult game, mind...

Next out of the box was a coil of bracelet sized memory wire and some miracle beads.  The purple and lilac beads are 3mm strung in a 3-3-1-1- pattern.  I cannot for the life of me get a decent photo of miracle beads which seem to glow from within so go here to see what they really look like.

This red and bronze one is strung with black fimo heshi disks in between.  The miracle beads are 4mm and I think I prefer this size.

Heart Embroidery

The project I'm going to show you today was actually embroidered at the beginning of December, it seems I've got a bit of a backlog.

I was poorly with my infection and my removed teeth and I felt like embroidering.  I picked a book from my groaning craft book shelf (actually I have far more than one shelf...) - Sweet Stitches from the Heart by Anne Sohier-Fournel, Agnes Delage-Calvet and Isabelle Leloup.  This is a really lovely book with a mixture of cross stitch and embroidery patterns in it.  I also have a similar book by some of the same authors - A Rainbow of Stitches - both are great for small projects like this one.

The flowers are embroidered with long and short shading, the yellow centres are satin stitch.  The stems are, predictably, stem stitch and the leaves are detached chains.  The outer heart is stem stitch too, everything else is back stitch.  I painted the frame red to match, though it looks orange in this photo.  This isn't a great photo - why wasn't my new year's resolution to learn to use a camera??

Luna Lapin

At the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate in 2014 I feel in love with Luna Lapin, and bought the kit.  Mum fell in love with her wool coat, and so did I, so she bought it for me!  I started making Luna back in August, and I showed you the completed bunny, without face or tail, back in December.  

Well, not only does Luna now have both face and tail, she also has clothes!

The dress kit came with the coat and I much prefer it to the t-shirt dress the Luna kit comes with, so I made this one.  I did mess the collar up a bit, but it's not really that noticeable.  There was a lot of tiny, fiddly binding with this one, the neck seam is bound as well as the hem of her dress.

I also did a pretty bad job with the buttons, they're not actually that skewed, her dress isn't on straight, but the top button is in a funny position.  That doesn't matter though as she has her coat on, even in the house!

Ta dah!  Looking back at the website where I gave you the links at the top, I've done the buttons wrong!  Ah well, never mind.  I love this coat and would wear it myself, if it weren't so small I can barely get my big toe in the armhole...  It took me hours and hours and hours to make.  I did my very best sewing and even so it's not perfect.  I love the little details like the bands and buttons on the sleeves.  I used my new machine to sew button holes for the first time and it was fine on the dress and sleeve bands... then I came to do the main buttonholes.

I had a real job!  The sleeve was getting backed up behind the foot and stopping it moving properly so they were all different lengths, and some bad planning on my behalf meant they weren't properly lined up or were wonky.  In total, I sewed a total of 20 button holes and unpicked 16!

I'm happy with that back pleat though!  I should have taken a photo of the inside - the hem is all bound, as is the neck seam. Again, fiddly, tiny binding!  Despite the faff, I really enjoyed making this and would like to make another Luna with some different clothes.  Having looked at Cool Crafting's website, I see more clothes I want but I'm not the type to change the clothes on a toy so I'll need more rabbits!

Viennese Waltz - update 10

It's time for the update on my Viennese Waltz cross stitch.  I didn't post last time as I had nothing to show.  Here is where I was before Christmas.



and here is where I am now

So I didn't quite reach my target of having this finished by the end of 2015!  It's time for a push to get this done, but I've just started a beading project which is taking up my sofa time...

I'm sewing along as part of a SAL, you can go and see what the other participants have been up to here:

Claire, Avis, Gun, Carole, Alison, Jule, Elizabeth, LucyAnn, Kate, Cathy, Jess and Jacqui

Shoe mat in the works

I know this is a crafting blog, but my bunnies do sometimes make an appearance here, so I wanted to give you the sad news.  On Sunday morning we lost our beautiful little Ellis.

She had lived with us for 7 years, she was a rescue rabbit.  Needless to say me and Mr CA are so very sad, but poor Colin (her companion) is devastated, I have never seen a more lonely or depressed bunny.  Although it's a bit soon for me to have a new rabbit, I think we'll have to find Colin a new friend this weekend as I don't want to lose him from a broken heart.

On with the crafting...

On New Year's Day I started a new project.  We leave our shoes in the dining room as our hall is very narrow.  They're just plonked under the radiator and this includes Mr CA's boots when he's been out doing archery on muddy fields.  I get tired of sweeping up the dried mud, and the hay from my shoes (I always have bits of hay sticking out of my hair, sawdust clinging to my jumper, straw stuck to my jeans...) so decided a mat was in order.  Something I can throw in the wash.

I picked out a charm pack - Fancy by Lily Ashbury for Moda which was a present from the lovely Kerry.  I'd roughed up a quick sketch on graph paper and worked out some sizes and I knew I wanted fabric with 2 distinct colours.  In the end I went for 2, but colours that could be paired - green and blue and yellow and orange.

I added some Kona Coal that I'd bought for another project and made some HSTs.  They were cut down to 4" squares, so there was plenty of room for error!

Even so, I managed to make some mistakes... I think I had my ruler upside down.  I replaced them and made another 8 as I'd managed to completely miscount!

This is the final layout, it just needs sewing up.  And quilting of course!  I know it's not the most original of designs, but I've pinned a lot of chevron quilts so I was bound to make some chevrons at some point!  Hopefully I'll be able to show you this all finished soon.  It may be the guinea pig for FMQ on my new machine.

The T-shirt who dreamed of becoming a bag

Another post about a morning spent at Debbie Bryan, we're becoming regulars!  This was a free event.  We were asked to bring along an old t-shirt to be converted into a simple shopping bag.  I don't actually have any old t-shirts so mum brought some of dad's with her.  I picked a black one with a hash tag pin-tuck stitched into it.

The black, raised lines were already on the t-shirt.  We were let loose with fabric paint, stamps, pens, embroidery threads, lace motifs and ribbons.  I went for some Perle cotton 5 and added 3 lines of sashiko stitching in 3 different shades.

We then cut the arms off the t-shirt, and the neck band and some people sewed theirs up in class.  I didn't as we only had 2 hours and it took me that long to do the stitching (yes, I was gossiping when I should have been working!).  I did it at home on my machine as I thought that would be much more sturdy for carrying around shopping than doing it by hand.

For some reason this outdoor picture has come out a funny colour!  Also, you can't really see much here - I didn't think to take a photo of it acting as a bag, so you'll just have to either believe me or call me a liar!

This is mum's:

She was in the process of embroidering little birdies and adding some bits of lace and ribbon.  She was going to finish it at home, but I haven't checked up on her...

Snowflake stars

Just before Christmas wonderful mum and I (I hate typing that.  I know it's grammatically correct but I just don't like it) went to a craft session at Debbie Bryan.  It was just titled "snowflakes" and I suppose you would call it mixed media.  As usual there was a constant flow of coffee and cake.  Steph, the tutor from The Bead Shop Nottingham was there too (as a participant) and we had a great time.

We were given a bag with three different plain wooden snowflakes in it (one of them is technically a star) along with some small pieces of wood and the acrylic centre to the top snowflake.  The blanks have holes drilled in them so you can stitch on them.  We were let loose with paint, stamps, embroidery floss and our imaginations.

It was a really windy day when we took these photos, so I couldn't capture it very well.  The middle snowflake has buttons sewn on one side, the star is laced with bronze metallic floss and there are 4 little arrows tied on to the bottom below the last star (one under the other).  It is all joined together with the bronze thread.  

I probably should have taken some close up pictures!

A couple of Christmas makes

I know I'm a bit late to talk about Christmas, but I wanted to document these little makes.

First, gift tags for the mums and Nana CA.  I made these using a free kit from Pretty Patches magazine.  Simple shapes cut out and hand appliqued in place.  I added the date in back stitch.  An eyelet through the top (the eyelet setter included in the kit didn't work so I used my trusty Cropodile Big Bite) and threaded with ribbon.

Mr CA came home from shopping just before Christmas with a gingerbread house kit for me.  I made it on Boxing Day morning so I could take it with me to family dinner with my parents and my brother's family.  My 3-year old nephew ate nearly all of it, he didn't like the sweets though!

It is far from perfect, and I'm definitely not going to win a place on The Great British Bake Off, but I enjoyed it!

Oh that reminds me.  There was a gingerbread house making competition on Kirstie's Handmade Christmas.  I was invited by the show producer to go on the advent calendar competition on the first episode of the show and I forgot to tell you!  I turned it down... You couldn't pay me enough to go on TV!