FNSI results - late! But I do have a note...

I did join in the FSNI, but I didn't get a chance to post on Saturday due to my lovely husband.  Today is our 1st wedding anniversary and he'd planned a surprise for the weekend.  First up, I need to explain the background.  We got married last year a couple of days after the volcano in Iceland erupted.  UK readers will remember the sheer airtravel chaos this caused, for those outside the UK, I'll just explain.  Basically, the whole of north east Europe was grounded.  No flights were leaving or arriving in the UK.  Trains and ferries were still running but they were jam packed with people trying to get home who couldn't travel by plane.  After a few weeks the airports started running again but the back log was huge. 

We had been due to fly to Vietnam on the Monday after the wedding.  This clearly wasn't going to happen but we didn't want to go back to work.  Travelling by land/sea to Europe was out of the question due to the queues of people so we jumped in the car and headed south west.  We went to Wales.  Wales has quite a bad reputation over here.  I'd only been as a child and all I could remember is rain, and that's what Wales is famous for!  Well, it was the most glorious weather and Wales is stunningly beautiful.  We fell in love with the country. 

The reason we went to Wales is that we're both prolific readers and I'd always wanted to go to Hay on Wye on the Welsh/English border.  It's called the town of books due to the 25 enormous bookshops it has selling a mixture of new books, seconds, second-hand books and antique books.  There are also shops selling crafty things and antiques, plus some excellent restaurants.  We headed to Hay, found a lovely hotel where the landlady gave us our pick of the rooms and a bottle of champagne to make up for us not being in South-East Asia but on the Welsh border!  The room was up in the eaves of an old Georgian Inn, lovely.  We spent two days in Hay then headed west to Brecon on the Brecon Beacons for zip wire and horseriding fun, then on the Aberwyswth (I have no idea how to spell that!) by the sea.  Bliss.

We did get to Vietnam, but not until the May.  Anyway, so back to my failure to post about the FSNI.  On Saturday morning Mr CA told me to get out of bed as we were headed to Hay!  He'd booked the same room we had last time.  We just spend a blissful two days reliving our honeymoon!  Before we get to the sewing, here's a picture of a small section of one of the rooms in one of the may bookshops in Hay:

And this is the craft book section!  (oops, it's sideways!)

I actually didn't come away with any craft books as they were either too old fashioned or too expensive for our meagre budget at the moment.  We did pick up a LOT of second hand novels though!

My FSNI is tied in with the anniversary as I spent it making my husband's present/card.  The first anniversary is paper, so I decided to sew him a book.  I'd seen love notes around on the internet a lot, particularly around Valentine's so I thought I'd expand on this and make a whole note book with a love letter. 

I spent quite some time cutting pages, ironing on interfacing and sewing the lines in grey.

I did this by chain piecing.  I don't know if you can call it chain piecing when it's not patchwork, but I used the same method and wow, it's great, I'll be doing that again.  I used one of those gadget things I asked you all about a while ago.  It made my lines perfectly spaced.

I added in a red line down the sides.

Then I got to work free motion embroidering the text.

My machine had a dicky-fit.  No idea why.  No amount of cleaning out the bobbin, rethreading or tension-twiddling helped.  So I just carried on!  After the first page it started running smoothly through no intervention from me!!

That's what the back of the first page looks like!!

I made the cover from pieces of Bliss.

Punched holes in it all.

And threaded it with cord.

I have had some fabulous mail over the last week, but I think it deserves a post of its own, so come back tomorrow to see what the postman's been delivering!!

Cards, cards and more cards

March is full of birthdays, and so is April, so I thought I'd better get prepared.

I'm not allowed to put this picture in the right way up, Blogger says.  There are actually two cards here, side by side.  This is just a simple card, and I don't usually go for simple. 

This one is not a simple card!  I have one of the Sewing Calendars for 2011 and this weekend happened to be patchwork cards, so I had a go.  I read through the instructions, but then did my own thing.  It's for my big bruv.  I'm not entirely happy with it.

Cards for men are hard, and mum had asked me for one for my brother, so I came up without this and was really pleased with it.

So pleased, I decided to make more.  I could only make one more as I only had 2 of the black present buttons, the rest were in girly colours.

Again Blogger insists you turn your head... I put this the right way up in Photobucket (my Blogger picture allowance has run out) but Blogger won't accept it.  I have a load of these funky felt animal stickers and had to use one for the gorgeous son of my cousin who will be 2.

I thought I'd get a head start on his brother's card too, he'll be 4 next month.  I suppose it's similar to Alfie's, but they're too young to notice, or even care!

And lastly, a card that wouldn't photograph well.  The flowers are mainly yellow, with a couple in green, not grey as they look.  This is for my friend's mum who always gets a card from me as she's totally fab.

In other news, I wont be participating in the Friday Night Sew In tomorrow.  My sewing machine is f***ed.  There's something wrong with the tension - it's the bobbin tension, but no where in the manual or on the internet can I find any instructions for altering it...  I could scream... think I might!

Valentine's

I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day.  It doesn't really have much of an impact on my life.  I have seen a lot of Valentine's projects blogland over the last two months, and I have to say, I'm sick to death of it!  Judging by the posts I've seen, Valentine's is BIG in the US, with people giving Valentine's to everyone they know and decorating their houses.  I'm pretty certain this doesn't happen over here.  When I first met my husband, we probably went out for Valentine's and there would have been a card, but now we're not really bothered.  Restaurants sport overpriced, fixed menus and shoehorn couples in so it's not in the least romantic.  This year we decided to just exchange a card, then forget about it!!  I only really wanted to exchange cards so I could have a go at a design I had in my head for a heart card using free motion embroidery and applique.

It looks pink in the picture, but the linen is actually natural.

I cut the hearts freehand and attached them to the linen with Bondaweb.  I then machine embroidered over them.  I wrote "love you" free hand in the corner.  I then zig-zagged the panel onto a card blank and frayed the edges before adding a simple heart brad.

I think it turned out pretty well.  The first version didn't work as I'd backed the hearts onto a blue fabric, and when I sewed the "love you" in the variegated thread, it didn't show up. 

I also made some of the little heart pouches I've seen on blogland, filling them with his favourite sweets - Midget Gems.  These are just made from two hearts cut freehand from vellum and sewn together a little haphazardly!

All those hours of practicing, for THIS??

I don't know if you remember, but I recently posted about my free motion embroidery attempts.  I gave it up because the bobbin wouldn't stop looping.  Well, I went back to it at the weekend to try again.  Same problem.  So that project is abandonned, but I did practice my free drawing again so I haven't given up on the technique, just that particular project!! 

Anyway, I did manage to get one of them done before the bobbin declared war.  I sewed it up into a very simple little lavendar sachet.  Christmas gift number 2 all present and correct!

Craft Book Challenge - January Roundup

This is a round up post of my Craft Book Challenge attempts for the month so no new stuff - sorry!  If you're not already joining in, come join us at Liesl's blog.

I managed to use 3 of my craft books this month:

Sew Darn Cute by Jenny Ryan
I made this patchwork scarf:

Knitted Toy Tales by Laura Long
And knitted this frog prince that Blogger insists on showing sideways

Free and Easy Stitch Style by Poppy Treffry
And got to grips with free motion embroidery.  See my post here if you're interested in learning more about it.

Three books in one month, not bad!

A new addiction - Free Motion Embroidery

Good evening,
I thought I'd drop by and show you all what I've been up to today.  I've been hankering to try Free Motion Embroidery.  My husband bought me a free-motion foot for Christmas and then I was promptly too ill to try it, then too busy!  Today I made the time and wow!  It's brilliant!  I was literally so excited earlier today I was bouncing around.  Before I came crashing down to earth, but we haven't got to that part of the story yet.

I used a brilliant book to help me with this technique Free and Easy Stitch Style by Poppy Treffry.  Does this count as part of my Craft Book Challenge? I didn't make one of the projects, but I followed her steps for learning the technique. 

I started with a bit of scrap fabric, just moving around with the foot:

Fun!  I then did as she suggested and cut a load of squares from an old flat sheet that had been drawn on...  I hooped up and got going.  I haven't cut any of the floating threads here, but I think you can make out a heart, a flower and an attempt at a butterfly.

I then started to work on individual motifs, outlining them twice.  The hearts are a little odd at the bottom, it took me a while to realise it was better to stop the machine then move up again to get a crisp angle rather than an arc.

More motifs.  Erm, that one to the top right of the flowers is a coffee cup and the one to the left of the hoop is supposed to be a bird!  I did find the hoop kept getting in the way of the little screw that holds the needle in ~(my excuse, sticking to it!).

The next step was to find a picture and copy it.  Oh how I laughed!  AS IF!  I can't draw at all and thought I'd never manage this....

But I did!

I have various things stuck around my craft room and on the shelf was a fairy I'd stamped and embossed for my Christmas cards a few years ago.  This one was a leftover.  I decided to draw her.  Wow!  I was SO impressed.  The photo of the stamped image didn't come out so well as it's actually in colour with black and gold embossing.  I haven't done the fairy's face, but I don't think it's a bad effort.  Even my husband was impressed.  (I don't need to tell you the stitched version is the top one, do I?!?)

Next up was shading.  That was tricky and I'm not convinced I've mastered it.  We were supposed to be experimenting with thread colours, but I just used a cheap black thread I had and a full bobbin.  At this point I changed to a bobbin which was wound with purple thread.  I don't like the way it looks.  I'll definitely have to experiment with colours later, but I was more interested in learning the technique at this stage.

This was followed by applique shapes.  I felt like I'd taken a step backwards, I could do a square a minute ago so why couldn't I do it now??

Practice, practice, practice... and some motifs in the squares...

And on to motifs!  Flowers, hearts and a cupcake.  Again, we were supposed to experiment with fabrics, but I just grabbed what I had from my scrap bag and wasn't even careful about my cutting out which is why the cake is odd.  I just wanted to master the sewing, I can manage the cutting and fabric choosing.  I also tried a bit of writing.  At this stage I had white thread and yellow in the bobbin so you can hardly see it (and Blogger refuses to turn the photo round!), but it says Cupcake and Flower on the piece to the right.  I was pleased with it!

So,enough with the practicing, let's get going!  You must have realised by now I'm a bit impatient!  I chose some lovely Moda fabrics, cut out a flower and two leaves by tracing the patterned fabric, Bondawebbed them down and sewed.  I could not be happier with the result.

 I decided to make another four of these and make them into little lavendar bags.  And this is where it all came crashing down.  At this stage, I had not touched the tension, the machine was threaded correctly, NOTHING was different from last time.  So why were the bobbin threads forming loops on the top?  I tried rethreading, cleaning out the bobbin case, altering the tension.  Nope, can't do it.

After a frustrating half hour, I gave up.  I desperately want to continue learning this technique, but this is a stumbling block I can't seem to get over.  Can anyone out there help me at all?  Or direct me to someone that can?  Honestly, I'm gutted.  I had dreams of 4 finished Christmas presents by this time.

edit: I'm not sure I made it clear about my difficulties.  I used the same thread, bobbin thread, material etc with the one above that kept messing up as I had used with the successful one - that's why I'm so stumped!  Literally nothing had changed.