Great week!

I am having a great week!  OK, so it's only Tuesday, but I was featured on One Pretty Thing this weekend (OK, so a lot of people are but to me it's a massive achievement!) and now I've been told that I'll be in the FaveCrafts January newsletter with my counting bean bags!  I am so excited it's like Christmas Eve has come early.  Small things...

Oh, and something else that makes me happy?  Remember my embroidered picture frame?  Here it is with the photo in it, mounted in the frame with the glass.  Love it!

(Project from Quilt a Gift by Barrie Sue Gaudet)

My online "success" also makes up for my frustrating sewing experiences over the weekend.  I'm on the last desperate push for Christmas presents now.  Having decided to abandon the idea of making gifts for my dad and father-in-law (I bought them a jumper instead!), I have now almost finished.  At the weekend we made some Cookies in a Jar, I just have to make labels for them now.  I got the recipe from taste.com.au.  I also made my own version for my dad who's diabetic.  I found a great diabetic dessert cook book last year and now all his presents come from it!  I used a shortbread recipe that just called for some butter to be added to the dry ingredients.  So, just a label for that too and they are done.

Also on the to-do list is a load of baking for presents, my lovely husband has made the gingerbread dough for the gingerbread rabbits and it's in the freezer, I'll get started on the rest of the baking tomorrow night, then hopefully finish it Thursday night.  That's not going to happen is it?  I'll be baking on Christmas Eve too no doubt.  I will be at work all week and I'm hoping they let us go home at lunch time on Christmas Eve as I also have to finish up knitting the ted bed for Rebecca's teddy.  Oh, and I have to do the wrapping and make gift tags.  OK, feeling stressed, time to concentrate on what I HAVE finished!

First up is a lap top cosy for my mum, the pig lover.  I found another pig patterned fabric and decided to use it. 

I wanted a khaki green for the lining but have very little in the way of solid fabrics, I love patterns too much.  Well, I had a brain wave.  I was in Asda and I found some of their Smart Price pillow slips in the right colour - two for just £1.69!  What a bargain is that??  There's well over a metre squared of fabric there when they're unpicked.  I used this excellent tutorial at Crap I've Made. 

(That lining IS khaki, once again it's my rubbish photography!)
I did struggle a bit with the zip.  Once I'd sewn it up, the ends of the zipper tape were protruding, a little handsewing sorted it out but I'm not sure where I went wrong.  It certainly wasn't down to the tutorial - the instructions were fantastic, I think it was just my lack of experience, it was only my second ever zip!

I also managed to finish up the caffetiere cosy for my brother.  Well, one of them.  I'd made two, one for a large 6 cup caffetiere, one for a small 2 cup caffetiere as my brother (a massive coffee lover) has both.  I'd measured and cut and sewed, then discovered that my great new sewing machine wouldn't put a button hole in them.  I'd used 2 layers of fabric and a layer of wadding but my 1-step button hole was struggling as it couldn't feed the material properly.  No problem I thought, I'll use the manual buttonhole.  Oh, there isn't one on my machine!  So I took them round to my mum's who's got a machine with a 4-step button hole.  Sorted! 

I took my caffetiere cosies home, opened the buttonhole and sewed in the threads, then wrapped them round the caffetieres to see where to sew the button.  Oh.  The large one is fine, but the small one is far too short.  About 6 inches too short!  What happened there??  So I abandoned it, he'll just get the one!

And then there was the i-pod cosy fiasco.  I think I've already mentioned that I've now made two attempts at this simple piece of sewing?  The first was far too small (noticing a theme here??), the second was too bulky to turn.  I would have loved to abandon this project, but mum had specifically asked me for one so I had to do it.  I gave up on the tutes I'd been following and made it the same way I made the accessories pouch back in November.  Success!

I added a silly little piggy bell I'd found.  Here it is with my i-pod inside - yes it's too big!  I'm going to say I did it deliberately so she could fit her ear phones in!!

Notice the pigs are upside down?  At least they are the right way up on the back! 
I know a lot of people are signing off for Christmas, but I'm hoping to do one last post with the ted bed/bag that I've been knitting for what feels like forever, and I'll show you the cookies in the jars too.  If you're leaving blogland before then for a Christmas break, have a very happy Christmas!

Embroidered Photo Frame - a proud moment!

I finished the embroidered photo frame I'd been working on on Wednesday night, but didn't get round to ironing it until last night.  Unfortunately it was very dark when I took the photos, so they're not great, but then my photos never are and I shouldn't really blame the light!!

This was my fourth finish for my Craft Book Challenge.  The project came from the book Quilt a Gift by Barrie Sue Gaudet.  This book is full of gorgeous projects using fabric and wool felt.  There are 1-2 evening projects and projects that will take a week or longer.  Although I love this project, the instructions weren't great - at no point did she state whether there were seam allowances, and if so what they were which meant I made the machined part twice to get it right.  I basically made up my own measurements the second time.  I chose to do the hearts and the vines/flowers free hand rather than tracing her template.  Templates are provided but need to be enlarged which I always find a real pain.  They'd been reduced by 50% so it wouldn't have taken many more pages to put them in full size.

Anyway, here it is, under the glass, in the frame but minus photo:

Here's a photo of it without the glass:

 And a detail of the corner - I'm not sure if you can make it out but there are little white seed beads to represent flowers:

I really am proud of this project and have plans to make more.  This one will have a wedding photo of me and my husband in, but I'd like to make some to show family photos so will have to change the colour scheme and the hearts - I'll work something out.

Thanks for stopping by!