Baboushka Decoration

I made a tree decoration using a lovely glass face cabochon.  I made her up as I went along but think that next time I make one I will put a lot more planning into the decoration.

There is so much enjoyment to be had from using a needle, thread and beads.

I am itching to get on and make another one as I have a stack of felt and faces to choose from. Deciding the colours is the hardest part!

Busy Beading

I have been busy with beads enjoying the slow motion of pulling the thread in and out of the fabric.  The above picture is a work in progress.  I am not too sure where  I am going with it yet or if it will even end up being a completed piece, but for now I am just enjoying the process of creating.  I have not bought anything extra to do this but have been consolidating the things I already have in the craft room.

If you are in a creating and crafting frame of mind you may wish to join Anne of My Giant Strawberry in her Handmade Joy Exchange.  I will be joining in this year, making and sending a little handmade joy made with love.  Please do go along to Anne's blog and join in if you wish to do so.

Despite the cold and grey days I have been a little bit hyper with excitement this week as I have been jolted into a realisation of what I want to do with my life and where I want to be.  I dare not share it with you all yet as my dream is in the early stages and may only ever be a dream but at least I have hope in moving forward and not being stuck at the crossroads!

Wishing you all a weekend full of wonder!

A Dressed Bunny and Five Minutes of Fame

I finished off my bunny with a basic linen pinafore and matching hat.  She was a dream to put together and I will definitely make one again!

In other news I got a letter published on the reader's letters page of a local newspaper.  They haven't edited it at all which is pleasing although they have added a extra 's' on the word encouraging which is rather annoying! I liked to see my words printed on paper as I think we can get a bit blase with our writing being seen on a screen.  It was good to see that an editor sees my thoughts worthy of publication and it's not just me pressing the 'publish' button!  

A Change of Plan

I had to give up on making the little felt animals.  After many failed attempts whatever I was doing wasn't working.  Many of the pieces were so tiny to turn inside out and sometimes I was required to machine sew through four layers of felt.  I think I will just take inspiration from the book and make my own version of felt animals.  The book and its instructions were far too advanced for my skill level.

Anyway, I still felt the urge to make 'something' so I turned to the patterns in one of my 'Tilda' books.  I felt much more comfortable in understanding the patterns and instructions.

Here is my first attempt at making a bunny.  She is meant to be wearing clothes but as I made her from patterned fabric I don't think she feels too nude!  I will have a go at making her a hat and dress and who knows what creative urge I will get next!

Bear Making

Thank you for all the Birthday wishes in my last post.  It was a day of sunshine and showers!  I spent part of the day looking at my new book on making felt animals.  With so many animals to choose from; squirrels, rabbits, moles, mice - I opted to make a bear!

After transferring the pattern to felt I have carefully cut the pieces out.  I am opting to hand sew the bear but depending on how I progress may use the sewing machine if I make other animals.  I don't think this will be an easy make as there are things like cotter joints involved in the making!

I have never made a jointed toy before and feel quite excited in doing something 'grown up'.  I will be forever the child in getting pleasure in the newness of  experiencing something different.

Toadstool Fairy House

I made this toadstool fairy house from a kit by Corrine Lapierre.  I still have a little felt fairy to make but may make my own rather than the one on the pattern.  I enjoyed making the french knots eventually - after watching a tutorial on you tube.  I don't know what I did before you tube - there are some excellent tutorials on there.  I am not sure what to do with the toadstool now!  It could be used as a pincushion I suppose or I could use it as a prop in my photos?  Anyway, it was a good exercise in starting and completing a project learning new embroidery skills on the way.  Putting the ensemble together was quite technical too!

I have a few things lined up to do over the next few days.  Collage cards are calling to me and playing with jewellery designs and hopefully visiting a spiritual centre to see what courses are on offer. 

See you soon!

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

I went to my third sewing class today.  It was an open session where we could take along any projects that we wanted help with.  I downloaded a free zipped pouch tutorial from the Internet to take with me.  I have never sewn in a zip before so thought it would be good practise to start off with something small.

For the fabric I purchased a set of 3 generously sized tea towels from Dunhelm Mill for £5.99.  I felt bad cutting into them but it was cheaper to buy fabric like this rather than off the roll.  There is the added bonus of the fabric having washing instructions with it too.  The packaging was wrapped in a lovely red tape so I used a piece of it to make a side tab. 

I don't know if I would make this particular pouch again as the instructions were confusing (even my tutor said so!) but I will definitely be making more lined and zipped pouches in the future.  I felt a real sense of achievement learning to sew in a zip rather than take the easy way out of sewing on a button enclosure as I would have done previously.

Scotty Dog

On Saturday I attended my second free sewing class provided by the Enfield Residents Priority fund.  You can see the first project I made on a previous post here.

I was thrilled with my Scotty dog doorstop!  He is partially filled with rice to give him weight and stability and then further filled with fibrefill.  I finished him off when I got home with button eyes from my stash and gave him a collar that I bought Gizmo to wear when he was a kitten which he refused to wear!

I got such a great sense of achievement from making this little dog as the pattern was quite technical albeit giving a simple result, that I am sure to make at least another one.

At last I think I can finally declare - I can sew!

New Skill - Machine Sewing

I am not a fan of machine sewing.  Never really understood about loading and threading the bobbin and the mystery of the different types of sewing 'feet'.  Saying that, I have accumulated a few sewing machines over the years hoping that each one would lead to a new found love.

Anyway, an opportunity arose this week which was to attend free local sewing classes provided by our residents priority fund.   Here was a chance to make something and take the evidence home.  Literally a five minute walk from where I live I would have been a fool not to embrace the challenge.

After a morning's worth of guided tuition I sprung home with a pair of pyjama bottoms.  Who knew that sewing in elastic wasn't so difficult after all.  I look forward to another sewing class next month.  Could I have eventually caught the sewing bug?  That remains to be seen. :-)

Nice Mice

I am slowly but surely building up a stock of things to sell at the September craft fair.  I was pleased with my simple mice cat toys that I made a few posts back and thought some mice for humans might be nice too.  These ones are filled purely with dried herbs; lavender, chamomile, lemon verbena and red rose petals. 

Their intended use is to go into lingerie/sock drawers, linen cupboards or anywhere that needs freshening up!  I intend to have them piled up in a big bowl of straw or hessian to add to the rustic look that I am aiming for but that could all change on the day!

Joy in June - Three Blind Mice

OK, there are not three blind mice as in the rhyme but are in fact five! This mouse making is quite addictive and difficult to stop once started.  I have made them with tea stained calico, given them felt ears and stuffed them with a fibrefil and Valerian herb.  They make the most wonderful cat toys.

I had bought the Valerian to go into the sleep pillows I was making but discovered that the herb has quite a pungent smell that can only be described as stinky!  I am so glad that I didn't put it in the pillows!!!  Anyway, cats find the herb as addictive as cat mint and it acts as a stimulant for sluggish cats.

I tested one of the mice on Gizmo.  Thanks goodness they don't have eyes.

Button Buddies

Grumpy Baboushka was my first and only.  From now on I will be making button buddies.  Thumb sized cheery dolls to bring a smile to your day. 

I am sorry that I have been a moody cow recently and promise to make this blog a place that you leave in a positive frame of mind.

Have a lovely weekend.  x

Minature Grumpy Babushka Doll

With many jobs needing to be done, I decided to put housework aside and make a mini Babushka style doll using my grumpy girl  as inspiration! Can you believe it was almost 5 years ago that grumpy girl came into being?

As you can see from the above photo, she really is very small and I had to sit by the light of the window to make the tiny stitches.

I embroidered her face freehand and my goodness hasn't she got the grumps? She is quite lovable really though and I enjoyed bringing her to life!

Perseverence

This morning has definitely been a learning curve.  I packed away the jewellery making components and brought out the fabrics and sewing machine.  All my good intentions for making  herbal pillows with a removable cover went out of the window when I couldn't get the inner lining (muslin) to cooperate.  The muslin was in fact cheesecloth and much too fine to handle as the threads kept getting caught in the machine.  I think it will be better suited for containing bouquet garni or to make bath bags.

For my second attempt I decided to do without the liner and just contain the herbal mix in a pretty fabric.  It started off good but then I realised that I had sewn the handmade label in the wrong way.  On the third attempt I had the right side and wrong side of fabrics facing each other and didn't realise until I went to turn it out, I also sewed the label in the wrong way round.  On the fourth attempt I have produced a passable if not plain cushion.  My word of the year 'perseverence' paid off in the end but I will need to persevere some more if I want to improve on the above effort.

Now I could do with some advice.  Do you think I should leave the pillows (when I make them) as they are, unadorned or do you think that they need some embroidery or further embellishment?  I would be interested in your feedback. The pillow above is approximately A5 in size (half an A4 sheet of paper).

I am glad that I got the machine out of its box and astounded myself that I could change a bobbin and thread up the machine!  I am looking forward to using it a lot more from now on.

Herbal Sleep Pillows

I have all the ingredients.  I just now need to organise myself into the correct mindset for measuring, mixing and sewing.  Jewellery making will have to go on the back burner whilst I get to grips with making the herbal sleep pillows.

In my teenage angst years I went to bed with a herbal sleep pillow each night.  The familiar and comforting scent of the herbs enabled me to drift off into a restful sleep.

It has been many years since I used a sewing machine and I still have to unbox the small one bought from John Lewis a couple of years back.  I really need to tackle my sewing machine phobia which stems from getting the ends of my long hair caught around the sewing machine wheel during a sewing lesson at school many moons ago.

So, I have an assortment of sleep inducing herbs, muslin to contain them, and a pretty floral cotton poplin to make removable outer covers.  Now I just need to make them.

Love

Soothing Stitching

With the hexagons put to one side (for now) I decided to embark on another project.  I had some little cross-stiched pieces that I did a while back so I decided to make them up into keyrings.  They are filled with stuffing, very squishy and tactile.  It was nice to sit down with a relatively simple sewing project.

 I think this little house with the poppies in the field is my favourite one.  It looks like a mini tapestry.

This gives you an idea of the size of one of the larger keyrings.  Now, you wouldn't lose that in your bag now would you?!

After all that stitching yesterday, I thought I would take it easy today and indulge in a bar of lavender chocolate, close my eyes and drift away to a lavender field on a hot sunny day.................bliss. x

A New Hobby

Thanks to Clare I have taken up another hobby!  I have never attempted patchwork before but have been inspired and encouraged by Clare's enthusiasm, tutorials and wonderful patchwork that she produces.

Most of the crafts that I do, require quite a bit of money to be spent on them but I see that patchwork can be quite frugal if you want it to be as all you need is fabric, a needle, some cotton for tacking and sewing, cardboard for a template and scraps of paper to make the hexagons.  I think I will want to spend money on beautiful fabrics though, so maybe it's not quite frugal as I first thought!

I was supposed to be doing housework but got distracted making my first lot of hexagons.  Fabric hexagons are wrapped around papers and tacked together.  The next fun bit will be sewing the shapes together.  I can see this becoming an addiction!

Thank you for all the comments regarding the moon in my last post.  Today in the Northern hemisphere the moon is waning and ascending.   According to a guide that I have, if you are going to be planting onions or shallots, it is best to plant them when the moon is descending  on the 20 - 22nd March in the morning.  March is the last chance to prune apple trees, when the moon is descending from 13-24th March.  I have taken this information from a book called 'in tune with the moon 2011'.  I have no idea if the advice works but if you haven't had much success in growing things maybe it is worth giving it a try!

Penny Rug Project No.1

It was 2 years ago that I did a post on the wonderful 'Born to Quilt' edition of the Magic Patch magazine. (Was it really that long ago?)

The patterns and projects were created by Veronique Requena who very kindly sent me the materials and pattern to complete one of the projects in the magazine.

It has taken me almost 2 years to attempt the penny rug but two weeks ago I started it and today I finished it (apart from additional embellishments and backing fabric). I thoroughly enjoyed making this although at times I cursed the cutting out. It was all sewn by hand and I can't wait to start on another sewing project!

Edited: Just to let you know that the 'Penny Rug' isn't actually a rug but it is a large doiley sized table decoration/table mat. It is called a penny rug because of the 'pennies' that are sewn on the tabs surrounding the mat.

Prim and Proper

I am a big fan of American primitive style stitcheries but have been unable to find exactly what I want while surfing the 'net. I like the simplistic styles of stitcheries that are mostly back stitched in one colour onto a calico or natural type of fabric and backed with a wadding and made into a project such as a wall hanging, cushion etc.

As I was unable to find a suitable stitching project I decided to design my own! I have hand drawn a 'primitive style' cat above to be used as a stitchery, applique or even a paper pieced project. The pattern is FREE for you to use in your projects but you may not copy or print off copies of the image to sell. It is not for commercial use. If you decide to make something using the design then please credit me as the designer and link to my blog where possible. I hope I haven't scared you off!!!

I will try to get the image into a suitable format for downloading and printing off but haven't yet figured how to do that!

If this post proves popular I may consider doing monthly downloads of my stitchery designs. Any suggestions for themes would be useful too!

Edited: In my haste to get the post up I have noticed the poor quality of my image. I will get a better photo put up in the next few days and have the design in a downloadable format in my sidebar.