A Little Bit Of Sewing

I found another book to add to the collection last week courtesy of a post on this blog. The book is called Felties and I have created two already.

The book has eighteen little felt critters to create. Each one is pocket sized and they do not take very long to make. I adapted each one slightly as I didn't want to use beads as I am going to gift these to some little people. I also stitched rather than gluing for some of the smaller parts.

First meet Pensive Rabbit.

And second to be created was Babuska. Instead of the beads used by the author I stitched some flowers.

I have a few more on the list of things to sew. The list that is growing oh - so - loooooonnnngggg!

A very L-O-N-G post!

Hello, I'm still here! Amazing how general life gets in the way of blogging sometimes hey? Anyway, it's the weekend so I finally have time to post.

So I haven't been posting much but I have been crafting!
The third of my Seasons girls cross-stitches, Winter, is done. Wheeee! Only one more to go and they will all be finished!


I really like the colours in this one, the photo's not that great but the blues are really pretty. This one also included white glow-in-the-dark thread as well as normal and variations threads. It's used in the snow in the corners, and you know what - it actually does glow-in-the-dark! It looks quite weird actually, with random glowing spots over the design.

I was all ready to go with Spring, the last girl but as I was ironing the Aida (you wouldn't believe the creases in it!) I found a dirty patch. So that needed a bit of cleaning. I couldn't get rid of it completely but in only really shows on one side so I think we'll all just pretend it isn't there.

Most of my crafting time in this past week has been spent on making this book. It's for my Art & Fashion class at school, a fantastic subject - I get to spend it doing crafty things!


It was taking ages to make it just at school and I want to move onto the next project there (softies!) so I brought it home to finish off. It's quite a simple design really and I'm thinking of making more to sell in our MadeIt shop. Some of the pages are made from decorated paper. I painted some of mine and ripped up and stuck sheet music on some others. The style of binding the book ends up with the tails of thread so I decorated mine by knotting some beads on.
Part of the project guidelines was that we had to put some stuff in the book. I have no idea what I want to use it for so I just decorated some of the pages, sticking to my turquoise colour scheme.



I went through my stash and pulled out everything that was turquoise and used it. The drawn pages were done using my new Inktense Derwent pencils. I love these pencils and have a big tin of 72 now to go with my set of 72 Studio Derwent pencils. Inktense pencils are similar to watercolours but they are brighter and look more like ink than watercolour pencils.

Lastly, Crafty Things and I have been working together to come up with these:


They are patchwork luggage tags! Crafty Things made a set when we went on holidays last September. I'm sure you all know how hard it can be to distinguish your bags from all the other ones on the carousel. These tags make it much easier to spot. They are about 11cm by 6cm with an elastic hairband used to attach them. The set we use is just patchwork front with a plain calico back. The ones we are working on now (pictured) have a little pocket on the back so that you can add a name and address on a card if you want, in case they get lost.


We were thinking of using clear plastic at first but decided fabric was better. With plastic anyone could see your details, and these days you don't particularly want this. This way, the card is hidden but still there just in case. (Are we slightly security-mad and paranoid perhaps?)
We just have to figure out the best card to use so that it won't fall our, because that would just be useless! Once that's sorted they will be up for sale in our shop. I think we'll make a few pocket-less sets (maybe with some crocheted flowers on the back) and they will probably be there sooner. I'll let you know, watch this space!

A potpourri of sites I have wandered across lately

Just wanted to share some of the sites I have explored lately.

Heather, from Ragged Old Blogger:Bits and Pieces has posted some pictures of her mixed media work. She has used photographs as the base but then extended these. I think I like the third one best.

If you like creating art with kids then have a look here. I love the way a lot of the art activities are related to an artist or piece of work. Another place for art ideas I stumbled across. In one of her recent entries she reviews a great picture book called "ISH" which I have on my shelf to remind me that things do not have to be perfect.

Then there is the wishing I had one of these on the bookcase. Another crafty book to put on the wishlist.

Knitting is still happening. Sewing has slowed down but ideas are gathering. Finally some photos just to give this post some colour.

Eating the apples in our backyard and looking so beautiful, bright and colourful.

Another shot of my mushroom. This one was taken outside in amongst the wood shavings.

Lucky Me and Some Creating Has Been Happening

It is always a great day when there is mail other than bills. Today the postie brought me a parcel -it came my way from the US. Inside was this lovely book.



Therese from the lovely blog Softies Central ran a very generous giveaway in January and I was one of the lucky winners. The book was my prize. It was on my wish list to own and I felt very happy when Therese picked me as one of the winners. a top addition to the bookshelf!!

On to some crafting. I have been experimenting with some corking again. I have introduced another class of children to the lost art of corking - also known as french knitting or spool knitting. I am trying to encourage them to make something more that a great long length (that however seems to be the passion at the moment!) and have shown them the book I wrote about in this post (I have just checked the link I gave on that post and is no longer working. It looks like the book is no longer in print).

I was also lucky enough to read about Noreen Crone-Findlay's latest e-book. It is called Spooligarumi and has some great instructions in it for creating some little corked creatures. Of course a copy found its way into my inbox very quickly and it was just the thing I was looking for.

I have created three little spool knitted critters this weekend with the aim of trialling some different techniques for making critters from the lengths of spooling. The first was a very little bird. For this I made a length of spooling and sewed it up by winding it around a texta and stuffing a cotton ball inside. I added wings with two very short pieces of spooling that were joined to make a loop.

He stands about 2cm tall. The eyes and beak are cut from card and glued on.

Next was the crocodile\alligator which has pipecleaner supports threaded inside the tubes of corking. This is from the Corking book by Ann Sadler. The aim here was to see if it could be done using the most basic of all corkers - the cardboard roll with four icypole sticks attached. When the spooling was done passing one thread over one thread the end result was not firm enough so I experimented and tried passing one loop over two and this gave a much firmer result that was great for adding the pipecleaner supports. For the difference look at the tail and then the rest of the body.

Instead of following the instructions in the book to the letter I trialled adding the pipe cleaner supports as I knitted. This was good for being able to measure the size of each piece needed. All in all a very successful experiment. The finished critter is a little larger and thicker that the one in the book but it still looks fine.

Last to be created was this little guy.

He is made from the instructions in Noreen's book. I was very happy with the end result. The corking was created with a cardboard roll tube and I used the one over two technique again to get a good firm piece of knitting. I hope that I am being clear about what I mean by one over two. I have three loops on each stick and lift the bottom loop over the top two so that the stitches have a better tension.

All in all a nice crafty weekend.

Book - all done at last

I have put the pages together and bound them up so the book is all done. Here tis....



I love the felt ric rac that I have used on the front cover. I bought it from the UK and I seriously think that I need more. Pity about the exchange rate!!



A few imperfections in the layout - the penguin is on his way out of the book - but in my mind these add to the handmade appeal.



I used some of my hand dyed wool to do the blanket stitching around the edges and the binding is a little bit of gingham ribbon threaded through the blanket stitching along the spine.



The leaf page is very plain but maybe that adds to the contrast of styles in the different pages.

Yippee - Last book page!!

Here it is - the last page of the little felt book that I have so slowly been putting together. I went with a leaf. To get the shape I used a scan of a real leaf and cut the shape out of some lovely felt purchased from paper and string. I just added a little stitched detail to show the veins.



I am now in the process of stitching the pages together and then I get to experiment with the binding. At the moment I am thinking of using ribbon threaded through the blanket stitching.

More Felt pages - well one more!

After a looonnnngggg time of not feeling enthused I got back into creating another page for the felt book. Remember that way back in July I shared the first few stitchings for this little creation. As I always seem to be saying - life intervened and this little project has been sitting around waiting patiently for the next pages to be sewn. At the weekend one more was finished. This one is another bird.



I experimented with a little silver around the eye and added a daisy on the wing for detail. A second row of stitching around the body also seemed to call out to be added. The single row of green just didn't seem enough.



This little bird was first inspired by this Bird of Peace that I stumbled across late last year and used as the basis for a Christmas ornament. I took the pattern pieces I have developed and cut them from felt to make this latest little bird.

One more page is all I need to do and then I will start putting the book together. Never know it might be finished before the end of the year. Possibly by Christmas......maybe.....perhaps!

More Felt Book Pages

A short little post while I am having a creative spurt and have finished two more pages for the felt book I am making.

This time I had a go a creating an owl and a penguin. The owl has fabric wings and the penguin has some nice glittery felt for the front of the body. The penguin was inspired by a small soft toy in an Usborne Art book and the owl was my own design but inspired by lots of different owls I have found online.





I am not sure what else I will add but I probably need two or three more ideas. Any suggestions welcomed.

Work In Progress

Oh, wow! I have much more energy now that the dreaded virus has been beaten - a bit of a lingering cough but nothing like what it was like at the start of last week. It also amazing what a few nights of sleep without interruption can do for you.

I have started work on a little felt book - another gift for the impending new arrivals in the extended family. Two pages have evolved so far. One has a flower stitched onto it and the other a butterfly. Both of the pictures have been designed from scratch and I was very happy with the butterfly. What do you think?



I also practised a new stitch - a variation of blanket stitch called closed blanket stitch where two stitches are worked from the one hole to form a triangular pattern. The idea came from a book borrowed from the library called "embroidery basics - all you need to know to start stitching" by Betty Barnden. My library cover actually says "start embroidery - all you need to know to start stitching" but the inside cover says "embroidery basics".


If you look closely at this one you can see where I had to unpick one of the feelers and have a second go at it. Lesson learnt - draw a faint pencil line for your stitching to follow.

One of the hardest things that I have found with our adventures into blogging is getting good colour reproduction in the photos that I take. Note the difference in the pink of the flower centre in the top and bottom photos.

I love my digital SLR that I was so lucky to get given at Christmas but find that I am still struggling with some of the settings. Lucky for me digital means you can take lots and lots of shots in varying positions in the garden. I have started investigating how to set up and indoor studio because with a day like today there was no hope of trying to take outdoor shots.

Whilst wandering the garden I took a few tree and flower shots as well. This one is my favourite.

New Titles!

Hooray!!! My order from Amazon has arrived. Sorry for another picture less post but the laptop doesn't have easy access to the pictures (just feeling a little lazy about making pictures accessible) and the other silly computer refuses to play fair with it's internet connection.

The next book in the Cute Stuff series looks just as good as the other with a neat little array of things to create. Avid Crafter is already browsing through it. The Softies Kit will be used soon and Making Books will be a very happy addition to the bookcase. It will be opened frequently and perused often for inspiration and techniques that I can use when I do book making activities with groups of children.

Experimenting with a New Acquisition

Crafty Things gets to play...... For my birthday this year (way back in January - gosh we are already in March!!) I was lucky enough to get some gift vouchers to a lovely little scrapbooking shop. These vouchers enabled me to purchase a .......

BIND IT ALL machine.

Unfortunately for me they were out of the wires that you need to use with the machine. I have had to wait (patiently well maybe not that patiently - I only phoned them a few times to see if the wires had arrived) for the wires to come back into stock. Yippeeeeeee - last week I got a call to say the stock had arrived. Time to play.

I very quickly learnt that there is a little bit of a knack to this gadget. My first attempts didn't end up with beautiful round binding wires but slightly oval shaped, crooked wires. The next big mistake was to start with a wide project that meant I was learning two new things at once. The machine only binds six wires at one time and with a larger project you progressively move the wires along (lining them up oh so carefully.......well lining them up better as you go along!) and bind in sections. Not quite as easy as it looks in the instructions.

Here are my first few attempts. First up a little notebook of recycled paper - tizzied up with lots of ribbon to hide the shonky wire which had a mind of its own.



Next an ideas book - I have made these before and taken them off to be bound with plastic comb binding. The idea came from this blog and I made one for my daughter last year for her to keep track of all her crafting endeavours. I used envelopes for pages, coloured card, thick and thin paper but did not add many inside decorations. The blog I used for my inspiration had beautiful decorations on each page. I did add a few things - I scattered them throughout - to my daughter's book but the latest ones have only got an array of different types of papers for pages. I covered one of the fronts with fabric using fusible webbing and used a piece of double sided scrapbooking paper for the other with a protective plastic layer on top.

Ideas book with fabric cover.

One of the envelope pages.

Plastic protective cover over scrapbooking paper.

My latest experiment was to make another birthday book (Blogged about here). This time I was much more successful with the wire binding and was very happy with the end result. I used my Fiskar's tag punch to label the removable month pages and went with computer printed labels rather than hand lettered. The front cover was again protected with a bit of left over laminate and the back cover was part of a recycled pad backing. The inside pocket pages are cartridge paper and the inserts are index cards.





That is all the play I have had time for but I am thinking about a few other ideas.

Sewing from our Bend The Rules Sewing book

The first pattern to be trialled from our newly purchased Amy Karol book is the little bib. Wow what an easy pattern. I did change the neckline slightly after much umming and erring as I my own baby days are back in the distant past and when I looked at my first attempt the neckline seemed a little small. I just re-drew the front curve a little deeper in the centre and tapered this back towards the original line at the shoulder area and I only mean a little - 0.5 cm is all. I have no little ones near me for a trial fit so I am just a little worried about it being too small around the neck.

When my children were little I made lots of bibs from towelling that I edged with my overlocker and added a ribbed stretch neckline. These were great as they could be thrown into the wash time and time again. They always came out clean and ready to use again. Any really grotty ones could have a good soak first.

What I like about the pattern is the fact that you sew before you cut. This makes it so easy to turn through because your seam allowance becomes very narrow after you have cut it out. I made my pattern out of a piece of card which will make it very durable for tracing around.

Amigurumi Elephant

From Crocheted Flo...

From Crocheted Flo...

Almost finished this first try from one of my new books. The book is called "Mr Funky's Super Crochet Wonderful" and is by Narumi Ogawa. I wasn't quite sure as I was making this but quite like the end result. I still need to add a flower on top and I'm thinking of adding a scarf. I am still not sure if I sewed the trunk on correctly but it will have to stay like that now. I think maybe instead of a flat line the trunk needed to be sewn with the end still rounded - a bit like the bottom legs.

Places to Visit

I worked out how to add a link to Madeit.com.au to our sidebar. I have had a wonderful time looking at all the creative handmade goodies. If you have never visited - it is an Aussie site for selling unique handcrafted items.

Of course Etsy is the other great place to discover all things crafty. I love using the connections tool to find new and interesting creations.

Just recently I have also been spending more than I should on some new craft books. Just can't help it when so many luscious books are shared between blogs. I have used Buy Australian and Fishpond as places to look for titles and have bought from both sites with no troubles. I have some things ordered from Amazon but try to buy from sites closer to home or local bookstores if I can. Just look at the pile that is growing. Just need to rearrange the bookshelf to fit them all on!

Pretty Little Bag

From Avid Crafter'...

I made this bag to give as a present for a friend's birthday. It held lots of little surprises all wrapped up. It is made of felt and the heart is just fabric from Mum's stash. It was from an Usborne craft book about fairies with all sorts of stuff to cut and sew. It was fairly simple. I machine sewed the heart on and the rest was blanket stitched.

Another Amigurumi and some Papercraft

Yes I have definitely become a collector of these patterns. I needed a ladybird for a gratitude gift I was putting together and so off I wandered to the land of Etsy and found just what I wanted at Lis Tan-Chaong's shop - Simple Arts Planet. The pattern is called ClawlieBuggie, The Lucky Ladybird. I ordered the pattern and it was in my e-mail inbox before I could blink. How's that for service. Later that night there was one completed ladybird and one half done. Both have since been added to the Gratitude Gift and are on their way, with the rest of the parcel, to the lucky recipient (who shall remain nameless at this stage) .

From Crocheted Flo...

My other crafting endeavour, also for the parcel, was a handmade book.

From Assorted Pape...

This little book is the continuation of an idea that started two years ago. As parent help at my daughter's school I was asked to be involved with some crafting sessions. I came up with the book idea as an introduction to mono line calligraphy. Over about 8 weeks the group practiced their calligraphy and produced all the parts to make a birthday book. Each page was a pocket page and an index card slipped inside to record birth dates for each month. Having them on index cards meant that they could remove a card and put on the fridge. Their books looked like this:

I didn't want plastic comb binding on the one I have just made and so the whole idea was to explore a different method of binding. I added a hinge to the pocket pages and then used thread to join all these together. By doing this the pages turned very freely. I was quite pleased with the end result but am still trying to think of some other ways to bind my book. Here is one last picture showing the inside of the book.

From Assorted Pape...

I had fun with the Gocco stamp I talked about in another post and hand lettered the months and then stuck these on over some gold paint. My daughter's DYMO label maker came in handy for the smaller month names on the index cards. I used clear plastic tape in the machine.