Flowers for Friday

Just a quick post - Friday has come quickly this week!

Here are a few photos I took recently of a flower in the backyard. I have cropped the original shots to get these images.



I loved the rows of water droplets on one of the petals and so cropped the image very heavily to get this picture.

Just liked the fuzzy bud waiting to burst open with luscious golden yellow!

The sun was shining through the jonquils and so I thought a back shot would be interesting.

Hopefully at the weekend I will get another page designed for my little felt book and maybe make a few bibs for the onslaught of babies arriving later in the year!

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.

Dreaded Winter Ills have hit!

Not a lot of crafting happening. I have been sick for a couple of weeks with a virus that just does not want to let go. It started of as a head cold but has now migrated to my chest - tight chest and dry, nasty cough that is keeping me awake most nights. Hopefully it will go away soon.

I did finish a little pram blanket which is put away for a new arrival expected in the extended family later in the year. I knitted the squares and then crocheted these together using a technique from the No Pattern Knits book I bought last year. Last of all I added a crocheted border - picot edge. It is a small blanket that I thought might useful for travelling or pram rides.



I have been very interested in Mel's sewing kit swap for kids that she has organised recently. Makes me wish my DD was just a little bit younger - wistfully thinking about how none of this wonderful blogland stuff was discovered until my kids were older.

I used the patterns and ideas from this book with my children when they were younger. They both ended up with a little collection of felt objects that they had very proudly stitched themselves. I struggled a little with the rhyming text but found the techniques to be very good.

Will stop now as the coughing is getting worse again.

Online Selling Adventures

Wow - we have had our first customer at our madeit shop!! Avid Crafter's ladybug pincushion has found a home along with one of Crafty Thing's cards.

Avid Crafter has made a second ladybug pincushion and we have just finished listing this in the shop. This ladybug only has two dots and a red bead at the end of her cord legs.



Crafty Things is busy trying to get some more Helping Hands created. Two more were sewn this week and given away before pictures could be taken to say thanks to some lovely ladies who helped out. Two more have been sewn and will be listed in the shop soon. These ones will be listed as a pair.



Some more crocheted flowers have been made and some new dyes were purchased at the recent Craft Fair. I experimented with some more colours and had lots of fun. The flowers are now just waiting to be added to some cards or maybe a bag.

We have had some frosty mornings lately and inspired by some photos on Gina's blog, Gingerbread, I took a photo of the frost on my car's windscreen. What do you think?

Do you want the good news, or the bad news?

Well, you'll get both. The good news first.

I am the very lucky winner of a giveaway over at The Felt Mouse. Thanks to her generosity, I'm going to receive one of these lovelies in my mailbox. It's so exciting! The first blogland giveaway I've won. Thanks soo much!!

Now, the bad news.

The computer is refusing to access the internet. Again. So I'm typing this on the clunky old laptop. Again. This time everything is worse! Nothing that we've tried has made the slightest bit of difference. Where are the good computer-fairies when you need them??

Oh, there's a bit more good news I forgot about.

My Crafty Friend and I made a second project from 'Cute Stuff', the Card Holder. Armed with a new stash of felt scraps (like I needed any more, but it was $2 a bag and there were some great colours I didn't have) we made one each.

Crafty Friend's Card holder in progress.

They resemble an small envelope with the flap tucking into a slot to hold everything inside. They were the perfect size; needed no adjusting at all. We chose different designs to applique and then machine sewed them together. Next time I'd hand sew them as the layers of felt (3 in total in the thickest part) tended to move a lot. Either that or find a walking foot for my sewing machine from somewhere.


Here are the finished Card Holders, front view...


and back.

Mine's the one on the left with the birds, and Crafty Friend's on the right with the girl and cherries. Mine on the back view shows the flap tucked in and her's out since unfortunately the cherries get hidden. We had a disappearing cherry too! One of the small red felt circles vanished and after looking in various places; the floor, underneath the book etc., we couldn't find it. It eventually turned up a couple of days later stuck to the bottom of the chair leg of all places.
They took around an afternoon to make all up. Hopefully they will see quite a bit of use.