Any excuse for a slice of Christmas Cake!!

Technically it was fruit cake, but it did have marzipan and icing on the top so in my book that's christmas cake. What is she waffling on about you ask yourself, well I had a rare day off today and decided to go and find a new teashop to frequent while I planned out some of my next projects and the selection of items I will be putting on my Folksy and Etsy shops.

Found a great little place tucked away up a side street which is both a vintage tea shop and a clothes shop, all the tea is served on vintage china so I treated myself to moroccan mint tea which comes served with turkish delight!! and while gazing at the cupcakes thats when I spotted the christmas cake so thought why not it my help my insirpation for Christmas Projects !!!Well that was my excuse anyway

It may seem a long way off but I  now have some great ideas for vintage inspired christmas decorations which will appear on the blog in the next few months.

Last year I made quilts for everyone at Christmas but never kept one for myself so found some great fun christmas material to make myself one

The photo below was taken from the first snow fall of last year when we rushed out to make a snow man before it disppeared , little did we know that the snow would turn out to stay for for next 3 months!!.

So our snowman will feature on christmas cards this year and it may even get printed onto fabric!!

The Celtic Connection

Its been a bit of a busy week so the crafting has been a bit slower this weekend, but it has given me a chance to finish off one of my many projects that I seem to have on the go at the moment, I have a great collection of celtic embroidery patterns and over the years have made a collection of cushions based on these designs which are now out and about in the UK somewhere.

My last couple of projects have turned into birthday cards and a framed picture but I am now wondering what to do with this piece as I really don't have need for cushions. A thought has been to have this as a centre peice for quilt but any suggestions would be welcome.  The fabric is cotton and approx 25cm x 25 cm.

Well off to add silver buttons to a plain black shirt to give it a new look :-))

A stitch a day

Just in case you are wondering I am not getting through a project a day, it's just a month of catch up on the projects I have done.

Embroidery is a one of my favourite crafts and always hand stitched not machine done though one of my challeges this year is to learn free style machine stitching. I think my to do list is just getting longer and longer!!!!

I always have half a dozen projects on the go at any one time as they can be really quick to finish and I love contemporary designs, they can then framed our added to other craft projects. I am happy to draw my own designs onto fabric but really love trying out other peoples and a  favourite of mine is the collection of Iron on embroidery transfers from Lazy May, they are cute and contemporary, easy to iron on and the website is great

http://www.lazymay.co.uk/

Just finished this project which will be turned into the front of a bag I am working on this weekend



What to do with a long fat quarter!!!

I bet you are now wondering what the hell I am going on about!!!, well if if you are a crafty person and have ever bought fabrics from a patchwork/fabric shop you quite often buy them in fat quarters. This is basically a metre length of fabric folded over and cut to make 4 equal squares of fabric approx 50cm x 60 cm depending on the width of the fabric. Now a long fab quarter is just 25cm x the full width of the fabric. (hopefully that makes sense).

Most of my patchworks use fat quarters to allow for the square or pattern size but on the odd occasion I seem to acquire a long fat quarter which is great for small projects in this case I decided to find an alternative use and made up a couple of holders for plastic carrier bags (which seem to multiply in this household).

The fabric was from the Amy Butler collection http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/products/ which can be bought from many fabric stores and in my case from john lewis.

Anyway I got 2 of the holders from each fat quarter with the aid of a metre of elastic and it took me 15 minutes to make each pair.

I will start putting together some "how to guide's " up if anyone wants one.

So an easy one to do if you fancy using up a bit of fabric !

And for my next trick embroidery:-)))

The weekend frenzy

Well I set myself the challenge of trying different craft projects and in my weekend frenzy I managed to complete a couple of them.

I think the comment I made on my Facebook Page was

Arts Sunday :- banana bread baked, apricot and plum compote made, chicken in to roast, embroidery for baby quilt finished, fabric cut for bags, designs for t shirts finished, photos for blog done and fabric for next project sorted and ironed. I think ready for a glass of red wine with an episode of downton abbey:-)))

In between all that I made some brooches, I have a box full of bits of ribbon and buttons which I have come from god knows where, I somethings think they multipy on their own in the box. So I decided to see what I could use them for and heres what I made.

They can be added to a jacket, a bag or even used as decoration on a present.

The Gap month and some old favourites

It's while since my last post but I have not been lagging behind in the crafty creations, in fact this weekend was a real burst of energy helped along with several cups of coffee and slices of banana loaf  which was also made in the weekend frenzy (the recipe is in the Hummingbird Bakery Cook Book which I would highly recommend).

Now I cannot claim to have made this in the last month, in fact it was created sometime ago but has been a favourite of mine and not difficult to make.

This project became known as the boudior eiderdown and used up some of my favourite peices of silk and velvet left over from other projects. They were cut in 20cm Squares and then handstitched together (you can just as easily machine stitch). The borders in contrasting satin were added and the vintage pink and silver ribbon was added as edging though not sure you can see that in the photos. It was all hand stitched only because I find it relaxing.

For the backing I used plain cream cotton, and for the wadding I used a 4.5tog duck down Duvet. The whole eiderdown was bound together by using small fabric rosebuds in the corners or the squares and stitiching all the way through all the layers.

It looks great in a vintage style bedroom but any combination can be pulled together to suit your home style.