Nothing like a baby on the way to make you sew faster!

Earlier this year we had family news of a baby on the way, my cousin was to become a dad in early Oct. Great I thought that's months away and I had plenty time to make a gift. Since we knew that it was to be a baby girl I could even pick the colour of the fabrics.

Well as the saying goes "doesn't time fly when you're enjoying  yourself"  couldn't have been more true.I had just realised it was September  and I didn't have much time left so I needed to spring into action.

My first thought was a cot or pram quilt, it was a compact size, it could be personalised and light enough to post (it was going to Italy). But of course I don't like making life easy for myself so I decided to alternate each patterned square with a square of embroidered fabric. So I hunted the craft cupboard for some fun baby motifs and to make it even more difficult I wanted one of the panels to be in Italian.

Well eventually patterns were found, fabric pressed and a square was embroidered each evening .(I managed to multi task by catching up on the TV, drinking red wine, chatting on the phone and sewing!!!)
It took a just over a week to  complete  the embroidery work and then over the weekend the quilt was sewn by hand, binding cut and pressed, pure cotton wadding purchased and the complete project assembled and then embroidered to bind the layers. It was even  finished off with some of the new labels I have made.

Luckily it was all completed in time as baby arrived this morning !!!!!.

Now I just need to post

A girl can never have too much glitter or vintage trinkets

I was actually thinking of naming this blog "They have mince pies in the supermarket already!!!".  I was out shopping the other day and they were clearing away all the school sale items (we go back to school in early August here in Scotland), and they were replacing them not with Halloween Items but with Christmas Biscuits and Mince Pies, it is only September!!!!!, I'll be hearing Christmas Carols in the shops soon.

Anyway it got me thinking about starting the Christmas Projects for this year and since I have a few ideas for projects already in my note book Idecided I needed to get a move on. I have also signed up to do a course at the School of Art next to where I work which will take up a fair bit of my spare time. I am really looking forward to it as it is a printing course for textiles for Fashion and Interiors, and I will keep you updated on how I am getting on and hopefully turn some of my designs in projects.

So back to the Christmas projects, I was out at a vintage fair a couple of weeks ago and have collected a load of vintage Christmas Cards and a few little trinkets to use in projects and was wondering on the best way to display them and came up with the idea of using old jars.

As you can see below I have used a kilner jar for this project. I have popped a  card inside the jar and added some glitter. Once the lid was locked. The jar was shaken up to disperse the glitter.

Round the neck of the jar I added a vintage ribbon and had threaded through it a 1920's dress clip. The ribbon was then tied around the neck of the jar.

A collection of these jars in different sizes look great grouped togethe, if you don't have vintage Christmas Cards you can use postcards in a vintage style like the one I have used in the picture below or use a Family photos. Since you can't put tea lights in the jars, I normally sit a tea lights behind the glass to give a fab glow .

Easy and quick to make

I think I was a bag lady in a former life !!

After last weeks creation with the tea towel, my bag adventures continued.

Over the last couple of weeks I began to think that maybe at some point in my life I had become obsessed with carrying my life around in bags, hence the need to make so many of them. I always seem to carry around at least 2 when out and about on my travels, one of which is full of books and magazines.

So after finishing last weeks blog update I started on making a book bag for my frequent library visits (always on the look out for new craft books) and I ended up making 4 bags in total. So now I know what I will be making everyone for Christmas.

Once I started on making the bags I was on a roll and again this is a really easy project using just 2 rectangles of main fabric for the bag and 2 rectangles for the lining and a couple of strips for the handles. After sewing up the bag  and the lining and then popping the lining inside that bag hemming the top and making and adding the handles it took less than an hour.

Though I have to say in my enthusiasm with the sewing machine there was an incident with a flying snapped needle , luckily I was wearing glasses otherwise I would have been making a decorative eye patch !!

Anyway you can see my creations below. The chintzy fabric now resides with my mum as it's more her style

The Cath Kidston fabric bag is ideal for my shopping

The little bag is made from a Rob Ryan print fabric from the fantastic clothkits company, where all the patterns come ready printed onto the fabric so are fantastic for the beginner and you can find them at

www.clothkits.co.uk

I even managed to use the piece of embroidery a did a few weeks and turn that into a bag to carry around my projects. A piece of natural linen was turned into a square bag with a drawstring and then the embroidery was hand stitched on.

Now look out for my next blog trick a special baby's pram quilt that required a quick finish!!!

50 things to do with a Tea Towel before you die !

Well the one thing a tea towel really doesn't gets used for in this house is drying dishes, I no longer have a dishwasher so I now go for the air drying method much better in my opinion and less work for me so more time for crafts.

So what has that got to do with crafts and sewing you may ask, well this is the strange way my brain works. I was having a sort out of the kitchen cupboard and came across a pile of tea towels that had never been used, but I must have liked the fabric as its not exactly the sort of thing I find myself out window shopping for on a Saturday afternoon.

Anyway I wondered what else I could do with these tea towel's and that's when the idea popped into my head, I have taken to carrying around a little fold away bag in my handbag for when I go shopping, I keep telling myself its about being environmentally friendly but it's more likely to do with getting older. Its then that I realised that these tea towels were ideal for turning into shopping bags, strong fabric and already hemmed, a few snips with the scissors and a few folds and a quick stitch and magic an ever lasting shopping bag.

This one has also got a pocket on the front.

Graduation?, the students are so young these days!!

Well it has been a busy couple of weeks on the travelling front, so I have not been so active as I wish on the craft front but the projects I have worked on have been so different.

As you may know if you read my last blog update, I had a morning of eating fruit cake and thinking up christmas projects, that was temporarily halted by a call from a great friend asking if I had anything in my craft supplies that could be made into a graduation gown and cap. Her daughter was graduating from nursery and the children were graduating the following week and since I was visiting the following this was good timing. Well I do like a challenge and since I work at a University I am not exactly short of inspiration.

Since I don't have any patterns for this short of thing I quickly sketched up a design and then made it up on the spot using some black satin that I had in my box and a used pink for the sash on the back of the gown. 1hr later and we had a gown.

The cap was a different matter, a temporary one out of cardboard would have been easy but this cap had to travel on a plane with me the following weekend so it had to be a lot more durable. So the thinking cap came back on and I used an oil painting board (oil painting is not a craft I am any good at!)  and covered it with some of the black satin and since this was for a little girl we had no ordinary tassle but one made from pink ribbon and crystals.

So off I travelled with the cap and gown last weekend, a quick measurement fitting to make sure it was the correct head size and the whole out fit looked fab.

Watch out for my next project,  what I did with a tea towel !!!

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 :-))