Organising heaven

Part of our extension has been to build another room at the side of our house.  The name of this room has gradually morphed from being the 'utility room' on the plans to the 'activity room' at the start of the build, the 'craft room' as the building took shape to now being known as 'My room'.  The last few days I have finally had a chance to begin to sort through my accumulated crafting goodies and begin to settle in.

                             

There are some of us in this world who enjoy the time spent arranging and organising our crafty world as much as crafting itself. I am definitely one of those.  Immersion in all the bits and pieces that can fit together to make something new is wonderful in itself.  Feeling the soft, slippery and grainy fabric textures, arranging the cotton spools and embroidery threads in their kaleidoscope of colours in boxes, letting buttons pour through my fingers, flicking through piles of patterned cards and papers, opening an assorted box of beautiful ribbons and beads.  Oh the joy!  Ideas for new creations and craftiness flitted through my mind at times, but for the most part I was just content this afternoon pottering and enjoying the moment.  Even Little Imp seemed to understand this contentment and pleasure when she woke from her afternoon nap and joined me.  She spent well over an hour happily engrossed in a bag of coloured pom poms. 

                 

A little table

I think I could class this as an up-cycle project of sorts.  I do love trawling through second hand sites like Gumtree, and now even more so as I have a real reason to be looking for quirky pieces of furniture that can add to the character of our home and the new extension.

 I need a bed side table that will fit in the small space left on my side of the bed as well as a small coffee table that will take my morning cup of coffee when I lie back and relax on our new sofa (when that arrives...and when I get time to relax!).  The little table I picked up the other week could actually work in either space, but it needed a little work first.

A few coats of laquer to the legs and the flaking chipboard base helped straight away.

It came with some plain white tiles in the top, a little boring for me.  These patterned orange ones are far more exciting, even a bit 'Moorish'(!), and I do like tiling and grouting.  So a little bit of tile cutting, liquid nails and grout and the job was done. Now just to decide where it will live...

A long time between posts...

Time for hand craft has been limited lately.  Having an extension built, doing some renovating ourselves and working almost full time in the last few months doesn't leave much time for anything else.  But we are almost there.  Weeks of reheated dinners eaten on our laps in our bedroom, the only real safe haven from the dust are behind us and it is has definitely all been worth it.  Not only do we have a larger, light filled living area, but I now have a room just for all my craftiness!  I'll share that another time, but going back a few months now before the renovating began in earnest and we still had a couch to sit on I made my brother's little one a felt gift.

The inspiration for this came from two sources. One - my brother who is an amazing artist and drew a tree titled 'Grow' while waiting for his baby to arrive, and two - a book of Softies a hootchie gave me that had a tree softie (as well as a poo softie!).  This is my version for my little niece.

The Basic Gist

2 bits of orange felt for the tree top, with cut out felt circles/swirls, bird and heart hand sewn on with embroidery floss (given felt doesn't have a 'wrong' and 'right' side, beware the rookie mistake of sewing these embellishments onto both 'front' sides of the tree - doesn't work when you go to sew the pieces together!! A few 'bugger, bugger bugger's may have been muttered). Once you have added the swirls etc, machine sew the tree tops wrong sides together with blanket stitch, leaving a gap for squishing in some stuffing.

Cut out the felt tree trunk with the base of the trunk on the fold. Hand embroider a face on one side. Fold right sides together and stitch each side seam. Turn right side out and stuff.Insert the trunk into the tree top, adding a bit more stuffing if you need to and then complete the blanket stitches by hand to attach the tree top to trunk.