Nesting?!

Not sure I believe in the 'nesting' theory of expectant mothers.  The closest I came to 'nesting' before Little Imp was born was starting to make a lamp shade and light shade for her room. The lampshade I managed to finish before her birth, the light shade only had its final touches done just before her first birthday. So much for nesting!

I've always liked little creatures, and ladybugs and bees seemed easy enough to make out of felt, so that's where I began. Lots of fiddly snipping of felt and plenty of hand stitching later the bugs and bees were all in place on the calico I had cut to size to fit the shades.  The lamp was easy to finish off - just glued the calico and then lengths of red ribbons onto the shade.  The overhead light shade was a bit trickier, needing some sewing and trimming to get a neat fit, and I really struggled to find the right shade of red tassle trim that I was after.  So that is my excuse for the bare light bulb in Little Imp's room that has probably blinded her with each nappy change until I finally finished the shade a few months ago.

Pretty... Cute.

I wanted to make a card with cut out birds on it.  My initial idea was to have 3 different paper patterned birds sitting on a 'wire' fashioned from silver thread.  I cut out the birds which looked great standing alone, but just couldn't get a grouping I was happy with overall. Then, flicking through my pretty card stash I found this piece of green patterned card with what could be blue branches and a glittery white flower.  With the word 'Pretty' stuck on the outside and 'Cute' on the inside, just right to sit beside a crepe paper flower on the latest baby gift. Pretty Cute.

A Stormy night, more Cards and a Baby

It was a dark and stormy night my friends, but the desire to craft overcame the fear & I braved the howling gale, the lashing rain & the flooded intersections to drive towards the Northern Lights and meet two of the girls, one looking full to bursting with an ever growing baby belly.
As much fun as we had, it didn't feel quite the same with one of the gang having moved down towards the Southern Lights to be with her boy, but those of us remaining did our best to create.

Sitting around the table we joked that we may end up being helpers in the birth of the baby hootchie-ette due the very next day, and little did we know how close that was to being fulfilled.  Not much more than 15 minutes after we left contractions began and now there is another little being for which to make little clothes and toys and cards!

We all scream for ice cream

Another 3 Suffolk Puffs get put to good use atop an ice cream cone....

Basic Tutorial:

• Draw a cone shaped triangle on your 'heat-and-bond' or similar iron on adhesive product & cut out.  Iron this triangle onto the fabric you've chosen as the cone.  I had some stripy orange-ish fabric that worked well for my waffle cone. Then cut out the 'heat-and-bond' backed fabric triangle.
• Using a water soluble fabric pen, rule lines parallel to the long edge of each side of the triangle.  These will form the guiding 'waffle' lines to sew along on the cone.
• Next sew 3 Suffolk puffs out of plain coloured fabrics - these will become the scoops of ice cream.

• Iron the cone in place onto the garment you've chosen to use (I've used a baby grow).
• Using a short length (2.0) straight stitch sew around the edge of the ironed on cone & then along each of the ruled lines to create a waffle pattern ( I later ended up using a close zigzag stitch around the border of the cone to help it stand out once the Suffolk puffs were stitched in place- you can see this in the finished ice cream cone at the top of this entry).

• Pin the Suffolk puffs in place overlapping each other and the cone & then hand stitch each one using matching thread.
• Almost good enough to devour!

An even easier crinkly crunchy tag toy

Not necessarily the most difficult part of making a tag toy, but adding a bit more time & fiddliness, is having to turn it right side out after sewing the tags in place (see my blog entry of May 24, 2011).  How could I make this toy even easier to make?  By using a fabric that doesn't fray of course - maybe felt or fleece.

Fleece feels a bit softer to touch and I had some perfect sized scraps of a multicoloured polka dot fleece left over from a blanket mum & I made for Little Imp last year that I thought might just do the trick.

Basic Tutorial:

• cut 2x approx 7inch squares of a fleece fabric
• cut a 4 inch cello square

• place cello in the centre on the wrong side of one fleece square and pin in place (insert pin from  right side of fabric so that you can remove it later) 
• If you want to add a label then sew that in place now onto one of the fleece squares
• match fleece squares wrong sides together (so the cello ends up sandwiched in between) and insert a few pins about 1-2 inches from the edges (this helps to keep the pieces matched while you insert the ribbons)

• cut out your various pieces of ribbon, some long (to double over twice) and others shorter.  Use different widths, textures & colours to add to the sensory input the toy provides.  I decided to also use some matching scraps of fleece to make tags 

• Then double or double over twice each piece of ribbon, tuck it between the fleece squares and pin in place.  Be generous with the pins and even more importantly, make sure you are generous with the amount of ribbon caught between the fleece so that it is well stitched in place when you sew the squares together

• Using a straight stitch, machine stitch the fabric squares together about 0.5 cm from the edge,  removing pins as you go & ensuring you catch all the ribbons

• Then sew a second time around about 1cm from the edge, parallel to the first stitched border to really make sure the ribbons don't come loose

• Sew a small '+' in the centre of the toy to secure the cello (approx 3cmx3cm).  You could use a decorative stitch if you like.  
• Trim the threads, remove the pins (of course), and you are done.

No decent shots of the finished product I'm afraid, just a snap of them as part of the gift bundles for some girls at work.

Alphabet stamps ..... I Like!

Another night of crafting during some Hootchie Hang Time with the girls and after some dinner & bottling of farm grown pears we got down to it.

Ergonomics Bollocks was up to her usual tricks with her power tools and this time (believe it or not) pieces of sticky tape, to build multi-hinged little glass door cabinets to hold all of her beautiful hand made ear rings.
That left Happy & I at the table cutting and sticking and punching and stamping cards.  And that was where the 'I Want' comes into it.  I'd fallen in love with the cute stamped greeting in the card Happy gave me for my birthday a few months ago, but after having the chance to use her alphabet stamps myself I really fell in love with them.  Little wooden blocks, edged with mini rubber letters in a little corrugated cardboard box.  I like!

So I stamped the 'thank you' cards I'd made.
I like!  (if I do say so myself)

Organised...Disaster

 I've been needing some new ribbon for a while, for embellishing cards, making some more taggy baby toys and no doubt many other projects I am yet to think of.  Scouting around Spotlight I chanced upon a whole 3 racks of  clearance ribbons by the spool, only 70c each, so I stocked up.

Looking at the state of my current messy ball of existing ribbons, and with my need for order I decided to fashion a ribbon box to keep these ribbon spools mess free.  I'd seen something along these lines a while back in a craft magazine, but that was much fancier than what I had in mind.  A cardboard takeaway box that I'd been keeping for goodness knows what was finally put to use.  3mm wide spools along one side, 10mm spool along the other and holes made to thread the ribbon through.  A bit of prettiness stuck to the top of the box and hey presto, ribbon box complete!

                            

    

 

..... And then....

.... Disaster Struck.... 

Disaster in the name of Little Imp.  

My fault really, leaving the box within reach, but oh what a tangled mess!

Basic 'How To':

• Find a box that snugly fits all the spools of ribbon you have either in one row or two
• Using a sharp implement poke/cut holes enough to match the number of spools in the box 
• Then poke through the ribbon from the end of spool and place the spools side by side in the box 
• This will leave you with a small piece of each ribbon sticking out each hole ready to unravel without tangle

ps. if you too have a Little Imp you might want to work out a way of securing the lid of your box better than I did first time around!