Some things aren't perfect - a bit of French knitting whimsy

Little Imp was given a french knitter for Christmas. Not the sort I remember having as a kid, this one was big and plasticy, with twirling spools and other attachments.
Little Imp struggled with it all until we worked out that if she just used her hands instead of all the attachments she could knit all by herself. Just like kids did in the 'old days' (ha!).

I helped a bit, but after a bit of perseverance she had a tube we could turn into a cat - just like the one pictured on the cover of the box the knitter came in (well kind of!).

No instructions in the box for how to make said cat, but we muddled our way through, collecting all our ingredients from the craft box - pipe cleaners, felt triangles for ears, goggly eyes, stuffing and glue.

We stuffed the tube..

We tied off the top third to create the neck between the head and body...

We poked a (pink) pipe cleaner through the stuffing to create the upper legs/arms, and threaded a (blue) pipe cleaner through the base for the lower legs. I folded over a small section on all of the pipe cleaner ends to get rid of the sharp pointy bit. The blue legs we made quite a bit longer to help the cat sit up and balance (see pic further below).

Short sparkly pipe cleaners were threaded through on the face & twisted over and around each other for whiskers and the felt triangles were pinched in a bit to create an ear shaped curve and positioned with a liberal amount of glue.

The green pipe cleaner was twirled around a pencil for curly whirly-ness and looped in near the bottom to create a tail.

A stray green pom pom was located by Little Imp during my tail attaching and proclaimed to be required as a belly button (because all cats have to have belly buttons apparently).
Two googly eyes were glued in place where they belong...,

And the third eye you may have noticed in the 'ingredients' pile at the beginning? Well, apparently some cats also have an eye on the end of their tails!

Hello Whimsy Cat;)

Christmas Cards with paper bunting

I found these photographs today & have realised I never uploaded them - from 2013's Christmas. Some Paper Bunting Christmas cards I made all that time ago.  Quite a lot of work, but they do look good at the end of it all.

White A5 card folded in half with a Christmas print taped onto the front half. THe first ones I did like the photo below - the Christmas paper covering the whole front of the card with about a 1-2cm overhang onto the back over the folded edge - looks a bit more finished). I think the cards looked better though leaving a small border of white card showing all the way around (see below).

Then cut out an assortment of small 'bunting' triangles from coordinating Christmas printed papers, thread a needle with gold thread, tie a knot in one end ...

... and sew them all together, leaving gaps between each one to string them out across the card, allowing a bit of slack so it looks a bit more like they might be hanging up.

Tie off the other end of the thread too and then use double sided tape to stick the triangles at each end down (and in doing so hide the knots).

Stamp out some sort of Christmassy word (like 'Christmas' for instance!!)...

...and stick that on the front too. (The card below shows the design I prefer; where I left a small white border showing all the way around)

Add a little something to the back of the card for fun - here a small punched out tree and a left over triangle. All Done.

Photo memory quilt

The lack of blogging does not mean there has been no action in the Button Room. Quite the opposite in fact. 

One of the key projects to finish in time for Christmas was another quilt commission, this time by a school friend for her young daughter who is due to head to boarding school next year. A very different quilt from those I have made before, she sent me a picture of a quilt she liked and a range of fabric she had selected.  

What makes this quilt extra special are the photographs printed onto fabric and incorporated into the quilt.

Here's the finished quilt front:

 And a beautiful Kaffe Fassett 'Dahlia Blooms' print looks fantastic on the back.

But best of all, I have word that the recipient is pretty pleased with the finished product.

Many a way to use a Suffolk Puff

Christmas crackers

I'm excited for Christmas this year. Preparations for feasts and advent and gifts are already underway in my little world.

One feast I am very excited about is to be hosted at our house, with all the Hootchie Ladies (my bestest uni girlfriends) and families coming to celebrate.

One of the other crafty hootchies and I have been at work making Christmas crackers. Here is a little of how it went down.

We gathered supplies - Christmas paper napkins (good for easy tearing therefore good for a good cracker rip), snaps, toilet rolls, raffia for tying, card and prettyness for decorating.

We wrote the jokes, super BAD cracker jokes - you can see how much fun this part was:)

Now, see those naughty little Christmas elves in the picture above. They were created last year and got up to mischief every morning of advent. Well they seemed to have got wind of Christmas preparations and made an appearance...and made us drink some wine...

So, we wrote the jokes, we found/made some trinkets (not showing you those pictures - it's a secret!), and we compiled the crackers. Lots of crackers.

We think they look good.

a monster and a wand

Beware those beady eyes....

and those chomping teeth...

IT'S A MONSTER.  

RUN AWAY!!

Or you could get out your wand if that is more your style.

  

Fun appliques.

Montessori fabric matching job

I was a bit worried when I saw the email subject line 'Term job' from Little Imp's teacher earlier this term. Was I about to be asked to make another 36 fiddly little drawstring bags?
I'm happy to make more bags down the track, but this term there are just too many Christmas crafts that are needing finishing (or starting for that matter!).

The request was not for bags thank goodness, but instead to renew the classroom 'fabric matching job'.

This is a 'sensorial' job completed by the younger children, essentially there are 2 piles of different types of fabrics and they need to use their sense of touch alone to match the fabrics with their eyes masked.

I managed to get a pile of assorted fabrics from a craftsy work colleague to add to some I had at home & this is what eventuated - a lovely pile of varied textures.

A quick 'how to':
The finished size of my fabric squares is roughly 4 1/2".
I started with rectangles of most fabrics 5" x 10".

Fold in half, right sides together and pin together if needed.

Then straight stitch around all four edges (even where the fold crease is) with a good 1/4" allowance & making sure to leave a opening (approx 1") to turn right side out. Once stitched, trim fabric from around the corners & then turn right side out. Poke out the corners & finger press the seams before pressing with an iron to flatten (make sure the fabric can withstand the ironing temperature you choose!)

Then top stitch all the way around with matching thread to finish each square.

Some of the fabric types required a bit of a variation from the above method.

For the fur I decided to make the fabric square single sided, so I just cut 2 squares each 4 1/4" and then backed these with a slightly smaller piece of felt,sewn around the borders twice. This worked well to stop the fur stretching and moulting & will also hopefully mean they last a bit longer with all the handling of little fingers.

The hessian I had was a very large weave, so quite tricky to work with without it unravelling. I used a zigzag stitch to edge the hessian before then folding in half, straight stitching/turning inside out etc.
To reinforce the edges & the overall square I went around the edges twice with a zigzag instead of straight stitch, and also did the same in the middle as seen below.

The square sequined fabric worked best by cutting to the finished size & then straight stitching twice around the edges with wrong sides together (i.e. no turning right side out at the end).

Here is Little Imp testing the final product before we drop off to school this week (the lowered hat is our make-shift blindfold!).