The Softie Elephant King

It was a little busy in the lead up to heading to Tasmania last year, but I did get some time in the evenings to have a go making another critter from the Softies book I was given a while back.  'George the Elephant King' was my pick.  I do like making things on a small scale, so I decided not to enlarge the pattern, essentially making George half the recommended size (about 20cm high).

This was my favourite Softie in the book and I was more than happy with how the elephants turned out.  However, regardless of whether my elephants were made with green swirls & spots, or out-and-out floral fabric, it seems that I  instead created Georgina the Elephant Queen...
...or could that be George the Elephant King Queen (!)

I've made a whole herd now, if 7 elephants constitute a herd that is.  Some even with bells in their belly for jingle shaking kiddie fun.  Birthday gifts for little ones in 2012 me thinks.

The Overland Track, Tasmania

Christmas is not my only excuse for not posting recently, we have been away hiking the Overland Track in Tassie.  6 nights and 7 days of hiking the Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair region, camping in gorgeous locations each evening and wondering at incredible and ever changing scenery each day.  Plenty of wildlife - wombats, pademelons, wallabies, echidna, a HUGE possum attempting to enter our tent and not just one but about 6 platypus!

Amazing weather (aside from rain on the last night, which we paid for by having set up camp in what turned out to be a very large puddle by morning).  Yummy home made gourmet dehydrated dinners and our favourite end-of-day snack: popcorn with plenty of salt cooked on the trangia.

The only downside to the whole trip was getting back to Perth to have the awful pain I had been experiencing in my feet on the last day of walking being diagnosed as stress fractures of my heel bones.  At least I've felt justified in how much I'd been hobbling since finishing the hike, not even able to limp given it is both heels!  'Keep off your feet as much as possible' is what I am meant to be doing.  Ha!  Washing all the stinky hiking gear, hosting of Christmas gatherings, a 20 month old who is increasingly mobile and an ingrained need to always be doing something.  It hasn't been easy, but still worth it!

'Toot Toot'

Another up-cycle project, this time with a couple of magnetic pull along wooden toy trains I picked up at a baby market.
Each train carriage has grooves that must have once held something that you could slip in and out, but this wasn't part of the purchase so I decided to make my own.  This was the result.  A perfect stocking filler for the Little Imp!

Part of this project was playing around with my sewing machine and some free motion embroidery.  I had a go using this to attach the felt letters to the fabric backgrounds and although I have a way to go until I am happy to embroider something a bit more special, I was surprised that it wasn't as hard to do as I expected.

Although I have made these little fabric letter cards to fit into the train carriages, they would also be great for kids for lots of other things - attach magnets for sticking on the fridge, adapt as a memory game or shape recognition with different felt symbols....

Basic 'How To' 

Cut out cardboard, background fabric and felt letters

1. Measure and cut pieces of firm cardboard (e.g. from a box) to the size you want
2. Measure and cut your background fabric  (here from blue & orange spotted patterns) - it needs to be double the length of the card with approx 1-2cm seam allowance all around 
3. Cut out letters (or shapes/ symbols) from felt to fit the card
4. Sew the felt letter onto the bottom half of the background fabric, positioning it to allow for bottom and side seams in the next step. This is where I played around with free motion embroidery, but you could  do this with a standard machine stitch or by hand)
5. Fold each piece of background fabric in half, wrong sides together.  Using the cut cardboard pieces as a guide, mark the position for the side seams leaving a few extra millimeters on each side.  Then machine straight stitch up each side along these marks.  
6. Trim side seams and turn right side out
7. Slip cardboard piece into fabric pocket that you have created
8. Slip stitch the bottom seam closed

Pieces from left to right demonstrating steps 4 - 8 

  

Fabric covered ideas book

 I'm a visual person.  I like making lists and planning things.  Sometimes I write these down, but more often than not I loose the scrap I've written on. This doesn't help with falling asleep at night, attempting to recall lists and plans somewhere from within my whirring brain.

On a recent op shop expedition for photo frames for Little Imp's room (I'll post about that project some time soon), I came across an unused notebook for 50c that I realised could do the trick.  A new cover to make it mine and I would have a place to jot and store my thoughts and ideas.

I'd had one of the Japanese-y pieces of fabric I bought a while back earmarked for a book cover of some description and a strip of thick linen from an upholstery swatch (also from an op shop) worked perfectly as a coordinating feature.   A very easy project indeed.

Here's how it turned out.

               

  

Basic 'How To'

• Use a hard covered bound book for this project.  To work out how much fabric you need, open the book flat on the fabric and mark leaving an additional 5cm all the way around (to fold over and secure on the inside).  If the fabric has a design you want placed in a particular area on the cover take this into account (e.g. I wanted at least 2 full birds showing).
• Cut the fabric to size using scissors or a quilting cutter.
• Cut a coordinating/ contrasting strip to use as a feature on the front cover.  I used a teal upholstery linen that I frayed by pulling out a few threads along each long edge.
• Work out where you want the coordinting strip placed and pin to secure it to the main fabric.
• Machine stitch the strip to the main fabric using a small straight stitch in your choice of coloured thread along each edge.  I also used my machine to stitch 'OneLittleImp' along the strip for fun.
• Then reposition the open book on the wrong side of the fabric.  Use PVA glue along the inside side edges of the front and back covers and stick the fabric down, pulling it taught across the book and spine as you do so.  Do not use glue on the outside of the covers as it will show through the fabric and ruin the finish.
• Before you glue down the top and bottom edges snip the fabric on either side of the spine to allow the fabric to sit flat when you fold it over.  
• Take care when folding over each of the corners to ensure you get a nice neat point. 
• Use the flat blade of your scissors and a bit of extra glue to poke the thin pieces of fabric left at the top and bottom of the spine into the gap between the book cover and binding.
• Measure and cut 2 pieces of card to stick over the fabric edges on the inside covers at the front and back of your book.
• If you want to add some ribbons as page markers, cut these at approx 1.5 times the length of the book and secure them in place under the card on the front inside cover.

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.