A cactus is always a succulent, except for when it's not....

I've had this project in mind since I remembered I had this in the cupboard....

 

Gorgeous olive green chunky corduroy that I bought from a charity shop a few years ago with no real purpose in mind. It was a 'just in case'. The idea was one of those that wakes you up in the night, tempting you to go get the sewing machine out at midnight.

A plan was afoot. I made some rough templates and after learning the hard way to snip the inside of round seams and to refinforce them he was complete!

 

 So here is my newest design- a cactus of the non-prickly kind, in fact he's positively soft!
Next to him are some pincushions I've been working on, I was trying to get a new one made each night but some jewellery making has intervened. 

Just as an aside I've been trying to keep an eye out for some of the designs on packaging while out in the supermarket and how beautiful is this...

 .....makes me want to get baking!

Lists, Christmas and fabrics galore!

I've been selected to have a stall at the Harley Christmas Market, as well as a few local markets I'm doing, so my list making has gone into overdrive to decide what to make! It's also been a great excuse to go fabric shopping, so off I went. I'm making a quilt, my first ever, for my nephew's 2nd birthday so I'd been looking for something to back the Alexander Henry 2D Zoo fabric I'd been saving. I went to a lovely local fabric shop which has just expanded and found a perfect dark blue polka dot cotton and just HAD to buy some Hungry Hungry Caterpillar fabric too! I also picked up some nice grey spot ribbon and a lovely toadstool painted darning mushroom.  

I couldn't find a binding to go with it so I nipped across the road to Boyes, a fantastic general purpose store that my area of the country is blessed with. They've got some nice 100% cottons in, £3.50p/m!! So the 5 fabrics across the bottom row from the right are from there. The bottom left one is a remnant I thought I'd missed so pretty much whipped it off the table with delight, it's a yellow Peter Rabbit print and I'm going to have a good think before I decide what to use it for. I also decided to make a green crocodile for my nephew so I picked up some felt and a pack of googley eyes. The snowflake fabric and the blue and green birds fabric are both from the great Seamstar online shop.

The sewing machine will be put into service tomorrow as I have a whole day to devote to it. Fewer shifts at work means an unhappy bank balance but at least I have time to craft!
Speaking of work, I tend to use quiet periods to plan what I'm going to make, do you do the same? One thing that's been going round in my head is a 'sprout' design wire bangle and tonight I finally tried it out and I'm really happy with it! What do you think?

 

I'm going to make more based on this design but first I need to order some more wire! Watch this space for new pieces and I'll let you know when I list them in the shop.