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. 

Little bundle of joy.

A card came through the post today, telling me I had a parcel held for me, it was a fabric order from the USA I had been waiting for, unfortuntely there was an £11 customs charge to pay!

Nevermind, the fabrics are lovely. The grey and yellow floral print is my favourite and I may have to buy more. The seller also included a extra piece of fabric as a freebie! I would like to reccommend Runner Girl Fabric or view the store on eBay.

I also explored a sewing shop in town and was very pleased to find an Aladin's Cave of fabrics and supplies, I left with a selection of grey, purple and green felt, thread and some purple cotton fabric. Then over the road to Boyes to find they had more felt in than usual and I bought a metre of mustard colour felt, squares of orange, turquoise and white, more thread, more purple cotton fabric and half a metre of heavier weight Vilene. The plan is to make a lobster and crab to follow up on the jellyfish I made last week (both suggestions by my mum, she's great for ideas).

Jellyfish and Ice cream.

My latest project was a present for blogger Tasha's birthday and is my first attempt at making a creature from my own design. So here is the Jellyfish in question-

He's made from an Erin McMorris fabric and felt. I'm going to make another and blanket stitch the legs so they won't fray as much but as a first go I'm quite proud!

Little bag of happiness.

We visited Ikea at the weekend, the list of things to buy from there had been getting out of control so we had to nip it in the bud. Aside from all the other wonderful things I came away with there was a stack of fabric, Tasha and I hogged the cutting table for about half an hour. I had to buy a mini blue bag just to get them home safely, now I don't want to get them out except to unfold and refold them, they look so snug!

I've stocking up on sewing supplies lately and got a few gems from a charity shop- 3 vintage patterns (to go on the To Do list) and some bias binding, all for £2!

I've been attempting more fabric related projects lately and as I'm temporarily back at home while I work the summer in my local Post Office I needed to set up some crafting space. My Mum had salvaged a Singer treadle table from a skip outside a sewing shop many years ago and converted it to a table, but it'd been in the garage for a few years so I got it out, cleaned it up and installed it in my bedroom. The treadle still works so smoothly despite being out of action for about 30 years.

On my table here you can see a pin board I bought because it was square, pinned to that is some felt stitching inspired by the beautiful Polygon throw by Mia Cullin at Habitat. On the board is also one of my Scribble necklaces, soon to be added to my Folksy shop. In front are a selection of postacards from New Designers a few weeks ago and also two felt cacti- Astrophytum Myriostigma inspired as my real one gave up the ghost just recently and it was my favourite. Felt cacti are dangerous- they keep you up until 2am making them!

And lastly these are some of my Scribbles units before trimming and shinking, I really loved the negative shapes created with the black background, I'll try to encorperate this into some future pattern design and maybe screen print it.

Stool saga part 2.

Yesterday Tasha and I went bargain hunting, she got a very cheap table and I bought the foam I wanted to recover my very sorry looking blanket box, I also had to steel myself against buying a sewing box in a charity shop, good job I didn't have enough cash!

Anyway here's the pathetic blanket box-

The 'reupholstering' it had was not particularly nice, the staples were sticking out in places! So off it came and the frame needed a bit of tlc, I had to hammer some nails back in and one of the corners needed glueing as the joint had come apart. Here it is drying with a clamp on, my beloved car is unwittingly being used to lean it against!

Next to that in the garage is the frame from my first stool purchase which I'm just finishing sanding, then it will be oiled and reunited with the seat pad which I have covered, I'll save that until it's finished.

I've been having quite a textiles obsession lately since going to IKEA and buying some of the beautiful bird print Cecilia fabric for £1.99 p/m. I also splashed out on some Lena fabric too while I was there and recently snapped some more up on eBay, on the right in the pic, as I don't often get chance to go to IKEA and if I do it's always an expensive trip! Also in the pic is a pillow case Tasha gave me to amend to fit a small pillow, top left, and below that are two pieces of fabric I bought from Isabelle and Kate's Fabrics on Folksy. I've been planning to try covering some Moleskine Cahiers with fabric and I think the yellow and grey piece may end up involved.

Finally, for this post anyway, I have somewhat of a cactus obsession. I've been collecting a few cacti and succulents but a clear favourite has emerged, purely because it seems to have grown at least an inch every time I look at it. This is my prize prickly pear, which needs repotting as it had an accident in the car on the way home from the garden centre and fell out, as did most of it's soil, but despite that it has sprouted. I don't know a lot about them but I'm hoping it grows to be pretty big.

Spurred on by my cactus obsession and a search online I'd been wanting to make a cactus pincushion for some time and finally got round to it this week, infecting my friend Tasha with the bug too, you can see hers on her blog here. My next plan is to make a prickly pear one, but I need to get some purple felt first, then I'm thinking maybe a little bunch of cacti on a wrist band for mobile sewing and then ......

More on this and more shrinkle-ing later.

Lists aplenty!

Let me introduce myself, my name is Jenny, I'm a second year BA(hons) Contemporary Decorative Crafts student at Lincoln Uni in the UK.

Well I say second year, I just finished it and am now thinking, among other things, about the glorious summer that lies ahead, plenty of time to get on with all of those projects that have been filling my head when I'm trying to get to sleep. Projects which have been trying to tempt me away from the uni work I should have been doing in those last few frantic days.

So far the list consists of-

• Recovering a car boot sale stool
• Repainting an Ikea rocking stool (small stool obsession lately!)
• Making up some cushion covers
• Sewing a tool roll for my jewellers files
• Experimenting with shrink plastic
• Trying out some designs from in my little sketch book for jewellery
• Making use of the large pile of fabric sat by my sofa
• Getting in some knitting practice

How much of this will get done we will see but I'm determined to have a productive break this year. I'm really excited about starting the new term in September and moving on to some new units. Here are some of the pieces I have made over the last two years at uni, I work mostly with paper and metals, exploring the relationship between the two.

Hand cast paper and copper unit chestpiece.

Knitted paper yarn and handmade copper chain necklace.

Cast cotton linter fins cuff

Sorry about the poor pics, hideous carpet in rented flat! More on my work and lists to come.