Thank you cards - November/December 2011

Finally I got around to making thank you cards for our wedding presents. It took a while beacuse we were waiting to get a decent photo of the two of us to put onto them. Here's the finished result:

The card is A5-sized, so the photo is a 6x4 normal sized picture. They are doubling as christmas cards as I am too disorganised to do both (though they're probably not very festive!)

Two birthday cards - 29/10/11

The end of October/beginning of November seems to be a mini birthday season. Here are some cards I made the other day:

This card is an autumn theme as I have lots of skeleton leaves and also October is full of falling leaves. White card, pen & ink, stick-on flowers, skeleton leaves, stick-on letters.

This card is Halloween themed as this birthday is on October 31st. White card covered in dark blue paper, pumpkin made of orange paper with gold stars for eyes and nose, bats cut out of the blue paper, stick-on lettering.

Tall Ship Necker - finally finished

Last summer (that's summer 2010 I mean), I went sailing on STS Lord Nelson as part of Girlguiding UK's centenary celebrations. We were divided into four watches and each watch had a different colour necker. I was in Aft Starboard watch, with blue neckers.
Some of us made little cross stitch designs while we were on board, and some people brought blanket badges for swaps. So when I got home I decided to sew my swaps and my cross stitch to my necker.
While we were moving house, I found my half-completed necker so I sat down the other day and finished sewing on the last couple of badges. Frome Valley is near Bristol, Chandler's Ford is near Southampton, the cross with the roses is Cumbria I think, and the bear is Warwickshire. The white square badge was one that was made for everyone on the voyage, and Waterford was the port we visited en route. In the cross stitch patch there are dolphins because we saw lots on our way, a little duck which was hidden somewhere in the ship, a shamrock for ireland which we visited, and a friendship knot made up of the colours of the watches (blue, yellow, pink and white).

Close up of badges

Detail of cross stitch

Christening card - 6/10/11

The baby I made a card for a few months ago is being christened, so I thought I'd make a similar card for her christening.

Birth card

Christening card

I gluyed together the sky & hills, then I cut out the cross and stuck everything to the main card so that the white showed through. The rays of light and letters were added later.

Denim skirt from jeans - 25/9 to 29/9/11

I found this project on the Singer website (here).
I had a pair of jeans with rips in both knees so I thought I'd make a skirt out of them. The length was dictated by the location of the rips! It ended up just above knee length.

Legs cut off

 It took quite a long time to unpick all the seams so I got a bit bored between unpicking and sewing back together.
Here is the finished skirt:

Front of skirt

Back of skirt

The seams went a bit funny where they changed from the existing seam to mine. This is because I couldn't do the seams the same way the manufacturers had because I'm not good enough at sewing (and my machine can't do zigzag).
Now I need to think of another project to do though we're moving house soon so I might just have a rest from crafty things while we pack everything into boxes!

Sewing covers for things - 20/9/11 & 21/9/11

More adventures with the sewing machine (and projects I've been meaning to make for a while).
Yesterday I made a cover for our printer. It's not a complicated shape, just a cuboid, and it lives under the bed, but the box it came in doesn't. So I wanted to make a cover to stop it getting scratched and to keep the cables together with the printer.

Laid out flat

With the printer

The cover is just a basic cuboid net made out of pink cotton as you can see. The main part wraps around and fastens with velcro, and the sides tie with ribbon at the top of the printer.

The cable tidy loops also fasten with velcro and the ribbon from the sides thread through them for extra security.
It it a simple shape, the long wrap is all one piece and the sides are sewn on separately. All the pieces were hemmed using the hemmer foot so I didn't need much seam allowance.

Today I tried to make a cover for the sewing machine so that the case doesn't get scratched (and so that people don't try to pick it up by the handle!) I used some cloth which I have which has two layers and is an iridescent purple colour. The underneath layer has quite thick threads, so it frays quite easily but the two layers are woven together using regular stripes which makes it easy to cut straight lines!

Fabric ready for cutting

Side pieces cut out

I thought I could use the hemmer foot but the fabric was too thick to fit into it so instead I pinned and sewed them with the normal foot:

Pinned edge

Hemmed corner finished

So here is the finished cover
The only problem is that I didn't leave enough seam allowance so it doesn't actually fit properly around the machine. It ties around with ribbon so it fits around but doesn't cover all of the corners.

I'm going to cut it in half and add a strip of contrasting fabric so that it fits properly. I might see if I can find some aida band and add small motifs to make it pretty.

Marzipan does sewing! - 19/9/11

As I said in my last post, I've got my sewing machine back with me again after two years of it being in storage. It was my granny's machine, so it's about 75 years old and still works really well.
The main thing it can't do that new machines can is sew backwards (which is generally solved by turning the work around!) and sew in zigzags, so I can't easily do buttonholes. It's hand powered so you have to be able to feed the work with one hand, but that's not too difficult and it makes it much easier to regulate the speed. It probably helps that I'm left handed! Here it is:

A thing of beauty

is a joy forever.

Inside the little box are all the extra feet to do things like hemming, attaching braid, quilting and sewing on zips. Luckily I also have the original instructions so I know how to use them. I'm very glad to have it back!

 

So, apart from gazing at it's beauty, I'm also getting on with some projects I've been meaning to do for a while now. First I thought I'd start with something small and (allegedly) simple - a cover for my Bible.

Bible open

Closed up (I managed to get the church on the front cover!)

All unfolded

There's a pocket for a small notebook and a pencil too.

Making it was more complicated than I expected, not having made a book cover before. I probably should have made a paper pattern first but I just used the book to find the sizes. The cover is quite tight-fitting. It's fastened by poppers, which I sewed on the wrong way round to start with!
Not bad for a first attempt at machine sewing for two years though. My friend has asked me to make her a dress so I need lots of practise!

Birthday card - 14/9/11

Today is my friend's birthday, so the other day I made a card to send to her.
The 'happy birthday' is ribbon which goes all around the card, the flowers are cut out of semi-transparent paper, and the name is made of individual sticky letters.
Can you tell that most of my card-making things are still following the purple theme?
I hope she likes it. Happy Birthday Ros.

Hopefully I will have time to do more crafty things now the summer is over. I have my sewing machine now so maybe I can even make some exciting things from fabric!

Here's One I Made Earlier: Coasters

I haven't made anything lately, so I thought I'd do a post about things I've made in the past. Quite a lot of the things I make, I give away as they're cards or presents, but here's some coasters I made for myself.

 These are the first coasters I made, they are made from a cross-stitch kit based on Rennie Mackintosh artwork. I like this type of work, as the dark outlines make it look kind of like stained glass. I made these in autumn 2006, after I moved into my own flat and had no coasters to put my mugs on.
The coasters pictured below are also from a  kit, made at about the same time as the Mackintosh ones, they are a variation on Blackwork stitching, except that while traditional blackwork uses only one colour, these use variations on the same theme. I liked making these as they were mostly backstitch, so they didn't take very long to complete!

This coaster is one I made for my boyfriend for his birthday a couple of years ago. I made it following a design I got from World of Cross-Stitching magazine in early 2009. It's a bit cheesy, but he likes it as you can probably tell from the tea-stains.

Finally, some coasters that don't use cross-stitch! These were painted onto tiles with glass paints, to my own designs.

The one on the left was based on the trees outside my window, and the right is a rainbow. These are quite simple to make, if you have some spare tiles left over from tiling the kitchen or bathroom. The glass paints need baking in the oven to make sure that they dry properly.

Wedding favour - 16/6/11

I decided to see if I could make some wedding favours which were sugar flowers, to show off my flower-making and also because I don't like sugared almonds, the traditional favour.
As the main flower at the wedding will be calla lilies, I made some and then tried to arrange them in a pretty way. They are doubling up as place names.

I was originally going to do just one flower each, but that didn't look very good so I made a little bunch of three. This does mean I'm going to have to make three times as many flowers, but never mind.
The stem is made out of half a wooden kebab stick painted with green food colouring. I made the flowers out of white paste and then painted them afterwards, but colouring first would probably give a better colour.
They are similar to the calla lilies I made before, but I bought a proper cutter so that I don't have to make the shape each time. The stamens are about an inch long and the petal is about 2 1/2 inches long by 1 1/2 inches wide. If you didn't want to buy a special cutter, you could use a similar sized leaf cutter and cut the stem end off.
(Cross-posted to Marzipan's Cakes)

Wedding reply card - 9/6/11

This is a card I made to reply to a friend's wedding invitation. Their wedding colours are mostly blue, and the flowers are going to be sunflowers, so I decided to put a picture of them both inside a sunflower shape.

I used Paint.Net to mainpulate the image as I don't have Photoshop. I couldn't draw the sunflower very well using that so I drew it in AutoCAD (though a different drawing programme would work just as well), and dropped it into the photo image on a different layer.

Template for the sunflower

Final image to print onto card

Once I'd printed the card, I embellished it with some stick-ons and hand wrote the greeting for the front.
The card is lined with cream paper, mostly so that I could write the message without worrying about messing up my lovely card!

Finished design

Card standing up

Invitations - 20/4/11

These are some ideas I was trying out for hen party invitations, to go inside the wedding invitations. I found some cards in the shape of a dress, so I am going to make the invitations in a dress shape but only one piece of card so the decorations will be on one side and the writing on the other.

This one follows more of the shape of a dress

This one uses the dress as background

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These cards are mostly made with pre-made stick on decorations. The big flower is cut out of semi transparent paper and stuck on.
I think the one with a pink background uses the shape of the dress better and is more delicate, so the eventual invitations will probably look more like that than the other.

Notelet - 4/4/11

I was listening to a programme on the radio about how writing actual letters (not emails) is good, and I remembered that I owe a friend a letter from Christmas time. (The programme is available until next Sunday 10th April from iPlayer if you're interested)

I have some notelets but I thought it would be nice to make her a card as she is quite a crafty person herself. I wrote the letter and then I decorated the card. Here it is:

The design is done so that the card is landscape but it would look just as good on a portrait card as well:

It is made from a white pre-folded A6 card, pink paper, flowers from the patterned purple translucent paper and copper coloured skeleton leaves.
I seem to be keeping the postal system in business lately, I'm sending so many cards. I had forgotten how much I liked making them!

New baby card - 2/4/11

This is a card for a new baby called Dawn, hence the sunrise:

Landscape card of a sunrise: folded card, coloured paper, gold star, silver pen and white ribbon.
You can't quite see in the photo but the paper colours are pale pink, orange and dark blue, with bright yellow for the sun's rays. The silver dots in the sky are supposed to be tiny stars.

UPDATE: the parents liked the card so much they are framing it to put up in the baby's room! Success!

Wedding invitations - January - March 2011

In January, I started designing these wedding invitations. The colour theme was dark purple, with not many other theme-y ideas decided, so I went to the craft shop to get various things I could use on invitation designs. I cam back with white A4 card, dark purple A4 paper, translucent paper decorated with purple flowers, purple ribbon, silver skeleton leaves and silver stick-on decorations.

Using these, I came up with four different designs for an invitation card based on a folded A5 piece of card:

Simple design with just coloured paper and a silver leaf

Split the card horizontally between plain purple paper
and translucent flowery paper with a ribbon hiding the transition,
with a silver leaf on the bottom half.

Card split vertically between patterned paper and
plain white card, ribbon under the translucent paper.
Two silver leaves near the open edge.

Card split vertically with plain white card and purple paper,
ribbon down the folded edge and a skeleton leaf in the centre.

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We chose the fourth design, replacing the copper coloured skeleton leaf with a silver one. The ribbon also changed in the final version to a more solid purple as the translucent ribbon tended to unravel at the ends where they were attached to the inside of the card. Final design shown below:

Unfolded final invitation.

 Orders of service will be shown in a later post.

Birthday card - 28/3/11

I'll start this blog of crafts with a birthday card which I made this morning. The card is a pre-folded A5/A6 card. Decorating it are paper miniature flowers and ribbon with lilac paper as a background. It's unlined and the lettering is done by hand.

 The flowers are meant to be white calla lilies and purple rosebuds. I bought these pre-made.