March sewing - catch up post

 Apparently I'm too busy making things to blog about them at the moment...

I've managed to carry on with the 52 week challenge so I'll organise this into weeks again - weeks 9 to 13

Week 9 - Sew something Timeless or Classic

I found a free pinafore dress pattern on the Halla patterns facebook group which is reversible so I made rainbows one side and dinosaurs the other. The instructions were a little confusing, eg there's optional patch pockets but they're not mentioned in the instructions so I only remembered them partway through. The end result looks nice, though my daughter has now decided she doesn't like dinosaurs so she will only wear it rainbow side out!

I also made her a birthday crown (complete with her favourite animal elephant) 

Week 10 - Sew a Bag (challenge rejected)

Continuing the elephant theme, I made her a dress made from elephant fabric - this is the Beachcomber from Waves & Wild (formerly Made by Jack's Mum). I thought the elephant fabric was jersey, but it's not stretchy enough for the neckband so I'll have to replace it with ribbing at some point. I also have a panel in the same design that I'll probably make into a sweatshirt eventually.

Week 11 - Act of Craftivism

So this is to sew something to support a cause etc. I saw a request on a sewing group for drawstring bags to be used as washbags for patients in the children's hospital, so I made ten over the week and sent them off. I got a lovely card as a thank you.

Week 12 - Sew something for yourself

I made a few things this week - I had some lovely sewing-themed fabric that I wanted to make into a dress for myself (Halla Agnes dress). But also there were a couple of birthdays so my daughter helped me make a rabbit for her friend (Patterns for Pirates Plushie Pals freebie), and I also made some flowers for my mum (tutorial on Facebook here)

Week 13 - Upcycle something

A relative is expecting a baby girl, so I made a dress (Twig + Tale Petal Wrap dress) from an old dress of mine and some needlecord that I got as a gift.

I also made a t-shirt (Halla Stardust) for a charity raffle. TGCGS Charity Fundraising

Links to pattern designers that are in this post (not affiliate!)

Hallå Patterns

Waves & Wild

Patterns for Pirates

Twig + Tale

Marzipan learns crochet

I have a friend who teaches children to crochet in schools, and one day I was at her house chatting about wool whith her and another friend (as you do) when I said I wanted to learn crochet. She gave us a quick lesson, but I didn't quite get the hang of it, and then she went away for summer holidays...

A few weeks later she came around to my house & taught me how to make chain (it's like finger knitting but with a hook) and slipstitches (to tie the bits of chain together). I made a ring, and a flower:

Ring and flower made of chain & slipstitches

Then I got a bit carried away, and I tried to make a lacy mat-type thing with different colours of wool that I had:

Based on a flower, with chains around the edge

Except it looks a bit more like a hat than a mat.

I got quite into making chain while I was on the bus to work but I got a bit carried away:

This chain is longer than I am when it's stretched out.

 Then I was in the crafty-shop one lunchtime, and I found some pretty wool to save me having to change colour all the time, and made a flower with it.

Pretty firework wool!

The trouble with that wool is that it's hard to see the stitches because it's so dark.

I got a bit bored of making chain after a while, but yesterday my friend taught me to make proper crochet (double crochet) in rows so now I have something else to do on the bus:

A very tiny scarf?

It's only about an inch wide as it's about eight stitches in a row. Any ideas for what to make with it? Or should I just try to make something more sensible & call this a practice piece?

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!

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!

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.