Feeling Felt-y

Remember the felt I ordered the other week? Well, here are the first items I've made using this:

I used the violet and lilac felt and they look pretty good, but for some reason they look a bit blue in the photos...

Fun post!!

I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of two fab books which I ordered on Amazon to help me in my sewing/crafting quest, and they finally arrived yesterday!! Yippee!!

This is the first one:

This is a great book all about Christmas decorations (one of my favourite things!) and there are some fab projects which I will def be making this year. There are also a few things that are not too obviously christmassy so they can be made for other times of the year so I think this was a good buy! My first make will prob be these cute birdies:

SO much nicer than the tacky plastic robins you get in the shops! And they would look fab in any colour.

'tweet tweet'

And the second (and maybe slightly more exciting) book is this:

It even comes with all the stuff you need to make the bag on the front cover!! Can't wait to get started on that one and I am so keeping it for myself :-) I also think one of my first makes from this book will be one of these as I really need one!

There are so many lovely things to make and sew little time...

Cross Stitching

This has been a work in progress for nearly a year and I finally knuckled down and finished it off last week. It was not a difficult to do as I originally thought, and I was put off by the intricate corner detailing and the french knots but it was a lot more straightforward than it looks on the pattern! And I found some tiny pink beads to use instead of doing what was going to be 68 french knots. And the best bit is I'm keeping this for myself : )

The photos haven't turned out very well but it is on a white aida canvas with baby pink Anchor thread. I did have a frame ready wand waiting for this but alas it does not fit... The overall picture is a smidge longer than it is tall so it's not quite square but it's not really rectangle either so me thinks it will be a while til I track down a suitable frame for it! Ah well, I've waited this long.

I ordered a ton of DMC thread to start the cross stitch nativity which I never had time to do for Christmas last year, so when that comes in I'll be stitching again to add to my Christmas decorations.

In the meantime I thought I'd make a little coaster to keep me busy. I wanted to stitch 'make tea not war' but it was too big so it just ended up saying 'tea' which was just as nice. I decided to keep this even though it was supposed to be a pressie, but I like it too much and I never make things for myself (well except for the home sweet home one).

Got some more cross stitching ideas in the pipeline but have promised myself to get the Christmas stuff done first before getting distracted with anything else! And I also promised to make something for my hubby as he's been a bit left out on the cross stitched pressie front!

I do cakes too!

Last month was my inlaws' 30th wedding anniversary and so I decided to recreate their wedding cake for their party. It seemed like a good idea at the time but in the middle of decorating it, I was ready to throw it out the window!! It turned out really well in the end and tasted rather good, even if I do say so myself!

There are more pictures, but we had to send the memory card to a data recovery company (long story) so I'm still waiting to get them back, if we ever get them at all that is. If and when, I'll post more pics of the cake.

It was three tiers - fruit cake on the bottom, chocolate butter cream sandwich in the middle and red velvet on the top. The fruit layer had marzipan on it then the fondant icing and the other two layers had butter cream on and then the fondant. I estimate it took about 12 hours to do from start to finish, and it weighed a ton! Had a very stressful 45 minute drive to the party, driving extra slow round the roundabouts but it got there in one piece and everyone was quite impressed with it. So was I to be honest!

My mother inlaw saved the pink roses from the cake and has made a nice little posy arrangement with them to keep which looks quite nice. I should confess that I didn't make the flowers but bought them from a great website and they looked very effective on the cake!

This is the first cake like this that I've made but I probably won't be making them too often as I just don't have the patience for it on a regular basis!

Babygrows

I made these ages ago but as they were a pressie, I haven't been able to blog about them til now. I saw something similar on another blog and when I found the tool fabric I knew just what to do with it!

And I found some really cute winnie the pooh fabric which I just had to buy. What I like about this one is that it's not too in your face 'winnie the pooh' if you know what I mean.

Hopefully when little Oliver grows into these his mummy might send a few pics. If you know any babies that should be wearing one of these please let me know!

Look what came in the post today!

A lovely pile of felt in a selection of scrummy colours!! Call me sad if you like, but this made my day (maybe my week, but it is only Tues)!! It is SO much nicer than the felt I bought in the art shop in town.

My aim is to try it out and see what lovely things I can make incorporating felt and then reorder the best colours etc. Me thinks it will work well with names on the drawstring bags I shall be making and also with the hair clips, so I'll let you know how it goes!

Look at the pretty colours...

Special mention (and thanks!) to Lupin Handmade where I ordered these. You should check out her fab wee shop on Etsy and her blog too, she's a cool lady making cool stuff!!

Go Fish!

Here's a project I did last month which I have only just got round to posting:

This was a custom sized memo board made with a great multicoloured fabric with fishing boats on it. It's finished off with a narrow pastel yellow ribbon and a few studs. I also made a matching telephone pad:

This was a bit of an experiment and it turned out quite well I think. I will probably only do these for special orders though as it was more fiddly than I expected. Love spray glue though, it works a treat!!

The photos just don't do this fabric justice, it's so bright and colourful!!

Anniversary cross stitch

Not blogged for a while but I've been on holiday so no time for sewing etc!

Before we went on holiday it was my in-laws' 30th wedding anniversary which brought me the chance make a few special things. These will most probably be a one off but they were worth it in the end! the easiest of the three projects was this:

A cross stitch to commemorate the anniversary. It is mainly stitched in gold thread and features two champagne flutes with 'congratulations' down the side. I also used tiny pink beads on the detailing.


I also decorated a photo album but have just realised I never took any photos of that! The piece de resistance was the remake of their wedding cake which I made for their party. We took loads of photos but the SD card mysteriously got damaged so we lost them all, but we have sent it to a data recovery company to try to retrieve them so watch this space.