Bunting for Party Gifts

Little Lady was invited to a party and we had the inevitable struggle to think of a present.

But then I hate buying 'stuff', surely a handmade gift has to be better than an off the shelf, same as everyone else gift..doesn't it?

I had half decided to keep up with the making, but go for something both boys and girls might like and settled on Tooth Fairy Pillows or Bunting.  I like to make gifts but I'm never sure if they are appreciated or whether people think you're being a bit of a 'cheap-cheat' because they don't realise how much work goes in to it.  As yet I have only received one thank you, from a parent, for a child's handmade gift having made Elsa and Sofia Felt Crowns & Crayon Rolls.

I asked if Little Lady knew what colours her friend liked, she went for the inevitable pink but also green, blue and purple, so although pink is the main colour in various shades there are also splashes of green and blue and purple.

I also ran into the child's Mum in the playground when she apologised for not getting back to me about our acceptance and suggestions for a present, but that she was struggling with what to buy too....so here goes....

I said, I make stuff, how would you feel about some personalised bunting?

I am glad to say that her face lit up and she said that she loved bunting!

Sadly it was all a bit of a rush and the camera was playing up so I have no photographs of that particular one....HOWEVER!

The Mummy of this little girl was SO pleased with the present that she asked me to make 2 more sets.....and for these I have photos!

Ready....

TA-DAAAAhh!.............

Sorry I wasn't able to get a hanging picture, but the light and weather hasn't been that great (until after I gave them to her!)

She was delighted and therefore, so am I.

I loved making them and at a very stressful time they have been a welcome distraction.  It also means that instead of paying 69p per metre for the tape, I invested in a 50m roll from eBay  for about £6-7 and it can also be used as apron ties.  Not bad at all.

I have also learnt...ask....and if you feel you get a good response....go for it, and if it seems a bit luke- warm then immediately say....or is there something the child is interested in...craft, dinosaurs and move on.

I might try putting together some felt sewing kits and seeing how they go down...not sure.

Anyway I digress!

I have another low fat recipe coming soon and some more crochet...a finish-up no less.

So until the next time,
Cheerio!
Nora

Eleanor's Melman Quilt

My Little. Lady l-o-v-e-s Melman from the Madagascar films.

Such a long time ago (November 2012!) I told you about an end of bolt purchase from Eternal Maker, it is Michael Miller, Giraffe Love fabric.

I then had to buy some co-ordinating fabrics, some I bought with the Giraffe fabric and some a month or so later including Minky or Plush fabric for the reverse, also bought from the Eternal Maker.

I wanted to try something different and went for the Trellis quilt by The Jungs.

I then used white fabric for the trellis and borders.  I told you about the saga for that here, back in May 2014!

The top border I decided to make deeper than first intended as Little Lady had said that she wanted something 'rainbow' in her quilt and as there are seven colours of the rainbow and seven letters in her name....something sprang from that!

Using a variety of fabrics with a rainbow similarity, I decided to appliqué her name using lime green embroidery floss to blanket stitch.

It turned out like this......

(Please excuse it's screwed up appearance - it's getting LOTS of use)

With such a large quilt and a small amount of Giraffe Love, I used a calculator on Quilters Paradise. It is brilliant!  It is to calculate how much border to buy, but I put in the width of my purchased fabric, the length and width of my quilt top and then changed the border width until I knew I had sufficient fabric to cut a particular width of border and went with that!  It worked.  Slightly backwards I know, but it worked!

Having chosen the lovely, snuggly minky or plush fabric for the back, I needed to find a good tutorial on how to sew it successfully.

I turned to Pinterest and found a tutorial by Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew for quilting Minky, tips on sewing with Minky by Amy at The English Geek, a simple Minky Blanket Tutorial by Jenny at iCraft and a self-binding tutorial by Ashley at Make It & Love It.

When I laid my top out on my Minky, I discovered that I had JUST enough.  That would mean no self bind, and to be honest, I didn't want to do too much quilting as the prospect of ruining this quilt was too much to bear after all this time.  So I decided to use the simplest method by Jenny at iCraft of putting right sides together, sewing almost the whole way round and pulling the quilt through the gap and top stitching the seam all round to neaten and close the turning gap.

I asked The Hubs to amuse Little Lady for the day whilst I got down to some serious, concentrated sewing.

I used my label printing technique to print a label for my quilt and sewed that onto the Minky before I began, like this.......

I then cracked on with the main quilt joining the back and top and then top stitching around the edge, closing the turning gap on the way.

Want to see......?

OK, so here is my finished quilt.

Ta-daah........

I love the trellis effect and the Giraffe Love fabric................

And although I haven't quilted it, the simple Plush application to the back looks good......

What do you think...I'm SOOOOOO pleased and Little Lady is over the moon too!

I'm going to leave it for the moment and see if it needs quilting, I'm sort of hoping not so that there is no chance of messing it up after all the traumas and hard work...we'll see.

Little Lady has slept under it every night since, she is SO pleased with it.  Bless her.

I'll be back soon with another sewing ta-dah, a crochet update and quite possibly a crochet ta-dah too....it's all go here I tell you.  And in-between all that making, there has been some buying too....ooooops!

Hope your day is a good one and that you are getting done the things you need to get done and maybe a few you'd just like to take time over and enjoy.

Until the next time, toodle-pip,
Love
Nora
xxxx

Belle's Summersville Stars Quilt

Waaaaaaaay back sometime whenever,  I bought a Summersville Jelly Roll, I have no record of having blogged about it, so I'm not sure when that was!  BUT....I did find a photo of it with 2.5" red cut squares....look....

I bought it partly because my Teenage Daughter likes Summersville and partly because I'd never used a jelly roll before.

It sat for a while until I decided what to do with it.

Finally I decided upon a 1600 quilt after finding plenty on Pinterest.  For this quilt you simply join all the strips in one looooong length and then cut 18-20inches off one end to stagger the joins, fold in half and sew raw edges together, fold again and sew the length and keep going like this until you have the size of quilt required.

I chose to pop a red square between each strip as they are sewn in the first long length.......

And I don't have a pieced top to show you as I got too excited and just kept pushing on!!!

For my backing I decided to use IKEA Britten Nummer fabric......

It's lovely and wide to start with, so no joins.  The background colour is also similar to the organic cotton batting I found in my stash during my January declutter!  Now there's a stroke of good planning *wink, wink*.

It wasn't until I had pinned the top, batting and backing together that I decided to to stitch just inside and outside each red square, a sort of stitch in the ditch I think.  It looks like this......

My quilt didn't turn out as random as other 1600 quilts I've seen, but I'm using the empty space to my advantage.

My daughter loves stars, so my other thought was to quilt a star shape in the spaces.......

Finally my binding is a bias binding made, from the same red fabric I used for the squares and my new Clove Bias Binding Maker.  Here it is made and ready to be applied.......

I made a label after being inspired by this post about using using cotton and freezer paper and popping it through an inkjet printer.  I chose a free border image from the internet and used Word 2003 with a text box to write inside it.  This is how the label looks,........

Then it was onto the binding.  I machined it onto the front of the quilt, right sides together and then turned to the back and hand stitched it in place with tiny stitches...look....

Purely by accident I found a great way to hold the binding in place.......

Little Lady's hair slide that was staring at me from the coffee table....suddenly the light bulb came on and there we are!

So the final quilt is all finished and was given to her today for her 16th birthday, here's a snap of Teenage Daughter and Little Lady snuggling straight after it was opened.......

So all that is left for me to say is HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY BEAUTIFUL BELLE!!!

I'll be back very soon.

Until then, toodle-oooo,
Nora
xxxx

Santa Sack Swap 2014 - for my partner....

Here's the post, as promised, about what I sent to my swap partner over at The Fabric Laboratory.

I've never taken part in one of these before (poor Helen!), so wasn't sure what I was doing so I just kept reminding myself of the rules.

After only an email or 4 between us (as we both seem crazily busy) and after a slight delay (as we forgot to swap addresses so had no idea where we were sending our gifts!) Our parcels were posted and I waited with baited breath to see first if Helen's arrived and secondly...did she like her gifts!

As far as my gifts to her went, I had a few clues to work with.....

Helen is a Dr Who addict, she likes the colour orange, drinks coffee and eats chocolate for company whilst creating and has clear views (which I don't disagree with!) on what should be in a stocking which she blogs about here.

So I thought it would be fun to mix my craft and included crocheted, knitted and machine and hand stitched items, I set to work and came up with these......

Of course the stocking to pop it all in.......

Pattern from the Fabricworm, and one that I have used before with great success.

The fabric is from Panduro Hobby, there is a hint of blue in the not very Christmassy orange fabric and in the very Christmassy snowflake musical fabric, I hope I got away with that colour combo but I couldn't find any Christmas themed fabric that was predominantly orange.

Next up was a hand-stitched Christmas Pudding Tree Decoration, it is so simple to do and I may just have to post a tutorial on that one (although those of you with sewing experience can probably work it out).

Along the coffee theme, I made a Tardis Mug Rug and wrapped some packets of instant cappuccino in it.

I got the inspiration from a search on Pinterest and I shall post a tutorial on this one too as I couldn't find one and someone somewhere might like one! 

The reverse of it looked like this and the whole thing was basically a mini quilt with machine quilting and hand finished binding.

Next up a Zakka inspired Zipper Pouch.................

Keeping with the orange theme again, mostly handsewn but with a little Zakka embroidery wither side of the picture panel.  Hopefull a useful little puch for on-the-go projects.

Here's the lovely bright lining......

...and a 'pull' for the zip......

Here's a close up of the picture panel.....

Some special chocolates for a special lady...............

Some 'smellies', an organic bar of orange scented soap in a Spa Soap Coat...........

The coat is made from 2 colours of Rico Creative Cotton, I made it up as I went along, so another tutorial could be in order here!

I made a hole one side and a loop the other, the loop simply goes through the hole to keep the Soap from falling out of its Coat.

Finally, no self-respecting stocking would be complete without.......an orange in the toe...........

...this one had it's own orange cozy to keep it safe, it can be reused for other fruit to prevent it getting bashed and bruised in your lunch box (or handbag!) and being Rico Creative Cotton again, is fully washable should you get a juice spillage!

I made up this pattern as I went, but I seem to remember it was in a copy of Mollie Makes magazine (found a link) a couple of years ago, and, no doubt, you could get this on Pinterest or through one of the search engines.

So, there we have it!

I hope to follow up shortly with the tutorials, but there is so much going on here, lurgys galore and I have committed myself to the Make Me a Wardrobe 2015 Challenge over at My Make Do and Mend Year, click on it to follow a link to Jen and maybe you'll be inspired to sign up!

See you soon!

Love

Nora

xxxx

Freehand Machining.....

Something I'd fancied having a go at, but not plucked up the courage.

I was given a book for my birthday in 2012, it is by the brilliant Poppy Treffrey and contains oodles of advice and encouragement to just do it!

So in the end, I just did it!

My Tiddly Toes needed a gym bag for school.  Being short on time I ordered a plain one from Panduro Hobby.

I wrote up her name in a flowing, handwriting type of font on the computer, I thought this would lend itself best to flowing my machining.

I printed it out bold so that I could see it through the interfaced fabric, like this......

I then simply hooped it up and started stitching!

And this is the result........ta-dah!......

A little wonky, but I'm quite pleased and Tiddly Toes is over the moon!  No-one else has a gym bag like this!

The moral....just have a go!

Have you tried anything new recently?

Love

Nora

xxxx

Happy Birthday Crafty Friend

Do you remember back here I told you about some book purchases, one of which was inspired by The Patchsmith?

Well, I decided that for my Tea-addicted Crafty Friend, a Mug Rug gift for her birthday was highly appropriate!

I've only ever made 2 quilts before (although I have my heart set on a few more) and I've certainly never worked on this small scale ever!

But tell me what you think.....

 

Here is the detail of her name sewn by my fabulous Brother Innovis SE350 and of the tea cup.....

 

 

I really enjoyed making it and I hope she'll find plenty of excuses to enjoy using it...Happy Birthday Carol!

 

Back with a little bit of something very soon,

Nora

xxxx

Little houses

On a whizz about BlogLand the other day I pinned the following on my Pinterest board from The little house by the sea.

In fact I pinned a few things, this one quite some time ago......

..... and I have some magazines and books, all marked at the pages to do loosely with 'houses', including this from Mandy Shaw of Dandelion Designs which featured in Issue 21 of Simply Homemade magazine.

 

It all started with wanting to design a Tooth Fairy thing-a-ma-jiggy to hang on doors to put teeth into to escape from the groping under pillows and potentially disturbing the recipients of pennies.

 

I didn't want a tooth shape, or necessarily a bag or indeed anything with a fairy (not too appropriate for boys!), so I started thinking about Fairy Cottage....what would a Fairy live in?

I looked for toadstool houses or little whimsical cottages as inspired by a freebie in this issue of Cross Stitcher magazine.....

 

but needed to add a pouch as integral to the design.

Then on The Patchsmith the other day I saw these from Retro Mama ......

 

 

The Patchsmith had redesigned WITH POUCH!

I dug out some free fabric that came with this issue of Simply Homemade magazine a couple of months ago......

 

and I made this................

 

Here's the detail on the front.......

 

 

It is gorgeous and I love it......but it's not quite right. So I decided to do something a little rash....

I've digested all the designs and sewing techniques used in the projects that I have gathered (and they are all very similar, coz let's face it how different can you really be when 'building' a house?!) and  tried to design one myself!

It ended up a bit wonky as I wasn't too neat about placing the design on the front or neatly sewing as it is, after all, a prototype!

Ready to see my mad idea?

OK, let's go....

Ta-DAH!!!!...............

 

Bonkers isn't it? 

 

But I just adore the roses round the door and the bunting!  Here it is up close.....

 

I wasn't brimming with confidence but now I've finished, I am terribly excited!  Not bad for a first attempt.  My lack of drawing skills does show in the shape of my toadstool....but I'll work on that.

Fabulous little stash-buster as you only need odds of fabric and floss.

Any ideas on a better shape for my toadstool, or how to ensure the stem and top appear separate are very welcome!

Thanks so much for dropping by, nice to see you,

Nora
xxxx

Bunting

I had a special request to make some bunting co-ordinated to a rather beautiful and very special bedroom.

It is for my God-Daughter (who you will often see me write about as Tiny Angel) and her name is.......

 

This was the special request that required adding some gorgeous gingham to my stash that I told you about here.

 

Well, it is still a work in progress, but I wanted to show you the progress........

 

 

The first 4 pennants made (of 13) and the appliques applied but not stitched in any way (as I can't decide whether to do them by hand or machine!)

 

But it is progress nonetheless.

 

I'm off to make a cup of tea and get my mind churning over the applique embellishing possibilities....happy days!

 

Until the next time......take care, xxxx

Nora

Tiny Tote

As you may remember, back here, I got a subscription to Sewing World Magazine for Christmas.....I am really enjoying it. 

 

You may also remember from here, that I'm not one for making free gifts and that also extends to the projects in magazines, although they do inspire me in other ways.

 

However, when this arrived a few weeks ago........... 

 

 

 

....I spotted this little number.......................

 

 

 

and thought how lovely it would be for my Tiddly Toes to have a little bag like this for days out when she collects things like shells or takes a snack and her 'doff'.

 

So I had a dig in my stash and found some bits and bobs to make this...........

 

Ready......ta-daaaaH!

 

 

Do you like it?  Tiddly Toes LOves it!

 

It has already been on a shopping trip and been used to carry many a 'thing' about the house.

 

I now have an order for a little pink one for Tiny Angel, I'm also planning to use it, together with other designs I have seen, as inspiration for a bag for me.  I hope I shall make more of these as it was fun, easy and quite quick.

 

I shall be back soon with a spot of vintage nostalgia.

 

Until then, take care,

Nora

xx