My Weblog

Ruby

Naughty Ruby's in disgrace

She's sitting in the naughty place

For silly Ruby cut her hair

And do you think she gives a care ?

Quite.

Sometimes

Sometimes I can't think of anything remotely interesting to say ( some may dispute the 'sometimes' bit ? ) so I'll just throw in some random www I like.

This site

These

These cuties - click on the album link.

This site

These paintings

Everything this girl  does - I've linked to her before, but she has some new stuff up and it's all worth a second look anyway.

The children are on half term (no comment), so maybe we will have a go at doing something like these. (that's if I don't throttle them first, does anybody else's kids fight like mine do ??? Jeez ) some dimensions for houses here.

Ultra cuteness here. I love the fact that a grown man designs this stuff - makes me want to kiss him.

I'll be back on friday, hopefully with photos of my dolly - if the sun ever comes out again,  in the meantime I shall be reading this, I know I'm biased but it's grrrrrreat !

Raggy flower tutorial

You will need...

Small amounts of hessian backcloth and good quality felt .

a rag-rug hook or small pliers (or probably even eyebrow tweezers will do the job).

strips of fabric, somewhere around a half an inch wide (ish)

Brooch/pin back.

Method...

Cut your fabric strips into approx 3" lengths, I've used one of these gadgets which makes it a lot quicker

a piece of 1" wood dowel with a bit gouged out, if you know any wood-cutterly types, it should be easy enough to make one.

You just wrap your strips of fabric around it and snip snip snip through the channel.

Either that or just roughly guess the length, it doesn't really matter.

Draw a circle onto your hessian, bearing in mind that these flowers get big - my outside circle has a diameter of 2.5" and I've ended up with a flower almost twice that size (the one I made last week turned out enormous and very heavy, more suitable as a paperweight in fact).

then, mark smaller circles as a guide if you want to use more than one colour.

Before cutting out, stitch around your outside circle 4 or 5 times- this is very important, otherwise it will fray like buggery, and then cut a good half an inch away from your stitch line .I cut it far too close to the stitch line on this one, but just about got away with it.

Now, using whatever tool you've managed to find, work from the centre outwards, inserting your hook and pulling the fabric through, like so

This method is explained far better here , under the rag rugger link on the left, (this is also where I got all of my equipment from). Leave just a couple of hessian strands between each strip and work in circles out towards the stitched edge.

The back will look something like this,

Cut a circle of felt to the same size as your hessian circle and stitch together. Apply your brooch back and there you go... easy.

OR...

If you can't get your hands on any of that equipment, just cut two circles of felt- one slightly bigger than the other, and mark the smaller one as before ( if desired)

then, giving your fabric strips a little twist in the middle, stitch onto your felt pieces, again keeping the strips nice and close together.

Work from the centre, outwards.

Trim the larger felt circle to the same size as the smaller one and blanket stitch together to give a nice neat edge. Attach your pin/brooch back as before.

This second method is just as easy and quick as the first, and both are fun to do . The hook technique is particularly fun for children to do as there are no stabby sharp needles involved. Molly has made quite a few of these now, she loves to choose the fabrics, in fact she choose the colours for the second flower. Light pink, dark pink, orange. YUM.

Do let me know if none of this makes sense, I don't mind, I'm used to people telling me I don't make sense.

I'm off to the shops now, wearing my new corsage to brighten up a very grey English day.

Ta-ra chucks.

I'm not superstitious, but...

I just spent the whole afternoon putting together a raggy flower tutorial, and then pressed the 'erase all' option on the camera.

?

Damn you Friday the 13th.

I'll do it all again (because I love you) and will put it up on tues or weds of next week. Scouts honour.

I still have all of those other wips to finish, but I'm ignoring them and starting something else instead. I want to make some dollies like this

and this

a dolly like this has been on my mind after seeing this little girl . So cute. I too remember having a haircut that looked as though it had been chewed by the dog (sorry Jane). In fact all of us creative types probably created this kind of look by taking the scissors to our own hair when we were kids - resulting in a rather short, funky, fringe/bangs . Didn't we ?

Either that or the dolly got it

(yeah, yeah, I know she's ugly, but I got her when I was five years old and I love her with all my heart).

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the bag/ underwear post, seems like I'm not alone when it comes to messy men (no surprise there then). ; )

I'll leave you with some good YouTube karma to wipe out that nasty friday the 13th-ness.

: )

Have a GREAT weekend !

Pants ?

Well, I managed to get one bag done.

See my lovely tidy piles of fabric in the background - I am so happy with me.  : )

I probably have enough scraps to make a trillion bags, which just goes to show that you should never throw anything nice or pretty away.

I regularly throw away things that I don't consider to be nice or pretty, for example - Phil's socks and underwear.

Phil and I have lived together for a long time time now, and he knows that throwing his dirty socks and undies down the stairs (so they land in a heap by our lovely stained glass hallway door), and leaving them there, really REALLY annoys me.

My dear husband doesn't seem to be able to understand the concept of putting dirty laundry in a laundry basket. ?

So, I take my anger out on the smelly socks and unmentionables, by throwing them straight in the garbage/rubbish bin. New or not  *  This makes me happy again.

Anyway, back to the bag...

I really enjoyed doing this - because it's so messy. The stitching is all over the place, but who cares ? If it starts to unravel, just do a bit of hand stitching to put it right, I reckon more stitching will add to the texture anyway.

And going back to not throwing pretty things away... that corsage is made from the cuff of a very well-worn Oilily dress, I just cut the cuff off and gathered it up with a running stitch, and then made a little fabric yo-yo to go on top.

A few people have asked me where to get Oilily fabric, Gawd knows, if anybody does know, I will happily lick you all over. In the meantime, I just cut up old dresses that you used to be able to get on e-bay.

We're away for the weekend, we are going here, a very westerly part of Britain, if you live in America, I will be a little bit closer to you and I will be waving to you on Friday evening. Look carefully and you will see me. As usual, the weather forecast for this country, is crap. Rain, rain and more rain....

I've packed our bags with Scrabble,drawing stuff, playing cards,Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl books, and lots of warm blankets. Wish me luck.

* Phil, in case you were wondering.... that's what happened to your ' lucky mickey mouse pants'.

Ha !

: )