Dipping my toe into the mock log cabin world.
Spud likes to bounce on it,
and then have a little rest.
I blame Amanda for making me stray away from the house painting road.
Bad Amanda.
Here's wishing you a happy weekend all !
Inspiration
A bit of this and that
Well, that's another month gone. So much for my posting more often, but I'm guessing that nobody wants to see pictures of the door and window painting I've been busying myself with.
In between the rain that is - I'm not going to whinge on about the weather, BUT, if we have another wash-out of a summer like we did last year, then I'll be having very stern words with the Big Man upstairs. Probably from the local mental health hospital, which actually seems like quite an attractive alternative to last year's ' being trapped in the house with two crabby kids for 7 weeks summer holiday ' nightmare.
Anyhow there has been a little bit of crafting,
A little bunny for Molly's friend, although I've now been told I'm not allowed to make birthday presents for her friends anymore because it's embarrassing. Charming daughter that I have.
Showing Molly how to quilt and quickly realising that a lot of her stitches are better than mine. This will be a little wall hanging when we finish.
A bit of bag making. I can't afford any Cath's of so I bought a half metre of furnishing fabric for £6 at my local shop and managed to squeeze this roomy bag out of it. I winged the pattern and will post up some handy hints and tips next week. The biggest tip being - don't think to yourself ' I really ought to move that cup of coffee before I knock it over my sewing stuff ' and then not bothering to do so.
That's a good handy tip that is, I had to wash everything, fabric,scissors, pin cushion,cutting mat, etc etc etc. I am a daft-ass sometimes.
Anyway, I hope you have a lovely weekend with no daft-assness in your world.
See you next week.
Definitely.
Bunnypins
Molly-Mummy crafting -
We put some blue linen backed with white cotton onto an embroidery frame.
Drew some bunnies with one of those disappearing pens,
and stitched stitched stitched.
We drew around the bunnies.
and then stitched on top of our drawn line
Laid our bunnies face down onto scraps of wool felt, and then stitched together on top of our other stitch line.
Cut off the excess and snipped those curves.
Carefully cut a line in the felt (with Mummy trying desperately not to interfere here), and then turned the right way out.
Stuffed them, stitched closed and then added a brooch pin.
Mummy pinned them to a cushion,
(left click pic to view bigger and you'll be able to see them - silly me)
Then Molly pinned them to her bag.
My poor neglected blog. I've not been doing anything exciting, in fact that's the first bit of stitching I've done in weeks and weeks. Instead I've been spring cleaning - bleughh. If you got caught in a big dust cloud hanging over the south-west of England last week - that would have been me - cleaning my kitchen cupboards.
Sorry about that.
Anyway I shall be back after Easter posting a more regular basis now that my house is sparkling (ish).
I hope you have a lovely break with lots and lots of chocolate and sweeties.
xx
Happy Pear
wishes you a happy weekend.
And I do too.
Friday wip
A half apron for Molly to wear over her jeans.
Because this is the closest she will ever get to wearing a skirt.
And later I want to try out my yo-yo maker I got at Superbuzzy. Maybe I'll have a go at making something from here (click on the little pdf box to view the instructions).
Various other free patterns here, and it's worth having a little lookie here too.
Have a great weekend !
Mum...Mum...MUUUUUUUMMY !
That's all I've been hearing the last few days. The two smallest are sick. Sick enough to be off school, but not sick enough to quit fighting and arguing and shouting for me, unfortunately. I prefer the sort of sickness where they are laying quietly on the sofa sleeping all day.
I'm one of seven children ( imagine that ), and when I was little my Mother frequently used to lock us out of the house all day, particularly during the long summer holidays, and can you blame her ? When we wanted a drink/wee/something to eat, we used to have to crouch down and shout through the letter-box to ask if we could come in. This request was normally met with a reply of
' Mum's bum ' or
' Mother's Ass ' or
' You bloody kids give my ass a headache ' ( I never figured that one out until I grew up and had kids of my own, and then it all became crystal clear).
My Mum is 83 now and she still swears like a trouper and behaves very inappropriately. The kids think she's hilarious. One day, when I'm feeling brave, I'll share with you the rude rhymes she's taught them.
Anyway, *amazingly* I have managed to do a little bit of crafting. I spent last night sewing the binding on to Molly's quilt that has taken me over 4 years to make.
This is the first big quilt I've ever started and finished, and quite possibly it'll be the last. Let's just say you are not going to be getting any close up shots. There are so many mistakes I wouldn't know where to start, but it looks just fine from a distance.
Unforunately, I don't have a 'Thomas' - in house colorist extraordinaire, to give me advice like Jane does ( I've tried offering her a swap - two of my children for one of hers but she's having none of it), so I made it up as I went along. If I try to plan things out I get in a tizzy-wizzy about not repeating patterns, and balance and stuff, my brain just doesn't seem to work that way, so I wing it - with mixed results.
Luckily, I like how this has turned out, I like the way deeper valued squares seem to have gravitated towards each other to make lines and shapes ( even though I seem to remember I was trying to avoid that happening), and I like the random-ness of it. I do like a bit of random in everything, so this quilt suits me just fine.
And the poorly girl seems to like it,
she's been snugged up today with Poorly Martin. I never showed you Poorly Martin's *piece de resistance* for cheering up sick children did I ?
Probably because, back then, I'd only just started my blog and I was trying to fool you all into thinking I was a nice, genteel English girl. Obviously, I didn't manage to keep up that pretence for long anyway, so I'll leave you with Poorly Martin..
the
bottom flasher.
Bad boy Martin !
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 !
: )
I'm not cutting it
Today's WIP
A little polka dot credit card holder
on top of a Dalek pencil/sketchbook holder prototype.
Look at that fabric, isn't it sweet !
Which leads me to Myra. I was going to leave a comment on this post, agreeing with others and telling her to cut cut CUT !
But the words 'pot' 'kettle' and 'black' immediately hit me in the face
I have many things that I really really don't want to cut up, amongst them,are these fabrics from Kitty. Notice I only cut out two incy patches of that sweet fabric, and that nearly made me hyper-ventilate.
Then there's this Merry Bonbon fabric I got from e-bay, how can I cut into that ?
And Debbie sent me this over a year ago, it's still not been used, but I do like to pick it up and cuddle it from time to time (really, I do). I know my friends and family are sometimes understandably concerned about my odd fabric stashing/stroking behaviour. But you understand me - right ?
You do.
I know you do.
Pretty thrifty Fabrics
From my local charity shop
Make pretty nifty dresses
For small pandas.
Basic panda pattern from this book.
It took me longer to make the dress than it did to make the panda, so I am totally in awe of Christina who can stitch such beautiful tiny clothes as these. Amazing.
My blog is a year old tomorrow, Happy Bloggy Birthday to me !
Juju mailed me recently, to say that, 'Surely I wasn't still reading the 'Kenneth Williams Diaries' ?'
In other words, I have updated a single thing on my blog since I first started, which is a pretty poor show. Bad me.
New look blog coming soon. ( Once I figure out how to do it all again ).
Grey/Black Wednesday. Scary Saturdays.
My wednesday contribution to Mav and Stephanie's colour week.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid.
Dalek stamp carved from the Speedball Speedy-Stamp stuff, onto fabric.
We are Dr Who crazy in this house.
If you don't live in the U.K, and you haven't seen series two of Dr Who, and you can't possibly imagine that anyone could be as good as Christopher Eccleston - don't worry. We very quickly warmed to David Tennant, and the 2nd episode of a two-parter we watched on Saturday (The Satan Pit), had me rooted to the spot. I swear to God I forgot to breath towards the end.
It was the talk of the playground on Monday morning, I can tell you.
Some of the episodes are quite scary for little ones (and me), but it's 'Good versus Evil' stuff, with 'good' always winning in the end.
Or maybe not.
You'll have to wait and see.