January making and buying

It's been ridiculously cold in the house the last fortnight and I've been making 'house scarves' and buying more long johns. Honestly I think I could set up a shop selling long johns I have so many pairs!

With it being so cold I drop into the same routine at this time of year by doing less challenging crafts whereby I can wrap myself up in layers, not think too much and just knit or crochet very simple things. You can't get much more simple than loom knitting and I started some neck warmers on the circular loom.

There is something quite satisfying about the speed you can create something and here is my first neck warmer.

This pink neck warmer was quickly followed by this bluey one, although not done on the loom but hand knitted.

I'm not much of a knitter but I have got this item on the go also at the moment, it's some sort of scarf / cowl with some interesting wool I bought in Whitby.

Continuing with scarves, this time crochet. I found a Youtube video showing how to do a type of moss stitch for crochet, it was a very good and easy to follow tutorial by Olivia at Girlybunches who has some great crochet videos.

http://girlybunches.com/

A scarf in moss stitch is a good way to use up small scraps of wool.

I didn't want tassels on the end as it's a fairly short scarf to tuck into a coat so not the neatest of finishing off at the ends but it's a nice stitch to do.

Had some of my fabric back from the printers, the Scandi Trees design, and I've sold a bit on ebay.

With some Christmas money I bought myself a nice quality rotary cutter. Previously I had a £3.99 one and it was useless but spending a bit more on this Olfa cutter is proving great for accurately and neatly cutting my fabric.

I bought some more Harris Tweed last week from the weaving lady on Harris and I'm in the throws of creating some textile jewellery and a tweed needle case.

Another needle case I've recently completed in the book style is this one, made with scraps of hand loom cotton from the Skye Batiks shop on Skye which I believe have recently taken delivery of a new batch of my designs on some garments.

Back to crochet, I found a pattern in a recent magazine for crochet buttons and I turned the basic idea into pin cushions.

Thanks for sticking with all these photos, I'll finish with some food just ahead of Burns Night. Joy of joys I found the veggie haggis had made a welcome return to Morrisons, more of a sausage shape to previous years but will make a lovely, hearty feast.

Monsters and miniatures, and a new machine

I think I have created a monster!

Brace yourselves, it's a huge Bob style bunny. I wanted to use some scraps of wool up so I just kept knitting the 2 balls together for a bit of mottled effect and here he is..... Bob's big brother!

Another little and large would be these crocheted strawberries. The big chunky one is a pin cushion and I'm just finishing the small one as a necklace.

Completed last week for my mums mothers day gift was this miniature embroidery for a brooch.

And lastly, I've been so busy with work and things that I haven't had much of a go on my new sewing machine which arrived last week. I went for this Janome as it does text which is quite a feature in work I like to create and I'm very excited about some of the 400 embroidery stitches. My old Brother machine is still good but this one purrs in a much nicer way! 

I'm looking forward to warmer days and good natural light to get stuck into using it.

Some festive makes

It's that pre Christmas fortnight when you suddenly find yourself with too much to do in too little time, the weekends are fast running out for seeing people or delivering gifts and I inevitably reach the point of chaos and "is it over yet!" And that's just me, I have no kids to worry about, I only have a small circle of friends, I only have 2 people to prepare a feast for. Goodness knows what the stress is like for some people.

I haven't been as productive making new festive things this year, I think because I've been trying to keep up with the demand for textile brooches but here are a couple of things I made.

These had been intended as auction gifts for my East Riding Artists festive gathering but I had to pull out at the last minute due to travel complications which would've meant I had a long way to walk to the venue with a bad foot and carrying plates of food, not good if it had been an icy evening.

Anyway I made a festive can wrap for a pencil pot. There's a bit of doodle embroidery on here and some embellished rubber stamped bits.

The next thing is a mini pin cushion and trinket jar made from one of those mini Bon Maman jam jars. They are so cute it really leant itself for making a mini Christmas pud to go on the top for a pin cushion.

I used felt to make a red disc for the base and the pudding is just a circle stitched around and drawn up into a ball before stuffing tightly.

I decorated the pudding and then it is stitched to the red base and that is glued onto the jar lid and that's it.

Tomorrow I will post details of my festive blog giveaway.

Derwent pencils on fabric

A friend told me that you can use Derwent watercolour pencils on fabric, it has to be the Inktense pencils which are particularly heavy with pigment. I've had a bit of a go with the pencils and its pretty good, they don't blend quite as well as on paper and be careful near the edge of your drawing as it can feather beyond your outline.


Overall I'm quite happy with the result and will be able to use this effect for small craft projects. I ironed it to set the pencils but I wouldn't want to use it on anything large scale as I don't think washing is an option.


This afternoon I used one of the fabric drawings and made a pincushion.