Napkin Holders, Christmas Favor Boxes and Centre Piece

This morning I made some napkin holders and favor boxes.

The holders are just a piece of card which I tried to roll up but it didn't go very well, so once I stuck the embellishment on the front I flattened the whole thing and think it looks better like this now.

The idea for the boxes were from  this site  and was passed on to me by Julie (elysia2003).  I have put three chocolate mint squares inside which I placed in a small bag first as they were not wrapped.  Should be fine as we are having our special dinner on Saturday.  I found that the sides of the boxes wouldn't quite go together where they met at the point and left a bit of a gap.  This was probably due to there being three mints in each but I thought two was a bit stingy.  I punched holes in the top and threaded the red ribbon to tie them up so that they are not glued together, it is just the red ribbon holding them together.  On the front I glued a triangle of some patterned glitter card I found in my craft box that I have had for years and then I stuck two small pieces of curling ribbon and a small gift bow on as well.

I made a centre piece for the table by placing a candle in the centre then putting one of those rings you can buy with the holly and pine cones on it around the outside, it is gold coloured.  Then I bought some small LED lights which are run buy two AA batteries, they come from 99p shop and are shaped like stars.  I twisted thenm around the outside of the cones etc and then placed a piece of thick gold tinsel around the outside so I could hide the wires and the pack for the batteries under it.  Here is a picture of what it looks like with and without the lights on.

Fourth Shirt

Well, here is the fourth shirt finished at last.  The buttons took an age to come because of the snow but they came yesterday so I managed to make the buttonholes and sew on the buttons.

The shirt is made out of a small gingham check which only cost me £1 a metre so including buttons and interfacing the whole shirt cost less than £4 to make.

Christmas Tablecloth and Mats

I made a quilted tablecloth for Christmas earlier in the year.  I had some fabric that had square blocks on it with pictures of Santa on them so I used these as the centres for some blocks and did a log cabin like pattern around the edges with some other Christmas fabrics I had.  The blocks came out about 6 inches square.  I also had quite a bit of another fabric that was cream with some hand writing on it which although the words are not Christmassy, it looks nice, so I put some of this round the outsides in a thicker border and then sewed the larger blocks together.

The tablecloth was still a bit short length ways but fitted width ways but I had just about run out of the script fabric so I used some plain cream and made the ends of the cloth slightly different.  You cant see the ends in the photos but they look ok as I had enough script fabric to do the border around the edges so it matches the rest.

Blouse for Daughter

I have finished making a blouse for my daughter for Christmas.  The fabric is a bit sparkly, it is a cotton fabric which is crinkled and has silver glitter on it.  It cost me £2 for the fabric and I already had the buttons in my button tin.  I didn't put any interfacing in it as thought it would be a bit too stiff.  I didn't have a pattern for this but used one of her long checked shirts (you know the kind that are made out of brushed cotton) to cut it out.

I expect she will wear it unbuttoned over a t shirt like a jacket.

Snow in Gillingham

We had quite a bit of snow this week, it has been really cold too.  Other Half has been off work and kids been off school, been quite cosy really as we got out Chrismtas tree up.

This was our front garden, the snow is 3/4 way up our wall which is 2 foot high.

Treasure Hunt

I have made up a treasure hunt for my youngest daughter for Christmas Day this year.  I have bought her lots of presents that are small bits and pieces like I would usually put in a stocking but thought to make the morning last a bit longer I would hide the presents and give her some clues to find them.

I typed out the clues in my word processor and then changed it to an old fashioned looking font and changed the colour to brown.  Then printed them out on normal white paper and cut them out singly with a pair of fancy scissors like you use for card making.  Then I rolled each one around the end of a small paint brush.

I found a lovely box in our loft that we bought a few years ago because it looked nice but had never used it for anything, I think it was from one of the pound shops but you could use any box and decorate it nicely.  Just don't forget to print out a separate list if you are going to wrap up the box as a gift so you remember where you are supposed to be hiding the gifts.

Shirt Number 2

Here's the second shirt.  The fabric looks better made up than it did on the roll.  Definitely had my eyes going funny while cutting it out but it doesn't look too bad now its finished.

I have cut out the next one, think I will cut the other one out as well while the pattern is out of the envelope, then I can just get on with the sewing.

First Shirt

Well I have finished my first man's shirt.  Never even tried doing one before.  It's not as perfect as a shop bought one as I was still finding my feet with it but it looks ok, I am quite pleased with the result and think the nice buttons make it look better.  I folded it up nice and wrapped it in some cello then Xmas wrap.

I have got quite a bit done on the second one, got the sleeves in and the cuffs on, just button band and collar really to do on that one.   Still haven't started cutting out the other two yet, need to buy some more interfacing when I go up town.

Photo Book With A Difference

For my grand daughter's brithday I made her a photo book with a difference. Here are a couple of the pages from the book to show you the kind of thing I did. I used a photo editing programme (Paint Shop Pro 5) to make the pages, they are just a blank rectangle which I covered over with a pattern, then I added a photo of her or a member of the family which I had made into a cartoon effect ( I found a site online which did this for free) and then added some embellishments and some text at the bottom and saved the whole page as a jpg file. Then I went on to one of the website where you can buy a photo book and instead of just adding photos I added the whole thing as if it was a photo and made it cover the whole page. The finished book was lovely and looks like one you buy in the shops.

Yet more Paintings

These paintings I did as presents for my nieces and nephew a few years ago.

More Paintings

These painings I did in the back garden. Out side our back door we had a blank brick wall which really got on my nerves so I decided to make it into an art gallery by copying some famous paintings onto the wall.

Paintings

I wanted to add my paintings I did a few years ago. There are my of my four grandchildren, and my Mum.

Where I Am Up To

Well that is all the photos I have on my computer that I have already taken. I will take my camera up with me tonight when other half goes to work and take some more of the bits I have made and put them on soon.

I am making mens shirts at the moment, I have nearly finished one of them and will be starting on the second one tonight unless the buttons I ordered turn up today in which case I will finish off the first one completely first.

The second one I am making is stripey fabric and I am not 100% sure about using it as it makes my eyes go funny looking at it so will be a pain to sew up. I have cut it out though so will have a go and see how I get on.

Christmas Placemats

I made a patchwork table cloth for Christmas (it is in the loft for now, will get it down next week with the decorations and take a pic) and wanted some placemats to go with them. I bought a piece of holly patterened fabric off Ebay which was quite a bargain and I already had some red fabric left over from the table cloth so made these placemats. I made the rectangles the same size as some we had already and then hand quilted them with some wadding and some plain backing fabric and put the edging round. I have made 8 of them as even though we can only sit 6 at our table properly, if my daugther's family come we have seven of us and thought might as well make it 8 and have a spare.

Button Necklaces

I was wanting to make some button necklaces for gifts for Christmas but just couldn't get them to look right so in the end I went for these. I bought some waxed thread like you hang a pendant on for making a necklace, and then drilled small holes in the edges of the buttons with my hobby drill. I then joined two buttons together and tied the string in a knot at the back and carried on until it seemed long enough then just tied two longer bits of thread to the ends and tied a knot at the top.

Charm Bracelets

These are the four bracelets I made also for my nieces for Christmas. They are pieces of silver coloured chain with the beads and bits fixed on with head pins. The other bracelet at the top has some old vintage metal buttons on it and it is for my eldest daughter for Christmas.

Fabric Dolls

These are two of the dolls I made for my nieces for Christmas this year. They are made with a pattern I found in an old magazine, it was one of those sheets you pull out the middle and open up so I don't know what the magazine was. I made four of the dolls in different colours, their bodies are made from unbleached calico with the faces and boots painted on with acrylic paints. The hats are made from felt.

I have since made some more of these, two big ones with the little dolls to go with them and some more little ones to use up some of the scraps of fabric I had lying around. They will go away towards my stash for a stall one day.

Football Bears

I had some blue fur laying about that I had bought to make a Tree Skirt for Christmas one year when we had a blue living room. I had quite a big piece left over so as my eldest grandson is a Chelsea fan I decided to make football bears for the three of them for Christmas this year. I bought half a metre of white and half a metre of red to go with the blue as two of them are Arsenal fans (or were when I made them lol, you know what kids are like).

I got the pattern off the internet, it was a free teddy bear pattern. I made it smaller than the one they had by just printing off the pattern a bit smaller. I knitted the clothes for them by finding a free pattern also on the net for a new born baby set of jumper and bottoms, but made the legs a lot shorter and also made the arms shorter on the jumpers.

Red Black and Gold Quilt

I made this quilt for out own bed. I had started to collect fabrics for it last Chrismas when my sister-in-law and I went a Christmas do at the fabric shop in Rochester and she told me to choose some fabrics and she would buy them for me for Christmas. I bought about 4 or 5 FQ's in reds, blacks and creams with gold metallic patterns on them. At the shop, everytime you spend £10 she stamps a card and when it is full up you can choose a metre of fabric free and I had filled up my card after this purchase so I bought a metre of a nice black with a gold print on it to go with it. I put these bits away and then after Christmas I found quite a few FQ's on Ebay in the sale as the fabrics had been sold as Christmas fabrics (they haven't got Christmassy patterns on, just swirls and things like leaves or flowers).

I started to make up the centre block in the spring and then in the summer I managed to buy enough fabric to finish the outer blocks. Most of the blocks are made from triangles which I had made by sewing two squares together across the diagonal with two lines of sewing and then cut between the two lines and pressed them open so they were now two squares made up of two triangles of different fabrics. These new squares I put together in different colour combinations to make the larger blocks. I had designed the layout in my note book first so I could work out how much more fabric I needed to buy and so I knew how to sew the bits together.

The wadding I used was a thicker wadding than usual as they had run out of the thinner one in Dunelm Mill when I went to buy it. It was a bit harder to sew but I am very pleased with the result and it is quite a warm quilt to use.

I made the two cushions to go with it afterwards.

Purple, Green and Pink Quilt

This is the quilt I made for my son for Christmas this year. I decided to make one for their living room after all, it is a smaller size and I have used the colours they have in their room which is open plan and goes into dining area and kitchen. The living area is mostly purple as they have a new purple sofa and armchair, but their kitchen area is pink and lime green and they have ornaments and bits of all the colours through out. I thought they could have it over the back of the sofa or arm chair and would be handy if it gets cold in the winter or just as a spare cover is someone stays over.

The pattern I used for this one is the same as for the last two quilts with the 6 sqares and a rectangle to make a block but instead of putting them together randomly I used the same colour for all the rectangles and then put them so that they made a zigzag shape across the quilt.

Patchwork Bag

My sister bought me the sewing pattern for this bag for Christmas last year along with the fabrics needed to make it up. It was quite easy to make but I haven't used it yet, was going to use it in the summer but forgot all about it. I have since used the pattern to make some more up out of scraps of upholstery fabrics to may be put on a stall one day.

Pink and Blue Quilt

This is the other quilt I made from the parcel of scraps I bought on Ebay. It is for my eldest daugther for Chrismtas this year. I have put some pink beads on this one for decoration and it is double bed size. For the backs of this one and the other I used an old duvet cover which I took apart. It was just the right size.

Autmn Colours Quilt

 I have made this quilt for my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas this year as they both help us out a lot through out the year especially my sister-in-law who has taken me to craft fairs and quilt shows this year.

The fabric I bought off someone on Ebay who was selling it in bags of 1kg as scraps. I paid about £15 and bought two bags of it and there was enough in the parcel to make the tops to two quilts double bed size so really pleased. This is just one of them.

I sewed some beads on to the plain bits of the quilt to tart it up a bit. The pattern for the quilt I got again from a book, it is made up of blocks with 6 small squares (2 squares by 3) and then a long rectangle bit across the top to make it square. The blocks are random in colours and randomly sewn together to make the quilt look like a nice jumble of autumn colours. The triangle pieces across the top and bottom were added on as it wasn't quite long enough for what I wanted so used up the scraps I had left over.

Fabric Storage Baskets

These are the fabric storage baskets I made for my sisters for Christmas this year (must remember not to tell them about this blog until after they receive them). I got the instructions from Jamtart's blog, not sure how to link to the tutorials on here yet but will try to work it out and update at a later date. Try this link if I have worked out how to do it then pat on the back to me lol.

Another Recycled Magazine Bag

This bag took a bit longer than the clutch bags. It is the one I gave my eldest daughter for her birthday at the weekend and she really loved it.

The base is made from using the pages that had just black writing on, the strip across the middle is from pages that had black and white photos on and the top and handle was made from some brown paper I had in my stash.

Recycled Magazine Clutch Bags

I made five of these recycled magazine clutch bags back in January. They are for Christmas presents for this year for my four nieces and my son's girlfriend. They were made by following a tutorial on the web for making bags from candy wrappers but instead of using wrappers I used pages out of magazines as I have loads of these given to me to read and seemed a shame not to find a use for them.

I bought some rolls of clear sticky tape that was 2 inches wide and stuck a strip of this to the page from the magazine I wanted to use. I could get about 3 strips from each page, then cut them out so I had a pile of strips as long as the page, then cut the strips down to the right length. I can't remember how long they had to be off hand but there are lots of tutorials out there and they are really easy to follow showing you how to fold the pieces up and link them together to make a chain, then you sew all the chains together to make the bag. It has a zip sewn into the top. I will just have to tell them to try not to get the bags wet!

Knitted Cardigan

I did a lot of knitting for last Christmas, this is one of the cardigans I made for my eldest Grandson with a picture of a soldier on the back.

Colourful Quilts

I made three of these quilts last Christmas for my three grandsons. The pattered fabrics were nearly all bought on Ebay and the plain fabrics I bought from the fabric shop. I got the idea for the pattern out of a quilt book by sister-in-law gave me. It is a block made up from 4 small sqares in the centre, then 4 rectangles going around the outside. I made another on in pinks and lilacs for my grandaughter but didn't get a photo before I gave it to her.

Christmas Food Hamper

This was a hamper I made up for my brother and sister-in-law. Not exactly a craft but it might help someone trying to work out what to put in a hamper. I can't remember exactly what I put in it now though. The box was just and empty one I picked up in Aldi's off the shelf and then covered it with some Christmas paper.