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.

My First Quilt

This is the quilt I made while on my course. It lasted for four weeks and we went on evening a week so had to get a lot of it done at home. It wasn't technically the first ever quilt I had made as I had made one when my eldest daughter was little and she had loved it. It wasn't a cotton fabric quilt though and I hadn't put any wadding in it or anything, was just like a large blanket but she loved it.

This one was for my youngest daughter for Christmas and she was into pink and black (her room had been decorated in these colours not long before) and also liked skulls so the fabric was just right for her. I bought the special fabrics from sellers on Ebay as you can just about find any pattern on a piece of fabric if you look hard enough. I then bought some other flowery pinks and blacks at the fabric shop to fill it all out. I used plain white cotton for the plain rectangles.

When I had finished making the quilt up and had done all of the hadn quilting I decided to embroider my daughter's name on some of the white patches with a metallic variable coloured thread. Her name is Rebecca and we usually call her Becca but at school she is known as Becky and she was into writing her name with all different spellings, like Beka, Bekkii etc etc. I sat and worked out all the different spellings I could think of then wrote them out in bubble writing on paper so they looked the right size to fit on a patch then cut them all out and pinned the name to the quilt and embroidered around the edge, then filled in the other lines that were underneath the paper. It took quite along time to finish but looked nice when it was done.

Gothic Bag

This was the next project I started on while waiting for my course to start. I had bought this fabric off someone on Ebay and instead of it being a FQ they were selling a piece which when it came was quite big. I only needed a fat eigth for the quilt so had a lot left over so decided to make my daughter a new bag. She had one that she liked a lot but it was getting old and grubby so I took some photos of it and also measured all the parts of it and drew out a plan of how it was made and then made my self a pattern. This was also hit and miss but it came out quite nicely after all. The strap was just some black webbing and the buckle was off an old belt.

Patchwork Cushions

These were the two pillows I made last year for my daughter. I had enrolled on a quilt making course at a shop in Rochester, Kent called Hometown. Its a lovely shop, sells all the fabrics you need for quilting including all of the other bits you need like wadding, needles, everything.

The lady who runs the shop, Marion, gave us all a paper with what fabrics we needed to make the quilt on the course. It said to get 17 fat eigths of patterned fabric but I bought fat quarters instead so that I would have some left over for other projects as I knew I wanted to make some cushions to go with the quilt.

I started making these before I actually went on the course so I was making it up out of my head, I used a square of newspaper as big as the front of the cushion then just folded and cut it up until it was in triangles then cut out the triangles from fabric leaving a seam allowance.

The photos on the front were iron on transfers I bought from Ebay and I ironed them onto a piece of white cotton and then sewed them onto the front of the cushions.

First post, New blog, How exciting

Well here we go, welcome to my blog at last! I thought it was about time I had one seeing as everyone else seems to these days. I intend to add photos of my things I have made in the past so I can keep them all together along with the things I am working on at present and ideas for the future. I will have to fathom out how to do it as I go along. I will get the old photos on first and tell you a bit about everything then get to where I am now with my crafting.