Craft Neutral Christmas Bauble Swap

Slightly crazily, a little while before Christmas, I signed up to the Food of Love's Craft Neutral Christmas Bauble Swap. It was a bit crazy because I didn't really have time available to do it, but I couldn't resist - I'm always after more decs for my Christmas celebrations! And of course swaps are a great opportunity to experiment with new ideas - as you try to make things that you think will appeal to your swap partner. My partner was Caroline of Seawood Designs. She sent these brilliant ami reindeer for my 2 boys (they never made it on to the tree!). Caroline tells me that she used a free pattern that is available on the Lion Brand Yarn website if you want to have a go next year. As if that wasn't enough, she also very kindly sent these very pretty and delicate beaded snowflakes. I am sure that she put masses of work into these - they look very starry and shiny on our tree in amongst all the lights. I also got some rather scrummy G&B chocolate - although I nearly lost the chocolate to the boys and had to hide it in the bread bin! So a huge thank you to Caroline for being such a generous swap partner. For my part of the bargain I did some experimenting with crazy patchwork to make a little tree, and had a go at making yoyo hearts for a wreath. Here they are: I was pleased with both of these - particularly the wreath. It was fun to make the yoyo hearts and I love the way the colours are Christmassy without being too obviously 'green, red and gold for Christmas'. The fabrics are all from a Kaffe Fassett charm pack that I got from Cotton Patch. I used this excellent tutorial at Penny Sanford Designs for the hearts. The wreath is made with a circle of twisted wire which I single crocheted round in order to form a good base to sew on the hearts. I sewed the buttons on at the same time as sewing the hearts to the base, if you see what I mean! All in all it was a hugely satisfying swap, so huge thanks to Eileen at Food of Love for organising it. This is my 99th blog post! Look out for a 100th post giveaway coming your way soon.

Three More Stockings..

I'm back and I'm blogging! Only a short post today because I'm absolutely cream-crackered and need to go and have a sit down and a cup of cocoa (with a gap*, of course). I had a fantastic time down in London catching up with old friends from student days and with some of my old workmates. We realised yesterday that it's 9 years or so since we all worked together at Senate House in London (designed by one of my heroes, Charles Holden). It's great that we've managed to stay in touch for so long - something to do with being thrown together by adversity I think...

Before I went off to catch my train I sped round to the Post Office to send these 3 stockings off on their way to their new owners. I can't take credit for the design, but I am happy that I managed to embody the customer's design idea pretty successfully. It can be quite tough to translate someone else's pictures into a 3D form - and what's more, with this project I had to do it 3 times! I really hope they bring a lot of Christmas cheer to the recipients, and of course that they get filled with presents from Father Christmas.

While I was in London I decided to spend some time at the craft stalls at Spitalfields market. I was quite amazed at how much the market had changed since we used to visit regularly a decade ago. It's all spruced up, less Bohemian, and the people you see browsing around are a bit different too. However there was still some really inspirational crafters doing their thing (but maybe not as many as I remember) - will post about what I bought very soon.

*with a gap - means leave a gap that you can fill with alcohol of your choice, e.g. cointreau, rum, brandy...

UK Handmade Winter 2009

I'm rushing around trying to get everything ready before I go off on a bit of pre-Christmas partying in London tomorrow, so I haven't had much time for posting. But I'd really like to point people in the direction of new winter edition of the fantastic online magazine for UK Handmade. The editors' mission statement begins:

"UK Handmade is a design led online magazine committed to showcasing and promoting the best creative talent the UK has to offer. Artists and designers from across all of the art disciplines have a place here including photography, feltmaking, jewellery, fashion and art."

A really worthwhile aim!

I'm lucky enough to have a tutorial in it for these cute little elves' hats (page 86), and there are loads more brilliant seasonal craft ideas and articles. There's a wonderful sounding recipe for Christmas cupcakes, and article about all the goings on at Rothley Craft Farm, instructions on how to make a beautiful Christmas flower arrangement, some reviews of Christmas craft and baking books, an article on the Bloomsbury group, and more.... It really is a fantastic read. UK crafters are a talented lot - take a look at the inspiring UK Handmade Flickr group if you need any evidence! It's a great place to look if you are short of a few Christmas presents.

Finished Another Christmas Stocking!

Here's another Christmas commission all done and ready to be posted, as soon as I've finished another one for Daisy's big sister!

Working from my friend's specification I've used pink corduroy in the main body and Michael Miller's Yule Trees fabric to form the lining and the cuff. The name and the Christmas tree applique are made using wool felt, embellished with vintage buttons. There's also medium interfacing in the body of the stocking & the cuff also has a layer of fusible fleece to give it structure when the stocking is hanging.

I've really enjoyed making this, it worked out almost entirely how I'd hoped, although rather different from the original design. And I was pleased that the method I used for putting the stocking together worked too! I'm now just hoping that Daisy Rose and her mum like it.

Christmas Stocking Prototype

I've been working hard on this prototype Christmas stocking today (with a little break when we had an unscheduled power cut!) and am now nearly done. As I've already mentioned I've got a commission from Celia to make stockings for her 2 lovely girls, and before I started cutting fabric and sewing applique I really wanted to have a go at making a trial version. I realised I was being handed the perfect opportunity to make stockings for my 2 lovely boys! I have been meaning to do this for 3 years now, and even have some fabric cut out ready to go, but they've never got finished in the Christmas rush. Poor things are always getting prototypes and rejected experiments (a misshapen owl and a turtle with no eyes are quite popular..) but this time I think they are going to pretty pleased, because this has gone really well. The main body of the stocking is lovely orange (Danny's favourite colour) corduroy which I got from Ditto Fabrics. It's the 1st time I've used this shop and I am very impressed with their selection - especially with the lovely corduroys in lots of beautiful colours - the staff were very friendly too. The fabric trim on the stocking cuff is Laurel Burch Bountiful Blessings Tress in Ivory (from a very helpful ebay retailer called Quilted Mouse Fabrics). All the applique is in 100% wool felt from my favourite Handmade Presents - not cheap, but in my opinion it's fantastic value because it's top quality. I'm pretty pleased with how it's all worked out - the only thing I'd change is the colour of thread I used for the name applique - it's too light I think. It's a bit of a work in progress photo because I haven't sewn the final seam - so you also get to see my workspace, and today's number 1 distraction - Selvedge magazine - which arrived this morning. As usual I'm totally gobsmacked by all the gorgeous work and photos of beautiful things. As someone else said - even the adverts are lovely to look at. I've already been through it twice and will have another browse tonight. It's such a treat to receive that it really was a no-brainer to fork out for a 3 year subscription recently.

Some Commissions!

I've had some commissions lately which is really great - it's good to be working on something that you've already sold! Far better for your confidence, although it can be more stressful, especially as you have a customer's expectations to worry about too. But my customers have all been lovely so far, so fingers crossed. It's a real mixed bag of projects. Gill wanted a hat... it's just been finished, and this is me wearing it - excuse the crazed smile (see below, I'm very tired). The yarn is Colinette Point 5 in a shade called Velvet Damson. It really is lovely and a real pleasure to work with. I've also crocheted up another in a shade called Bright Charcoal (I couldn't go to the shop for just one thing could I?) - can't decide whether to sell or keep that one! I am becoming slightly obsessed by Colinette yarns, they are such blissful colours and I love the different textures and structures that they produce. I've had some requests for proper full-sized stockings, so I've been having fun working on designs. I thought it might be interesting/scary to post a picture of my initial design so that you can compare it to the final result. So, here's my design.... The customer requested pink and wanted the stocking personalised, and I suggested the applique. I think the one thing that this tells everyone is that my artistic skills are extremely limited. And don't you like the use of the pink gummed paper I pinched from my sons' craft box?! I'm going to be using pink corduroy for the main body of the stocking, and felt for the tree and the letters. The stocking is going to be lined with some gorgeous Michael Miller fabric called Yule Trees (the link will take you to Hancock's of Paducah - I warn you not to click on it if you suffer from fabric issues). We tracked down a UK supplier of this fabric on Ebay - it's been a very helpful service so far from Quilted Mouse Fabrics. Another item I've been asked for is a blue hippo amigurumi with a nurse's hat and apron. I'm thinking felt for the hat and apron - I'm hoping it's going to look pretty cute. Other stuff I have almost finished at the moment are: business card wallets made with some really funky Free Spirit fabric, 2 or 3 crochet brooches and a patchwork bag. Phew! And of course there's just the small matter of my lads' 6th birthday party at the weekend and finishing decorating the front room by Christmas. See, I told you there was a reason I look tired...

I made something just for us....

And possibly for the entire neighbourhood to point and stare at, but hey! It's Christmas and you can't be low key at Christmas time..

As you can see it's a stunningly beautiful, only slightly over the top Christmas door wreath. It's made with plaited tubes of very funky Christmassy fabric. Each of the single tubes that go to make the plait is nearly 3 metres long (can you believe it?). It took me FOREVER to stuff the damn things, and I got a very sore thumb doing it, but I have to say that I am extremely pleased with the results.

The boys like it too. They were most impressed with the lovely holly wreath that our neighbours have on their door, and this spurred me to get on with this fabric version that I had been planning for a while. I got the idea from a vintage 70s craft book that I found on one of my charity shop trawls. We have a little porch over our front door so it should keep reasonably dry out there.

We are very Christmassy here now - we have the tree up and the room is decorated. We have lovely cut out snowflakes on our window and lots of home made decorations on the tree. Today we made great big cardboard stars which we covered in glitter paint - hopefully they'll be dry by tomorrow so we can stick them on our wall. And I am so proud of myself for writing a blog post amongst all this busy-ness!

Christmas cards

Sandy and I sat down to watch the lovely film Once on Thursday - what a fantastic film, I really recommend it. Whilst watching we had a real blitz on making our Christmas cards. We have 2 kinds to send out - lots of people will be getting a paper heart Xmas decoration, with a little letter slipped inside & other people will be getting a more standard card.

We made the hearts pictured using the technique of folding that I've blogged about before. You can download a template there if you want to have a go at making them. They are very satisfying to create. We used origami papers because they have wonderful sparkly Christmas colours and are very easy to fold (obviously!) and manipulate into the heart shapes. They have turned out slightly crazily patterned but I really like the effect. We still have to add hanging ribbon & write the letters but we are getting there... We have 2nd class stamps so they need to be done by Wed I think. Plenty of time.









The more traditional cards look great I think & are very very simple to do, so I thought I'd describe the process in case anyone feels inspired. Here's what we did:












I created a card template by drawing round a Christmas cookie cutter. I used this bauble-shaped cutter because I thought it was a fun shape whilst still being pretty straightfoward to cut round. I have a shooting star cutter that I thought about using, but it would have been hell to cut out lots of shooting stars - all those angles!












I then drew round the template on the back of the origami paper, cut out the shape and stuck it on pre-folded cards that I had cut in half (because I'm mean!). I think they look fab as they are but I am tempted to stick extra glitter on them... can't have enough glitter at Christmas.

If I get time I am going to chop the offcuts of paper into strips and use them to make paper chains with the kids. That could be fun/interesting/messy...