In an amazing show of efficiency, yesterday's numbers have been hung and after searching aorund the house for a suitable place I finally settled on the side of our staircase. Whenever we take Little MIss C upstairs one thing we do is count the stairs as we go. The only slight problem is that this means that the numbers read from right to left, rather than left to right as is conventional. I figured that putting up with that was cheaper than moving the staircase to accommodate them! In case you're interested, the wooden pegs were bought very cheaply on eBay and the lovely ... read more
Counting
It's several months since I gave you a sneak preview of the fabric numbers that I had started to make from Meg McElwee's book Growing Up Sew Liberated: Making Handmade Clothes and Projects for Your Creative Child. You may know Meg from her lovely blog, Sew Liberated, but if you don't make sure you head over there and see the wonderful things she makes for her two gorgeous boys, and also the fun activities that they all get up to. There's no real reason why these numbers have taken so long to finish as they're not at all difficult. The numbers ... read more
Upsy Daisy’s Skirt
Whilst she doesn't watch it all that often, it's fair to say that Little Miss C is quite a fan of In The Night Garden and loves the characters in it. We are often asked to drawn Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy for her and she loves dancing like Upsy Daisy whenever she can. The only ITNG toys that she has are small ones that have been free on the cover of the show's magazine so she was thrilled therefore when my parents were given an Upsy Daisy plush toy for her by some of their friends. Now this Upsy Daisy had sadly lost her skirt at some point in the past and LMC was very quick to point ... read more
Little Lady in Red
There are far, far too many unfinished projects in this house, so yesterday's nap-time was an opportunity to actually move some of them over to the finished pile. It's several months since I went up to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show with my mum, but whilst there I had a lovely time on the Clothkits stand. I remember so many of their things from my own childhood and all of their projects have a lovely air of nostalgia about them. I've blogged before about the "Jemima" doll that I made for LMC and it's lovely that this is now one of her favourite things that ... read more
Needle cases
This was a quick little project that made use of some bits from my stash whilst creating a lovely gift for someone. These needle cases are very quick and easy to make, yet look really good. The outer fabric is upholstery swatches that my mum picked up somewhere years ago and then inside I used constrasting felt colours inside. To make them I took two pieces of the upholstery material, put them right sides together and sewed round all apart from one inch. I turned it back out to the right sides and went right round the edges with a running stitch. After cutting two pieces of felt to size I ... read more
One step closer to being finished
This isn't the first time that I've shown this particular piece of cross-stitch on my blog. In fact, it's nearly three years ago since I actually finished the sewing part this twelve days of Christmas wall hanging. Since then I'm sorry to say that it's remained in the hoop in which I stitched it. It's moved house with us and last Christmas it didn't get a look in thanks to the demands of a six month old Little Miss C. Finally things changed today though. It's out of its hoop and I've even managed to buy a the bell pull mounts for it. There are less ... read more
Lion hand puppet
I haven't forgotten about my craft advent plans here on the blog, but whilst I've been caught up in the party season finding time to sit and write blog posts has been ditched in favour of doing things that will provide content for blog posts. The crafting has continued at a furious pace and I am hoping that by December 25th, you will have had a total of 25 crafty blog posts, even if they're not at a constant rate of one a day. Today's craft "show and tell" is something that Little Miss C and I made together this afternoon - a lion hand puppet. I have to admit up ... read more
Festive bird rope
Another Christmas decoration today, but one that's quite different from what I've shown you the last two days - a felt bird rope. This took quite a while to make, mainly because each of the birds and hearts consists of four layers of red felt that are sewn together by hand. Just cuting them all out took a while. The birds' eyes are tiny black plastic beads and I managed to source some lovely red wooden beads from The Bead Shop that form the main part of the rope. The original design came from the book Christmas Stitchery which is packed full of some lovely ideas for ... read more
Designs and Such Christmas Tree
I was delighted to recently be asked to review something from new local St Albans company Designs and Such. They are an online craft store that sell both craft kits and also one-of-a-kind handmade items which would make lovely gifts. Being a crafter myself it seemed logical to test out one of their kits and I was sent the Trio of Feltivity kit to make for Christmas. I should add here that time constraints mean that I've only completed one of the trio so far - the chirstmas tree - but watch out for the other two completed projects later in this advent craft month here on ... read more
Festive bunting
I'm going to start my festive advent journey on here with a simple bit of homemade decoration. There's not much that's as simple to make as some festive bunting. I actually bought this as a kit at the Knitting & Stitching show in Harrogate last week for a bargain price of £2.50, but it's so simple to make this yourself from things that you may easily have in your stash. All you need to do is find some festive fabric and with pinking shears cut out some triangle shapes. If you want double sided bunting (as I've done here) then cut two triangles from each fabric and ... read more