Kitty the felt cat x

I have to confess a terrible sin, I am guilty of making purchases based on other bloggers recommendations.


Are you shocked or just as guilty as me?


Well this particular purchase was all the fault oops rather influence of one Abi who blogged before Christmas about a gift she had handmade for her friend. One look at that beautiful bunny had me intrigued so I went to the pattern designer Alicia Paulson's website  "Posie" and there I fell in love with Juniper the cat.
She is made from felt and requires a fabric quarter for her dress and some wool for her stole which I had already in my stash. You also need embroidery thread and stuffing which again I had in my stash.


So I followed Abi's expert advise and bought my felt from a lovely shop called The Eternal Maker. I chose barnyard red felt for her welly boots and silver grey felt for the body. I also found a beautiful patchwork fabric a bit reminiscent of Cath Kidston I thought called Faded Floral Patchwork for Lecien Japan.

The pattern is very easy to follow and you don't need to know a great deal of embroidery. In general you need to know only three stitches...........
whip stitch
buttonhole stitch and
satin stitch

The designer recommended a chalk erasable pen for drawing around the pattern but I could only find an erasable felt tip pen. Sadly despite following the manufacturer's guidelines, the pen is not 100% erasable however, the main areas which I couldn't get the pen out were covered in either her boots or dress so hopefully as long as no-one undresses her, the secret is safe.

I found it really therapeutic sitting and doing tiny back stitches to form the shape of her body and then gradually see her face appear as I stitched her eyes and nose and added in some cute whiskers. Unfortunately, there is a slight discrepancy between her eyes so she looks a little lopsided by about half a centimetre but it makes her original and a bit whimsical.

I ended up hand stitching her dress because I sat in the lounge, the warmest place in my cottage, and watched Miss Marple episodes as I stitched. I tied a piece of pale blue ricrac around her waist to add something different. She also has a little stole which I made in some rose pink thread to match the roses in her dress.

Instead of green wellies I made deep red ones because I referred the colour and again I felt they would coordinate with her dress.

She is now named Kitty because I think it suits her best and she is going to sit on my bed.

I also bought the bunny pattern too and I have plenty of felt left over to make her once I've completed some other projects I'm working on.

Have you been inspired to make something based on another blogger's handiwork?

The GREAT British Sewing Bee x

So are you glued to the TV on a Tuesday night at 8pm to watch the best new programme in the crafting universe? No, well why not? I have been watching the adverts for the start of this programme for ages and at last last week it arrived. Yes, The Great British Sewing Bee is in town at last.

It is a programme about 8 amateur stitchers from all walks of life who have been chosen to compete to be crowned The Best stitcher. Each week the competitors are given 3 tasks which they must complete within an allotted time and their work is then judged by the absolutely gorgeous Patrick Grant and the sewing queen May Martin. Under their watchful eyes, the contestants choose their fabrics from an amazing array of shelves, pin their patterns, cut their pieces and carefully stitch them together to make some pretty beautiful pieces of work.

For me, it is like sitting on the lounge floor with my mum the trained seamstress teaching me how to carefully cut the correct paper pattern pieces, plan where they best fit onto your fabric, pin them carefully into into place and make those first scarey cuts. Oooh that really was the worst part for me cos I'm not the best cutter being lefthanded. Then cutting the notches for matching and making tailor tacks to match up darts and seams.

 

Then the magical part where you take your pieces to the machine and if you've done everything correctly and can stitch a straight line, you should end up with a beautiful product all made by you. I was lucky to have such an amazing teacher in my mum really. I made dresses, helped her make my summer and school dresses, at school I made a waistcoat and after leaving school I made my own dresses too. It is a wonderful skill to have.

and this is similar to the machine I learnt to sew with, amazing isn't it?

Anyway back to real stars of the show, the contestants. I have to say my favourites at the moment are Lauren, Mark and Ann. Lauren has been sewing since she was a child and made the most beautiful A-line skirt with bias binding edging. She has a brilliant blog and webpage as she and her husband are opening a shop this month. Lauren has some great sewing tutorials on her blog and has a lovely style of writing and her photos are clear and show exactly what she is doing.

 

Ann is the most mature lady on the programme and her skills are so lovely to watch. Her simple yet elegant alteration to the blouse the contestants were given was beautiful and she is so calm. I certainly wouldn't be under those circumstances.

 

Finally Mark has made the most incredible Steampunk costumes but never really put in a zip but came up with the best day dress last week which had to be accurately fitted to a real model. It was perfect and he won that round.

 

Tonight they are making trousers and a silk blouse. Now those are two scarey challenges. So tune in at 8pm BBC2 for the next exciting episode. Me, well I'll have to watch on iplayer as I'm learning how to make linoprints at WI. Yes you read that right I go to WI. 

The corsage

So just a brief post today. Have been to the Drs to have bloods and things checked as he wanted to make sure my Lithium wasn't poisoning me. As I haven't had a phone call so far, I am assuming all is fine and it is only my silly inner ears which is making me giddy and sick.

Anyway, I forgot to show you what I made for my sister's birthday present. I had seen a similar item in ''East'' a very lovely lady's shop in Wells and also nationally. I wanted to get this for my sister however, it was rather expensive and also I thought I could make one in colours she might prefer and as it would be handmade, no-one would have one the same.

So I bought three different colours of felt in aubergine, fuschia and grey and also used the red felt I made last year. The centre is a felt rose which you make just the same way as for a paper rose. Cut out a circle of felt and them cut it into a spiral shape. I cut mine so that there would be petal shapes on the spiral. Then roll the felt into a rose shape and stitch neatly together. The next layer is the leaf shapes. Some are stitched straight on and others folded in half to give depth.I then had some fine brown velvet ribbon which I made into loops and stitched underneath and some thin loops of felt. Finally there is a layer of long thin leaves in the three main colours. I completed the corsage with a glass button which I stitched into the centre of the rose and then finished off with a brooch clip. The actual size is about the same as my hand. I hope my sister wears thin on her wonderful black winter coat.

Here is the finished corsage photographed my my sister as I forgot to do that bit.............silly blogger.

Tiger, Tiger burning bright..................

Well not so much a tiger I'm afraid as a variety of other jungle animals. I thought I ought to post about the curtains I decorated for my lovely friend's Nicki and John and their new baby H. Now to say she is new is slightly wrong as H is now almost 6 months old! Whoops. Anyway, way back before she was born, Nicki asked me to help her make some jungle animals in order to decorate the orange curtains she was repurposing for H's room.

So one sunny day we both sat outside in Nicki's garden crafting and eating yummy food. And these are the resultant curtains.......................

The idea was to have day and night in the jungle/African tranvaal as Nicki is South African and wanted lots of bright colours. I started off with the idea for the owl and Nicki made the rhino and elephant but then H came early so I completed the curtains as a pair.
Much of the tree and leaf design is my own but when it came to owls I sought inspiration from this book ''Super Cute Felt'' by Laura Howard. I have followed her blog and bought a few individual pieces and love her simple, yet personal style. The owl design is from an egg cosy. All I did was to make the owls super bright in colour and then coloured ricrac across their breasts. I thought a mummy and baby owl would be quite appropriate. I added in a big moon to set the scene.

 The designs for this curtain were from Laura's book again, at least Mr Lion is. He was originally designed to be a mug/coffee warmer but he was so perfect for the curtain, I used him alone. I then added the tree to give the animals a true-to-life background and added tufts of grass and a pond with huge splashes for Mr Hippo jumping in.
Nicki and John were really pleased with the finished curtains and I hope when she is old enough H will be too.

Lady in red...........

Today we were walking in a smallish winter wonterland which looked like this.................

however by this afternoon it had virtually all gone, shame. Never mind I was nice and warm in the flat doing my lady in red who now is complete and looks like this

she's a felt ornament for the xmas tree. I got the pattern from posy rosy little things and there is a cup of hot chocolate I'm going to do next I think. The pattern is easy to cut out and you only need to use embroidery stitches like backstitch, blanket stitch and back stitch oh and french knot and lazy daisy stitches. It took a couple of evenings and gave an excuse to watch old Hollywood musicals and Miss Marple, heaven.

Prize and sneak peak.

Look what my fave postie brought in his sack today....................................my prize from the Scrapbook circle competition I won a few weeks ago.

 Here are both sides of the double papers.......................

 some lovely embellishments, letters and material and twine. I am so pleased with this prize, definately worth entering the prize draw.

They will make some pretty layouts of some of my autumn photos I think. I took alot of pictures of trees I seem to remember. I have also started my new project which at the moment looks like this.........

Oh and of course Happy Thanksgiving to all my USA friends, hope you're having a wonderful time.