Cushion

Another '6 months off' project was making a cushion with the union jack on.  There were a lot of flags around last summer with both the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee so plenty of inspiration.













I'm sure somewhere I saw one that was all done in white, which was what I decided to do.  I have accumulated a fair amount of lace and wanted to use it in a project that I would get to keep as it's so lovely.  I bought a cushion pad from Dunelm Mill which was in the right size/shape; it was filled with feathers too :) http://www.dunelm-mill.com/shop/cushions/

I laid out two pieces of white fabric and using a ruler and pencil drew two rectangles the same size as the cushion dimensions.  I left plenty of extra fabric to ensure that I could properly secure the lace.  I laid out the diagonals first - medium strip of lace from top left to bottom right and from bottom left to top right - and pinned them.

I can't use the foot on the sewing machine very well at all and since I wanted this to come out looking nice I turned the wheel on the side by hand for the whole of this!! It is very laborious and slow but it did mean it all looks beautiful.

For the white strips on either side of the diagonal I used a narrow white ribbon, pinning and sewing as before.  The more complicated bit is the central cross as you have to layer your strips of lace.  I first pinned the horizontal cross-piece and its edging.  Then lay the vertical crosspiece and weave its edging underneath the horizontal crosspiece.  It took me a bit of time as I re-pinned it to get it perfect.  Also when I decided that my wide lace was too creamy/yellowy and bleached it it decided to shrink and so I had to re-pin all over again.

Knowing that when I sewed it all up and made it into a pillowcase there would be an edge where the tag ends of my bits of lace would be showing I made a hem, trimmed the ends of lace and covered it with ribbon.  I know it's not perfect but it gave me a nice finish.  I can't really tell you how to make it into a pillowcase as I had Mum explaining it to me in unfinished sentences and in the end let her fold the flap and pin it for me to sew.

I'm really pleased with the way this turned out and use it a lot.  One last detail, the little 'handmade' charm I found and an opportunity to see the lace close-up.

Jewellery holder

In my six months off sick I did several fabric related projects and, having shown them to a like-minded friend who I saw recently, realised that it was about time I shared them on here too!!

I'm not really one for wearing jewellery but do have lots of pretty things and I can never find them when I want so thought it would be a good idea to try and put them all in one place and display them at the same time.  Pintrest provided some inspiration....

The main problem with these is the stretch/sag caused by the weight of the jewellery.  I decided to use a cork pin board instead.  I cut a piece of wadding to the right sort of size and covered it with a piece of creamy linen.  I used ordinary drawing pins to attach the linen to the edges of the pinboard.  I put one pin in the centre of the top, then the bottom, then one each side, pulling the fabric taut as I went along.  I then put more pins in to properly secure the fabric.  Some pins went in better than others, some broke, one decided to bury itself into my thumb and so to finish them I went round with a miniature hammer to get them flat!  To keep the fabric in place I used wood glue on the back of the board to stick it down and trimmed away any excess.

 I wanted to keep the subtle lace look and so used wonderweb to attach strips of both wide and narrow pale cream lace across the width of the board.  When it was finished I thought perhaps I had gone too subtle as it was quite difficult to distinguish but with the jewellery on it doesn't matter and I'm not sure you would want much more.

 The final piece has (most of) my jewellery on it and is hung proudly on my wall.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out and enjoy looking at it.


COST
- Cork pin board, approx £2.50
- Wadding, FREE (from Mum)
- Linen, FREE (from my fabric stash, I think it originally came from my other Grandma)
- Drawing pins, FREE (I don't throw away stationary supplies)
- Wood glue, FREE (went and looked at all of Dad's random bits and pieces)
- Lace, 70p per metre, used two different widths so £1.40 (leaves some offcuts)
- Wonderweb, approx 50p per roll
- Clear push pins, £2 (box of 200, from Staples)

You will also need: miniature hammer, scissors, iron

Total = £6.50 but I had a lot of supplies to hand

And here, finally is my jewellery board :D

 

Hope

I have finished my first block! I know it's the second one that I've made but it is the first that is complete.

 I'm quite pleased with the way it has turned out :) It may not be perfectly square, or flat etc but it is bright and cheerful and colourful and has helped me to try and be more hopeful in my current situation.

My boyfriend's parents gave me a little book of sewing projects for my birthday and it talked about using catch stitch to applique.  Apparently the entire block could be classed as applique; I didn't realise there were so many different ways to do it (or that I was doing applique!!).

 

Anyway, this close up shows the detail and I hope you can see it.  I put iron-on vilene on the back of the purple fabric before cutting the letters out, to reduce the risk of fraying.  It worked really well and was so easy and simple to do.

I was planning to link to something showing you how to do a catch stitch but what google has come up with is different to what I did so I'm going to leave that bit out......

I haven't quite worked out what I want to do for my next block.  There are lots of ideas floating around and things I'd quite like to do but am not really feeling at the moment.  Thoughts and inspiration would be very welcome!

Pink bedroom (contd)

After several days looking at my frame I got on with the decoration and found an arrangement that I was happy with.

 

The large butterflies were drawn using a template and then cut out by hand, the small ones were made using a paper-punch which Mum has although I'm not sure whether it was originally hers or came via Grandma.  There are two different shades of paper, in approximately the shades that were already being used to maintain continuity.  I played around with lots of large butterflies, lots of small butterflies, a mixture of both and gradually pared it down until I was happy with it.  Let's hope my friend will be happy with it too.

I took the left-over butterflies and blu-tacked them to my sister's bedroom door as a pretty surprise for her when she came home after a weekend of weddings and she is very appreciative. 

Forever Friends!!

Mum and I went shopping in The Range (http://www.therange.co.uk/) the other day and I picked up an absolute bargain.  You might have seen lots of 'British' FF stuff last year, but this is now old stock and I presume they were trying to get rid of it.  There was a pack that seemed to have a fair amount of stuff in it, although we couldn't quite work out precisely what products, and decided that at £7.99 it was probably worth it.

It was definitely worth it!!
- 3 x sets of clear stamps
- 1 x pack of 5 cards with envelopes
- 2 x A5 card kits
- 2 x decoupage pack
- 4 x A4 sheet of motifs

It's a pack that is going to be shared out as there is just so so much there.  I've started having a play and over a couple of sessions have made a total of 4 cards.  This is out of one half of one of the decoupage packs (Mum has the other half of the pack, which is identical).

The Beefeater is on one of the cards that came in the pack and I've very simply added gold peel-off strips as a border.  It is a little bit plain and I might decide to add a few more bits to it.

The sentry with his busby is on a pearlescent card (from my own supplies) and has a matching ribbon.  The ribbon wasn't quite long enough to tie into a bow so I got Mum to tie a bow in an identical bit and trimmed it to size.  I love ribbon and whenever I buy a top that has ribbons to hold them on the hanger in the shop I chop them out and save them.










The pinstripe paper came in the pack and I thought it very appropriate as I imagine the FF bear getting into the cab as being a city business man.  Again it is a simple card but I like a clean look and think that it works well with the offset.  There would be room at the bottom right-hand corner to put a greeting on later if desired.

I absolutely love the effect of the bears peeping out the bus windows.  They consist of several layers and have a wonderfully 3D effect which is slightly lost in the photo.  I coloured the edges of my background paper with an appropriately shaded ink pad before sticking it to the card.












Lots of fun so far and much much more to come! Also this season's range of FF products are now available and some of them look gorgeous too!

Pink bedroom

A friend is going through a rough time and was talking about re-doing her bedroom to turn it into a pretty, pink, relaxing sanctuary.  She is doing this on a budget and I thought I could make her something to go on a wall which would help both money-wise and in showing my support.

I had three pre-cut wooden words that have been sitting waiting for me to do something with them for ages.  They were 50p each from Hobbycraft.  The answer was not to try covering them in patterned paper as it creates a sticky mess and so I ended up painting them.  The pearlescent paint (on the right) actually comes out very thin so they each needed several coats with a very dry brush.

Given that one word developed a crack and was somewhat fragile I decided they needed to be mounted on something solid for support.  Originally I had thought of hanging them off a ribbon but I started experimenting and came up with this:

I used glue dots to temporarily attach the ribbon to the words and then borrowed Mum's notice board to try it out.  The ribbon and card on the side are possible components.

As it was a day that I'd had codeine I couldn't use my car to go anywhere and get supplies so I thought laterally and took a mounted photo out of its pale wood frame and cut a piece of mount board to the correct size as the background.  I used the kitchen floor, two cutting mats side by side and my metal edged ruler to do this however, even with a ruler, I cannot manage to cut a straight line so it took a few attempts.  As mount board is so thick you need to cut the same line several times before it is done.  You can obtain it from pretty much any art shop, I think my A2 sheet was £4.50.  I've used part of it for miniature furniture making after I came across this blog http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.co.uk/  The rest of the sheet has lived in the boot of my car until now.

I then went and looked for some paint and found a tin of pale pink.  After phoning Mum I discovered that I wouldn't need white spirit to clean the brush afterwards (apparently that is only for gloss paint) so it didn't matter that I couldn't find any.  She also suggested watering the paint down slightly in an old ice cream box so there would be less chance of brush marks showing on my background.

It came out a very pale pink and I did three coats to try and darken it slightly.  I was on the kitchen floor again but this time with a messy mat.  The board obviously got quite damp with the paint and curled more than I was expecting so I did sit there for some of the time, watching the paint dry, as I tried to hold it down slightly.  Once the paint was dry I put it all together but it doesn't look finished so it is sitting there waiting for me to decide what else to do with it.  I'm thinking butterflies?

To be continued...