New in My Shop: Folk Floral Hoop Art Tutorial & Embroidery Pattern

I'm on a roll with adding new stuff to my shop this week, first the trio of felt flower patterns and now some floral wall art inspired by folk art designs:

My new printable PDF pattern includes two versions of this flower design: a step-by-step tutorial for sewing the felt applique version (complete with full-size templates, of course!), and an embroidery pattern for stitching the embroidered version.

I've actually included two versions of the embroidery pattern - the full design I stitched and a simpler one, too, so you can go for a less detailed look or add your own details with your favourite stitches. And, of course, there are reversed versions included in case you need them for your fave transfer method.

The designs both fit inside five inch embroidery hoops and would look lovely hanging on the wall to add some summer loveliness to your space. The embroidery pattern would also look fab stitched onto something like a bag or a quilt square.

When you buy any patterns from my shop you can of course make lots of things for yourself and to give as gifts, but you can also sell the finished items at craft fairs or in your Etsy shop, etc, as long as you credit me as the designer.

You can buy my Folk Floral PDF pattern from my shop - it'll be available to download immediately after your payment goes through! Shop before May 31st to get this design at the bargain launch price. 

 

P.S. I actually shared a version of this tutorial with my newsletter subscribers last year. Subscribe to my newsletter for all the latest updates from me and my shop and to never miss out on my free projects!

Craft-Themed Jigsaw Puzzles for Sewing, Knitting, Quilting, and Crafting Fans!

I have totally fallen in love with jigsaw puzzles and was delighted to discover recently that you can buy crafting-themed jigsaws. They're so colourful and cosy, I adore them.

Obviously, when I set up my new Amazon Influencer page (a little "storefront" where I can curate lists of things I love and where if you end up buying something I earn a small amount of commission for the referral) a list of craft-themed puzzles was one of the first things I had to put together!

(In the US? Click here to view my page on Amazon.com)

There are puzzles decorated with art and craft supplies...

 

... sometimes with the addition of cats!

Puzzles featuring quilts and quilters...

 

 ... granny squares...

... and haberdashery shops.

There are also puzzles depicting dream creative workspaces, including a lots of cosy craft-filled sheds!

 

I want to move into that last picture immediately.  

Click here to view the whole list of puzzles on Amazon.co.uk, or click here to view a similar list I've put together on Amazon.com. (All the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links).

New in My Shop: 3 Easy Felt Flower Patterns - Make Sunflowers, Dahlias & Layered Flowers

I've just added a new PDF pattern to my shop... well, three new patterns, actually!

 

 

My latest listing is a bundle of 3 easy-to-sew felt flower designs: sunflowers, dahlias and layered flowers.

 

 

 
You can use the tutorials to make brooches or headbands, and there's also a template for making poinsettia brooches for the Christmas holidays.

 

 

When you buy any patterns from my shop you can of course make lots of things for yourself and to give as gifts, but you can also sell the finished items at craft fairs or in your Etsy shop, etc, as long as you credit me as the designer.

You can buy this bargain bundle of printable PDF patterns from my shop - it'll be available to download immediately after your payment goes through! Shop before May 29th to snap up the flowers at the bargain launch price. 

 

P.S. I've got lots more patterns in progress at the moment - subscribe to my newsletter for all the latest updates from me and my shop.

Fifteen Felt Christmas Ornaments Finally Finished!

Oh, hello, what's this? Another blog post about getting things finished?? HURRAH.

If you're a regular reader of my blog you'll know that I was working hard to finish lots of my personal creative projects last year, including a patchwork blanket, a couple of quilts, and a set of felt Christmas ornaments I was making from Alicia Paulson's lovely patterns.

I bought several of Alicia's kits way back in 2012 and 2013 and had really made very little effort to devote any focused time to them... so, unsurprisingly, most of the designs were still sitting in pieces, unstitched, in a drawer in my flat many years later.

Well now, happily, I can say that all fifteen ornaments are finally finished! Woohoo!

Don't they all look fabulous together?

That photo ended up being my most popular Instagram photo from last year - and, indeed, my whole time on Instagram. Watching all the "likes" roll in for this project was a weird and fun way to finish the year!

Fancy a closer look at the ornaments? The first batch was the slowest to finish as they technically took me 5-6 years to complete...

... then it took me just a month to get another four finished this autumn...

... and the final four were ready just in time for Christmas.

I completed the sweet Gingerbread Girl in early December - I probably could have managed it slightly earlier but I wanted to make sure I was super focused and in the zone when I stitched her face to get it juuuuust right. She is so charmingly folksy, I love her.

The next two got finished in the middle of the month, while watching made-for-TV Christmas movies (I love made-for-TV Christmas movies). There's the cute (double-sided) Notevena Mouse (as in "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse")...

... and the lovely (single-sided) Lighted Window.

The very last design I stitched was the Whistling Tea Kettle which is the one I took most liberties with when it came to not following the instructions.

There was a lot of satin stitch in Alicia's original design and I a) do not enjoy and b) am terrible at satin stitch, sooo my version looks slightly different to hers while still keeping to the same overall pattern. Could I (should I) have used this project as an opportunity to improve my satin stitching? Probably, but never mind!

I deliberately missed out a row of blanket stitching on the kettle, too, because I was finding it frustrating and honestly just wanted this thing finished. I'm pretty pleased with the end result, though, even with the changes.

Just like the other big projects I finished last year after years of them being just works in progress, it is hugely satisfying getting these ornaments completed! I've been meaning to finish them "in time for Christmas" for so many years (and so many different Christmases) that it felt wonderful finally having them ready in time for one.

Having said that, though, I have a confession to make: although I basked in the glorious feeling of getting these ornaments finally finished (which was an excellent Christmas gift to myself), I didn't actually hang any of them up at Christmas!

My holiday decorating style is, these days, best described as very minimal. I put up a few decorations around my flat along with all the cards I'd received from friends, but I don't put up a Christmas tree... and even if I did, it would have to be a VERY big tree to fit these ornaments on it as they're quite large (though you might not guess it from the photos). The Gingerbread Girl, for example, is about 17cm (almost 7 inches) high.

Also (and it's embarrassing to admit this) there's a bit of me that's a teeny bit worried that I'll have them on display and someone will come round to my house and think I made and designed them and say something nice which ends up feeling not so great. I've had this happen several times before with handmade-but-not-by-me things and honestly hearing "oh wow this is the best thing you've ever made, I love these so much!" about something that isn't your work is super awkward and slightly devastating! (Even if you yourself think they're nicer than your own work, too!) (Ugh, maker feelings are so complicated).

So, I think I'm going to end up giving some of these as gifts to friends and family in the run up to next Christmas and possibly just keeping a few of my favourites to hang on doorknobs and other suitable places in my flat. (If you're a friend of mine please do feel free to drop hints about which ones are your faves!)

I'm going to give myself the year to think about it though - who know, by the time next Christmas rolls round I might have decided that I can't bear to part with any of them and I'll have found the perfect places to display them all! We shall see...

Want to make some of these ornaments for yourself? Click here to find all the patterns (and much more loveliness) over in Alicia's shop.

For lots more Christmas crafting ideas, visit my archive of free tutorials.

Making a Patchwork Quilt: the hand-quilting is FINISHED!

Remember my patchwork quilt?

This quilt is officially my longest running work in progress: I started it way back when I was a teen, which is so long ago that if the quilt was a person it would now be a teenager itself, definitely old enough to drive a car and maybe technically an adult by now (yikes). 

After a flurry of quilt-making enthusiasm when I was a student, I put the part-finished quilt top away in a cupboard for years. When I rediscovered it in a box in 2012, I thought about just getting rid of it but that felt a bit wrong so when my mum said she liked it I decided to try and finish it as a gift for her. I got the quilt top finished by 2014... then put it in a box again and didn't look at it for another four years.

Last year I was full of enthusiasm for Finally Finishing long-running projects (including a patchwork blanket and another quilt), so in the spring I bought wadding, white backing fabric and white quilting thread ready to complete the quilt.

I washed and ironed the fabric and put the quilt sandwich together (if you're not familiar with quilting, this is the step when you put all the layers together ready to sew them) then started the hand quilting in the summer.

Now, I don't know if you've ever done any hand quilting but it's a seriously labour intensive process and a very repetitive one! It's also not exactly the ideal project to work on during the hot summer months (and last summer really was hot). So, after making a start I ended up taking a break for a couple of months... but I did a big push this autumn to put the hours in and managed to finish the quilting at the end of November. Woohoo!

I thought the Christmas quilt I made my sister took a long time, but this one is a bigger quilt and made up of smaller squares so I had a lot more (and longer) lines to stitch so there were waaaaay more hours of stitching to put into this quilt.

The Christmas quilt was also a lot neater than this one: I'd used a proper block for marking out the squares for the Christmas quilt and cut and sewed them super neatly. The squares for the old patchwork quilt were a lot more randomly sized - and sewn together rather wonkily, too! I started out the hand quilting using my previous method of using masking tape as a guide line to stitch along... but I soon abandoned this to stitch freehand, following the not remotely straight lines of the "squares". So, all the quilted lines on this quilt are pretty wobbly (and my stitching isn't that neat to begin with, I have so much respect for people who manage to do neat hand quilting because mine all turned out so messy!) but hopefully this just adds to the quilt's handmade charm rather than detracting from it.

I'd originally hoped to keep the fact that I was finishing this quilt a secret from my mum (so it would be a big surprise when it was done) but I soon realised that this was going to be impossible, simply because of logistics of hiding something that big. So I told her about it and we've spent many happy hours sitting watching TV and movies together in her living room while I stitched and stitched and stitched. Sometimes this fella kept us company, too.

I've mostly kept the quilt stashed in her spare bedroom, working on it in bits and pieces when I went round to visit. I took it back to my flat a couple of times thinking I'd be able to really focus on it and push the project forwards but this turned out to be a terrible strategy because I'd spend the whole evening hunched over the quilt, stitching away happily while listening to podcasts or audiobooks and the next day my neck and back would be very angry with me!

For the Christmas quilt I stitched pairs of lines at a time, working steadily outwards and marking off each pair on a neat little chart as I went. For this one I worked a bit more haphazardly, sewing out from the centre but stitching several lines at once. I didn't make a chart to track my progress this time, just laid the quilt upside down on the floor at regular intervals to get an overview of how much stitching was left (the stitched lines are much more visible on the back than the front as they stand out against the plain white instead of getting lost in all that colour and pattern).

By November 20th, I'd stitched out to the first two corners of the quilt. It was amazing what a difference finishing that first corner made: it suddenly started to feel like an actual quilt instead of just a big bundle of fabric.

 

 

 
Excited by the prospect of finally getting this baby FINISHED, I devoted the next few evenings to quilting. I got the third corner finished on the 22nd...

... then started on the fourth and final corner. I couldn't resist laying it out to take a few more "in progress" photos before the quilting was finished.

Having the end in sight felt great!

Sewing these final few lines was definitely the most enjoyable bit of the quilting process (hand quilting is so boring, you guys! oh my goodness!!), and I was full of glee when I tied off the last stitch that weekend.

Even though it's now been over a month since I finished the quilting, I still haven't taken any photos of it "finished" and ready for the binding.

I have trimmed off most of the excess wadding and backing fabric (another step that's made it look much more like a real quilt), bought a fabric sample card so my mum can choose the perfect colour for the binding fabric (this important decision is still in progress but she's currently leaning towards blue), and sold the quilting hoop to a friend (because frankly, I plan on never hand-sewing another quilt as long as I live!!!).

Once my mum has decided which colour she wants for the binding, I'll measure the quilt and order enough fabric plus some matching thread. Then it'll be time to get started on the final stage! Maybe this time round I'll actually follow the instructions properly (unlike last time)? Watch This Space.

How To: Sew Modern + Minimalist Felt Christmas Tree Ornaments

A few years ago I shared a tutorial for making minimalist Christmas cards, featuring simple tree shapes cut from neon felt. At the time I thought "ooh, these would make fab Christmas ornaments, too!", cut out some extra shapes for making ornaments with... then ran out of time to actually make some for Christmas. Now here I am a whole four years later, finally getting round to it.
 

 

  
(As always, I am firmly team Better Late Than Never).

 

 
I used bright and zingy neon pink felt for my trees, stitching them together with lime (almost-but-not-quite-neon) green embroidery thread. Neon pink is a total nightmare to photograph but I hope these photos give you a vague idea of just how bright and fabulous these look IRL.

I love how super simple they are, but also how much they POP. They'd look particularly fab on a white tree!

You could, of course, make these ornaments in any colour you fancy - how about stitching a whole rainbow of trees and making a festive garland?

You will need:

- felt in your chosen colour
- contrasting embroidery thread (floss)
- the template sheet from this tutorial
- a sewing needle
- sewing scissors

Optional: narrow ribbon, sewing thread (to match the felt), sparkly stuff like seed beads or sequins.

To make each ornament:

1. Use the tree template to cut out two tree shapes from your chosen felt.

2. Thread a sewing needle with a length of embroidery thread, and thread it into the top of one of the trees (sewing into the felt but not through it).

Make a small loop of the thread, then sew another small stitch (again sewing into the felt but not all the way through it). Set aside the needle and knot the two ends of the thread to secure the loop you've created.

Trim away any excess thread. 

Alternatively you can add a ribbon loop, securing the ends with whip stitch and matching sewing thread.

If you'd like to add some sparkle to your tree (and make it a bit less minimal), use matching sewing thread to stitch some sequins or seed beads to the other tree shape.

3. Place the two tree shapes together and join the edges with blanket stitch. Use more of the embroidery thread, but this time use half the available strands instead of the full thickness of the thread. Keep your stitching as evenly spaced and sized as possible and finish it neatly at the back.

This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it to make as many ornaments as you want for yourself or as gifts, but please don't make any for sale. You may borrow a couple of photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to this page on my blog, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial / share my templates on your site. Thanks!

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P.S. Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns: