Sky Blanket, Days 1-106

I finally managed to get a snap of the whole of my in-progress sky blanket at the weekend!

My sky blanket is based on Lea Redmond's sky scarf project. I'm knitting a square a day for (almost) a year, based on the colour of the sky at midday.

Here's all the squares up to (and including) the one for April 15th:

The squares go horizontally, left to right along each long row (like the days on a calendar). I'm just holding it this way round in the photo cos it's easier! The first square is in the top right hand corner. 

I'm writing the sky colours on my calandar each day, and then marking all the squares off on this chart as I sew them on.

The squares are very quick and easy to knit but there are SO MANY ends to weave in as each square is knitted with two strands of yarn so the colours can be blended together ... so that's 4 ends per square and several hundred sewn in so far!

Blog Love: LovePaperFish

My crafty chum Kirsty of LovePaperFish had her email hacked last month by some very nasty people, and lost all access to her blog as a result! Eek! Such a horrid thing to happen :(

(Here's a pic of Kirsty & me -with the lovely Lu Summers in the middle- at the Festival of Quilts last summer)

 

If you're a fan of all things crafty and felt-y you may well have visited Kirsty's blog before or bought something from her website or from one of her Etsy shops (I always recommend her as a supplier of awesome felt balls & colourful buttons). 

Please do check out her brand new blog & show her some love by leaving her a comment, following her blog, linking to her new blog in your blog sidebar, etc, anything you can do to help kickstart her new blogging adventure :)

(All photos in this post have been borrowed from Kirsty's blog).

Giveaway: Super-Cute Felt

I hope you guys have enjoyed my slightly extended "book week"!

To finish off this book-themed fortnight, I thought it would be nice to do a giveaway for my own book, Super-Cute Felt which was published last autumn. 

The book contains 35 cute felt projects, all designed by me.

I may be a teeny bit biased (haha!) but I love this book! :)

It includes small projects (like pansy hair clips) and large projects (like a toadstool hot water bottle cover) in four sections: accessories, gifts, homewares and celebrations. Each project has illustrated, step-by-step instructions, there's also a short guide to materials, equipment and techniques at the start of the book, and most of the templates are full size (hurrah!).

Here are a few of my favourite projects...

A lion coffee cosy:

A hedgehog phone case:

A snowglobe doorhanger:

And cat, mice and cheese puppets:

I'm giving away one signed copy of Super-Cute Felt, and (because I love you guys) I'm happy to post it internationally so anyone can enter.

For your chance to win, just leave a comment on this post before 10pm on Tuesday 24th April. I'll pick a winner at random on Wednesday 25th April.

Please make sure you leave a name or pseudonym (no anonymous comments please!) and leave a blog link, Twitter username, Etsy username or email address so I can contact you. If I'm unable to contact the winner within two weeks, I will pick someone else.

Update: this giveaway is now closed.

Book Review: The Liberty Book of Home Sewing

Are you a fan of Liberty fabrics? If you are, then the pictures of today's book - The Liberty Book of Home Sewing - will probably make you say "oooh" a few times.

It's a gorgeous looking hardback with a fabric-bound cover, embossed silver lettering for the title, double-page spreads of Liberty prints dividing the chapters, and lots of smartly styled photos.

There's a short introduction that covers the the history of Liberty fabrics, and there's a guide to the fabrics used throughout the book at the back providing a bit of information about the patterns and giving you all their names.

There are 25 sewing projects - each with step by step illustrated instructions - and a few pages on basic sewing techniques at the back of the book.  The templates for the very small projects (like a fabric corsage) need enlarging and the others are drawn out on a grid for you to draw out onto paper at the sizes shown.

Most of the projects are the standard "sewing basics" you find in other "home sewing books" (an apron, a blind, some cushions, etc), just made up in lovely Liberty fabrics and presented with photos that could be straight out of a glossy interiors magazine.

There's also a no-sew project to make a "keepsake board" which is a nice idea but I'm not sure how relevant it is in a book with "home sewing" in the title...

... and this peacock pincushion which is gorgeous but I'm not sure how well it would work if you couldn't find (or afford) the exact fabric used:

Overall, this book feels a bit like a sewing book trying to be a coffee table book, if you know what I mean, it's a little bit of both.

If you want a glossy coffee table book with lots of info about Liberty fabrics, or a sewing book with exciting new project ideas or lots of detailed information for beginners, then you might be a bit disappointed. But if  you love Liberty prints and the style of the photos in this book and want some relatively simple sewing projects to work on, then you'll probably find this a very lovely, inspiring book both to flick through and to sew from.

The Liberty Book of Home Sewing is published by Quadrille. RRP £20. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other bookshops.

[Disclaimer: Quadrille sent me a free review copy of this book, and the Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links which means if you click on them and then make a purchase I get a very small % as a referral fee.]