#Crafting365 Days 13-15: Flowers, Squares & One of my Favourite Stitches

Work-wise, the past few days have not been very exciting. I had a couple of days off thanks to a bug that's been doing the rounds, then spent yesterday mostly doing boring computer things which, frankly, are much too boring to blog about!

Thank goodness for #Crafting365!

While I was curled up on the sofa under a blanket, taking it easy, I had lots of time to (slowly, sleepily) work on my floral cushion. It's a big cushion, and there are lots of felt flowers to sew on... and lots and lots of stitching to do to make that happen!

For #Crafting365 day 13, I took a photo of the colourful threads I've been using to stitch the flowers:

 

Sewing loads of flowers was the perfect project for my half-asleep weekend: nice and simple stitching, no real decisions to make (just picking the next flower to sew), and lots of happy colour to cheer me up while I was feeling a bit ugh (v technical medical term that, "a bit ugh").

It was slightly surreal at times though as I was binge-watching Hannibal as I stitched, which is excellent telly but pretty darn gruesome! Sitting sewing a pretty project covered with flowers while watching something so dark and filled with blood and gore = very strange. It may have been a bit of an odd combination but it kept me very well entertained!

By the end of day 14, this is how the cushion was looking:

Lots of colour, but still lots of space to fill.

Someone asked in the comments of my last post what stitch I was using to stitch the felt shapes. I'm hand stitching them, using whip stitch. Whip stitch is my favourite stitch for sewing felt shapes to a background, it's so easy (though it's a bit more fiddly when you have to reach inside a cushion like I am for this project, instead of just sewing a shape to a flat piece of felt or fabric).

Wendi from Shiny Happy World has a fantastic video tutorial for using whip stitch to applique felt shapes - click here to watch it.

In her video Wendi uses two strands of embroidery thread (floss) but I'm sewing my shapes using sewing thread. She also sews from the outside of the shape in, while I sew from the inside out, but the basic technique is the same.

At the weekend, I also finished this teeny bit of lime-on-neon-pink embroidery (started on day 12).

I was a bit nervous tearing away the tissue paper to see how the stitching had turned out. Stitching through tissue paper is a great way to stitch from a pattern onto felt but the paper can obscure exactly where you're stitching, so removing the paper can be a bit nerve-wracking! Luckily this time my stitching turned out okay (hurrah!).

The neon pink felt continues to be a total pain to photograph, but you can see a photo of how the stitching turned out here. Please note: the quote I stitched includes the F word. It's a bit ironic that I'm worried about offending people by sharing a photo of a quote about not caring what people think, but I know that cursing is not everyone's cup of tea and it's not something I normally include in my blog so I thought it was best to give you guys a heads up :)

(Impossible to photograph neon felt and a curse word you're worried about putting on your blog? What an excellent choice of project to share online, Laura, you really thought that one through! Haha.)

Anyway... the embroidered quote is going to become a little felt bracelet, once I've worked out exactly how I want to put that together. I enjoyed stitching this so much I'm now thinking of some other (less swear-y! non-neon!) things I could embroider. Hmm...

In the meantime, yesterday (day 15) I did some knitting while working on lots of boring-but-necessary computer stuff. There was lots of hanging around as things installed and loaded and saved and transferred and so on, so being able to pick up my knitting and knit a row or two here and there throughout the day saved me from some intense computer-related boredom.

I'm continuing to (slowly) re-knit a whole bunch of squares which I (foolishly) knitted at the wrong size earlier. Seven squares re-knitted, sixteen still to go! Woohoo!

P.S. Like making cute stuff? Mollie at Wild Olive is running a fab series where lots of different makers/designers are sharing their tips adding cuteness to your designs. I was delighted when Mollie asked me to contribute a tip to the series! You can read my tip here and you'll find the whole series here.  

#Crafting365 Days 3-12: Lots and Lots of Stitches!

I'm now twelve days in to my #Crafting365 project: doing something crafty every day, taking a photo and sharing it online. It's not gone entirely smoothly so far, but what new daily challenge ever does, right?

On the evening of day three, I was feeling a bit half-asleep and wanted something simple to work on where I wouldn't have to make decisions. So I re-started a project that's been in my "in progress" pile for months and months (I am frankly embarrassed to look up how long ago I started this!).

Next day (just four days in!) I nearly forgot to do some crafting. Oops!

I remembered just in time, and squeezed in a bit of knitting before bed.  Some of these were knitted earlier, I'm not a magic speed knitter :)

The squares are for my happy rainbow blanket - I'm re-knitting a bunch of squares I realised that I'd knitted the wrong size (so annoying).

On day five I did some more knitting, and added some more shapes to my geometric project. Because the felt I'm working with is quite soft (and felt is quite a flexible material anyway) it's quite tricky keeping the lines straight. I'm using a ruler to check the lines frequently, but I'm still having to do a bit of unpicking and re-stitching now and then.

Day six was another sleepy evening, so I added another square (and a bit) to the pile:

On day seven, I started stitching all those felt flowers I cut out last week. I'm using them to decorate a cushion cover - I'm hoping the finished result will be a riot of colour when it's finished.

(I totally ironed the cushion cover before I started, by the way, but gripping the fabric tightly while stitching the felt shapes creates lots of creases!)

I didn't get much #Crafting365 making done on day eight. I was working on my geometric project again while watching TV and it was excellent, very distracting telly!

On day nine, I added some more flowers to the floral cushion. I don't have a plan for the layout of the cushion, I'm just adding the flowers one by one and seeing how the design develops, which is kinda fun.

Then on what was supposed to be day ten of my #Crafting365 project, I totally failed to get any non-secret-deadline crafting done. So far, when I've had busy days (working towards deadlines or going on Nice Days Out) I've managed to squeeze my #Crafting365 making into the evenings but this day was just too darn busy.

I did a bit of work for a deadline first thing in the morning, blitzed my inbox, had an awesome day out sightseeing and catching up with an old friend, then spent most of the evening stitching for my deadline. I guess I could technically have found the time to do a bit of creative making somewhere but never mind. Life happens sometimes! I'm going to do 365 days of crafting, and if that takes a bit longer than a year so be it.

So, after skipping a calendar day, for day ten of #Crafting365 I had a big session of post-deadline stitching - adding lots more flowers to the cushion. It looks like I've come on in leaps and bounds but actually loads of these are just pinned or tacked in place so I've got lots of sewing to do before I can add more flowers. Not that I'm complaining - this is such a happy, relaxing project to work on!

On day eleven I did more thinking about crafting than actual crafting. I have a big box of "in progress" projects which are less "in progress" than they are "abandoned for aaaaaages". I opened up the box and had a good look through all the half-made projects, making plans for revisiting and re-starting a bunch of them over the coming weeks.

First up: finishing cutting out this pile of triangles for something, er, triangle-y.

Then yesterday - day twelve - it was time for some embroidery! The bright pink felt I'm stitching on is super-bright neon pink, which is quite impossible to photograph. Please trust me on its real life awesomeness :)

P.S. I'm posting my daily #Crafting365 pics on Twitter and Facebook - follow along for lots of crafty goodness!

Kings Cross, the London Canal Museum & a Bookshop on a Barge!

Back in August, I had a Nice Day Out in London with my crafty/bloggy chum Fiona. We like to pick an exhibition to visit together, then have a good old natter about the ups and downs and ins and outs of crafting and blogging. This time round, we were visiting the Ladybird By Design exhibition at the House of Illustration... just round the corner from Granary Square, at the heart of all the redevelopment that's happening at King's Cross.

"We had a wonderful day out exploring King's Cross!" is not something you'd be likely to have said a few years ago, but the redevelopment includes lots of great stuff like viewing platforms, parks, the fun fountains in Granary Square, some nice cafes and the recently-opened House of Illustration.

Ladybird By Design was a fab little exhibition. Celebrating 100 years of Ladybird Books, there were lots of (very nostalgic) original illustrations on display along with info about the history of the books. There was lots of reminiscing going on amongst the visitors, and I found it very hard to resist buying aaaaall the charming Ladybird Book -themed stuff in the gift shop afterwards!

We'd hoped to follow the walking tour of the area next but sadly when we left the gallery it was absolutely chucking it down with rain. Ah, the joys of an English summer.

So, hiding under our umbrellas we headed to nearby Kings Place, which we'd spotted from one of the viewing platforms earlier. We had a cuppa and some very yummy cake at the cafe, explored the galleries and peeked out at the canal (and all that rain!) from the shelter of the patios.  

Seeing the London Canal Museum was so close by, we decided to brave the rain again and head there for a visit.

We both loved this part-sculpture, part-vertical-garden we passed along the way - though we got some funny looks from passers by as we stood taking photos of it from under our umbrellas!

The rain might have been a nuisance, but it lead to us discovering the delights of the Canal Museum and for that I'm very glad. This is such a nice little museum!

The building that now houses the museum was once an Ice House, storing blocks of ice imported from Norway. Here you can learn all about the ice trade and the history of London's canals, see inside a narrowboat cabin, watch an archive film of a canal trip, and discover the history of ice cream! There are also free audio guides to the museum and a walking guide for the local towpath, both available to download from the museum's website.

The museum backs onto Battlebridge Basin and luckily for us the rain cleared up just in time for us to enjoy a stroll by the water. Such a peaceful little spot!

After our visit to the Canal Museum we headed back to Granary Square for a late lunch, then explored the area a little.

 There's still a huge amount of building work going on, but even the not-yet-let shops are looking great with art installations in the empty windows and quirky, positive little phrases where the shop signs will be.

Our final stop for the day was something really rather special: a bookshop on a barge! How cool is that?!

Word on the Water is incredibly quirky (how often do you go to a bookshop that is also a boat?) but also a really lovely little second hand bookshop, with lots of tempting titles to choose from.

Unfortunately, though my head and heart were in love with the idea of a floating bookshop my stomach was not impressed and I had to retreat to dry land while Fiona paid for her purchase.

After starting our day with an exhibition of book illustrations, it was great to finish the day with a visit to such a fab little bookshop! If you fancy a visit yourself, you'll find Word on the Water on Facebook and Twitter.

Pompom Packs and other New Stuff in my Shop

I added a few new things to my Etsy shop this week.

First up: lots of fluffy pompoms!

 

After abandoning my sky pompom project I tried to think of something to make with all the pompoms and totally failed to come up with anything - partly because, I think, I was still feeling a bit "ugh" about having abandoned my grand pompom-ing plans. So I've decided to send them out into the world to find new homes. Once all the pompoms have sold, I'll donate the total listing price to charity so something positive can come out of my otherwise failed project.

I've listed them in packs with some co-ordinating yarn so you can use them for gift wrapping (pompoms make great gift toppers!) but you could (of course) use them for any crafty project you can think of. Click here to see all the pompoms in my shop.

Also new in my shop this week...

... I've added a bargain bundle of ribbons to my crafty destash sale. Just £5 for 30 x one metre pieces of assorted ribbon and trim!

 

... and I've listed the two swan brooch samples I stitched for this tutorial. You'll find both mini swan brooches in my sample sale section along with lots of other bargain felt brooches.

 

P.S. The new Book People catalogue dropped through our door this week and - look! - there's my book! :)

If you fancy picking up a copy (or three? haha) of my second book, Super-Cute Felt Animals, at this bargain price, you'll find it here.