#Crafting365 Days 56-73: Juggling Lots of WIPs + Trying New Things

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with lots of crafty goodness along the way!

On day 56 of my #Crafting365 challenge, I finished stitching the final few squares of the Christmas quilt I'm making for my sister. There's still lots of sewing to do before this is an actual quilt, but it's great to have the patchwork finished after all those hours of hand stitching.

When I tried to take photos of the finished quilt top, our little old lady cat demanded that I pay attention to her instead of this weird thing on the floor so most of my photos turned out like this:

On day 57 I did some relaxing knitting in the evening, and soaked up some creative inspiration from UPPERCASE magazine. UPPERCASE is always awesome but I'm especially loving this colour-themed issue.

I did some more knitting on day 58 and (with rainbows on the brain) I sorted through my stash of squares and planned out the colour order for my rainbow blanket.

Don't all those bright colours look delicious together?

Day 59 involved more knitting, although with slightly less colourful yarn than the stuff I'm using to knit my rainbow squares!

This is a much neglected project with a woodland animal theme. I've got lots of hours to put in on this if I'm going to meet my planned deadline of Christmas (and it's nearly the end of November already, eek!)

On day 60 I went to Renegade and spent several hours oohing over all the awesome wares for sale and doing a bit of shopping. In the afternoon, I visited the Foundling Museum to see their current (excellent and very moving) exhibition, The Fallen Woman. While enjoying a cuppa and a very tasty brownie in the museum cafe, I doodled a whole bunch of new project ideas on a napkin.

I love visiting exhibitions, etc, on my Nice Days Out but I also love the time to think that a day out on your own away from work and deadlines gives you. I often find myself scribbling down new ideas in cafes or on my train journey home after a busy day of going new places and seeing new things.

(Psst - that awesome crafty tattoo is a fun temporary one from Floss & Mischief)

I was feeling a bit under the weather for days 61-64 so I just ended up doing lots and lots of simple knitting while curled up watching TV. Not very exciting crafting, but better than nothing and look at all the squares I finished!

On day 65 I decided I'd had enough of all this sleepy knitting and had a Making Day - minimising my screen time to focus on Actually Making Stuff.

One of my projects for the day was to finally cut out some more felt flowers for my in-progress cushion project. I ran out of flowers back in September and the project has been on pause ever since. It was nice to get back to working with all this colour!

I started adding the new flowers to the cushion on day 66 - pinning and tacking them in position ready to sew later. Finding the best place for each shape is a bit like doing a felt-y jigsaw puzzle!

The next evening (day 67) I did some knitting and some relaxing colouring in while we watched TV. This is a fun Evolution-themed colouring book which I was sent to review - well, you can't review a colouring book without actually colouring it, right?

On day 68 I revisited a project that has been sitting half-finished in my "in progress" box for years: felt bird ornaments from a vintage craft kit I bought way back in 2011. I am so terrible at finishing my personal projects!   

Fingers crossed I can finally get all the birds finished in time to display them this Christmas!

Day 69 involved yet more blanket squares. That yellow is growing on me more and more with each square I knit.

 

Then on days 70 and 72 I tried something a bit different from my usual makes.

I've done a few projects for docrafts Creativity magazine of the past couple of years and the magazine always comes with a crafty cover gift (or three!). I thought it was high time I used them to make stuff.

First up: card making with decoupage kits and coordinating papers from the Forever Friends range (very cute!).

The next day I put together some more card toppers - foiled Christmas designs, cute kittens and vintage-y florals. I don't have any of the proper mounts/dots you're supposed to use to stick the layers together, so I got creative and used double sided sticky tape and little pieces of white felt to create the 3D effect :)

I've never made any kits like this before and I don't often work with patterns and pictures, so dipping my toes into this kind of card making is proving to be a really fun creative challenge.

I was back to my regular crafting on day 72, doing lots of sewing with a kitty keeping me company!

Those Christmas pudding ornaments are based on one of the earliest tutorials I shared on my blog. I cut the pieces out last year planning (I think) on making a few different versions of the pudding ornaments to show how you could vary the pattern. Sadly I failed to write down what I'd planned to make and I've since forgotten! Oops. So, instead, I'm just stitching up the ornaments and I'll be adding them to my sample sale sometime soon.

Then yesterday (day 73) I worked on a whole bunch of different crafty things.

I almost finished the vintage bird ornaments (I need to buy some ribbon before I can actually finish them but at least they look like birds now!)... I finished the Christmas puddings... I put together some charming Gorjuss decoupage kits (more Creativity freebies) ... and I used some colourful crepe paper samples to make some stripy cards.

Right, time to stop blogging and to go do some more making...