Upcoming Class: Make Felt Christmas Ornaments

UPDATE: a free tutorial for making these retro felt Christmas baubles is now available here on my blog! You'll also find the tutorial for the autumn wreath here and the weather mobile tutorial is coming soon. 
  
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On Sunday 27th November, I'll be teaching a festive sewing class at the Village Haberdashery in London: making vintage-inspired felt Christmas ornaments!

These ornaments are so much fun to sew - there are so many different possibilities when it comes to decorating them! You can also choose to stuff them for a 3D look, or leave them flat. 

You'll receive the materials and patterns you need to make the baubles, choosing from a traditional red and green colour-scheme...

... and a modern pink, blue and turquoise colour combo.

Then I'll teach you how to make the baubles, decorating them with ribbons, sequins, beads and simple embroidery.

As well as your finished ornaments, you'll get a copy of the pattern to take home so you can make as many as you like for your Christmas tree or as gifts for friends.

Click here for the full details of the Christmas ornament class and to sign up.

I'm also teaching two other classes at the Village Haberdashery, later this month - follow the links for more info!

Weather-themed Felt Baby Mobile class, Saturday 29th October.

Felt Autumn Wreath class, Sunday 30th October.

Upcoming Class: Make a Felt Baby Mobile

UPDATE: this project is now available as part of my Patreon pattern library.

Click here to find the Felt Weather Mobile Tutorial and to sign up to my Patreon. 

Subscribers get full access to a growing library of PDF patterns and tutorials, and emails whenever new projects are added. You can unsubscribe at any time. 

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As you might remember, I'm teaching some sewing classes at The Village Haberdashery in London this autumn.

On Saturday 29th October we'll be making rainbows...

... and happy little felt suns...

... and lots of clouds, then combining them all to make weather-themed baby mobiles!

All the materials you'll need to make the mobile will be provided in the class fee. After learning how to make all the pieces and assemble the mobile, you'll get a copy of the pattern to take home so you can make more mobiles or cute things like rainbow brooches.

(It took me a while to perfect my rainbow-making method - I'm so pleased with how they turned out!)

 

Click here for the full details of the baby mobile class, and to sign up. 

This autumn I'm also teaching classes on making a felt autumn wreath, and colourful Christmas ornaments inspired by vintage baubles - click here to see all the upcoming classes at The Village Haberdashery.

August in Pictures: Colourful Craft Supplies and Summer Flowers

My August was full of colour!

I was busy working on lots of new things, choosing (then shopping for) the supplies to get crafting.

There were rainbows of thread on my worktable...

... and I stitched a couple of felt rainbows, too.

 

The rainbows and sun are pieces I've designed for the felt baby mobile class I'm teaching at the Village Haberdashery in West Hampsted, London in October.

I'll be running three classes at the Village Haberdashery this autumn - making an autumn wreath in September, a baby mobile in October and Christmas ornaments in November.

Here are the four designs you can learn to sew in the baby mobile class - clouds, rainclouds, rainbows and little smiling suns.

In early August I visited the bright and cheerful Village Haberdashery shop to chat about my classes and pick up a pile of yummy craft supplies for my projects.

The autumnal shades of that wool blend felt became an autumn wreath...

... decorated with felt leaves and toadstools. You can see more pics of the wreath (and find all the info about the wreath-making class on Saturday, September 17th) here. 

These festive colours were destined to become vintage-inspired felt ornaments for my November class (I'll be sharing pics of the ornaments soon!).

 

In August I blogged about the Brunel Museum and it's charming garden, the Green Way path between Maidenhead and Bray, lots of lovely London things, Leeds Corn Exchange, and a morning in Kensington. It might be weird of me, but I find it quite fun working out which photo from each of my "Nice Day Out" blog posts to share on Instagram.

 

I finally finished up my Take to the Sea embroidery (such a fun project - though a very time-consuming one!)...

... and I added some more colours to my scrappy patchwork cross stitch.The back of the work is somewhat messy, but who cares?

 

I had relaxing evenings in with beloved DVDs and comics and assorted crafty projects... (this mitten is from a kit by Alicia Paulson)...

... lazy days spent sewing on the sofa watching the Olympics and hanging out with this fluffy fella...

... and gorgeously sunny afternoons in the garden on some blazing hot days (I got this lovely bit of summer reading in Annie Spratt's awesome Indie Magazine Swap!).

There were plenty of busy days working at home with the tools of my trade: pinking shears, fabric scissors, paper scissors, embroidery scissors (great for cutting out small felt pieces) and my go-to selection of needles and pins.

 

But I also managed to squeeze in a couple of wonderful days in London, with long walks through parks and visits to museums.

I spotted these gorgeous wildflowers in Hyde Park at what felt like the height of summer...

... and just a few weeks later autumn is already creeping in!

Bright summer sunshine is all well and good, but I adore the soft light you get in autumn and all the colours of the leaves as they turn and fall. Mmm... autumn...

I took this photo of the gorgeous heather in our garden. I've spent lots of my recent tea breaks watching the bees buzz round this heather, they love it almost as much as I do. I love how the autumn colours are lurking behind the heather like "hello! it's me! I'm back!"

I'll share another Instagram round-up next month. Spoiler alert: there are probably going to be some autumn leaves!

I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me.

Upcoming Class: Make a Felt Autumn Wreath

UPDATE: a free tutorial for making this wreath is now available here on my blog!
 
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As I mentioned the other day, I'll be teaching some classes at The Village Haberdashery in London this autumn.

First up - on Saturday 17th September - I'll be running a workshop making a colourful wreath. UPDATE: this class has been rescheduled for Sunday 30th October.

We'll be wrapping a wreath base, making felt leaves and mushrooms/toadstools and assembling all the pieces to make the finished wreath.

This is such a fun project to make, and I'll be sharing lots of felt crafting tips and tricks along the way.

 

All the materials are provided in the price of the class, and you'll get a copy of the templates to take home with you so you can make lots more felt-y things.

 

I think the mushrooms would make lovely ornaments or brooches!

 

Click here for the full details of the autumn wreath class. 

I'm also going to be teaching classes on making a cute felt baby mobile and colourful Christmas ornaments - click here to see all the upcoming classes at The Village Haberdashery.

Take a Class with Me at The Village Haberdashery

Exciting news: I'm going to be teaching some classes!

Annie from The Village Haberdashery has invited me to run some workshops in her lovely shop this autumn.

I visited the shop - in West Hampstead, London - yesterday to meet Annie and finalise the details of the classes. She stocks such a gorgeous range of fabric and other crafty supplies, it was all very tempting.

I'll be teaching three felt-y hand-sewing classes:

Saturday 17th September - Making an Autumn Wreath
UPDATE: the wreath class has now been rescheduled to Sunday 30th October

Saturday 29th October - Making a Baby Mobile

Saturday 26th November - Making Vintage-Style Christmas Ornaments
UPDATE: the Christmas ornament class has now been rescheduled to Saturday 27th November

Follow the links for all the details!

 

Lino Printing at The Handmade Fair with Zeena Shah

I had a very fun day out on Friday at The Handmade Fair - a new, crafty fair with a focus on learning and making. One of the lovely bloggers I bumped into described it as being "like a crafty festival" and it really was, with lots of tents for workshops and talks plus shopping and eating... lots of famous faces from the world of craft and sewing... and lots of bunting! :)

I'll be blogging about the day later this week, but in the meantime here are some snaps from the workshop I attended: lino printing with Zeena Shah.

I'd never tried lino printing before so I was quite excited to give it a go at the Fair - although I was a teeny bit nervous about using the sharp lino cutting tool! Me + sharp objects = usually a bad combination.

We started by drawing a design we wanted to print. I had a bit of creative block but I eventually settled on a simple star design and drew it onto my lino. 

Then we carved out our designs, leaving raised areas where we wanted to print and cutting away the sections that would be white space. The lino was easier to carve than I expected but still quite hard work after a while (I suspect lino cutters elbow might be a thing!) and you had to be very careful with the cutting tool as it was indeed very sharp - as proven by one of the ladies on my table who cut herself (ouch!)

It was really fun to see the design gradually appearing in the lino and really nice sitting and chatting with the other ladies as we worked. We laughed about the mistakes we were making, admired each others designs and talked about the things we'd done at the Fair earlier that day.

My design was finally finished...

... just in time for me to do a couple of prints before the workshop ended.

I used too little paint (oops) then a too much (double oops) then my third print was just right. Hurrah!

Trying new crafty things = so much fun!

If you'd like to try lino printing, Zeena runs lots of lino printing workshops.

Disclosure: I attended The Handmade Fair as a guest of the organisers who sent me a free ticket.

Giveaway: Tickets to the Edward's Menagerie Book Launch

As I mentioned yesterday, I've got a fun giveaway for you today: tickets to the launch of Edward's Menagerie, the new crochet book by TOFT founder Kerry Lord.

Edward's Menagerie will be published in July by David & Charles. RRP £15.99.

Click here to read my review!
 
Rather awesomely, if you pre-order the book directly from TOFT you'll also get a PDF of ten bonus patterns that aren't included in the book: a badger, camel, kangaroo, moose, reindeer, sloth, lemur, skunk, snow leopard and armadillo.

Also awesomely, I've got two pairs of tickets to the book launch to give away. Hurrah!

The launch party will be held at Toft Alpaca Farm in the Midlands (click here for location info) on 25th July, and will involve craft workshops (yay!), cream teas (yum!) and alpaca treks (squeeeee!).

 

 

Fancy going along? Just tell me what your favourite animal is for a chance to win a pair of tickets!

You can leave a comment on this blog post, or CLICK HERE to tweet me your favourite animal. 

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. 


Please note: this giveaway is only open to people who live in the UK! Each winner will be sent a pair of invites to the book launch but they'll need to make their own way there.

Leave your comment or send me a tweet before 10pm on Tuesday 24th June, and I'll pick the winners at random on Wednesday 25th June. I'll then pass the winners' details to the organisers so they can send out the invites.

If you're entering with a blog comment 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 winners within a week or they turn out not to live in the UK, I will pick someone else. If you're leaving a comment with your Blogger profile, please remember that you need to have your profile and email address set to public for me to be able to get in touch with you.