It's a Creative World

Really Easy Felt Flowers

My mother-in-law had seen some felt flowers made from circles, and had bought a set of circle dies to cut the felt, so we had a quick look on utube and found this fantastic tutorial from mummycraftsalot.  We adjusted it a little bit so that all the work is done by sewing which seems to work quite well, so here is my step by step tutorial to make these gorgeous flowers.

Firstly you need 6 circles, you can mix the colours - these circles are 1.5", if you make larger broaches using 3" diameter circles then double up the circles so use 11 circles rather than the 6.

Have your needle ready and threaded with cotton, then take one circle and fold it in half (if you are making a larger broach with the 11 circles you would lay 2 circles on top of each other and then do the folds)

Then fold the circle in half again so you have a 1/4 circle

Layer the quater circle over another of the felt circles (this will make the base to the flower) and just stitch the centre in place.

Repeat this process so you fill the base circle with 4 quarter circles - I have only used one stitch to hold the pieces in place near the centre.

Take your last circle and fold it into it's 'quarter' shape but place it in the centre of the piece vertically rather than horizontally.  Again add a couple of stitches to hold it in place (I stitched this one on the diagonal from both sides).

Then arrange all the quarters which will fluff up and fill the flower.

And this is one of the people I made the flowers for as an Easter gift.  I stitched them onto some elastic to make a bracelt and hairband.  You can attach them to any clip, or onto boxes or bags - lots of uses.

 

Hope you enjoy making them

 

Katherine

A quiet fabric book

Hello, Eleanor here again.

I've been stitching away on a small scale project, for a swap I'm involved in. It's called the quiet fabric book, inspired by a project in this book. Nine of us are making small (ATC sized, which is 2.5 by 3.5) felt books, with a theme of quietness, and each of us contribute 9 fabric pages. Mine are all the same, and will be sent to the host for distribution, so that we each end up with nine different, unique pages to bind into a beautiful soft little book.

I chose "the silence of a seed" as my page title, and stitched a botanical type illustration of the germination of a bean.

Here's one:

and here are all nine!

The very background is white felt, overlaid with woollen plaid from a sample swatch, for the soil, and cream damask from an old curtain above. I have used this curtaining for a dozen different projects, it has been so useful.

The bean itself started out as black shrink plastic cut in 2 inch bean shapes. Once heated and shrunk to less than an inch, I added coppery brown embossing powder, and heated until several layers made a thick finish.

A short length of white paper string cut at an angle makes the radicle.

As the hypocotyl grows, the seed coat (from a vinyl handbag strap, heated rather daringly, careless of fumes!) begins to rip and shrivel, 

and the first few roots emerge.

Appearing above the surface of the ground, the cotyledon has the beginnings of a leaf poking out.

Finally, the felt cotyledon has hardened and is wrinkling (with the aid of blonde moments embossing powder)

and the twin leaves have unravelled themselves and bounce gently on strong (wired) stalks.

The page title is printed onto my good old standby, cotton curtain lining, trimmed and secured with simple stitches.

It was amazing fun, planning and executing the pages, although by the ninth I was seeing wonky roots and wired stems in my dreams. I'm hoping the other girls don't mind that the page is a little bit dimensional.

It's a while until the swap is officially over, but as soon as I have pages back from the other 8 girls, I will post them here if they agree. Meanwhile I will be deciding how to bind them all, or maybe making a little quiet box to keep them in.

Finally, all the prizes from the Spring Blog Hop have now been drawn, the winners were:

Dolly's voucher - shellyj 

Gabrielle's Altered Book - Michaela

Mandy's Crazy Chick - Helen Winnicott

Laura's candy - Angelfish

Ifa's prize - Mole

Erika's candy - Kirsti

Eleanor's feltie thing - Catriona

Tracey's goodie bag - Jimjams

Kerry's flowers - Lisa

Leanne's shrine - Gabrielle.

See you next time,

Cheerio!

 

AUTUMN LEAVES

Hello, Eleanor here.

I was given a skirt recently, and although it was just my size and a great length for me, and had some surface interest, I wanted to brighten it up a little.

It started out like this:

I cut lots of simple leaf shapes from felt, small, (1 inch long) medium, and large (2 inches long), selected some matching embroidery thread and stitched the leaves on, fairly randomly, over the main part of the skirt, and in heaps at the hem, like this:

and this:

then popped back outside (and wondered when looking at the photo afterwards, where my waist had gone, probably too many autumnal treats, like toffee apples, gingerbread and apple crumble - almost cropped it (the photo, not the waist - I wish) but hey, who am I kidding?) for a falling leaves photo:

This is a beautiful song. by someone who sadly never even saw the summer of her life, let alone the autumn.

See you soon.

E

xx

 

Weekend Workout 22 - Colour Palette

Hi everyone - Dolly here with a challenge for you all - a colour challenge this weekend.

As part of a class by Shimelle I was introduced to this amazing site

http://www.design-seeds.com/

 Design seeds has the most amazing colour combination cards and they are just so beautifully showcased.

Apart from making you want to scrap and giving you hand to do that – they are just beautiful to sit and drool over.

Have fun enjoying the site but the weekend workout challenge for you all is to use this colour card to inspire your creativity.

 

 It might be a page, a card, a home décor project. But let the colours inspire you to create.

I used the colours to make a clock for our newly decorated library.

The clock was one I had had for years, always meaning to decorate it. This was the perfect opportunity.

I painted the edges of the base board cream and then used a truly gorgeous piece of K and Co paper from the Blue Awning range (my favourite range ever!) Part of the paper is flocked and lightly glittered as you can see here.

 

 

I used some scraps of wallpaper samples (the paper that never made it to the decor in the room) to cut some butterflies and to add to inked and stamped papers I had made to match to make the flowers.

 

 
 

I also used scraps of the same sample wallpaper for the text (well it is in the library so it had to mention books). The paper has a gorgeous shiny stripe that looks lovely in real life.

 

I hope you can see how the colours in the sample inspired the piece of work.

 

 

I hope that the colours inspire you to create. Do leave us a link so we can see what you have come up with.

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Thanks Dolly, it's such a cool, restful palette, it was a pleasure to use. (and that site is a fab resource)
I chose taupe linen, and pale robin's egg stranded silk for rows of simple embroidery stitches, sampler style.
On top, I placed a photo of my grandson, on a vertical piece of cream mountboard for contrast, with pale jade ink sponged edges.
Placed in a thrifted frame, it gives me joy.

I miss him.

Eleanor

x

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 Hiya Claireliz here, with my attempt at this gorgeous colour palette.

I had a photo in mind for this as soon as I saw the colours, it's one of my friend Jo, taken at a friends wedding the other week. Jo is one of my closest friends, she is also very crafty, she gets just as excited over new stash & pretty things as I do, and we can giggle & eat cake for hours on end...

 

For the journaling I used a quote from Bernard Meltzer (although I changed the "he" to a "she" to make it fit.)

A true friend is someone who thinks you are a good egg, even though she knows you are slightly cracked.

A quote I feel sums up our friendship perfectly.

I loved working with this colour palette, & will be using it again, I also really enjoyed using a girly photo with colours that I would usually use for more masculine layouts. Thank you Dolly :D

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Weekend Workout 20 - HP

 no, not the brown stuff in a bottle, Harry Potter of course.

Eleanor here, with weekend workout number 20. The theme this weekend is anything and everything remotely, vaguely Harry Potter inspired.

I haven't seen the last two Harry Potter films, I'm waiting until I can watch them both, one after the other, in the comfort of my own home, with the kettle on, and on, and on, and home baked goodies to munch.

My children and I have all loved the books, and so I decided to create another artist's canvas embroidery, like my Heidi one, this time printing a page from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where the sorting hat makes a first appearance, onto artists' canvas, and stitching over it with the image from the title page of every book - the Hogwarts coat of arms. (It takes ages, the canvas is stiff, and my fingers are sore, but I love doing it.)

 Does Harry do it for you?

xx

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Hi, Dolly here.

I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I was one of those people who queued to get the books at midnight and devoured them within the next day. I love them. OK so I started pretending I was reading them for school - just to check they were OK for the children. But I convinced no one!

Both of these pages were made using Dawn Inskip kits from her store at Scrapbookgraphics, especially this one called, appropriately enough, Wizardry

 

and these have to be the two cutest little Hogwarts trainees ever!.

 

Have fun creating wizardry of your own.

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Hi!

Glittery Katie here and I love, love LOVE  the Harry Potter and I couldn't wait to get my hands on the last book of the series:

 

Hope you play along!
Love GlitteryKatie xxxx

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Hiya Claireliz here, I'm another one who is a huge fan of Harry Potter, the books reignited my passion for reading aged 21 & my love of Harry Potter is something I am lucky enough to share with my 5 year old daughter - who happens to be called Hermione :D

As the summer holidays are upon us & the weather has not been fab here by the seaside we put on the Harry Potter dvds (the less scary ones) & got out boxes of lego & here is what we've been making...

                                       
 
 
 

We have 2 Harry Potter legos sets, Dumbledores ofiice & 2 shops from Diagon Alley (I want all the Harry Potter lego sets & to build them all in my attic - a bit like the train sets people have - a full on Harry Potter World but I don't think hubs would let me lol) and we made our own huge Hogwarts...

if you look closely you can see a lego troll in the dungeon...

 

we also found a boat with oars from a Pirate set of Lego...so now they can cross the lake to Hogwarts...

                                      
 

Hermione asked if she could have some more Harry Potter lego for Christmas this year as we had such fun making these, so as long as she's good & I can play with it too I think I'll be collecting Harry Potter lego for her ready for Christmas :D

So show us your Harry Potter magic, looking forward to seeing what you make :D

C xx

BUSTLE & SEW

 

Today it's our pleasure to welcome a guest, Helen from Bustle & Sew:

"Hi, I'm Helen and I live in an old farmhouse by the sea in the beautiful South Hams area of Devon, with my beautiful Newfoundland dog, Ben. My husband commutes weekly from Portsmouth, so is here to help walk him at weekends!

I work part-time for a local charity, supporting elderly people to stay in their own homes, and also have my own, very tiny, business, Bustle & Sew, selling my patterns online.

These are just a few of my designs:

I don't have any formal textile training, but come from a long line of skilled needlewomen, learning from my mother and grandmother from a very young age. I love to create with fabric and thread - embroidery and applique are my favourite techniques. I love sharing my ideas for designs with others, not just experienced stitchers, but also, hopefully, those new to the pleasure and satisfaction of making something yourself.

I was thrilled when Eleanor suggested I might like to contribute a guest post to IACW, and thought long and hard about suitable ideas - I hope you like the projects I've chosen.

Hand embroidery is my main passion - I love the feeling that I am part of a long line of embroiderers stretching back through the ages, and also the portability anbd low cost of materials and equipment - hoop, needle, scissors, floss and fabric - embroidery really is a hobby accessible to everyone. So I thought for my first gift to you (I was always told as a youngster that visitors should bring a gift with them), I'd offer you one of my hand embroidery patterns. This one is a little bunny who doesn't seem at all sure what to make of the bunch of brightly coloured balloons he finds himself holding!

Please just CLICK HERE to download my Bunny and Balloons pattern absolutely free.

One of my most popular series of hand embroidery designs has been my "Rosie & Bear" series, based on my memories of my own Rosie's childhood days (a long time ago now!) and the naughty Bear she adored and took everywhere with her - he's waiting for her next visit now, perched on her bed just as always.

It's fun mixing real memories with imagination - below is my Rosie & Bear Royal Wedding pattern. Here Rosie is peeping through the railings at Buckingham Palace, hoping for a last glimpse of the beautiful princess, whilst Bear, who couldn't care less about rose petals and lace, is tugging at her hand - he wants to go and march with the soldiers in the parade!

Of course, you don't always have the time to spend hand stitching - it can take a while, and I also enjoy machine applique - a look that's become very popular recently, that can be very expensive to purchase.
So my second gift to you is another pattern - this time four cheerful marching elephants inspired by a 1950s children's colouring book...

Free pattern here.

If you like these patterns, then please do visit my shop, Bustle & Sew, where I have lots more listed. And, as the final part of my gift to you, just enter the code
“PaperMountains”
at checkout and you will receive 20% off your first purchase.
Come and visit me soon at my blog … – I’d love to meet you there!
Best wishes, and thank you again to Eleanor for inviting me."
Helen xx

It's been delightful, thank you Helen.

Don't forget to check out the lovely free patterns Helen is so kindly giving away.

xox

Weekend Workout 6 - DOODLE

  Hiya Claireliz here.

It's my turn to set the challenge this week, it's one of my favourite techniques to use on projects....

Doodling.

We want to see your doodles, on anything, scrapbook pages, cards, altered items, anything you like.

It can be simple doodling such as a faux stitched border or a really complicated flower design, whatever takes your fancy. I've used one of my favourite doodled borders on my layout, all you need is a black pen, a white pen & about 15 minutes...

 

To create this border I drew around the inside of the scalloped edge around the layout, then drew inside it again, then just start colouring in small black stripes, let the ink dry & then colour the blank sections in in white. I love the effect this type of border creates, it really makes the whole page pop.

Thanks for stopping by today & can't wait to see you doodles, be sure to leave us a link in the comments if you join in with us & we'll pop by & say hello.

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Hi - Dolly here.

I love doodling, on phone pads, conference notes, corner of the newspaper, but it isn't a technique I use often enough on scrapbook pages - and I need to use it more. I think part of why I use it rarely is the fear of spoiling a page. Not something that worries me when I am scribbling all over things I shouldn't be.

So I am going to make a promise to myself - doodle more .... on pages and layouts that is.

However, when I saw the challenge for this weekend I did set out to try and doodle on a page and I made this page of a piper we happened across at a local stately home. It was one of those bizarre unexpected moments. I doodled round the scalloped edge and round the strips and elements - very constrained doodles, but heck .... they are there.

 

and this is another page I made a while ago which has sort of doodled text flowing around and the initials in the top corner are doodled too.

 
However, a technique I do use a fair bit is making doodled flowers and adding them to pages. I like the free form of those.

 
 As well as doodling the flowers I doodled round the edges of the papers. I love doodling flowers as they seem to flow well and make great accents for all sorts of things. I will often add buttons or beads  to the centre and you can make them match the papers of the page.   

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Eleanor here, with an embroidoodle.

I simply drew a large E on a piece of linen, outlined it with chain stitch, and then filled it with stitched doodley bits. It was fun, easy and just needs a frame (it's approx A4 size) when I next go to a carboot sale. (I might have to stitch a few more doodles in it first, that's how doodling gets you, once you start you just can't stop looking for another space to make a little swirl or a flower.)

The red heart is filled with French knots:

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Hi Debbie here with my own doodled page. I started with a blank piece of white card and apart from the photo and the paper buttons on the tree and for flowers, everything else is doodled.

Thanks for stopping by. Debbie x

 

Stitching Stamps again!!

Last year I stamped my Bombshell Mermaid stamp onto fabric and coloured her in with Copic markers. I made a quilted surround from sea themed fabrics:

Well this time I wanted to use the same stamp but EMBROIDER the mermaid stamp this time!

I also wanted to include some fabric for the mermaid's tail and bikini top so I bonded some Bondaweb (to prevent fraying) onto the back of my chosen fabric and stamped the Mermaid's tail and top onto this fabric:

I then carefully cut it out the tail and bikini top from the fabric.

I stamped my Mermaid onto a piece of cream fabric using Staz-On ink and put the fabric into an embroidery hoop.

I took the fabric tail and bikini top I had cut out and used some clear glue to place it onto the mermaid:

I then used a combination of back stitch and satin stitch to outline and fill in the mermaid's image.

I also outlined the fabric tail and bikini top with back stitch.

Once the embroidery was complete I finished the mermaid by attaching her to a collaged and stitched fabric background to make a hanging!

I rubbed a little Rock Candy Stickles over the fabric tail and top to give the mermaid some sparkle!

Hope you enjoyed this project remember stamps make excellent subjects for embroidery!

Happy crafting!

GlitteryKatie xxxx

 

 

When I was a little girl

I loved the story of Heidi.

I saw an old edition in the Salvation Army furniture warehouse, and paid 50 pence for it (yes I know, I seem to pay 50 pence for everything, but it's true). Look at this lovely endpaper:

Originally I wanted to embroider some of the simpler line drawings onto calico, but then realised that stitching them over the relevant text would make the piece more meaningful. I tried my old trick of photocopying onto cotton sheeting, but it was picking up too much ink and looked horribly dirty and smeary. Looking for something else to try, I found a roll of artists' canvas, cut a piece A4 size and it printed beautifully.

I then scanned the drawing at the start of the chapter, resized it, altered it to green, faded it, and printed it on top of the text, as a pale outline for stitching.

I like to stitch in dark green

and here it is, stitching complete, ready for framing, a simple but meaningful piece

What book from your childhood brings back special memories for you?

Eleanor

x

 

 

 

 

Simple Things - Believe/Belief

Happy Sunday, Eleanor here, with my 8 inch fabric square.

No-one ever promised us a smooth journey through life, and some have a rougher ride than others, with greater obstacles and more challenges to overcome, but whatever your path, wherever your steps take you, if you believe in yourself, have confidence in your own judgement, and keep focused on what is important to you, it will make a positive difference to the outcome.

Troubled times in my own life have strengthened me and, in my middle years, I feel I have greater confidence and self belief than I could have dreamt of. With every set-back, my calm resolve and quiet determination not to let it bring me down has increased.

To illustrate self-belief, I have drawn and embroidered a self portrait, with appliqued printed cotton fabric for my red top. It's not a perfect likeness, but that's OK, I loved making it, and every stitch re-affirms my belief that I can DO anything.

I believe in myself, and I hope you believe in yourselves too.

Bye for now.

xxx

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 Hi, this is Mandy.

When I came to think about the word 'BELIEVE' I found it impossible to limit myself to one thing as there is a pile of things I believe in.

 

I found a family photo from 2007 that summed us up, then typed the text into PSE and printed both out together onto printer-friendly canvas (the photo is not very clear because of my printer being low on ink).  I added a strip of butterfly trim, a K&Co chipboard word 'believe' and stitched them down with my sewing machine.  The crochet butterfly was made by my Gran. 

 

Here's an even closer look, with the brads and wire I added to the butterfly...

 

It was quick and fun to make and the canvas will be flexible in my fabric book.

Thanks for looking,

Mandy.

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