Scary Squares Halloween Table Topper

Here is the third pattern I was hoping to have ready a few days ago for the launch of my Etsy Shop

It's a Halloween Table Topper, made using most of a Charm Pack, and some extra black 5" squares for the embroidery panels.  The fabric is Haunted Mansion by Sanae

The pattern includes instructions for how to do the spider web quilting design.  I have to say that I'm rather pleased with how that came out!  My free motion quilting skills are definitely improving.

I guess now I'm allowed to buy some more Halloween fabric for next year!

Have you got any Halloween crafts in the pipeline?

Tracy Chevalier: Quilts / Personalities / People / V&A Channel

My friend send me a link to this video, so I thought I'd share it along too.

Tracy Chevalier: Quilts / Personalities / People / V&A Channel

I love how they've stored the quilts on rolls!!

Challenge Yourself - October

So September's Challenge was met with the 'soft launch' of my Etsy shop.

That means it's time for October!

To celebrate my new shop, and also my two year blogging anniversary in November, I'd like to have a giveaway (or maybe giveaways) in November.  So.... my October challenge is to arrange said giveaways so that come 1st November I'm all set to go.

Sounds pretty simple but I've never done it before so maybe there is more than meets the eye.

Add your link below if you are setting a goal or challenging yourself this month.

***Whilst I have every intention of funding this giveaway myself, if you have a shop and would like to contribute some prizes in return for bloggy promotion and eternal gratitude, feel free to contact me.***

I've done it!

I have an Etsy shop

I was hoping to have three patterns ready, but the last one is still in progress, so here are the first two.

This completes my September Challenge, and I've also decided it completed my very first challenge in February.  A little while ago I realised that I wasn't getting the time in the sewing room to create enough 'stock' to hold a physical market, and I had more chance of developing the patterns and marketing those.  I decided that my February Challenge to have a market stall by the end of the year could also include an 'online market', so Etsy shop it is*.

To go along with my new Esty shop, I have also created a Facebook Page, so if you are a Facebook-a-holic, please like me so I'll feel liked.

All I have to do now is keep up with pattern designing and writing.  Luckily I have a few already planned out.

And for those of you who like my free tutorials, don't worry, I will still be posting them for the smaller projects.

* It's my 'game' so I can change the rules if and when I want!

A Labyrinth of Masks

Last weekend we went to a friend's masked birthday party.  My husband, being the creative type he is, said to buy some plain masks and he'd decorate them.  So, inspired by the Labyrinth movie, that is what he did....

I saw a character in the movie that had little antlers and decided that's what I wanted, so that's what hubby made me ('cause that's the sort of guy he is!).  My mask was painted white, then detailed with gold glitter and more white paint, plus the antlers and feathers on top.

My husband's mask was paint several colours over the top of each other, the details added with gold beading wire, braid left over from one of my old costumes and feathers.

And I'm rather impressed to say that other than the actual base masks which I bought especially, everything else came out of my sewing/craft room (oh, except a few things which I think came out of the garage.... I'm not sure what's holding those antlers up!).

Clucky Reborn

After a good scrub and a run through the washing machine, I have recovered Clucky and her chicks from the marking pen disaster.

Now I just have to get onto making the second one for a friend.

My apologies to the thread

It appears my chook disaster on the weekend was not the fault of the thread after all.

I sat down at my sewing machine tonight and looked at the little chicks which were sitting on the table and realised that one of them had black staining around the body but not near the eyes.

Further investigation revealed that the culprit was in fact the pen that I had used to mark the shapes... and consequently forgotten about.  I'm not entirely sure which pen I had used now, but it obviously wasn't an appropriate fabric marking tool.

This is good news and bad news.  Glad I found this out before I started making the second one.  I was able to mostly wash the pen off the fabric.  I'll have to re-mark it with something else to start sewing.  The tiny remnants of the pen marks shouldn't run any more.

But as for my daughter's which is already sewn up, things aren't quite so easy.  I scrubbed the little chicks and their wings as best I could, and they look a lot better but not perfect.  My husband suggested we run them through the washing machine a couple of times and see if it makes them any better.  It also means that I may have some problem with the mother chicken as well as the chooks, and this could get ruined totally if the washing does not work.  I guess it's better to find it out now (and potentially have to remake the whole thing) than to find out later when my daughter gets it wet and ruins a beloved toy.

I had already ordered a bundle of a different brand of thread which is labeled as colour fast, which I don't appear to need now... but I guess a delivery of pretty thread will make me feel better (after the sick feeling I have now knowing that the mistake was entirely mine).

I'll keep you posted on the progress of Clucky.

Doing as I'm told

Last night I wanted to head to my sewing room (as I usually do in the evenings) but I didn't know what to work on.  I always get this problem when I've been focusing on one thing and then it's finished.  It's not that I don't have plenty of things to do, or even plenty of things already half done in the middle of my work table, it's just that I need to find direction again.

So last night my husband suggested that I should work on something for me.  I've always been making things for him, or the baby, or presents, but nothing for me for a long time (I think the last thing was maternity clothes).

It took me a long time to decide what to do but finally I settled on this doll kit which I'd bought from Katkin Designs way back before ... I can't even remember when because I can't find a blog post about it.

The previous doll from Katkin Designs that I'd made I decided to purchase the printed face, but with this new one I thought I'd be daring and trace the face on myself using the Prismacolor pencils.  So that's what I've been working on last night and today.

I'm rather pleased with the outcome, even though I know it's not perfect.  The pattern provides the picture to trace and includes very details instructions on how to colour/shade the face as well as a close up photo of the face from the completed doll on the cover.

And on a completely unrelated topic, here are some more pictures of my garden taken on the weekend.

Some leaves starting to grow on my cherry tree, which I'd been worrying had died (I know they are dormant in winter, but this tree was looking very sad even for a dormant one)

And another ranunculus flower to prove that there is more than just orange ones there!

I need to buy some later flowering bulbs next year as most of my bulbs have finished already and it's not even the end of September!

My little girl is one

Well, she will be tomorrow, but we did the 'party' celebrations today so that dad would be home to join in.

I made her a cake and daddy helped to decorate it (most of it is still left so feel free to come over and taste some ;)

I was rather impressed with the outcome.  I had the idea for the marshmallow flowers out of my cake book and then thought it would look nice with vine-y/branches in between so the artistic husband learnt how to use the icing tube and away he went.  I also found a tub of sugar butterflies in the cupboard and put them all around the sides.  The blocks were his idea to use up the left over cake where we'd cut out the number and he did the decorating on them.

I had decided that I'd better start practicing with these cakes so by the time she is old enough to care about what the cake looks like I'll actually be half decent.  After today's effort I don't really think I've got much to worry about!  I'm a little sad now that there weren't more people to see the cake (just us and my best friend with her soon to be husband).

There was a low point to the day unfortunately.  As her handmade present, I'd made her Clucky by Melly & Me.  As soon as I saw the pattern I knew I wanted to make it.  Most of my evenings recently have been spent in the sewing room getting it finished in time.  I was so excited to give it to her this morning that I forgot to take photos beforehand.  She loved it.  The surprise on her face when she discovered that the little chicks came out was wonderful.

The downside?  Because she is one, everything goes into her mouth.  I found out the hard way that the embroidery thread I had used for the eyes was not colour fast (despite it saying so on the wrappings).  Two of the chicks are completely ruined with black dye running over them.  A third is not as bad and I can salvage the wings, the fourth hadn't made it to her mouth.  I'll now have to re-make three little chicks before I can let her have it again.  She cried when I took them away from her, I felt so bad.

So now my problem is that I need to find some guaranteed colour fast thread to embroider the eyes with.  Any suggestions?  What do you use?

I've emailed the company in question about their thread, and will let you know their response (if I receive one).

Birdie Stitches June

Although I feel like I've hardly spent any time in my sewing room lately, I have managed to catch up on the June block of Birdie Stitches (although I'm rapidly falling behind on September!).

This one sat on the backburner for a while because I didn't like the idea of putting the year into the quilt.  This quilt is destined to be my daughter's Big Girl Bed quilt, if she likes it.  I wont finish the quilt this year, and this year isn't when she was born or anything like that.  I had contemplated putting her name, but knowing my luck, if I did that, she'd tell me she didn't like the quilt!

I was looking through the Birdie Stitches flickr group the other day to see what other people had done with this block.  Someone had included the word 'dream' and I thought that was rather nice.  I consulted with my husband, he's always good at things like this, and he suggested the word 'soar'.  It kept with the birdie theme and has a great motivational meaning too.  So once that was decided, I finished the block rather quickly.

I really enjoyed embroidering the cursive writing and am thinking I should include them in my other work a bit more.