Patchwork Cushion

Well it is a little milder this weekend but has been raining steadily ever since around 10am so not all good.  Today I'm sharing with you another of the samples I made for my recent stitchery demonstrations using various Clover templates.  I spent quite a while thinking of different of using the little puffy circles obtained by using the Suffolk Puff (also known as yo-yo) template and this cushion was just one of them - there are one or two other items not quite finished but I will get them done and share them another day.  This cusion was made from lots of odd scraps of fabric cut into squares and stitched together.  I then added a yo-yo to alternate squares with some miscellaneous buttons from my (large) mountain of odd buttons. I am trying really hard to use up oddments in all departments of my crafting but the mountains don't shrink by much!!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend and hopefully the weather is better for some of you than it is here.

Backgrounds

The challenge this week on Make My Monday is to make a background from scratch (no designer backing papers allowed) and there is a mid week motivation post with ideas and of course the usual lovely work from the design team.  My background was made on watercolour paper with distress stains, water and salt - once dry it has been overstamped.  The image is a Creative Expressions stamp designed by Sam Poole, coloured with matching Distress colours, cut out and popped onto a piece of embossed Core-d-nations card (sanded, inked and overstamped).  Apart from the little bee which is a Chocolate Baroque stamp all the other stamps used were from Creative Expressions by Same Poole.

April Quintiles

Well I must say that the theme for Chocolate Baroque Quintile swap this month really had me thinking - it was April Fool.  Of course I had to tie in the theme with stamps and/or products from CB so I ended up 'thinking outside the box' and went for Steampunk style.  To my mind there must have been people who thought that the early inventors of weird and wonderful flying machines were foolhardy to say the least.  The quotation is from Shakespeare and the images are of course Chocolate Baroque stamps.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what the other members of the group come up with for this month which has been a bit of a challenge!!

Blue Birds

A bit of hybrid crafting here with some of the elements being created using Docrafts Digital Designer programme.  The backing papers, ribbon and bow were printed as was the image - all arranged on the screen and then separated out for printing so that I could make up the card in the traditional way.  A Spellbinders shape was used along with a strip of embossed card as a border for the printed ribbon and bow. The sentiment was produced on the computer and punched out.  The actual image was a black and white one but I altered the colours within the software to tie in with the rest of the design.  Working out designs on the screen is a great way of being able to just print papers and other elements at just the right size, thus saving on ink and also not ending up with loads of scraps of printed papers - as you know I have a mountain of those already!!

Owl Shopping Bag

Well I've started unpacking my bags from the show and managed a quick photo of this owl shopping bag which I made.  It occurred to me that the Suffolk Puffs would make good eyes for an owl so I set about drawing a design so that I could applique it onto some plain fabric to make into a lightweight bag. The pieces were applied to the background using Bondaweb and then buttonhole stitched around by hand before making and adding the dimensional eyes.  Must get on now with the rest of the unpacking because I have a commission card to make today as well - all go here but it keeps me out of mischief!!

Apologies

I really must apologise for my lack of blogging (again) but my reason this time is that I've been busy getting things ready for a couple of days demonstrating at my local craft shop.  As they recently started selling fabrics I was asked if I could do something relevant and as I didn't want to be dragging a sewing machine along I asked if they could get in a supply of various Clover templates, which they duly did.  I've been working out various ways of using the Suffolk Puffs, or yo-yos, and making Kanzashi flower brooches in addition to making some bags, covered books etc to show just some of the ways of using both the templates and the lovely cotton fabrics.  It was a very busy time although extremely cold in a daughty marquee - I can say that trying to sew with fingerless gloves on and bundled up in cardigans and coats isn't the easiest but it was lovely chatting to the visitors, many of whom are regulars to these two day shows which happen in April and September each year in conjunction with a woodworking event.  My 'friend' Jill of Jills Quills very kindly popped a sneaky photo onto her blog of me at work!!  They pretty well sold out of all the templates and I guess some of the fabrics were sold too so my efforts were not in vain.  Hopefully I can come up with pictures of some of the items later when I've unpacked my bags.