I saw this quote this morning and I couldn’t resist!
Normal sewing related posts will resume soon I’m sure! 🙂
As I’ve said before I love a good quote! I’ve got a pinterest board full of them – I guess it’s the modern day equivalent of sticking them on a pin-board.
I was printing out a few out today to put in my new journal and I didn’t have a nice one for this quote – so I made my own 🙂
I’ve always loved the idea of keeping a journal and failed miserably at it. This blog works quite well as a journal and it gives me a reason to actually attempt to take decent photos of what we’ve been up to but it’s a big job to keep up to date with it. So when I saw this idea I thought it was perfect for me and I’ve had it on my to do list since it was posted (so 3 years!) that’s pretty good going even for me! I’ve been looking for a suitable box to put it in on and off for all of that time.
Basically it’s a journal where you write a sentence or so for each day and then when the same day comes around again the following year you can see what you were up to last year. Kind of like a twitter journal!
I finally settled on a beautiful box from S & H Cope (Folksy Facebook). I knew it wasn’t quite right for the task because of it’s shape but I figured it was so lovely if I couldn’t make it work I’d still have a beautiful box at the end of it.
When I put the index cards in they got stuck about 3/4 of the way into the box which was a perfect height so I made a kind of shelf out of cardboard
Then I just stamped all of the index cards – the dates are right over at the edge because my stamper has no way of cancelling out the year. I used postcards and so on that I found in the “cupboard under the stairs box” to separate out the months. These are things I used to have on my wall at uni so it’s nice for them to have some use again. I’m thinking I’ll add to these over time with other postcards etc so it’ll become an ongoing memory box that actually gets some use.
I think it looks pretty good in our almost toy free dining room.
I’m going to try turning the comments back on and see how it goes with the spam so do let me know what you think.
This is a bit of a round up of gifts I’ve made for babies in the last 6 months or so. They were all made with things I already had in the house which is why fleece has a bit of a starring role! Click on the links for instructions.
This is bunny monster from a Make a Monster by Fiona Goble. I’ve mentioned it before (see here) I think monsters make cute cuddly toys for babies but maybe I’m odd!
Butterfly with crinkly wings. I’m not entirely happy with this – I think the ribbon is too wide and the face isn’t quite right. It’s definitely worth a second go though.
Rainbow cloud I love the different colours in this and babies seem to like having something to grab. If I make another one of these I’m using ribbons – turning the strips through after I’d stitched them was a proper pain!
Sunshine The original tutorial didn’t include a face but I think it worked out pretty well. The face is made of towelling but anything soft or textured would work.
Crinkly Owl. This is vaguely based on a few different things I’ve seen online 🙂
There are more ideas on my pinterest board if you’re looking for inspiration.
Thanks for stopping by, don’t forget to come and say hi on facebook 🙂
I got my machine out a couple of days ago to try and make some headway on my gift list and it was making a load of noise so I decided that it was time for a clean.
My machine is a beautiful old Frister-Rossmann that I bought from a lovely lady on gumtree last October when my old one decided the middle of the Christmas rush was a good time to conk out. My previous machine was a John Lewis Mini. I always recommend those to anyone who wants to take up sewing it’s a great starter machine. One of the reasons it’s such a great starter is because it pretty much only does straight lines and zig-zag.
So anyway I pulled out the manual to clean and oil my machine and was reminded that it can do so much more than straight lines and zig-zags. I am now on a mission to learn how to do some other things.
This is my first attempt at freestyle embroidery and appliqué. The idea is it looks a bit rough and sketched out – kind of like a doodle. I love doing it. Basically you drop the teeth which pull the fabric through the machine so you can move the fabric around any way you like. I watched a few tutorials on youtube – this one was pretty useful.
I also used this tutorial – which is what I modelled the house on
It’s hanging on a string above my craft table along with other things that make me smile.
(Comments are disabled but do come and say hi on facebook or drop me an email – I’d love to hear other ideas of things I can do with my machine)
