Scraphappy Saturday - Anyone want to trade?

As I'm sure most of us are more than aware there is a world recession going on at the moment, belts needed to be pulled tighter and there is less spare money to use on luxuries as the price of every day living just seems to go up and up. As much as I like to think that fabric and crafting is a necessity rather than a luxury ;-) I am certainly being forced to buy less these last few months. But I'm coming to realise that that isn't really such a bad thing.

How many of you are like me and have a tonne of stuff that you've bought over the years that has rarely seen the light of day since it came home? Well this is the year to get using all that stuff!! :) And what perfect excuse but to combine some of that with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.I have had this book sat on my shelf for a while and not done anything with it so this week I will be attempting to make myself a red pot or two........ The scraps have been raided and I'm all set to go. I wonder if I'll have a finished pot to show you by the time next Saturday rolls on round?

While I was sorting out some strips for my pot, I noticed how many really thin strips that I'd saved, I'm talking pieces less than an inch wide. I figured they would be great for some fabric weaving in miniature so I made a couple of ATCs. Here's the result.

Scattered HeartsYour Love Gives Me Wings

So anyone want to trade with me? I'll send you mine if you send me yours :) No rules just send whatever you want to make me. Just leave me a comment and say which ATC you would like...I only have one of each so they'll go to whoever is the first to say.

3Creative Studios Challenge - A tale of procrastination

When I heard about the 3creative studios colour palette challenge earlier this year I knew I wanted to join in. I have a big pile of doll making books on the shelf and although I have attempted a couple of dolls in the past it's something that I've been wanting to play more with and just never got round to. Anyhow I thought that I might marry the two up and use the palette challenge to play around with dolls.

Well the inspiration picture and colours for this month were announced a while ago and I've been procrastinating. I took a quick glance at the picture and decided that the colours weren't speaking to me. I've been putting off starting anything until the beginning of this week when I decided that I didn't want to fail at the first hurdle. I told myself that even though the colours weren't speaking to me I'd join the challenge by making something small like a postcard.So I printed out the picture and palette and raided the scrap boxes. Wow, once I laid these colours out I just loved them together. I couldn't wait to get going and the idea of a postcard went right out of the window and the original plan for experimenting with doll forms came back again. I decided for my first doll attempt I'd have a go at a pretty simple, primitive kind of goddess form.
I figured it might be interesting to play around with the fabric weaving idea again. The picture above shows my woven 'base' fabric.I really like the earthy tones of all the fabrics together, and that along with the original picture which was of a pine bough really gave me the feeling of the colours that you might experience on a woodland walk.I decided that my doll would be a goddess of the pine forest. I started decorating the fabric with some of the leafy patterns that are among the decorative stitches on my sewing machine.I just randomly stitched all over the cloth in a few different pattern variations. It was an interesting experiment as I really liked some of the bits on the cloth but knew that there was no guarantee that these would be on the final doll as the fabric would get cut up again.I have to admit that it was a bit tricky turning the doll, particularly getting the layered woven fabric through the tiny neck, but I managed it in the end. Got a bit more recycling done too as I again stuffed out the doll form with some of the bits and pieces that would have otherwise ended up in the bin from other projects. You might recognise some mug rug trimmings going in here :)I was a bit undecided about what to do with the face. Originally I thought I'd use a rubber stamped face, but I liked how a bit of the vine stitching was going up the side of her face and didn't want to cover that so decided to go with paint. Sadly I'm no artist and faces will be one of the things that I hope to practise as the doll making experiments continue, but for now I think this one came out ok.I added some yarn that I had in the cupboard for her hair and she was done.I had so much fun making her, and am really pleased with how she came out but I can't help thinking that maybe she could have been even better if I hadn't left it all until the last minute. Moral of the story - Don't procrastinate just because you think you don't like something more often than not if you just get stuck in you'll realise that you love it!!And I even had enough of the woven base fabric left to cut a couple of backgrounds for postcards. They're on the sewing table waiting for a few extra embellishments and then will be tucked away again until needed.

Can't wait to see where the next palette will take me.

Scraphappy Saturday - No More Blues

Last Saturday of the month so this will be the last of the blues I guess. Am feeling a little sad about that, was just beginning to get up some pace the month has run out, its true that time speeds up as you get older!

Never mind I'm pleased with what I did get done in the end. I'm happy to say the Kindle cover is finished, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It's amazing what you can do with a few scraps of fabric that might otherwise have ended up in the rubbish pile.You might remember that this was the starting point, some random blue strips woven together, and just a little bit of work later and I ended up with this.I'm now going to be able to take my kindle out and about in my bag without fear of it getting damaged or scratched up.The hand stitching took a bit of time, but I think it was worth the effort. And thanks to Terri's brilliant instruction (see link in yesterday's post) the zip that I was worrying so much about went in nice and easily.And the kindle fits in just perfectly.
This has got finished just in time as I'm going away next weekend so my kindle will now be coming with me :)

If you have been reading my blog you may have seen my posting about the red and white quilt I'm working on, quite a few people mentioned that it would make a great quilt for the rainbow challenge and yes it really would, but somehow I just don't know what I'd do with 12 of them :) Anyhow my favourite part of the quilt is the chequer board block so I figured I'd make myself a few blocks each month and have a rainbow quilt just for myself at the end of the year. So here are the blue blocks.Now I'm off to do some blog hopping to see what everyone else has been doing in the rainbow challenge this week.

Still Got the blues

Hand stitching on my kindle cover continues. I am loving the fabric weaving technique and all the possibilities that it holds. Don't forget you can find all the inspiration for this over on Jude Hill's blog. As I was putting the basic block together it occurred to me that all the little squares of fabric were much like chapters in a book, each with it's own little story to tell, a piece of the puzzle. In my mind they have come to represent all of the chapters in all of the books out there that I've yet to read, some of which have yet to be written even.I thought that stitching some letters in to the chapters/fabrics would be really fitting. One side of the cover is going to be all like the above. The other has a little embellishment.

You know how sometimes you have wonderful treasures that you've held on to for years, just sat there or hidden away, out of sight maybe but not entirely forgotten, waiting to find the perfect home?This little kitty picture (sorry the photo is refusing to upload the right way!) was sent to me by the very talented Terri Stegmiller a few years back when we did a little swap of kitty fabrics. As Terri is also the designer of the kindle pouch pattern, I knew that at last I'd found the perfect project for him.

The covers of my pouch have now been finished, and I have also made one part of the lining for this I'm hoping to get the linings finished and the pouch sewn up today. Of course I'm raiding my blue scraps for the linings of my pouch.I've cut a piece of scrap muslin to size and am randomly laying out all the tiny odd shaped scraps I've kept on top, it's sort of like putting a puzzle together.Once I have my base fabric covered I'm using bondaweb to fuse the pieces in to place.Then on with the darning foot and I'm securing the pieces with some random looping meandering, nothing too fancy or neat as this will be the inside.I'm excited to have this almost done. I'm a bit nervous about the finishing though as this has a zip fastening and I've never put in a zip before.

Scraphappy Saturday - Small progress

I'm still only making very slow progress on my kindle pouch for the rainbow scrap challenge, but hey some is better than none right?One evening earlier this week saw me sorting through the blue scraps box, trying to decide exactly how I wanted to use them in my pouch design. Then all of a sudden it came to me.I recently signed up for this class given by the hugely talented Jude Hill. If you haven't visited her blog before grab yourself a cuppa sit back, read and enjoy here.

I have to confess that I haven't had any time as yet to really explore the wonderful ideas and techniques detailed in the class, but I figured this project would be perfect to start me off playing with a bit of cloth weaving.The great thing about using this idea is there is no precise, accurate, time-consuming cutting required. Torn strips and fraying edges are all a part of creating your surface cloth.The two sides of my pouch have been roughly woven together. I just need to get these stitched down with a few stabilising stitches, trimmed back and then I can start the real fun - adding images and stitch to create the story of my piece.