Thursday, 29 September 2011

Sewing arty canvas thing - handmade Thursday


While browsing around a local craft centre with a friend I saw some embroidery / applique art mounted on canvas and selling for £100.
£100!!!!! 

Well, mine cost £2.24, plus bits and pieces from my button and scrap stash.

I wanted to make a "family" piece, something which celebrated the five of us.

When I'd sewn all the pieces together I simply used my glue gun to stick it onto the canvas.
And I'm really rather happy with it :)

More handmade thursdays at White Lily Green.


Sunday, 25 September 2011

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

I love upcycling!


Making stuff for free is one of my favourite things!
Add my new found passion for patchwork and the upcycling possibilities are endless...

The idea for these trousers came from these patchwork shorts.
I cut out loads of 10cm squares from old t-shirts - ones with stains, holes etc. I just used the good parts!!
Then I used the overlocking stitch on my sewing machine to make 2 pieces of fabric. I drew around a pair of pyjama bottoms to get the pattern.

Why did nobody tell me making trousers was so easy? 
Just 2 pieces, 3 seams and a channel for some elastic :)


Poppy loves them; I only asked her to try them on and she won't take them back off!
(And I like them; they remind me of a pair I had when I was a student.)

Saturday, 17 September 2011

And the winner is....

 Using a very scientific and complicated method a winner has been selected to win the cushion.

A crocheted bowl is useful after all.
Small child pulled out the winning ticket.

Congratulations Shell! Your new cushion will be posted with haste :)

Saturday, 10 September 2011

Blog Post 201; you can win this upcycled cushion!!

 I thought it would be nice to have a giveaway to celebrate 201 entries on my blog.
So this morning I made this cushion...
 ...which used to be a very large man's shirt.
 The great thing about upcycling a shirt is that the button band is a ready made opening for the back of your cushion.
Just needed a little bit of applique made from fabric scraps and buttons.

Would you like to have this very cute cushion all for your very own? 
All you have to do is leave a comment on this post before Saturday 17th September.
I will put all of the names into a hat and draw out the winner :)

Happy commenting!

Thursday, 8 September 2011

Patchwork bedspread - a big ta-dah for my 200th post!

 It's the biggest thing I've ever made, and I am very pleased with myself.

I bought the fabric on ebay - 4 metres of flowery polycotton at £3.50 a metre. (From this shop if you're interested.)

I cut each metre into 16 pieces and ironed them into lovely 24cm square pieces.
(That took a long time...)





Patchwork would usually be much smaller squares but I was being completely realistic about both my sewing skills and my concentration span.


Highly detailed plan ;)


After much sewing I eventually had a very large square made up of 64 flowery squares.

There is a slight mistake in the pattern, but there are no prizes for finding where it is. (And while we're on the subject of imperfections we aren't mentioning any slightly wonky bits in this project, thank you.)
Wadded with polyester and backed with a king size flat sheet.

And here it is on my bed; it is making me very happy!

And it's also Handmade Thursday; more of that at White Lily Green.

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Handmade Thursday - crochet bowl

 The urge to crochet came upon me this morning.
So I dug out half a ball of wool and a hook and started making a hat.
But alas, half a ball only made a very small hat.
It does make a rather fetching bowl though.
(I'm envisaging it holding foil wrapped Christmas sweeties.)

More handmade Thursdays here.