Craft Catch-Up

We haven't been doing any writing about craft on the blog for... about a year?!? Seems unlikely, but there we are! So, here is a very quick catch-up of some of the things we've been doing. There were quite a few more, but we didn't take photos of everything....

Hanging for friends' wedding (made on Tilly with some hand stitching)

T and H's 10 year anniversary was last September (!) so this was their celebration quilt.

 

Scarf for H's Christmas present (modelled by J).

The leftover wool which was made into socks for T's Christmas (no photo).

 

Decoupaged tea-light holders for Christmas presents.

Sock monkey for Little M's birthday.

Two different latch-hook kits (here's one) - an autumnal tree and a puppy.

Leaving presents for staff I had lived and worked with for 8 months or so - painted and then fired at a local-to-there pottery shop. (PS. Yes, those are shoes. And yes, she does like shoes.)

A gardening book for cousin B's birthday.

 

 

Decoupaged tray for J's birthday - a new in tray.

And that's all we took pictures of! Fairly sure that there must have been a lot more bits and bobs throughout the year (plus lots of cards etc) but this is everything we have evidence of.

What crafts have all you readers been up to?

Knitting and Stitching Show 2014

Following a few years of indecisiveness, E and A were finally brave enough to visit the knitting and stitching show! It was held in Olympia this year and the huge venue was jam packed!

We saw...

Quilts...

Beautiful fabric...

Buttons...

More quilts...

Blue fabric, specially for A...

More quilts (I love this one)...

Ribbons...

More buttons...

And lots more besides!

The booking system wasn't great, so we didn't get to the workshop we'd originally intended, but we did one workshop at a stall, and one that we managed to book on the day. So, after our first peruse around the place, we settled at a stand to do some decoupage. (Side note: not entirely sure what decoupage has to do with knitting or stitching, but never mind.) A chose a star to decorate and E worked on a coaster. It's surprisingly easy - A decided that this was her type of craft - fast, inexact and using lots of glue! (Actually, she was instructed to use less! But A's conviction is that PVA sticks the world together, and that hasn't changed.) want to see?

Our second workshop was very different. Sarah is part of a movement called craftivism and we spent a quiet hour stitching mini protest banners. A noticed that the slow process of stitching letters made the meaning of the words really sunk in a different way. More on this later, and the movement of craftivism, later. 

And, of course they did some shopping! 

Good haul, eh? Most of the things here have destinations in mind, so watch this space for more crafty activities...

This is also our one blog-aversary today! Our little blog is one year old today! Wow. So, as a celebration of our birthday, if you are reading this please, please leave a comment so we can say hello. I hope people have seen a little of our CCC life.

Xx

What an ipad really needs

Is of course a beautiful case.

As you may have noticed, the inhabitants of 2CC are recently into sewing. We are generally keen on making, (against the universal trend, I found myself hearing from the Prof of Making at UCL on Material World the other night).

My lovely iPad's lovely jacket started life as a shirt:

another shirt that I don't have a picture of, and to tart it up, a gold shawl found in a charity shop that cost £4 for one by one point four metres of glistening gold silk. No, I don't suppose it really is silk at all, but something synthetic. 

When initially cut up they looked like this:

and then this:

There is a wonderful website called the Missouri Quilt Company, where a very enthusiastic lady with a lovely accent, (very American but pronounces her T's as T's, so I imagine this to be a Missouri way of speaking), shows ways of putting bits of material together so they look better than they started. 

Following her directions, we then got to this:

The poor ipad has been living in a Jiffy bag for the last few months, and I thought it would miss this, so I opened the bag out and quilted the patchwork to one side, and the pocket part of the shirt to the other:

Finally, E brought back an excellent earthenware button, almost willow pattern, from the Kitting and 

Stitching Show at Olympia yesterday:

and look how well they go together:

What do you think?

Sleepytime Blanket for Baby J

After finishing baby A's blanket I was rearing to make another one, this time for a friend of mine who gave birth at the beginning of March in Northern Ireland. It was rather a hard labour, but both mummy T and baby J are well and healthy.

We knew he was going to be a boy, so I decided to go down the very traditional route and make a blue themed blanket. I also used quite stiff backing, so it is more like a play mat than a blanket, although it can be used for either.

I was really inspired by some wonderful fabric from Plush Addict.

Isn't it amazing? I LOVE the little deer and the bees, although the second fabric up from the bottom was a bit weird. I didn't use that one. The rest was going to be scraps, so I drew out a rough plan for how I wanted it to look.

Some scraps were left over from baby A's blanket, some were from Coombe Cottage's material box, and some were from some charity shop clothes. They made a really nice selection of mostly boyish colours.

First I made the diagonal patterns. Each diamond was a quarter of a charm pack size (I'm learning the lingo!) Charm packs are 5 by 5 inches, so my quarter squares were 2.5 by 2.5 inches. Obviously this includes the includes seam allowances, so in the finished project they are smaller than this.

Here is me laying out the squares:

The green colours from my leftover fabric really add a nice element. I'm very into blue so I was worried they'd be too dull and spoil it, but it all worked out fine.

Then Tilly and I stitched them together in diagonal rows, like this;

Coming together, isn't it? This is always the exciting part of a project, when what's in your head begins to take shape. I made another panel the same, and then cut out the larger panels, tacking them together.

Isn't the 'Bambi' fabric wonderful? I love it! And i still have quite a lot left over... More projects to come, no doubt!

Then I pinned it to the backing - I used a wadding that had material on one side, which is easier to do, but the finished item won't be as pliable. Here it is pinned:

I know that it's a bit lopsided and everything, but I think the overall effect is okay. THEN, it was time to sew it together and to do the quilting! I did 'real' quilting this time- basically just sewed all of the diagonal lines to make sure thquilting didn't slip. Tilly struggled a bit getting through the quite thick layer of fabric (she's only little after all!) but we managed.

Do you want to see the finished product? Here goes...

TA DA! Yes, it still looks lopsided, but it is handmade after all.

With my Brave Little Bird label all stitched in.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with it, despite all its imperfections. And I think that Baby J likes it too:

He's only two weeks old - look how big he is! And how beautiful! Wishing Mummy T and Baby J all the love in the world

Hope you've enjoyed my blanket too, dear readers. Leave a comment if you want to.

Xx

Adventures into Sewing

It's been a while since our last update here, and I'm going back a bit to update things. My Christmas present from A and J this year was...

                               

A sewing machine! A lovely dinky little one from John Lewis. Isn't it sweet? I wonder whether I should name him/her... is it normal to name sewing machines?

I was home for a few days around Christmas, and this seemed the perfect time to try it out - I do know how to sew, but have always been very under confident machine sewing. Hand sewing? Fine - I've done quite a lot of it, involving various sorts of embroidery and cross stitch. (Although I still can't get the hang of French knots!) But machine sewing? It's sort of bee a scary block for me - my little experience has been at school, which was fine although uninteresting, and on Alison's machine, which was unsuccessful and terrifying! 

Fortunately, my little machine came up trumps. It isn't fancy, like these digital ones with all kinds of amazing stitches, but it sews and doesn't get stuck and has quite enough stitches to be getting on with.

Mr Father Christmas had given me some beautiful material squares, so I decided my first project would be a patchwork cot blanket for baby A, the daughter of one of J's ex-colleagues.

Using a rather nice Liberty sewing book I got last year from Christmas, I decided on a simple brick pattern.

                  

I started my cutting up all the beautiful material:

                   

Isn't it a lovely selection? Part of me didn't want to use it because then it would be gone! But that's such a stupid reason that I managed to cut it up, and started sewing. It was so much easier than I thought... 

                         

Ta-da! Dont the colours all look so wonderful? I love it. Then came the slightly harder part of sewing it to the backing, and using quilting. J was sent out on a mission to find wadding at the nearest Dunelm Mill shop and came up trumps. For my first quilt, I wasn't able to do 'real' quilting, so I made single knots through the layers at every other corner instead. Not the proper way to do things! But, for my first foray into machine sewing, I have to admit that it hasn't come out half badly. Would you like to see?

                    

Isn't it lovely? The dark blue backing fabric was taken from A's material box. R, J's ex-colleague, and baby A seemed to like it. Do you want to see it again?

Okay...just one more.

                           

Small, but satisfactory. 

Stay tuned for my next adventures in the world of machine stitching!

Xx