A Sizzix rainbow chevron quilt

I have been using my Sizzix Big Shot again to help me make a quilt and I absolutely love this one. I made it for a raffle at church as we are having a day for "Dress A Girl Around the World" ( a great charity helping to clothe some of the poorest children in the world) and so we wanted to raise money to buy fabric, elastic and bias binding. The great news is that we raised £165 through the quilt raffle. The quilt was so eye-catching that lots of people wanted to win it and , to be honest, I was a little sad to see it go (but I could always make another one!)

I found this tutorial for a chevron quilt which looks great. It uses strip piecing which would make this quilt even quicker to put together. However, my cutting out is always terrible (I even managed to make a wobbly Log Cabin square once) and so I put my quilt together using a Sizzix rectangle die (2" x 4" finished size). I found that 1 fat quarter can be cut into 24 rectangles but some of my fabric pieces were a little smaller than a fat quarter so my quilt is 22 rectangles wide. 

I started with a stack of rectangles and sewed 11 lilac rectangles to 11 red rectangles. Then I sewed the remaining 11 red rectangles to 11 yellow rectangles in pairs and continued like this through the stack of fabrics. I laid out the fabric pairs on the floor to create the chevron pattern like this.

Each diagonal row is then sewn together and looks like this.

Then the rows are sewn together like this.

Eventually the quilt top looks like this - so pretty!

I finished the quilt by quilting in the ditch along the zig zag rows which was really effective and used a turquoise fabric to bind the edges.

One of the problems I had with the original tutorial was that it didn't give the finished dimensions for the quilt. Then ,after I gave the quilt away, I realised I hadn't measured mine either! This quilt has 22 rectangles across the quilt and there are 23 rows. I think the finished quilt measured approximately 40" x 50".

A Christmas sheep bauble, or should that be Baaaaable!

Things gave been a little quiet on here as we have been besieged with winter illnesses, but when I wasn't nursing a poorly child, I did manage to get a little crafting done. We had a Christmas tree festival last weekend at church and it included a craft stall selling things for our chosen charity (UWCM). I decided to try to make some Christmas baubles to sell and came up with these sheep. I love them and I'm a bit sad they all sold - but I can always make some more!

They are a no-knit woolly decoration. I started with a polystyrene ball and wound some white wool around it. I think I actually used a cotton yarn, but it was just whatever I had left in my wool box. I wrapped the yarn around the ball until it was completely covered and then tied it off and used the same yarn to make a hanging loop. I made the hanging loop now so that I could hold it up and work out where to stick the face.

The head is made from a ball of black wool just wrapped around itself until it got to the size I liked. I sewed on two tiny white beads for eyes. I could have used small wobbly eyes, but I didn't have any. I cut out a strip of black felt with rounded ends to make the ears and glued the ears to the body with the head stuck on top. I pushed a pin through the head while the glue was drying.

I used 31/4 needles and knitted a scarf which was 3 stitches wide so didn't take long to knit and stitch around the sheep's neck. The sheep was finished by gluing 4 tiny black pompoms onto the base of the sheep for legs.

I love how these turned out and I would love to make more. And speaking of the Christmas tree festival, there was a vote to choose the favourite tree and our Brownies tree won - Hurray!

Around the base of our tree were pinecone hedgehogs in willow baskets that the Brownies made themselves, as well as pompom caterpillars, bead dragonflies and foam owls. I'm so pleased that everyone liked it so much as we had a lot of fun making it.

UKS Blog Hop - Washi tape jewellery

Hello and welcome to everyone who's hopped over from Sarah's blog on the UKScrappers End of Summer Blog Hop - and hello to everyone else too. I hope you are having a great time looking at lots of inspiring posts (with the chance of winning a prize too!).

As I was thinking about which project I would like to do for the blog hop my eyes glanced around my desk and spotted some washi tape - it wasn't difficult as I have quite a collection now. I wondered if I could do something a little different with it. I did a bit of research (oh, how I love Pinterest) and came across jewellery made with paperclips and electrical tape. I had a go at making some using using washi tape and I was so pleased with the results. 

(By the way, if you like this style of jewellery, but don't fancy making it, maybe you could find the paperclip necklace they were selling on Anthropologie a while ago for $168 !!!)

So, I started out with a simple bracelet. Wrap some tape around a paperclip, then clip another paperclip on and wrap some more tape around. Continue until it is long enough - I liked the look of it going around my wrist three times. I love how the pink tape and yellow paperclips really pop with colour.

I used my needle nosed pliers to bend one end of the last paperclip to look like this (before adding the tape). It makes a great closure which is quite secure.

I wound it three times around my wrist, but found it went four times around my daughter's wrist. She really liked it, so now I'm wondering about making these with the Brownies too.

I also tried a multi strand necklace using the same technique, where each strand has one extra paperclip on than the last.

This time I used two jump rings and a proper jewellery clasp to finish it. 

This was lovely to wear as it is so light which makes it really comfortable.

I tried to get a bit more sculptural with the paperclips this time and tried to link them together in triangles. I did find it more tricky and there were quite a few occasions of peeling tape off and clipping and unclipping.

I think the design looks a little clearer when I'm wearing it.

I hope you like my washi tape jewellery.  If you want to carry on hopping then the next blog is Furrypig's blog. Hop over to see what she has in store for you. To be in with a chance of winning the prizes you need to leave a comment on every blog AND on the UKScrappers Blog Hop thread.You have until 6am 10th September 2013 to complete the hop. Good luck!

A little bit about me... I am a freelance crafter and I write for 3 UK craft magazines; Scrap365, Sewing World and Beads & Beyond. I love scrapbooking, Fimo polymer clay, patchwork and quilting, knitting, stained glass and mosaic.  I am mum to three young children and I'm also a Brownie leader and so I frequently blog about kids crafts too. My youngest child is just starting school and so I am about to embark on relaunching my career. Things have changed a lot since I started out being freelance (15 years ago), for example, for the first three years I didn't even own a computer! Please do join me on my journey of discovery over the next year as I am taking time to work out how to turn making lovely things back into a full time job. Hope you can come along for the ride.

Washi tape feathers

Feathers are trendy on scrapbooking pages at the moment and have been for a little while and so I wanted to have a go at making my own feather embellishments using washi tape. It was really simple.

I  placed a length of wire in the centre of a strip of washi tape and then stuck another strip over the top.

I cut the tape into a feather shape...

...and then snipped into the tape with scissors to create the feather.

For wider feathers I laid strips of tape horizontally on the work surface so they created a sheet of tape. I then placed in the wire and stuck down more strips over the top, before cutting out the feather.

I played around with different patterns of tape for different effects.

Come back tomorrow to see where they ended up on a scrapbook page.

T shirt printing at Brownies

We have been working towards our Artist badge at Brownies. So far we have made textured collage flags, decorated bookmarks and painted watercolour pictures of wild flowers. This week we finished our stamped and decorated t-shirts.

We made our own stamps a couple of weeks ago using 3" squares of cardboard (with two squares stuck together for extra strength), tacky PVA glue and some wool. We had intended to make them with string, but our string wasn't suitable as it was a nylon one which wouldn't bend and so we grabbed the wool out of our cupboard left over from our pompom making session. We hadn't tried this out before and we just hoped that it would work! The great news is that it did work - brilliantly! The stamps did need to be left to dry completely, so it worked well that we made the stamps in an earlier session.

This week we gave out the finished stamps and some yellow t-shirts (as we ask the girls to have yellow t-shirts when we go on Brownie holiday). We placed some old magazine pages inside the t-shirts to stop the paint soaking through.We handed out palettes with red, yellow and blue fabric paint and encouraged the girls to mix their own colours too. The paint was brushed onto the wool before being stamped onto the t-shirts.

We had some two tone stamping too...

Here are some of the finished t-shirts designs. We embellished the stamping with fabric felt tip pens.

These stamps worked so well. I was a little nervous of the designs which used only one strand of wool, but these actually seemed to work the best. The girls are all really pleased with their t-shirts.

Heidi Swapp Color Magic Backgrounds

I saw this layout recently by Yasmin Tolche and I love the background she has created using some Color Magic resist paper from Heidi Swapp. I had a packet of these papers and so I had a go with my mists.

These were the colours I started with...

I started with the lightest first ...

Followed by the other colours...

Finally I turned it over onto the newspaper underneath to remove the excess ink and here's how it turned out.

This is my finished layout using some Sassafras Lass elements , Basic Grey patterned paper and some torn book paper.
                                                   

I also found some Dr Seuss stickers in my stash and the book in the picture is by Dr Seuss. We love Dr Seuss!

Another mist background to come tomorrow.

A cardboard box theatre

Continuing the love for cardboard boxes in our house, I decided we needed a project for the Easter holidays. We made a cardboard box puppet theatre. We started out by cutting up a box so that it looked like this...

Then we papier-mached it with newspaper and diluted PVA glue. I don't think this was necessary, but it will make it last longer. However it has also warped the stage area, so you'll notice it looks a bit wobbly at the back now. 

We painted it next...

I sewed some curtains (I found a perfect piece of red shiny fabric in my fabric box) and we threaded them onto some dowel. The girls drew a woodland scene which we blu-tacked to the back wall for our scenery.

The Three Little Pigs is a favourite story in our house (the Boy is obsessed with the Big Bad Wolf), so that was our play of choice. I downloaded some images to make the puppets (from here) and the girls coloured them in and cut them out. We stuck them on long strips of cardboard.

We made some flat scenery too...

I added a cereal box onto the back to store all the puppets and scenery...

Then it was showtime! We put on a family show on Easter Sunday and the kids made tickets for everyone who was going to be watching. 

A Fimo Owl and a feather cane

I've started teaching Fimo workshops again recently (after a long gap) at a fabulous local craft shop called Spinning Weal. The shop is known for fabric, wool, felting and spinning with great workshops and a while ago they added a stand of Fimo. I had an idea to make one of my owls to sit in the shop and apparently he has prompted lots of great comments. A lot of people have thought he's fabric and get a surprise when the owl feels hard to touch. I felt that a knitting owl sitting on a quilt would feel very at home in the shop!

Here's a closer look at how I make an owl.

I start with a big ball of scrunched up kitchen foil and then wrap a layer of multicoloured leftover Fimo around the foil to smooth it out. When I make millefiori canes with Fimo I always have a distorted image at the ends, but none of it is wasted as you can see here.

The next step is to construct a feather cane for the owl's tummy. For this can I used transparent white to make a sausage shape (cane) with white Fimo wrapped around the edge - this is known as a bullseye cane. I squashed the cane into an oval shape and cut it into short lengths to build up the feather pattern, including some tiny canes of black with white wrapped around it. As I used transparent white, the appearance of the feathers will change once they have been baked.

I cut lots of slices from the cane and covered the front of the owl.

Here's a closer look at the other feathers. There are three different canes on the back as I kept running out of feathers!

Then it's two white circles for the eyes and black eyes, beak and legs.

Can you see how the transparent Fimo has changed now it's been baked and the pattern becomes more obvious?

The millefiori cane for the wings is made up from a selection of bullseye canes.

The quilt is made up from millefiori canes that I made when I was doing a Fimo demonstration at Spinning Weal in September.