A Pirate cushion

The Boy has moved out of his cot and into his big bed and he is doing really well. The girls have large cushions in their room which we call the "story cushions" as we lean up against them for stories at bedtime, and so I thought that the boy needed a story cushion too. At his request, I made him a pirate-y one.

I started off drawing a design onto paper and then placing my fabric over the top and drawing over it with a fabric felt-tip. I ironed the drawing to fix it and then used fabric paint to colour it in. Apologies for the photo - I was doing this quite late at night!

I used a watered down fabric paint for the sea and sky, which bled into the other colours more than I would have liked, but it still looked OK, so I layered the painted fabric up with some wadding and quilted it with my free-motion foot. I used white stitching for the clouds, sun and waves.

And I used black stitching for the boat.

Going out for a smoothie

I've been working on my final post as Guest Designer for Quirky Kits and this time I was using the Rocky Road Lite kit. You can see more details about it on the Quirky Kits blog here.

If you happen to be in Gloucester tomorrow then I will be at HobbyCraft doing a Fimo demonstration all day. Do pop in and say hello!

Happy Words minibook

I've been having fun with my "Hazelnut Coffee" Quirky Kit again and this time I've made a minibook containing some of the inspirational quotes I've been finding recently. You can find out more about it on the Quirky Kits Ideas blog,

Here's a look at the pages...

Happy Days with a Quirky Kit

I've been continuing to play with my lovely Hazelnut Coffee kit from Quirky Kits and here is my page using the crochet doily I used as a mask earlier. I love the texture that the crochet pieces give to this page and I really like the colour combination. I am rapidly coming around to the idea of subscribing to Quirky kits once my time as guest designer finishes as I am really enjoying using the selection of items that I wouldn't necessarily have chosen myself.

You can see more about the layout on the Quirky Kits ideas blog here.

Felted Crochet brooches

I have been working towards a little fundraising at my church again and I have been making these flower corsage brooches using my newly acquired skill of crochet. They have been quite popular and I have been taking orders!

The best thing about these is the wool. It's called "Wash and Filz it" and it's a washing machine felting wool. This means that I make a wobbly flower with my novice crocheting and then I pop it into the washing machine (usually with a load of dark or colourful washing) and it comes out all tight and neat - hurray!

The larger flower is made using a pattern from the Mollie Makes magazine, with a covered button in the middle, I found that pinning them onto a piece of printed card made the brooches look even smarter.

I'm afraid I can't link to the pattern for the rose as I'm fairly sure I've been following it quite badly and mostly making it up as I go along - it's all to do with the difference between American and English crochet patterns. However my method seems to work quite well and it looks nice at the end!

Guest Designer time for Quirky kits

I'm really excited to be the guest designer this month on the Quirky Kits ideas blog. I've had one of their kits before, as part of an assignment for the Scrapbook Magazine and it was really great. The kit this month is called ""Hazelnut Coffee" and it's another fantastic selection. Apparently there are still a couple of kits spare.

This is my first page for the month and I am so pleased with it - I'm considering popping this one in a frame! To see how it's put together, check out the Quirky Kits blog.

A Christmas Robin

I had a great day on Saturday in Abergavenny demonstrating Fimo. I was asked to make a few little friends to sit in the shop and here is one the the Fimo creations - sitting outside his own birdbox!

I'll let you into a secret... he's not solid Fimo. I don't like to waste Fimo where I can't see it so I make larger models by scrunching up kitchen foil as the centre. The shape is smoothed out by a layer of mulitcoloured Fimo, leftover from previous projects, and then covered with a final feathery layer.