Studio Tekturek pages on Scrap365

I have two scrapbook pages on the Scrap365 blog today using some lovely patterned papers from Studio Tekturek. This is one of them, why not pop over to Scrap365 to see the other one...

A carry everything craft bag

Woohoo! My craft bag takes pride of place on the front cover of the month's Sewing World.

Ten little rubber ducks quilt

Another cot quilt from me and this one was very over due for a baby born last summer but I was pleased to get it done before Christmas. I made a Hungry Caterpillar quilt for the baby's big brother and so I was excited to find more fabric based on illustrations from other Eric Carle books. However the other ranges don't seem to be available in the UK and so I bought this fabric from the States via a seller on Etsy.

This quilt is made from 3 different fabrics. The animal panels were on one fabric, the mother duck and ducklings and the numbered duck outlines were on another and then there was the lovely ducks on the water fabric around the border.

It was a fairly simple quilt to put together with squares and rectangles. I did some free machine embroidery in wavy lines on the white panels and I really like how this turned out.

I also quilted around each of the animals and each duck. I wasn't looking forward to quilting the octopus with all his wavy legs, but he turned out to be my favourite panel at the end. The quilting really brought him to life!

A Sizzix tumbler block quilt

 A friend of mine recently had a baby girl and I wanted to make her a cot quilt. Before she was born I started to make one using Dr Seuss fabric but when I saw the photo online of such a beautiful baby girl (with a very pretty name) I felt like I wanted to make something much more girly.  I have a few quilt dies for my Sizzix Bigshot, in fact it's the reason I bought the Bigshot in the first place so I could use it for quilts as well as papercrafts. I got out my tumbler block die and the Bigshot machine with a selection of girly fabrics and away we went. My daughter even helped by winding the handle on the machine.

This is probably the quickest quilt I have ever made as I started cutting it out at 11.30 in the morning and I was quilting it at 10 in the evening. The shape of the tumbler die makes the quilt look far more complicated than it really was. I only bought this die originally because it was on special offer but now I love it.

I googled three butterfly outlines which I traced onto Bondaweb and used to add the applique shapes.

I did simple quilting in the ditch with a little free machine stitching around the butterflies. I went around the butterflies three times as I've found that if the stitching line is wobbly but repeated a few times it looks like you've done it on purpose!

I really enjoyed putting together this quilt and I will definitely be making more Sizzix quilts. Cutting out accurate pieces has never been my strong point but this machine solves that.

2013 - A few of my favourite things

As it's nearly the end of 2013 I thought I would have a little look back at my favourite things of this year....

My favourite scrapbook page

This was inspired by a tutorial video from Creative Jumpstart 2013. I am very excited that Creative Jumpstart 2014 will be starting tomorrow. I love the comic book look of this page

A Breakfast fit for a superhero

 My favourite new craft

I have had fun starting to discover felting this year (and I only managed to stab myself in the finger twice! ). Father Christmas even bought me a lovely new needle felting brush mat, so I won't have to felt into a sponge and peel it off afterwards anymore. I think Father Christmas may have had advice from my Mum.

A celebration postcard

My favourite photo

I took this photo while we were on holiday in Paris and I managed to get all three kids looking at the camera and smiling - hurray! How did we achieve this? My other half was standing behind me and licking my head to make them laugh!

Can you see a resemblance...

My favourite song

My favourite song this year is "Little talks" by "Of Monsters and Men". I love all the different instruments used in this and I think it is definitely a "jangly" song ( This word has been used to describe other music I like).

My favourite kids craft

This was the most fun. Paper plates + paint+ salad spinner = spin paintings!

Spin painting

My favourite book

A perfect blend of modern policing with a large dose of fantasy.

Rivers of London

 My favourite quilt

A pirate quilt for a pirate themed nursery, with my own pattern for the paper pieced boats.

A pirate quilt

 My favourite film

Star Trek:Into Darkness - A fantastic sci-fi film with the added bonus of Mr Benedict Cumberbatch!

And a New Year's Resolution to finish the year... I will try to finish all the online craft workshops I am halfway through!

Christmas cookies in a jar

I love to give handmade gifts at Christmas but sometimes time runs short. This year I saw the idea of making cookies in a jar and thought it would work well - and it did. I made 6 homemade gifts in half an hour! I found this page, which includes recipes and printable tags. I did have to remake the instructions for the jars though as it talked about cup measurements instead of grams or ounces .

We tried a couple of the recipes out first, just to make sure they were nice and these cranberry cookies were our favourite ( we found the Santa cookies a little too sweet).

And for my friend who has a wheat and dairy free diet, I found this recipe here, for chocolate oat cookies, which works perfectly in a jar. She has a wheat free diet, not a gluten free diet, but I think you can get gluten free oats for a gluten free version.

Felt pebble brooches

Continuing on a sheep theme, I wanted to make some sheep brooches to sell at our Christmas Tree festival (if you are curious why there are so many sheep on here check out this post!). I made the brooches using a white felt pebble as a base (like this). I have some tiny cookie cutters that I use for Fimo and this time I used them as a felting shape. I placed the cookie cutter onto the pebble and used the felting needle to to felt the coloured  shape. I used a heart for the heart brooches and I used a shape a little like a club from a pack of cards upside down as the sheep face.

I embellished the sheep brooches with pompom legs and bead eyes before stitching on a badge back. I finished the heart brooches with seed beads around the edge. I particularly like how the hearts turned out. 

These all sold well at the craft table for £3 each and I think the background cards make them look even better.