Painty, stitchy glueyness....

Oooh, it's been awfully stitchy, painty and gluey round here lately in preparation for Milly's monster party this weekend. This lovely fellow has been hanging around our hall waiting for "Pin the Eye on the Monster":

He's made out of a piece of MDF painted by me with acrylic paint and then cut out by Jude.... here are the eyes:

They're machine-stitched out of fabric scraps from my stash and then glued onto cardboard. At one point the kitchen was covered with eyes on every surface:

They have a strip of double-sided sticky tape on the back so the kids can take turns sticking their eyes onto the Monster. And here are the party bags which are finally finished.... with a little help from my lovely friends (thanks Dotty!)

Each one was hand-stitched onto soft cotton bags which I made out of an old bedsheet, until I ran out of time and lovely Dotty ran them through the machine for me, being slightly more nimble with an electric needle than me. This was the prototype:

And this one's my favourite (I'm keeping him for myself!):

Also been making pressies for other kids: this is a cute little bag for a girl called Molly out of some great soft cord fabric I found in a charity shop recently:

I appliqued the M blanket-stitching it in place with embroidery thread.

And her card:

A few weeks ago I knocked up this little bag of marbles for another girl (see a trend developing here?):

And that's it for now, next post I'll show you Milly's homemade monster outfit....

xx

A Scarpered Sewing Muse and a Lovely View

Well my dears, this is my hundredth post... and I have made no progress with creating something for a giveaway to celebrate because my sewing muse has legged it. Done a runner, scarpered.

I'm too embarrassed to even show you the thing that I did make because a) it's so badly botched and b) I may be able to salvage it somehow and still turn it into something useable.... I have always had a real fear of cutting into lovely fabric - especially if I have very little of it - in case it all goes wrong, and this has happened a couple of times before as I am pretty new to the whole sewing malarkey.

So yes, I hacked into the pretty patchwork I was so pleased with and well, let's just say I've learnt my lesson: always practice something new on crap material FIRST!

So in the interlude while I coax the Muse back into my fingers, here are some pretty pictures to lift your spirits on what is today here in Cornwall a very murky, misty, damp sort of day :-)

Had to jump out of the car to snap this the other day

The view I see on my way back from school

Birds always look so cool perched on wires in flocks

Fun with yoghurt while Mum's back is turned!

Happy Green Day everyone!

Check out the other lovely green pics from all over the world at the very lovely Fiona of Raindrops and Daisies - who is also offering a very sweet giveaway herself....

Scraptastic! WOYWW is here again!

Happy Wednesday all!

As you can see, I'm taking a break from monster-making... I got a bit distracted by all my scraps

saved from all my (unfinished) projects

most of which are tiny  and useless

but being the veteran hoarder that I am, unable to throw anything vaguely useful away I've kept them, wondering what to do with them all

then I thought, what if I pin them in a long strip and then sew the strips together?

voilà!

I'm really pleased with this piece, and of course it does need more work, embellishing, stitching &c,

but - what do I do next? 

Do I carry on with all of the scraps to make one huge quilt/wall-hanging/thing?

Do I reinforce all of the edges and turn it into a bag? Possibly for Christmas presents?

Do I put it all away and get on with something for Christmas instead?! Only seven weeks to go, Granny's blanket is nowhere near finished....

Any ideas most welcome!

This is my 99th post.... I'm thinking of doing a giveaway to mark my next post - I'm not sure what it will be yet, but it may be fabric-related.... possibly patchwork....

Joining Julia at Stamping Ground and all the other creative desks for 

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday. Go take a look!

xx

WOYWWing & monster making

Hello fellow WOYWWers! Welcome to the monster workshop...

I haven't been able to do much lately as little Tula Belle has had a monstrous cold (I wrote that without intending to be funny - monsters are definitely taking over my brain) which has meant I've been unable to leave her for more than 30 seconds during the day without her crying, unless she falls asleep. Hard work at half term with all three girls home! We even had a thoroughly pointless trip to hospital on Friday night where we got to watch TV for four hours, waiting for the doctor's verdict. Yes - FOUR hours, with three under-fives in a horribly hot waiting room. Luckily the two older ones were angels, and there were lots of toys to keep them occupied, and the TV for Jude. Unlike my lovely girls, I was not in the best of moods, due to lack of sleep and worry over Tula, so by the time the doc re-appeared at 10:30pm, I was about ready to rip his head off. Needless to say, he allowed us to leave shortly after.

Tula is a special little girl as she was born with a slightly odd shaped chest, which means she is likely to have more problems than most babies coping with colds, which is why I wanted her checked out this time, as she hadn't been able to drink all day what with being so congested. Thankfully all was fine and she is slowly on the mend. I keep a separate blog to follow her story, which I occasionally update.

So, as a result, not much progress is being made with any of my projects. In fact, at some point I need to sit down and work out exactly what I need to get going on if I'm to get anything done for Christmas this year. Normally I'd be working out some card designs by now and have at least one pressie finished... this year: nada. zilch. zip. Despite my feelings about the whole Christmas frenzy, our gifts may have to be a little less personal this year than I would like.

scrappy heaven

Anyhow, back to the messy desk! I started making a pile of monsters to stitch onto party bags for Milly's birthday, but now I've finished a batch of the bags, I've realised most of the monsters are too gangly to fit the size of the bags.  Below left is one that's definitely too big, and he doesn't look anywhere near as nice shorter... so I've been playing with the pile of scrap fabric the lovely Dotty Bird flew in recently and trying to make some more squat figures.

I don't seem to be able to make 'cute' monsters: they're all a bit strange... 

This is the one that freaks Jude out the most

One completed scrappy monster!

My inspiration must come from my real-life monsters...

Skip on over to the lovely Julia at Stamping Ground who hosts What's On Your Workdesk Wednesdays and check out all the other busy desks on show.



Happy Wednesday everyone!! Have a lovely week x

Green Day!

I kept some photos back from this post just for today's Green Day!

A wonderful section of wildflowers in the planting scheme at Stratford Park in Stroud

A couple of late-blooming roses hanging on even though bare branches are starting to appear

How I wish my wildflower garden looked this fantastic!

Joining Fiona at Raindrops and Daisies for Green Day :-)

There are lots of fantastic photos from all round the world - take a look!

Have a great weekend everyone xx

WOYWW - It's Wednesday again!

I'm back! And with a different workspace.... my favourite father-in-law gave me an early birthday present of an Adana letterpress, which I am over the moon with BUT being the mother of 3 under-fives means I have NO time to play with it: a thoroughly novel kind of torture.

I don't normally write backwards: I thought it would help me set the type, but I didn't even refer to it in the end.

  I get to run in to my newly created workspace for half an hour in the evening before being summoned back by the youngest as she requests her evening/nighttime snack. Sigh. I almost wish I was the sort of mother who could just feed her babies every 3 hours and then shut up shop, but sadly that just has never felt quite right to me... however, now my new baby is exerting pressure on me too, I'm starting to think there could be some strength to that argument.

I'm yet to even make a single print: I have everything I need bar cleaning fluid (white spirit) and a palette knife to scoop the ink onto the printing plate.... I could make do, but John is such an impressive printer himself that the thought of doing anything he might disapprove of makes me feel unworthy of his gift or his teaching. I ran into Trago Mills (our local ghastly discount retailer) today trailing soon-to-be-3 year old and with (lead-weight) baby on hip, only to find at the till that there's a minimum spend on paying by card, which would have meant spending twice what I'd planned so I marched back out again as I simply couldn't face searching for more stuff to buy that I didn't want. I used to be able to go first thing in the morning when there'd only be 3 people in the whole store, but now I'm constrained by the school run.

Source: Wikipedia

So, I'm left with setting type, which is painstaking as the only bits I have are titchy, and I am very slow. I'd be happier with chunky type to start with just to be able to get used to the whole process, but I guess it's good practice. Hopefully I'll have a bit more energy tomorrow to get my supplies in and then I can get messy - the best bit of any creative process I think - from baking to painting! I do have a few blocks to play with too, so I don't have to finish my text (it's a silly poem I made up to give to John as thanks). And in the meantime I can carry on researching the wonderful world of letterpress! I'm reading this wonderful book too.

And it's rather nice to just sit in my new space and listen to all that silence for a bit.

And I still have plenty of monsters to sew! 

Joining Julia at Stamping Ground for What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday - 

hope you all have a productive week and I'll be poking around all those other lovely workspaces in due course :-) I'm especially envious of all those mugs of tea I spy - I never remember to make one before I start work....

Say lookit!

It's amazing what you can achieve in half an hour really....

From this:

to this:

(the curtain is to stop Jude sneaking up on me!)

Now I just need a bit of time to myself....

A good day's work I reckon! And now on with the rest of the day :-)