from small scraps of felt grow...

.....holly and mistletoe garlands!

Here is a quick and lovely itea for you, if, like me, you keep every little scrap of any thing!

These are so cute, and i had lots of fun making these up! i think people will enjoy recieving them as they are not your average christmas card!



Also, these take no time at all to whip up, so if your attention span for crafty things is short, this is ideal for you..



All you need is:

Any old scraps of felt, in any colours.
A sewing machine threaded with any colour thread.
Small "unusable" short scraps of ribbon.
scraps of card (there may be some in your recycling bin! just make sure it is clean..:-P)
A hole puncher

OPtional: if you have one of those toys for putting in snaps, you can also use it to put those little hole brads in. Not necessary at all though/

All you do is cut your holly or mistletoe and berry shapes.

Sew them together by feeding them under foot as you approach the end on the piece before.

Punch a little hole in the end, and if you have that tool, use it now.

cut card into ideal size for envelope.

punch a hole, you can also add those hole reinforcers if you have them.

tie the card and the garland together with the scrap of ribbon.

And Voila! All done!

Calling all quilters...

Recently i dabbled in a spot of quilting. I'm not normally a quilter, but i am a scrooge.. and i did have a lot of small scraps of lovely fabric, too small to do anything with but make a quilt (or two or three..!!)



so i made this, my first attempt! Definately a test of endurance, but in some ways relaxing, cause while you don't have to think too much, the time involved in making a quilt gives you time to think about other things in life. Kind of like therapy!



now, as i said this was my first quilt, and i decided to do it right by putting in cotton batting.. but i think it is pretty thin. I went to two different shops when buying it, and i asked them if it was too thin, but they both thought this was the normal thickness for a quilt... what do you think??? i'l love to hear!

make your own ironing board cover!

Recently, i had noticed how hard i was working our ironing board..


it looked sad, run down, and burnt out!

So i thought to myself " how hard can it be to make an ironing board cover???

It was sooooo simple!

All you need is:

a piece of 100% COTTON fabric, the size of your board and a bit more. Make sure it is something you can live with, cause you will be seeing it a lot...

some store bought bias binding, any colour will do.

and a sewing machine.


And all you do is:

Take off the existing cover, and lay it flat on the new fabric you are using, having pulled out the string. Save the string!

cut out the shape, and the sew the bias binding around the edge, folded over. Don't forget to leave a gap for the string!

Thread the string through the bias binding, and put this over the old batting, over your board. Pull the string as tight as you can and tie.

Done!!! wow, it feels like a new board!!!!!!

Have you seen this dolly?

For all those people who have waiting for me to make more Emily dolls, i have come up with a better solution.

You make her!

No, that is just rude! what i mean is that i am working on a pattern that you can make your own dolly, and even add your own personal touches to it! i hope to have this done by September, so that anyone who wants to have a project for Christmas will have plenty of time to make her! i promise you, i will make it super easy!!

lemonade

how do you like this little dress?

it will be on sale at the fair this weekend, i'll be at the Crafty Market in the Dublin Food Coop, so if you want it, come along!

little pouch!

Having my sister over recently was great, especially cause we like to do a lot of the same things and one of them is making pouches!

Since i have a fair coming up, and i was making about a million of these babies, i thought i would show you how very easy it is to make a pouch. I know there are a stack of tutorials on the net for this, but here is mu own version. so here goes!

1) you need:

-1 Zip
-2 pieces of outer fabric, cut to length of zip and depth of however deep you want your pouch
-2 pieces of lining, the same size as the outer.



2) First, get your zipper foot on your machine. Then unzip your zip, and sandwich one edge of it between your lining and outer fabric. Make sure your zip is FACING your outer. Pin and sew.

When you open it, it will look like this:



3) repeat the same with the other side. Again, make sure the zip is facing the outer fabric.




when you open it it will look like this:



4) Open it out and face the lining to the lining and the outer to the outer, like this:




5) UNDO ZIP to halfway at this point.. very important...



6) now sew all the way around the outer edge leaving a gap in the lining. make sure you sew over the zip ends.




7) Turn the whole thing inside out through the gap you left.



8) stitch up the gap.



9) and voila! you have a cute little pouch!



How easy was that!!