Fabric plans

So having gone through my fabric stash I am planning some projects. I bought this buddle of fat quarters to go with fabric I had for a few specific projects.One of my plans is to make a quilt with jars and bookshelves I was inspired by a quilt design I found online by One Day Quilt Frenzy which combined books and jars!

I reckon the wood effect fabric will make good shelves and the mottled fabric good book covers, plus the dubloons will make a good jar. I already have some other prints that will make intersting jar contents and some genius spider web fabric to add in a few corners!

Dr. Who Cookies

I love cookie cutters (not that I bake that often) but I couldn't resist this Dalek cookie kit from Greens. They were really easy to make and tasted pretty good too!

They proved to be a lot easier to exterminate than the originals :)

Badge madness

I went to the School Library Association conference the other weekend. During the session on school tranisitions the speaker suggested that the librarian could wear different badges during the year. This would mean the kids would remember you and think the library was fun.

Now i have no idea if this will impress the youth of today (though a few of my new sixth years did say they liked my 'Einstein is relatively good' badge) but the school has a badge maker I could borrow and I had crafty inspiration.

So Wednesday night was badge making with a librarian theme! Now I am rubbish at thinking what slogans to use so I hit cafepress and looked for librarian themed badges. My favourites include 'Question Authority, Ask a Librarian' and 'I read dead people'.

I also did a Dr.Who badge - partly since David Tennant is a local boy but mostly because Dr. Who has twice featured a library and the Doctor clearly feels they are important!

Now all I have to do is wait and see if my first year are impressed!

"The fat just walks away"

Clair and me both made Adipose (for the post about where we got the pattern click here). I already mentioned this in my crafty madenss post but here are both together for the first time - mine is on the left. Neither quiet looks like the original but both were made with love! Possibly they were generated from bones, blood and tissue rather than fat :)

Clair's rather cleverly actually weighs a pound!

Secret Patchwork Project

For the past few months (lets say somewhere in the region of 9 months) Clair and I have been doing a patchwork quilt for our mate's new baby. So the child is now six months old but the quilt is done! Made with love (if not competence).

We started with this great red fabric covered with loads of brightly coloured animals and somewhere along the way that fabric ended up as the back! So to bring it to the front we cut out five love hearts with an animal pair in each. I can neither confirm or deny that these love hearts cover up a couple of errors.

Crafty Excess!

Having had limited crafty opportunities for the past bit I went mental this week and did three different projects!

The first was the Adipose I talked about wanting to make ages ago! I haven't done much embroidery so getting the eyes and mouth even proved one of the hardest bits. I think my top tip for doing one is firm stuffing which makes it look more rounded.

Next came the cushions! Gran gave me old pillows ages ago and I got some fab yellow fur in Orkney last trip up so I made myself some muppet-esque cushions for my couch.

Finally came Tom's t-shirts. I got a couple of cheap t-shirts since this stencilling was another crafty first for the week. I used ColorBox's Crafter's stamping ink pads (I got it to print fabric for bears but have yet to use for that). I just used as if they were stamps and followed the instructions on how to get them to set.

I transferred the stencil patterns onto the outside of old photocopy paper packets. It's the poor man's version of freezer paper, the inside bit can be ironed onto the fabric just the same as freezer paper (though some of the cheaper ones don't work). I ironed on my photocopy paper stencil, placing some between the two layers of t-shirt so the ink wouldn't bleed onto the back, and stencilled away.

The FSM Pirate Fish was based on a simple google search but having looked again for the link I came across this handy stencil version on The Program Witch Pages. For the second t-shirt I used the 'classically trained' stencil created by diynamite.com. The original had fancier lettering but I decided not to risk it on my first outing.

Also on diynamite.com there is a great Mary Poppins Stencil which I may have to try for my own t-shirt another day!

Gingerbread Man Badge

I saw gingerbread men missing limbs in various forms including as softies (in Linda Kopp's book Plush-o-rama) and cookie cutters so I was inspired to make a badge version.

This little guy is only 6 1/2 cm long. I made it last trip up to Orkney and also got my sisters-in-law making their own versions (one with a missing arm the other with a missing bit of head).

It's simple to make so I thought I would share my original pattern (complete with instructions) in case anyone feels their clothing lacks partially eaten food. Click here to download the pdf.