Tag: diy

Day 4 of 12 Days of Christmas Crafts

Ohh, this is one of my favourite Handmade Christmas items I’ve made this year…

Although it may look a little complicated to make (I didn’t make it seem easy by rushing through each step in the video! My bad!), I found myself on to making the next lil’ stocking with 10 minutes or so! Once I found my groove I was off producing, like a little factory!

Give making one a go by printing out my dodgy amateur pattern from my Flickr page.

I made each one a little more personal by free-hand embroidering each name onto the cuff. (A lovely little touch if may say so myself!)

See you tomorrow for Day 5! (You’ll be humming ‘O, Christmas Tree’ all day long!)

Happy Seasonal Sewing Friends!! xx

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Day 1 of 12 Days of Christmas Crafts

The day is finally here to begin sharing with you what I’ve been busily been working on over the past weeks!

Introducing Day 1 of 12 Days of Christmas Crafts with 3and3quarters! Enjoy!

Happy Festive Sewing Friends!! xx

A Merry-Merry Handmade Christmas: Part One

Here is the first installment of the gifts I’m making for all of my family and friends this Christmas.

Last night I caught up with my main group of friends for our annual Christmas dinner. It was a lovely evening full of laughter, food, presents and catching up. We reminisced on the year that’s been while taking notice of two friends missing from the table who are currently living up life in snowy cold London! (Merry Christmas Sam and Dean!!)

And so onto the gifts I made!!

I patiently embroidered two ‘personalised’ embroideries framed beautifully in upcycled frames for my girlfriends and their partners – the first is of two mirrored sparrows (pattern sourced from Urban Threads) on natural Linen with the colour scheme based on the sparrow themed tattoo of the friend who received it.

IMG_1493The next embroidery, sourced from a blog called Spot Colors, is a sweet Peanut Butter and Jelly themed design on natural Linen. This was given to the friend whose nickname is ‘Peanut’ – I thought it would suit them quite well!

IMG_1494And lastly, for the little man of our friendship group, I made a sweet little dinosaur softie who was eager to become a four year olds best friend! This is from a pattern created by Melly & Me called Dilbert.

IMG_1497Handmade Christmas Cards: Made with scrap fabrics, festive ribbons and stickers, pre-cut felt shapes and my trusty label maker!

IMG_1501 IMG_1502Handmade Present Tags: These little guys were made by tracing around a cookie cutter onto cardboard and using flat sequins for the eyes and nose. Sweet, simple and effective!

IMG_1503All presents were received with much joy and thankfulness, albeit a loose buttoned eye that keep threatening to fall off whenever someone wanted to get a closer look at Mr. Dinosaur!

And so, onto the next journey of presents for my family – there’s one gift I’ve already finished, one other I’ve stared while the rest of what needs to get done lies patiently for me as I find time to get it all done!

Only 16 more days ‘til Christmas!!

Happy Sewing! xx

 

A Quilters Mind Never Stops Thinking!

Just only a few moments ago this afternoon, I finished hand sewing the binding onto the Gumnut Babies Quilt – escaping with only a few needle pricks and my sanity still in tact! Tomorrow I will label and photograph it, share here with you on my blog and then pass it on to the lucky lady who gets to snuggle underneath it’s warmth and comfort. Here is the quilt being quilted during the week. I had fun playing around with the composition of the quilting lines to tie in with the modern approach I took to making this quilt.

Obviously you’ll be able to see the final result when I photograph it tomorrow. I’m genuinely happy with how this quilt has come out, especially when I wasn’t following a pattern; it turned out exactly how I pictured it in my head and that, in itself, is refreshingly satisfying!

The quilt top I’ve made for the How Does Your Grow? Competition has been finalized and yesterday I embellished the quilt backing, cut the batting down to size and basted all three layers together.

The next step now is to decide how I’m going to quilt it so I can fully emphasize the overall design and message of the quilt, as well as to highlight the hand pieced flower blades.

So, now that these two projects are nearing their ends, it’s time to start thinking about the next few quilts that need to be made! I love planning and starting new projects; there’s such joy and excitement in choosing the right quilt designs, fabrics and quilting patterns! Within the past few months I’ve seemed to become addicted to solid block colours and have a few quilt designs in mind that, I think, will show off the harmonies between certain colours.

I was recently inspired to use a particular colour palette after watching the highlights of the 2011 Dew Tour on Fuel TV. I love the bright and vivid lime green that’s smattered around the Skate/BMX course and how the greys and black sit comfortably next to each other. These aren’t the best pictures, but you can see what I mean about that intense lime green!

So naturally I thought that those colours would look awesome in a quilt! I think the fabrics I bought match very well with the course’s colours and I plan to re-visit the notion of the ‘modern approach’ that I used with the Gumnut Babies Quilt, but with a different design of course!

Here’s a rough design sketch of the quilt that I hope to construct…

It’s amazing how inspiration can be found anywhere along with how it hits you like a ton of bricks when it does!

Another project that has sprung to mind is taking the opportunity to explore the use of negative space in a quilt. This thought came about after receiving an email from the organizers of QuiltCon (Texas, 2013) about the different categories that can be explored for the Quilt Show that they’ll be presenting. Entry is open for international quilters, so I’m thinking why not try my luck and make something that could be chosen for display! You never know these things unless you try!

These are the two fabrics I’ve chosen to use; purposely paired for the minimalistic design I’m working on. I’ll update more as things progress!

I’m also dying to find the perfect quilt project so I that I have an excuse to use these Denyse Schmidt fabrics that I oh-so love!

They’re just sooo pretty and fun!! I think I’ll have to spend some time this researching quilt patterns, waiting for the right one to jump out at me and inspire my mind!

Happy Sewing! xx

All In A Day’s Work

In my opinion, the best way to pass a cold and miserable rainy winters day would be to rack up a few good km’s on the sewing machine, pump out some extraordinary quilt blocks and projects and then sit and admire your accomplishments for the rest of the afternoon! That’s how my day was spent yesterday (minus the rain and misery) and how the rest of today will go – hopefully!

I’ve dived right back into a project I had previously started but realized I didn’t really like what I had started. I refer to this Gumnut Babies quilt top that I shared a few posts ago. I felt it was a bit bland and boring – to brown, messy and flat. I didn’t feel that ‘thing’ towards it….so it’s been rejected!!

And this is now the direction I’m going in! I’ve added a few more coordinating prints with bolder colours and patterns and decided to do a very modern Log Cabin sort-of design.

It’s only in the early stages of design and the layout of the blocks isn’t firmly decided yet as I still have a few more to make.

With this project, I’m totally going in blind while making it. I’m not following any pattern or specific instructions. Just like all my other quilts I make, the design is all up in my head and I just hope that I am able to translate what’s in mind into an aesthetically pleasing quilt. Fingers crossed xxx!!

I’m the first to admit that I spend way too much time on Pinterest – possibly border lining on addict. However, I was so inspired by a particular pin that I used it as inspiration and made some sweet little wreaths!

These were made by using left over knitting wool/yarn, wrapped hundreds of times around a foam wreath, hot-glue gunning store-bought felted flowers in a pretty bunch together and then attaching some contrasting ribbon as the hanger bit! Ta-dah! A pretty wreath for your front door! It took next-to-no-time to make and the materials where very cheap to buy. So get your craftiness on; make it and be surprised at the results!

I’ve finally finished hand-piecing my How Does Garden Grow? Competition quilt and am now playing around with different techniques to add more interest etc. to the centre of the flower design. I’ve made a few Dresden Wheels but am currently stuck on making them the right size to be able to stack them on top of each other, as if the flower was still blooming.  It’s a head scratcher, but I’ll work it out in the end. Here’s peek…

Right, well I’m off to sew! But only after I make myself a green tea and turn the heater on! Brrr, it’s cold!

Happy Sewing! xx