Mini Fabric Bow

I found an off-cut of fabric in my craft cupboard ages ago.  I thought about making some kind of bow for a while, but wasn’t quite sure where to start.  I tried finding a simple tutorial online to start me off. Most of the things I learn to make start by following a tutorial (usually on a stitch or technique) and then I start playing around with it once I’ve learned the new stitch/technique.

I couldn’t find anything I wanted in particular…  I then decided to Just Play.  I didn’t have a lot of fabric at first so I wasn’t that worried about getting things wrong or making too much of a mess.  I didn’t have much to lose!

At the time, I wasn’t feeling very well.  It turned out I had bronchitis, and had had it for almost a month when I started playing around with the idea of making a bow.  Because I was so unwell I wanted it to be as simple as possible!

I started by cutting a rectangle of fabric that I folded in half length-ways (right-side to right-side) and stitched around the edges, leaving a small gap at one end for turning right-side out.

After turning it right-side out, I made tiny little stitches along the long edges in a sort-of loopy way.  I’m sure it has a proper name but I don’t know what it is!  I’m still learning how to sew but usually end up just making things up as I go along!  Hopefully you can see what I mean from the photograph!

I also sewed closed the small gap I left for turning.   I then made a gather stitch down the middle of the rectangle and then pulled it together, tacking it down to hold.  I didn’t like it much at first because I thought it looked a bit messy in the middle.  To solve that, I simply cut a small piece of felt and wrapped it around the middle. 

It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it was a start…

My Christmas Makes…

Since I haven’t had a working camera for a while, there was obviously some delay in being able to share them with you.  Instead of writing a number of posts, I’ve decided to put all the things I’ve made for Christmas together in one post.

First up are the felt hearts.  I made one randomly.  I was just playing with some off-cuts of felt, thread and a huge bag of filling I had.  I like it so much I made a few more of them, in different colours, and added a length of ribbon so that they can be used as tree decorations.

Felt Hearts

Since I liked how easy using felt was, I had an idea for felt robins.  These took a few attempts to get right.  My sewing skills aren’t brilliant, but they turned out nice.  I can sew as long as I concentrate very hard and sew slowly… but then I get impatient and end up having to unpick stitches.  The eyes were originally made by sewing little French knots but I’m not very good at them (I manage to get maybe 4 out of 10 right!) and they were too loose.  For the ones in the pictures, I used tiny black seed beads.  It was a bit tricky at first, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it now!  Again, I added a length of ribbon so they can be used as tree decorations.  The filling (that was also used in the hearts) is horrible stuff!  It feels horrid in my hands – it’s worse than cotton wool!  I stuffed the robins as tightly as I could and stitched up the gap.  Normally I would sew inside-out and turn right-side out later.  This time, I decided to sew around the edge from the outside, in blanket stitch, but making the stitches tiny.

Felt Robins

 

 

Lastly, do you remember the little beanie hats I knitted?  Well, most of them ended up on little Christmas cards… and they look like this!

 

 

 

I made them using little card blanks and decorating them very simply with a few tiny snowflake stamps and silver ink.  The ‘Christmas Joy’ greeting is simply stamped – in either red, green or black ink – on card and then mounted on the card blank.

 

First post…

Well, this is new! If you’ve found your way here via my ‘other’ blog – welcome. If you found it randomly, hello to you too!

Although there is a separate page on the other blog for my craft stuff (which is mostly just to share photos with people), this one is for things I’ve made, creative things I’ve found, various creative people I meet and come across, etc. Of the things that I make myself, many of them can be made to order and sold. If you see something you’d like, simply let me know and we can sort something out between us, I’m sure. Occasionally I may post things made by other people. Full credit will be given, as well as a link to the specific page/artist. Sometimes this might go wrong, so feel free to correct me if this happens.

As you can see, things are very much Under Construction.  Bear with me and things will soon be up and running as they should.  Thanks for your patience.