Crazy About Wool

I am so enjoying visiting all the crazy wool people on this blog hop. I love to knit and crochet but I also love to make things with wool fabric and wool felt. I fell in love with crazy wool pincushions when I joined in a round robin sewalong a while back. It is still my favourite working pincushion.

Then I made a whole one myself.

The pattern is here.

For today I made an Aussie Christmas decoration to share. Summer is marked by noisy cockatoos flying over our house so it only seems right to have one on the Christmas tree with the robins and cardinals.

Here he is hung on the mango tree out back. And it just happens that the real cockatoo called in the other day too.

I scanned in the pattern. I am not sure if it will come out exactly the right size but close.
You can download it as a PDF.

I free motioned around the pieces in matching thread.
I trimmed the red square next to the bottom edges of the cockatoo piece first, then the top next to his crest, then the back to make it square.
I sewed the red square to a green square.
To give it a good swing as it hangs I added two washers from the tool box to a second green square and sealed them in with some iron on vilene.
I folded a piece of ribbon in half and tied the ends in a knot. I then sewed on the second green square sandwiching the ribbon.
To get the pieces to stay in place while I sewed them I used my trusty spray baste. I quick squirt on the back of each piece with an A4 piece of paper as a drop sheet.

I really wanted to get my knitted dolly finished for today but she is not quite done and she will have to make her debut another day.

Make sure you visit the other blogs in this Crazy About Wool blog hop. Today's list is below and you can see each day's schedule at Pieced Brain. Thanks to Denise for hosting this fun hop.

Tuesday, September 24

Quiltscapes

Marla's Crafts

Secretly Stitching

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Sew Many Yarns

Val Spiers Sews

Quilted Crow Girls Design

Happy Quilting,
Val

Some scrapbooking

I have only been having a bit of a look in at everyone's blogs lately without much commenting. A lot of my time I have been enjoying the lovely weather and watching the birds and the clouds. In the evening I have been doing some catchup watching of Doctor Who using ABC iView. I have the Apple TV box and can connect the iPad to the TV wirelessly and watch them while I knit or play a bit on the computer with some digital scrapbooking.
I am not much good at creating layouts for the pages so I just look up some layout sketches onlone and follow them approximately. I made this this one with my new coastal kit from Nitwit collections.

I was looking for a free collage maker and found Fotor which seems really good and easy to use. I made a little collage to cut up and put in my hand written journal. DH is not sleeping. He and Stumpy are looking at the ducks. The Energex helicopter flew over really low the other day.

I have joined up for the woolly blog hop hosted at Pieced Brain. It starts in a few weeks. I am hoping to get my knitted doll finished to show and I will work on some more blocks for the Summertime wool applique quilt.

Happy Quilting,
Val