A new skill. A new purse.

I bought one sew on coin purse frame at the Brisbane craft show and now I feel all sorts of patterns and applique designs bubbling up. My husband wants to make leather purses but I still like fabric. My first purse is made from Japanese cotton.

 I drew up the pattern and to make it special I appliqued a little kimono girl on the front.

One thing that I have found difficult is getting the purse to look perfectly symmetrical. Careful markings on the fabric should fix this so I can sew it perfectly.

Feel free to download the drawing image. I used felt for the face, hair and hands.
(I downloaded it to my desktop then opened my word processor and dragged it onto the page. It came out small size. Printing from 'preview' made it bigger).

Link it up Friday

Link a Finish Friday

Can I get a Whoop Whoop

Cockatoos and Christmas

Edit 2014 - Still planning :D

I have been busy designing some Australian summer Christmas decorations. I love the designing part but I don't really enjoy the sample making. At least I will have several cockatoos to hang on my Christmas tree as I refine the design. I am planning to try and sell them as PDF patterns on Etsy.

The sulphur crested cockatoo is a common sight around my place in the summer. There are tall tree all around my property and a flock of about 25 fly past regularly and take some time to perch and screech in the trees looking for food. They are quite a large majestic bird with a touch of the jester about them. Christmas in Australia is summer time and lots of birds are around.

I was having my breakfast tea when I spotted this one out my back door. He seems to have found a feast of seed pods in the grass.

Another of my favourites in the spangled drongo. It is a glossy speckled black bird with a deep notch in its tail. It is a migrant and turns up here in summer after spending winter up around Cairns. Several of them sit in the tree above our swimming pool and take turns diving and swooping in the water. They have an odd call a bit like a turkey gobble but not quite. It is maybe not the best choice for Christmas but certainly a good replacement for the crow or blackbird.

I think maybe a kingfisher or blue wren or a fig bird are next on my list for Christmas birds. Let me know if you have a favourite that turns up at your place in the summer. If you live in another country let me know if you have a favourite Australian animal or bird. I want to make a bit of a collection of designs for a variety of projects. But for now I have to get a couple of Christmas things finished to put in my shop before Christmas comes and goes.

A Tangle of Threads

I have been working on three different stitching projects and I just can't believe how highly charged those embroidery threads are. I put them down and zap! they form into a clump or a Tangle. A Tangle is the technical term for a group of embroidery threads and it takes quite a lot of rangling to sort them out.

A while back I posted about sorting out my embroidery threads with plastic display sleeves and a bit of paper and stitching. Well I have blessed the day I did that many times over when I have been looking for embroidery threads for a particular project. I thought it was about time to take stock and add my new threads to the system as well as tidy up the Tangle.

I put a piece of printer paper in the sleeve, sew it across the top opening then at one third intervals across and down. With my sharp little scissors I slit across each pocket a bit below the row of stitching. The point goes in easily and just slices across. Don't cut the paper. Make pockets on the back too.

All those little bits that are left over I roll up around my fingers and pop them in another sleeve. They stick to the plastic and stay in place quite well.

Ribbons Too
While doing that I thought it would be a good idea to straighten up all my ribbons too. So I divided each plastic sleeve into four sections. At first I just pushed the folded ribbon in but that was no good. I needed a spool to wind them on. I had a sheet of medium cardboard in the spare room and cut it into flat winders. To hold the end I used plastic paper clips that were just sitting in my drawer. It feels so good to be able to look at all my lovely ribbons now.

They went from a bag and a drawer and a box to a beautiful display folder.

Before

After

I put lots of photos and a description of what I did into a PDF that you can file away for a rainy day.

Download Organising Threads and Ribbons.

While writing this post my zippers arrived in the post. I am so excited. I will be checking my 'zippy things' board on Pinterest and start zipping up a storm :D
Don't they look fabulous. There must be a cool way to organise these babies.

Crows and Kitties

This project was started just before I entered my cockatoo phase so I had to keep going with the crows. I guess they are now blackbirds because I gave them yellow beaks. I love working with wool felt and wool fabrics to do applique. I also love the cute little designs that can be made out of felt. You can get so much detail.

On Pinterest I started up my 'I love felt' board to collect lots of cool felt projects for a rainy day. It always helps to have a bit of inspiration. I recently discovered the  Downeast Thunder Farm blog and lots of gorgeous felt bird patterns for free.

I was first introduced to the crazy wool pincushion by Kaaren at The Painted Quilt. And then Fiona at Bubz Rugs had a pincushion traveling swap. I was still feeling my way around blogland then :)
I still love using my international pincushion.

My latest creation has woven wool for the top and wool felt for the elements. I also used felt for the base and just cut a slit in it for turning and stuffing. I used baseball stitch to sew it up. I had a bit of rice and lavender mix in the draw so I popped in a few spoons of that then made it nice and plump with hobbyfill. I put in one of my washers to give it some weight and stitched the edges together.

If you would like to collect this pattern you can download it from google docs.
There is also a flickr photo stream with some construction steps.

I thought the kitty salt shaker should get a look in today. There is a ginger one for pepper but I don't use pepper much. I bought the pair in the Lakes District on my UK trip earlier this year.

Now I have to get busy and tweek the design and put in cockatoos instead of blackbirds and gum leaves instead of apples.