New things in the craft room

I went to Ikea the other day as I wanted some better storage for all the book pages I use for envelopes and tags. They were stacked in plastic boxes, which worked fine, until I needed the box that was right at the bottom! They were also slightly too big for the space so I had to move the whole lot if I wanted to get into the eaves storage.

Here are the new drawers! I have actually been lusting after these for a while and kicked myself when I saw a set in bargain corner a while back but didn't grab. In fact I don't think I would have stood a chance against the woman who eventually bought them - she was not letting anyone else near them! Anyway, they fit all the pages in quite comfortably and I can get to any type of book page I want to very easily! And they fit in the space so I can get into the eaves storage (and no I didn't measure the space before I went to get them!)

I also got a few more bits and pieces (but no fabric - I was shocked too!!) This is now one of my favourite parts of the craft room now. Some cute tins and a postcard (from a set) stand on top of this set of drawers.

They were in bargain corner as they had been used on display and had had paper stuck to the front of them. Easy to take off and when they have been reduced to £2 from £12 a little bit of paper wasn't going to put me off!

The little drawers in turn are resting on this filing cabinet. I have a mini obsession with filing cabinets (I have no idea why) and I just fell in love with this red set. It replaces a very large set of plastic drawers that wobbled whenever you went near them and were too big for the space. After a quick sort out all of the stuff from the old drawers now fit into my neat mini filing cabinet :)

I think the crafty room is nearly done although I did spot the two prints below while looking for links. Maybe for the front room??

print one

print two

My Creative Space

Today is dedicated to the massive pile of tags that have been on my desk since *mumble mumble* - lets just say a while shall we!

I'm making good progress so far and hope to have them completed by the weekend. Although saying that, there are a lot of cigarette card tags to be made and lets say that the cards do not like to be stuck to the cardboard backs without a nice pile of books on top of them, which slows the whole process down somewhat!

For spaces that might have less creepy dolls faces in them, head over to Kirsty.

Lovely lovely mention!

A lovely lady I know online informed me the other day that I was mentioned in Sew Hip (a UK based sewing magazine) Oooooooh I thought! It turns out that Michelle from the oh so fantastic Craftsville has been interviewed by them and she was asked to mention which articles on Craftsville were her favourite.

Can you guess who was mentioned?? Can you?? I'll bet you can't!

And I'm mentioned first :D :D :D The mention is in the Do It Yourself section and is the tutorial for my padded envelopes which you can find on Craftsville here. If you click on the photograph you can see the text better. And apologies for the awful photographs - they were taken late last night!

I'm thrilled to be mentioned in a national magazine even if it is only a tiny mention :) Thanks Michelle!

I'm too tired to post anything exciting today...

...so you get to see the crap I pulled out of my washing machine coin trap tonight after my washing machine wouldn't empty. See I told you it was exciting!

L-R Top to bottom

Big ball of threads
Lion rubber (!)
Piece of red plastic from the outside of a Babybel (cheese)
A piece of wood chipping from the park
A mini ball of fluff
A label from a piece of clothing
A sticker from a pack of Liberty fabric (ahem!)
A blue piece of paper
A nail (again !!)
A 20p piece. Anya was excited about this discovery
A sew on flower
And a grape stalk wrapped up with lots of threads

Finding this little lot has led me to the conclusion that I must check pockets much more rigorously than normal and that I should make an effort to empty the coin trap before the machine packs up and I have to empty ALL the water out of the machine through a teeny tiny little hole!

Oh and I have also discovered that going to the gym makes me so tired that I write boring blog posts. I'm going again on Friday - be warned!

Eeeeek my baby is all grown up!

How am I now the mother of two school aged children? How did that happen??

As you may have guessed Tara started school today. I may be a little biased but doesn't she look cute in this photograph?

Big sister had to get in on the action too :) You wouldn't think that there is two and a half years between them would you?

Apparently I had to take a photograph of them with their new lunchboxes too. Can you guess where we got them from?

And isn't my friend Ruth lovely as she made and sent Tara the card on the right. Tara was, quite rightly, thrilled with it and carried it around with her for most of Saturday morning!

So does having two school aged children make me officially old? :D

Lines of Liberty loveliness!

I'm a huge fan of Liberty fabric, especially the ditsy florals, but I really can't afford to buy it. So I was thrilled when I found out that the factory that produces the fabric for Liberty is nearby to me and that they have a seconds store :D They also print other fabrics too :)

Here it is drying on the line in the gorgeous late summer weather we have been having recently. I got 3 lines full from their scrap pack section* for £8! Yep all this Liberty loveliness for £8!!! Most of the fabrics are seconds although on some of the fabric you can't tell at all (although my dodgy photographs don't help!) I'll show you some of the fabrics I got.

In all the fabrics above there are only slight flaws (and in some cases none at all) but in the ones below you can see the flaws a lot more.

I'm thinking a quilt made of all this fabric would either a) look fantastic if the fabric was placed properly or b) a huge mess! I'm thinking a small square patchwork although hexagons have been leaping toward the front of my mind. The dodgy fabric would become the binding. What do you think? Recipe for disaster or the potential to be fabulous? For £8 I'm willing to try!

*They do have full yardage at the shop too although I am waiting until my clothes sewing skills are much better before buying some. I'm envisaging lots of floaty skirts and dresses for me and the girls!

3rd September was Stitch in Public day

No not that Stitch!*


This kind of stitching!

I was heading out of the door yesterday when I read a tweet from Mooosh saying that today was Stitch in Public Day** and that I should read Mr X Stitch for more details. I duly did and then took my embroidery to Ikea with me to do while Tara was playing after lunch. Notice the cakes in the background and where I am up to on the elephants ear?

What can I say? Stitching is hungry work!!

*Thanks to Matt for the idea of using the character Stitch :)

**I generally have a bag of stuff or my sewing box that I can grab when we are going out just in case there is a minute to do any sewing so most days are Stitch in Public days for me. The mums at ballet and those who go to the park after school have got used to me sitting down and sewing while chatting!

Melty Mummy moment!

I was cooking sausages last night for tea and the girls were playing out the front when I got a shout to come and look at something that the girls had made for me.

They had taken the flowers off a hydrangea bush we have growing in the garden and used to leaves to add decoration. Anya told me it was to say congratulations for being a gorgeous and wonderful Mummy! Aaaaaaaaaaah :)

Remind me of this aaaaaah moment next week when I am besieged by hungry, tired, grumpy girls after school won't you? I am not looking forward to dealing with a grumpy Tara! She gets tired easily at the best of times but goodness knows what a full day at school is going to do to her!

My Creative Space

This is not my creative space today but has been for the past few weeks as I picked it up and put it down again - good job it is one of those kind of projects!

It's a quilt for a little boy who turns one today. To say I am thrilled with how this has turned out would be an understatement - I am overjoyed with it. Yes it is slightly wonky but it has given much more confidence to have a go and take a few risks. It is only my second quilt* (not including the cheat quilt) and as I may have mentioned before I am thrilled with how it turned out! The fabric strips are the ones I got from the scrapstore in Leeds, the wadding is a vintage wool blanket (gives it such a nice weight) and the backing fabric is an old curtain which was made of Laura Ashley fabric. I hand quilted the circles as a) I didn't take my sewing machine on holiday to France with me, b) I like quilting by hand c) quilting on a machine scares the crap out of me and d) I don't think my machine could cope with it anyway!

I have a question about binding though. I bought some ready made binding from a shop and it was about an inch wide which gives for about half an inch on either side of the quilt. My question is, how on earth do you line it up so they the binding is equal on both sides? I tried and then tried again and then gave up trying to sew it on the machine (not possible due to binding not being the same width on both sides) and sewed the binding by hand. This took a very long time as you might imagine! Also, my local craft shop said that they didn't stock binding wider than 1 inch (rough size) Does anyone in the UK know of any stockists that have binding in wider widths than that? I used thick ribbon for my first quilt but it was a pain to sew.

Result - T and his family loved it! I gave it to them in the park and T nearly toppled out of the swing trying to grab hold of it. I think that makes it a resounding success!

*My first quilt is here if you fancy a look.

** Don't forget to go and visit the queen of the Creative Space.

Wheeeee I'm back!

While it was lovely to have time off I am very pleased to be back :) I had to fight hard at some stages throughout August as I wanted to blog/tweet but I resisted apart from annoucing that I was featured on UK Handmade! So what have I been doing? Some sewing (none for Swirlyarts - all for us and presents), lots of bits of mending and fixing, lots of playing, babysitting, reading and relaxing. Some scary ride riding at Disneyland Paris, digging through bargians in rural France, charity shop shopping and spending time with Matt without the girls (bliss!). Buying 7 vintage dresses for £20 in London (!), nearly fainting at the prices of fabric/notions in Liberty, fabric buying (but not at Liberty!) meeting a fellow tweeter (with cute daughter) in London, enjoying time spent by myself and generally having a great time without having to rush back to pack orders etc. Evidently I didn't have take photographs on my list as I have none to share with you today!

So to ensure you have something pretty to look at here is a sneaky peek of the main thing I have been working on in August.

Full pictures tomorrow once it has been given away to the recipient!