I made a Bear!

I like a workshop.  It's time you've bought for yourself to spend precious time doing something.  And you can properly enjoy it without feeling guilty about the dust/ironing/weeds/more dust because you're supposed to be doing the thing you're doing.  In my case it was a second needle felting day with uber talented Gretel Parker the Queen of Pokey Needles.  This day, coming as it did at the end of a rather hectic week of meetings including one in Germany, felt like a real tonic.

Needle felting is a very inexact science, it's sculpting with fibres but doesn't have a terminology.  You start with this...

 And stab it about with some special barbed needles which mesh the fibres together.

 You shape it...

 And tighten it all up with repeated stabs.

 Add ears.

 Have a one to one tutorial on the best way to add these gorgeous, tiny, hand made glass eyes and suddenly you're looking at something with real character.

Gretel's descriptions of the process are organic, descriptive and instantly understandable.  "Firm it up a bit.  "Poke it a bit more".  "If it's hollow, pop a ball of fibres up it".   Very early in this friendly, tea fuelled day I found tensions unwinding, cares dissolving and breath deepening as I became absorbed by pricking a muddle of wool into a shape.  Even when a break was called, many of us continued working, too engaged to tear our attention away.  Here's what we all made....

The obsession kept hold over the weekend as I continued prodding and poking to try and achieve the same smooth perfection Gretel achieves in each of her pieces.

  Even looking at these pictures now I want to get my needle out and neaten the imperfections.

If you get a chance to join one of these workshops, do.  If not, get a copy of Gretel's book.  And have a nice sit down with a cup of tea while you try and work out which project to try first.  By the way, he's called Sven.

Needle Felted Puppy

I wanted to see if I could replicate Buster the Puppy in wool and had a go at a needle felted version of him. This is pretty much the look we are greeted with whether we have been out of his sight for a few minutes for a few hours. He is always pleased to see us - because we might throw his ball for him. Or give him some sausage.

He started from a very basic sketch. I knew the shape I wanted him to be and that I wanted his nose pointing upwards. His legs would just be hinted at ('cos I can't do dog legs) and I'd worry about his ears once the body was done.

With a rough idea of what I wanted, I got started.

I used a length of wool roving and folded it in half to build bulk in the base. Once I had a form that would stand I pinched some shape to create the forehead and left about an inch of wool to form the snout.

Having firmed the shape up with a bit of needle stabbing, I pushed some black headed pins in where I thought the eyes would go so I had a sense of his character. These helped a lot while leaving me flexibility about final eye position. The legs were created by pushing a deep ridge in the centre of the body and on the. outside edge.

It took several attempts to get the ears small enough, I had over estimated the amount of wool needed. I also needed to decide if I was going to allow the colour on the muzzle and body to be contained within a sharp edge or leave it fuzzy. In this experiment I opted for fuzzy.

Fuzzy mutt.

His colour is a real mix of cream, light brown, grey and black. If I were doing this again I'd stick to block colours for ease. Trying to get all the colours in complicates what is a small shape.

The finished version stands about 4 inches high.

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Project round up, quilts, cushions and bags.

I was planning a review of the previous year and came across unused pictures of completed projects so here is a gleeful collection of things I'm glad I finished! The first is a Union Jack quilt begun in my patchwork classes about 4 years ago. I'd had enough of the very prescriptive accuracy demanded by a standard quilt and wanted to go off piste with a rag style. If it looks easy, chances are, it isn't. This wasn't. Union Jack's are hard and as you can see below. I got it wrong. (Bottom right corner - no idea how it overshot it's implied rectangular shape). This wrongness made me so frustrated, I hid the unfinished quilt top, moved house and made Other Stuff. I rediscovered the unloved squash of fabric in a bundle last summer and tried to save it. I failed to mend that design error (grrrr) but I did learn to love the quilt because it offered me a chance to do some freestyle quilting on a large scale. And gave me the opportunity to get to know my new sewing machine with its massive 11 inch throat.

Here it is wafting in a summer breeze. The fabrics behind are pre-washed ready for the next quilt. For the quilting, I wanted the effect of babbling brooks starting from the centre, feeding into larger rivers, washing over pebbles and eventually becoming the sea surrounding the British Isles.

It worked out just as I wanted and was a real joy to do. The fluid movements and swinging the quilt around took a little getting used to and there are a few sharp angles to begin with but once you find your rhythm it's great fun. I'm going to stop writing about this one now because sitting here looking at the pictures I'm seeing even more errors. Ho hum, it sits over the end of my bed and has been used for curling up with on cold evenings. I've learned a whole lot about "easy" quilts and never giving up and at least I got a cuddle rug from it.

Here's a cushion cover. This was designed to match a quilt made a couple of years ago for my sis-in-law-ish. The colour choices had been hers and it was a good challenge to find ways to lighten the colour mix and stop it looking like a bruise. (Something I nearly managed on several design tryouts). I came to really like the impact of the solid black against the soft, feminine pinks.

And my final quilt (although not final quilty thing) of 2015 was this chevron design quilt in male colours for a male man. Just like I'm never doing rag quilts again, I'm never doing chevrons again! I had to have a mass cutting out of these shapes because every time I did some work on it and walked away, by the time I returned, I'd forgotten how to cut the angles. I kept spending 30-40 mins figuring it all out again. Sheesh! And I was already feeling the pressure because I needed to have it ready to mail to Scotland as a Christmas present.

Of course, in the end, like an opening night at the theatre after a dreadful dress rehearsal, it was all fine. The angles sewed up nicely once the cutting out was done and the top came together quite quickly. Genius alert... what I have learned with quilts is to lay out the pieces and play around with the design until it's just right, then take a pic to refer back to. You're welcome. I think that will turn out to be my only genius gift to the world of quilting and I'm sure has already been claimed by many, many others. I am learning to love the imperfections I manage to add to each quilt I make, happy in the knowledge that when a quilt is wrapped around your shoulders or over your knees, all you're aware of is the cosy warmth from those layers. Delicious.

My final quilty thing was a basket from a pattern bought at last November's stitch and quilt event. I fell in love with the bold colours of these when I saw them on display and since a crafty girl always needs a bag for Stuff, I had a go at the largest bag.

Nice and easy to bring together using darts and some fun quilting. This is it inside out having it's base attached.

And the finished item. I use it to store needle felting wool for current projects. (See previous post about my slinky fox.)

The final, final project pre Christmas was this birthday board. I've seen these all over Pinterest (I'm addicted, send help) and had to have a go at making my own. Let me be quite clear, freezer paper is BRILLIANT! You decide on your text, make it go backwards (invert it?) print it on the shiney side of some freezer paper already cut to fit through your printer and with the ink still wet, use the back of a spoon to transfer the lettering to a piece of wood. I think I may spend 2016 transferring all sorts of words onto bits of wood. Use shrink plastic and a big hole punch to create the discs, write name and date in permanent ink, punch a hole in the top and bottom then shrink. Finally, spend the next five nights making your eyes go bandy in your strongest reading glasses, swearing at how fiddley the dang thang is.

Hang in pride of place and say to everyone who asks "Oh the birthday board, no I didn't buy it, I made it. Yes it is a good idea isn't it, yes I thought it up all myself, no I've never heard of Pinterest..."

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Slinky fox a la Gretel Parker

I've had Gretal Parker's lovely book for a few months now and have used it for techniques and general tips but not made any of the creatures from it.

I decided over the Christmas break to put some time aside to make a silly monster for my 1 year old nephew but my attempts were too scarey and weird looking. Turns out, monsters aren't that easy.

That's when I reached for Gretel's book, with the idea that I'd make my nephew a new creature for each birthday and Christmas. What I loved about the slinky fox design was how elegant and sinuous it was. I wasn't very confident of my ability to get that result but I got started, following the instructions to the letter...

Adding the feet...

Sorting out the nose and sticking in some black headed pins for eyes to get a sense of a character....

But the body simply didn't have the elongated lines I so liked. It looked like a dinosaur. I had a look for solutions online, how do you re-structure and can you cut bits out/off?

I couldn't find an answer so I just got the scissors out and gave the dinosaur a trim.

Looking foxy but still a bit snouty.

The shape was much better so I tidied it up before adding the layers of fine wool to give a smooth finish. Nearly finished, a little white added to the bushy tail....

...and a nose for him to scent his way about...

..and he's finished!

He's lovely, I adore him.

The end of the year is a good time to count your blessings. Himself and I mostly have our health, each other, a scruffy little dog and a cosy cottage roof over our heads. We have jobs and hobbies we enjoy and friends and family to share it all with.

It's also a time to remember. A few days before Christmas a work friend died. We had grown intensely close for a brief time when work threw us together, although we were very different people. What remains is sadness that her darkness overtook her, that she left before the rest of us could verbalise the arguments that might have persuaded her to stay and she slipped away before we were ready to be without her. Sleep well friend.

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Quick projects

This week has been filled with quick little evening projects I can sneak in between puppy sofa snoozes. I've had to nip upstairs to the attic craft room where there is a spotlight and spare glasses etc which make mini things easier to work on. Until now. I've taken delivery of a sofa side magnifying lamp which promises to bring joy to my crafting life and let me stay in the living room with other people and watch TV with them and generally be more sociable and less of a crafting leper. Anyway...remember this from the weekend?

It turned into this...

It measures about 1.5 inches but I have enbiggened it you can see. I'm not impressed with my colour choices and I don't think the silver French knots show well against the steel grey so next time I'll change that. Otherwise it was nice and easy to do and can be added to an embroidery hoop or used as the topper on a stuffed heart shape. (That's another idea in my head....)

Here's some other stuff I've been playing with...I love appliqué and machine sewing so I'll be making a few of these with different Christmas themes.

Here's one that's finished. And now it's been given (as a belated birthday present, oops) to the person it was made for, I can post this :)

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