Check out my muff!

Now for those of you snickering into your cup of tea, I'll remind you that the word 'muff' remains the term for a handwarmer or hand cosy, whatever other tawdry meanings it may have acquired in modern usage. Thank you very much.

A few weeks ago I received the best request ever. A dear friend of mine, Melski, owner of cold hands and warm heart, asked if I'd make her a muff.

As soon as it was requested, I knew in my minds' eye just what I wanted my hand cosy to look like. There is in fact a patchwork muff project in the book Denyse Schmidt Quilts,which I own and love. I followed  the pattern, which gave clear dimensions and construction tips, but encouraged a very free and approximate approach to laying out the fabrics and designing the outer layer.

Just my type of project.

It was a joy to riffle through my fabrics and find what I was looking for. The bulk of the fabrics are kimono offcuts, which I offset with scraps of brown linen and suiting fabrics. I played a bit with layout and then foundation-pieced the strips onto some muslin - a useful new technique to learn.

I went for a lining of red fleece and four layers of wadding, which hopefully will keep dear Melski's hands just that bit more snug.

Of course it wouldn't be a handmade gift without the label hand-stitched on as an afterthought!

Dear Melski, who said bad circulation couldn't be stylish?

My creative space... random acts of patchwork

After my little whine last week about my lack of space for quilting, I did actually get around to basting my ugly hexagon quilt. And then I stopped. It seems that I only like to think about one step ahead, and I have not yet decided on the pattern, or the method, of quilting (let alone whether I will straighten the edges, give it a border, bin it in disgust or what have you). 

Meanwhile, having finished last week's little filler project, I had to find a new filler project to help me procrastinate. I opted for a bit of patchwork and quilting practice. I raided the scrap piles and decided to make a tea cosy, inspired by a design in this darling Japanese patchwork book, the design of which I approximated. Very approximately.

Perhaps it was my approximating... perhaps it was the design... but it's one HUGE cosy.  I'm afraid it won't keep my poor little tea pot very toasty at all:

It certainly holds far more potential as a husband-cosy....

After fitting it on various objects, both animate and inanimate, I've opted for the toaster-cosy. It fits perfectly. I'm not sure that my toaster really needs a thickly padded, quilted cover... I guess I'll think of it as an elaborate dust-cover instead.

In terms of quilting practice, it was excellent, because it reminded me of the importance of accurate cutting, accurate seam allowances, accurate basting, using the walking foot, accurate quilt design drawing and slow, careful stitching. None of which I did. That's why I've cheekily blurred those photographs!

I think I might be hand-quilting those hexagons....

 But first, I'm off to visit some creative spaces via the lovely kootoyoo.

Bolstered.

A little finished project goes a long way in terms of helping creative and domestic frustration subside.

This lovely little bolster cushion was made from an Anette Eriksson kit. It is destined for chez Dillpickle, because as I made it I could visualize it living on Anna's couch. Plus, she just made my boys some lovely beanies. Hope you like it, Dilly.

 I met Anette at the recent Daylesford Craft Experience and fell in love with her stylish designs.  This one is a  half cross stitch design, very easy to execute. I've never done any cross-stitching but it's pleasantly simple, especially on the lovely open weave of hessian fabric. It's also easy to backtrack if you make mistakes.

Having said that, I did manage to overlook a major error early on, resulting in a need to drop an entire letter from the text in order to keep the symmetry. Can you spot it?

Do I care? Non. It's well-hidden by the cursive text, still aesthetically pleasing, and hopefully not too many Francophiles will be visiting Anna to hurl croissants at her in disgust.

I can highly recommend such a project for anyone else experiencing the work-in-progress blues.

A bean bag chair (of the not-so-beany-baggy-OR-chairy variety)

OK, so what I'm trying to tell you is that yesterday I made what is in essence a large floor cushion, only I can't call it a floor cushion because I used this (very excellent, helpful, easy, FREE) pattern, which quite specifically calls the end product a Bean Bag Chair. 

Actually, it's kind of tuffet-esque, or at least what I imagine a tuffet would look like.

I'm on a big stash-busting bender this year. I don't have a massive stash, but in fact I've decided that 'stashing' is not the approach I want to work with any more. It just feeds my consumer mentality at both the op shop and the fabric store.  So recently I've been pulling out the fabrics that I already have and seeking out projects that will suit them. I'm very happy to buy fabrics, new and old, but in future I will try to gather materials for specific projects rather than 'just because'.

Anway, these half-yards of Echino (Etsuko Furuya's Flower Bed) were originally purchased (from here) with the intention of making a bird-themed quilt. I've since decided the prints are too big and bold and look best in big pieces, so I hunted around for a project which would use them well. Given the weight of the fabric, a home-dec project was the way to go.

I think the Echino looks great teamed with the large piece of dark denim I scored from Savers.

I chose not to stuff mine with beans - apart from being environmentally disastrous, those little balls would find their way out of the inner bag and into my boys' nostrils faster than you could say 'death by polystyrene'. See, William was already checking out potential hidey-holes...

Instead, I've stuffed my cover with several old pillows, cushions, an eiderdown quilt and our sleeping bags, so it's actually doubling as storage. BONUS!

Turns out it's a great place for a kip, after the hard work of tackling one's younger brother.

PS Giveaway is now closed, I will draw a winner tonight. Thanks for playing!

My creative space... all in pieces

Pieces, pieces are dominating every available (and unavailable) creative space at chez clutterpunk.

Pincushion pieces (about to be packed up to take to the Northern Craft Bonanza tonight):

Kaleidoscope pieces (slowly sashiko-ing my way around the circles):

Rectangular scrap pieces sitting in my newly pieced scrap-gatherer, which are being cut into varying widths and sorted into paper bags: 

(They are being amassed for what I am calling my 'scrap management quilt', which will hopefully look something like the quilt below, found in THIS book):

Let's not forget the yo-yos:

And these pieces, lying around waiting to become something pretty to be given away in a few weeks... maybe to you.

Really, don't you think it's high time I started putting the pieces together?

Please drop into Kirsty's place if you'd like to play along with My Creative Space this week.

While the man of the house is away...

The Beloved, who this year is entering the Land of Full Time PhD Study (let us never speak of it again!), has abandoned* us for almost two weeks. In order to stay sane, I have bribed my good friend, upstairs-neighbour and refashion-recipient Sonia to do a little babysitting. I'll be paying her back handsomely, but I sweetened the deal by making this little obi-belty-cummerbundy thingamy... before I asked her to drop down at 7am so I could get out for a run!

This all fits in with my playing-around in order to find a good gift to make for friends this year. I'll do a few different things next time - perhaps leave out the padding, widen it a little for those of us with slightly more generous waistlines, and play around with the gathers. But mostly, I'm happy, and so is she. Apart from the babysitting bit.

*gone far away to locum and earn some money in order to support our family. That's the definition of abandonment, isn't it?!

decluttering my approach to craft, 2010

How do you go about setting creative goals? Is it all about completing a list of projects? Learning new techniques? Maybe setting up a stall or shop?

I don't think I've ever really set creative goals before. I often make life resolutions around the new year (vague and sweeping, helpful but not binding) , and have done so again this year, but for the first time I've decided to nut out what I want to do creatively in a more specific way.

Part of my bedroom 'inspire wire', on which I've hung items with textures, colours and patterns I'm drawn to

First, here are some things I learned about myself as a crafter during 2009:
- I love trying different creative techniques, but am most drawn to fabric-related craft;
- I am prone to creative 'attention deficit', which has resulted in lots of unfinished or badly-finished items, as well as a few too many craft/stash related impulse purchases of which I am ashamed;
- I'm more naturally interested in the aesthetic side of sewing (exploring textures, layers, designs, embellishments, originality) than the technical side of sewing (following patterns, making complex items, using fancy sewing gadgets or finishing things properly);
- I like the idea of making clothes for me and for the kids, more than the reality of making them! (This has a fair bit to do with the lack-of-technique thing as well as the time-consuming factor);
- I have decided I have no interest in selling things, but I would like to work on making some 'signature clutterpunk' items to swap and give away.

Having identified these things, here's where I'm heading in 2010:
In general I would like to...
- Narrow my creative focus and go for a bit of depth and technique instead;
- Think through projects first and execute them more carefully to help avoid frustration and waste;
- Use what I have already and make few, if any, craft purchases.

And I hope to do this more specifically by...

1. Focusing on quilting

I have done some very simple piecing and quilting, by both machine and hand, and I have loved it. There is so much scope for playing and expressing yourself in quilt-making, and yet there is a simplicty that I'm drawn to as well. I have plans for a lap-quilt, a wall-hanging and an already-mentioned bedroom quilt (on which I would like to experiment with all sorts of techniques!).

A very simply-hand-quilted lap quilt I made for a friend's wedding, using plain linen on one side and this patterned echino double-gauze on the other.

2. Making ONE garment in 2010, and doing it well!

Yep, I'm really lowering my ambitions here... but I'd like to hang up the 'Hack Refashionista' approach for a bit and work on making something that will fit me well AND LAST. I am going to do this with the help of Thread Den Sewing Lounge, who run a heap of classes from basic techniques to pattern drafting. My Christmas gift this year was a voucher to cover a few classes here, and I'm VERY excited! I've not had any professional sewing help and I can't wait to check out the timetable and decide which classes to take.

3. Developing a 'clutterpunk line' of simple things to make for gifts and swaps

OK, so this is the most vague of my goals. I haven't made many repeat items in my time (apart from Swineys, but that joke was over a while ago...). I guess I would like to have several 'something up my sleeve' items to make for friends and crafty types which is useful for them, fun for me, and at least a bit unique. Hmmmmmm. At the moment I'm thinking about aprons - but kind of more wear-out-of-the-house-if-you-dare aprons than clean-the-bathroom types. Hmmmmmm again. Thoughts?

OK, so writing this down is clearly of more benefit to me than to you. But if you have read this and drop in regularly, perhaps you'll be able to prod and poke me during the year, to say 'hey, how's that garment coming along and are you fudging the seams there missy?', or 'boy you need to do something other than quilting, it's getting boring', or 'hey, if that decoupaged-macrame-scrapbooking thing isn't part of your quilt/garment, drop it NOW!'. Because that's what creative friends are for, right?

Warm women: felting, friendship and a new scarf

When I signed on for the Warm Women project, I did not imagine that THIS would be my contribution:

But then, the world of craft blogging is full of new challenges, adventures, and friendships.

I mentioned my lack of knitting prowess when I posted a few weeks back about about the Warm Women project. I thought instead that I might try to 'quilt' a scarf with a long scrap of wool batting. Then Mim jumped in with a suggestion that I felt the batting, and offered her assistance. Not just online assistance, either, but a bit of an in-the-flesh felting workshop at her house.

[Just to fill in the back-story... I met Mim, maybe a year ago, just when I was embracing the whole crafty thing. I'd dropped in to Olive Grove Studios, a local handmade co-op, and Mim was working. We looked familiar to each other and spent some time trying to place the connection, before realising that years ago, pre-children and pre-crafting, Mim was the friendly, mean-latte-making girl who kept me caffeinated and therefore sane during lunchbreak from my 9-5 office job!]

Anyway, last Monday I landed on Mim's doorstep and, after admiring her delightfully funky and ecclectic kitchen, drooling over her stash and drinking a damn fine cup of coffee, we got felting!

Luckily, there was plenty of space for the children to romp:

And to practise 'sharing':

While the kids trashed the house and yard, Mim generously let me have free reign with her materials, and walked me through the felting process.

I went a bit nuts and shoved pieces of everything on top of my batting. I will exercise a bit more restraint next time I think! (You can see Mim's scarf, which didn't have batting and was a bit more refined, sitting parallel to mine. She didn't want to be in the photo though... hmmmph!):

The actual felting process is quite physical and very therapeutic... rolling and whacking and throwing the wet wool all around. It's definitely something I want to do more of.

Here are our scarves... mine is the one on the left:

The edges of the batting curl in on my scarf, so once it was dry I decided to stitch over it, to keep it flat (and to keep on the silk threads and such that didn't fuse in as much as I wanted):

Thanks Mim for sharing your time, space, knowledge, materials and muffins with me!

Here's my scarf, waiting to be packaged up with a few other donated scarves to be sent to Claire, then on to a Karen craftswoman, who will hopefully be just a bit warmer this winter.

Linen therapy

Edit: oops! I completely forgot to mention that this bag is my take on Made By Rae's buttercup bag, which I can highly recommend as a cute little bag project. There is a free pattern available for personal use only, or you can buy a pattern for limited commercial use. It's very sweet!

It was with great relief that I sat down yesterday and Made Something.

It's been a little while. Weeks. I've fiddled, and played, and dabbled, but not completed anything.

With my sister Meg/Aunty Moo around for a visit, performing her saintly aunty duties, I was able to get to it and sew a little bag.

Thrifted floral drill material (vintage? reprint?) and lovely, lovely linen, beautifully modelled by Meg (she's seriously handy to have around).

Ahhhh. Is there nothing that can't be improved with a good dollop of linen? My mood, included.

Although there is also much to be said for an angelic sister/aunt visit... photo credits go to my 2-and-a-half year old son:

Thanks Moo!

My creative space...

In my space today I'm...

waiting for some fabric to dry in the glorious sunshine

drinking chai

watching my boys enjoy the simplicity of a better-late-than-never birthday present (thank you Peta for the idea, and the ever-thoughtful, random-gift-giving Nikki for the supplies!)

and regaining some perspective, on mess, clutter and parenting:

Thank you all for the reminder after my last post that mess and chaos are just par for the course. And in fact, according to Amanda, a healthy sign of creativity going unstiffled. Duh. That's kinda what I told myself when I started out on this little bloggy adventure.

Children + Mess = Good Clutter.

Concern about appearances + keeping up with Joneses = Bad Clutter.

Got it.

For more creative spaces, visit lovely Kirsty.

My creative space...

Playing around with a bit of applique, thread sketching and pears.... mmm, pears....

A set of serviettes, each one just a bit different. The green solid is scrap fabric from a quilt I'm making for my sister. I like that pop of green but actually I'm still pretty partial to the basic black-and-white scribble on the reverse side...

Now enough of my lame-o pears, if you want to check out the real thread sketching talent around these parts, please pop over here and salivate over Tara Badcock's work (thanks Lauren for pointing me in her direction). While you're at it go give Linguisticky lots of praise and adulation... she found my thread sketching tute via WhipUp and immediately took it to another level with THIS:

BAM! A continuous line drawing taken from a life drawing class and transformed into fabric art. LOVE IT. And I love the fact that a little tutorial from my blog has prompted a new burst of creativity for someone over the other side of the globe. That really gives me a kick.

Anyway, I'm grabbing a coffee and heading off to check out the explosion of creative spaces happening at Kootoyoo... see you there!

Thread sketching on fabric: techniques and tips

Recently I've done a little free motion machine embroidery, or thread sketching. From some of the comments I received it's clear that this seems all a bit fancy, mysterious and only for extreme sewists.

It's not.

So I've written this post to demystify the process of 'thread sketching', and hopefully some of you will be encouraged to give it a go. Disclaimer: I am no expert. I do not hold a degree in thread sketching. I've done no reading or classes. I'm simply giving you some tips from my own experience. This is the old 'hey, if I can do it...' approach. My way is in no way definitive, or even right at all! But it's worked well for me... hopefully you can bounce off what I've done and go and make your own wonderful discoveries.

Tools:

FABRIC & NOTIONS
- A piece of plain, preferably medium-weight cotton or linen (i.e. woven) material. A tea towel or serviette would be perfect.
- contrasting thread (your regular sewing thread)
-An air-soluble fabric pen to draw your design on

A SEWING MACHINE

- Just your regular sewing machine, set up with your regular sewing foot and a universal needle.

- No, you do not need a special foot, or to lower your feed-dogs. You could experiment with these later, but your regular set-up should work fine for now.

A DESIGN

That's right, 'free motion' does not mean '100% improvised'. A simple and minimal design will work best. You will be drawing only an outline onto your fabric - not too much detail. The sketchy, improvised look will come, not from your design, but from the way choose to stitch it.

Stuck for a design? You don't have to be a drawing genius. Use a stencil! Copy something out of your kids' colouring book! Trace around your hand. You are welcome to use my Bird on a Branch design idea. Draw your own bird, use a free applique design (like these ones) or trace/print the one below if you like:





Techniques



1. Transfer your design onto your fabric


Using an air-soluble marker, draw your design on. As you can see I've kept it fairly simple. The outer shape of the bird I used here was based on one in a kids' stencil book I was given. See, not looking so clever now, am I? :-)


2. Straight-stitch over your outline

Now you want to 'draw' over the outline with thread, just once, to make it clear on the fabric:

To do this, set your machine on a plain straight stitch, set to its shortest length (this will make it look like one long line). Start sewing, guiding the outline under your presser foot.

When negotiating turns and curves, just go slowly. To make sharp corners (like the beak, above)stop, lift your presser foot, pivot the fabric and lower the foot before continuing to sew along your outline.

TIP: Stop and start as much as you like, but try to do the whole thing with just one thread (i.e. don't pull the fabric out and cut the thread). The fewer loose threads you have, the better.This will probably mean going over some parts of your design more than once to get to other parts, which is fine.

3. Straight-stitch over your outline again. And maybe again!

Now we want to start adding some character and complexity. I think the most simple way to do this is just to sew over your outline again in straight stitch:

Pick up from where you've left off, preferably without removing the fabric or cutting the thread. This time, don't be so careful. Try to follow your design line approximately, but not precisely. (You can lengthen the stitch here if you like, but remember that the smaller the stitch length, the more ink-like your line will look).

Can you see what is happening? Just by tracing around the same thing a few times, you will start to build up texture and movement in your design. It will start to look a little sketchy, a little messy. Go out of the lines a bit, just for fun. Wasn't that naughty? Wheeeee...

Now, if you like, you could do your whole design simply in straight stitch like this. That would look just lovely. If that's what you'd like, read no further... go and get on with it!


4. Add some grunge!

For those who like to live really dangerously, well now it's your moment to shine. It's time to add some splotches and 'ink blobs', a bit of shading and thickness. To do this you will want to go over part or all of your design again, adding a bit of detail largely by varying the stitch length and stitch width:

This is what my stitch width dial looks like... you should have something similar on your machine (although I can't talk for computerised machines, sorry!)

This is my stitch length dial. For the straight sketching I kept it all between 1-2. For this part, I like to set it on 'satin stitch', which is the 'F' setting.

Choose a simple part of your design to start on (e.g. the branch). Decide on your stitch length. Start sewing, and as you go, wiggle the stitch width around a bit. I like to do this in short bursts, sometimes just going wide for a bit, sometimes cranking it up to maximum. There is no formula here, you have to be brave, have a go and see what it looks like. Here's a snippet of my branch:

Just to be clear, here's what I did:

- The top line is a wobbly zig-zag stitch. I have set my stitch length to maybe a medium. Then, as I'm sewing, I have turned the width dial up and back again.

- The second line looks like a regular straight stitch, but it's actually a satin stitch, which is just that bit denser. I didn't vary the width on that one.

- The fourth line is a satin stitch again, this time with the width varied, which produces a nice, thick, inky look. My favourite technique is to go over the design in satin stitch, just every now and then playing with the width dial.

And here's a shot of my bird:
As you can see I was fairly minimal on this bird. I did a widening satin stitch for the legs, and a wee bit of zig-zagging on the outline just for variation. I didn't think about where I was doing things, I just wanted to break up the line a bit.

Here's another bird I tried, with different effects:

This time I 'scribbled' inside the bird. You can do this by using a straight stitch and sewing back and forth in an area, holding and then releasing your reverse/back-tacking switch to change directions. You'll probably need to pull the fabric across gently as you sew so that the lines don't all end up on top of each other.

(I don't think this effect suits the design as well, but you need to experiment with techniques to see what you like!)

5. Finish, clip threads, iron, pat self on back.

That's it folks.

Please let me know if this is helpful, and if you do some experimentation. I'm very happy for you to use my design, but please link me in if you're blogging, and if you become rich and famous making 'bird on branch' thread sketches be sure to remember me in your will!

Happy sketching.