Yet more bunting

And this time, for a real customer! Very pleased with the set of three bunting flags I was commissioned to make by a real person (and by that, I mean neither a friend nor relative). Just hope my customer is as pleased with them as I am.

I’ve now added personalised bunting to my Folsky Shop too.

Craft Fair ~ no ‘Eeek’, more ‘Yawwwwwwwwwn’

I’m trying to be stoic about my second ever craft stall which was at the weekend. I had geared myself up to it for weeks both mentally and physically (with stock and list-making), was nervous(!) getting ready  in the morning and had been really looking forward to it. I set up alongside Melissa, an Irish woman selling beauty products, and a couple selling lovely handmade greetings cards. I took a long time arranging my table, tweaking this and that until it looked like this…

The doors opened at 10am and by 10:15 there were still only the stall holders and a couple of sheepish-looking helpers. The latter disappeared pretty quickly, the stall holders remained and then a couple of people drifted in. They walked round the hall, bought a 20p tombola ticket and left. The other stallholders and I started to joke about how wouldn’t it be awful/funny/sad/ disappointing if that was going to set the trend for the day. Unfortunately it turned out to be just like that. For the whole four long hours we were there, there can’t have been more than 60 or 70 people there and that included my parents, who surprised me with a supportive visit. 

There were a handful of people for whom this was their first ever stall and it must have been heartbreaking for them. Some people won’t have even covered their costs for the day; the ‘cake ladies’ made a few sales, as did the tombola stalls but there were many tables which made absolutely nothing, and not for lack of beautiful things to sell; there just weren’t enough people through the doors.

Hey ho. Onwards and upwards. What doesn’t break you only makes you stronger. Lesson learned. Chin up and all that!

Still, I feel a bit blurghhhhhh about the whole thing.

Yummy Cupcakes ~ foolproof recipe

Easy to make cupcakes, whip ‘em up in 20 mins with the help of your Little People and Bob est ton oncle as they say in France. Honest.

Ingredients

• 190g self-raising flour, sifted
• 190g caster sugar
• 190g room temperature unsalted butter
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• A few drops of vanilla essence
• 2-3 Tbsp. milk

Pre-heat oven to 170°

Mix everything other than the milk together, and add milk if the mixture is too sticky. Using an icecream scoop or a couple of teaspoons, bung a generous dollop of mixture into cupcake cases (I find this makes about 20 large cupcakes) and bake for 15 mins or until golden brown on top. Pop them onto a wire rack to cool and make some icing, or better still, lick the spoons while you’re waiting

Twin Bunting

 For one year old twins…

 

 

 

 

Fabric basket

 

A bit more upcycling of my parents’ old curtains here. Inspired by So Resourceful’s post on her fabric bread basket, I made this fabric basket this weekend using a picture I’d seen of one made with ribbons so that the basket can be untied and stored flat.

Basically this is made with an octagon, a fat cross of interfacing (to strengthen the sides and base), and a small length of ribbon attached to each corner. Very simple to make, and beautiful to look at. You could make it any size to suit your needs ~ I’m thinking of making a little one which would be perfect for the thousands of bangles, hairclips, bunchies and scrunchies we once had that seem to lose their way. What will you put in yours?

Summer Tote Bag ~ How to make your own Summer Shopper Bag with free tutorial

My parents have got new curtains. Not normally of interest (unless you’re that way inclined!), but they kindly donated their old ones to me and they are begging to be ‘upcyled’. And they are a gorgeous stripey blue, cream and purple thick cotton fabric to boot. (You can tell I’m still a bit useless when it comes to labelling the weight of fabrics, but these are what I think are called duck cotton?). Either way, they’re perfect for big happy summer shopper bags, so I got me a-cutting…

As usual, I made it up as I went along and went back a couple of steps a couple of times. It was a lovely fabric to work with as it stayed folded when I folded a hem, and stripes are always easier to work with because of the given straight lines

Here’s what I made and how I made it  ~ free tutorial with step-by-step instructions and step-by-step photos which I’ve numbered in [ ] for ease of reference with the relevant steps.

1. Cut and iron your fabrics to size. See the first picture [1] for how much fabric you’ll need for each piece.
2. Place handles right sides together [RST] and sew lengthways, leaving ends unsewn. Turn (using a safety pin to help ease it through), and press again.
3. Repeat with the little straps and attach magnetic clasps. [2 & 3]
4. Fold in the hem of the short end near the magnetic clasp and press. Sew the end of each little strap closed (I sewed this by hand as my clasp was too near to the end of the strap fo rthe machine’s foot to fit past, even with a zipper foot).
5. Take the raw ends of one little strap and both raw ends of one handle, and lay them, raw edges matching, together with the top of the front panel of your bag, making sure they are central to the bag’s width. [4]
6. Fold down a 1cm hem, incorporating the strap edges, then fold down again and pin in place. This way, all your raw edges are concealed. Stitch in place.
7. Press 1cm hem for the bottom width of the bag.
8. Line up the long edges of the base of the bag [WST] with the front of your bag. Fold again, pin and sew along the length of the bag near to the bottom of the bag.
9. For extra support at the base, sew another tram line onto the outer edge of the hem onto the base of the bag. [5 & 6]
10. Repeat steps 5-9 with the back side of the bag so you now have the handles, front and back and base in one piece.
11. If your edges aren’t completely straight, trim them down now so that they are. Fold twice and sew a hem along the full length of the bag on each edge. [7]
12. Take both side panels and fold twice and sew a hem on the two long edges and one short edge.
13. Draw a rounded corner on the un-hemmed edge [8] and repeat on the other side to match. I did this by sight so can’t give precise measurements, but work with a smaller cut-off to start with if you’re unsure and you can cut off more if you see it doesn’t quite work.
14. Fold twice and pin the curved hem [9 & 10] and then hold it up against the bag and see if you like the curve you’ve created. If you do, go ahead and stitch in place. If not, unpin, cut a bit more off and try again.
15. With hem edges facing outwards together, pin the middle of the curved edge into the centre edge of the base, and work your way up on either side, pinning as you go. Your side panel should stop a couple of inches from the top of the bag.
16. Sew in place. [11]
17. Repeat steps 13-16 with the opposite side panel.
18. I’m most proud of this next nifty little step: sew a popper/press stud onto the top of each side panel so that the bag, if bulging with beachwear and towels, or French baguette and cheeses, can be unpopped to cram even more in! Love it more than I should
19. Ta daaah! Made By Yours Truly. You’re done ~ now stuff your bag full of wonderful things and sashay down to the park for a picnic.

 

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Another Clutch Bag – with free tutorial on how to make your own clutch bag.

A couple of months ago I won a giveaway from the wonderful Stitch This which included this gorgeous paisley-esque funky fabric. I’ve been terrified to cut it up but took Stitch’s advice, took a deep breath and just went for it. Partly the reason for the smallish size of this clutch – if it went wrong I didn’t want to have ruined the whole lot

It’s a very simple bag to make, although I did have a good go of hashing that up. I tried to do something clever with it half-way through, with inside-outs and turnings, but somehow I couldn’t get it right. I have kept in the pic I took of my, ahem, creation mid-turn just to make you laugh, but decided to unpick my ridiculously tightly woven stitches and just cover the seams with binding instead.

If you’re still with me and fancy making your own, then have a look at these step-by-step instructions on how to make this clutch bag along with step-by-step photos. This is for a flat and straight clutch bag. My other clutch bag creation, with pleats and an open top is here with its own tutorial too.

How To Make Your Own Clutch Bag – flat and straight

1. Cut your fabrics to size. I used a rectangle of 9.5″ x 10″ with a main fabric, medium-weight interfacing and lining. I hadn’t yet decided how to close the bag, hence the picture including a toggle button, a fabric button and a magnetic clasp. If I’d had some sticky velcro to hand then I might have tried that too, but I opted for making my own fabric button – my newest ‘skill’ which I’m dangerously close to getting addicted to and one day I might even get smooth edges too.
2. Lay and pin your fabrics together; Main fabric (Right Side [RS] up), then lining fabric (RS up) then the interfacing. Fold about 1.5″ / 2″ down along one length to mark where your flap will be and make a mark at either end. If you’re planning on using a loop, it would be best to pin and stitch this in place now fold the loop inside the bag, so that the raw ends poke out above the raw edges of the material. Sew along the three outer edges of the flap (shown in red thread in Picture 2).
3. I then stitched a further seam 1/4″ in along each of the two short ends of the flap as I realised I wanted it to be slightly shorter than the width of the bag (but this is when the bag was going to be flipped inside out. This step could be left out). (Picture 3)
4. Fold up the remainder of the bag up to the bottom of the flap (as shown in pic 4).
5. Fold the flap down and make a mark where your button will be (or clasp, or velcro blob or whatever you decide to use), making sure it is central lengthways.
6. Stitch this button/toggle etc in place before sewing up, so that your knot etc is out of sight. If you’re using a clasp or velcro blob, secure both sides in place before the next step where you will stitch the flap closed.
7. Turn the flap the right way round and stitch along the bottom of it/top of the bag [Picture 9]. Make sure you turn it the right-side round first. You wouldn’t want to stitch across an un-turned flap. That would be silly. And annoying. And mean a lot of unpicking. Hmmmm…
8. With RST, (and flap tucked inside), sew a hem along the length of the bottom of the bag, creating a tube. Turn the right way round and press.
9. Do not then do anything like I did. Do not try and do clever inside out stitching and turning – picture 10 shows you what kind of a mess you might find yourself in if you do that at this stage. Again, hmmmm….
10. Measure a couple of bits of fabric a bit longer than the height of the bag, they should be about 2.5″ wide but I didn’t have any wide scraps to hand, so used thinner ones. This is fine too but just a bit more fiddly.
11. Fold in half, press and open up again. Fold the long edges in again to the pressed middle line.
12. Fold down the top edge of one end (as shown in picture 12).
13. With the length and tip of fabric folded in on themselves (and lined up with the top of the bag), stitch the back half of the binding to the back edge of the bag (as shown in picture 13).
14. Fold the overlap bit up and over the bottom edge of the bag and stitch in place (as shown in picture 14).
15. Snip the small excess triangle off (as shown in picture 15), and stitch up the rest of the binding up the side of the bag. Repeat steps 10 – 14 with the other side of the bag.
16. Ta Daahh! You’re Done. Made By Yours Truly. Now sit back and admire your handiwork.

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Crafty Fun at the Fair?

I’ve got my second ever stall coming up in a couple of weeks. The last one was a Christmas one, so it was easy to create for with a rather obvious theme. This one is a summer fayre so there’s no telling whether or not my creations will go down well or not. Time will tell…

The next few days are a bit manic for us and I won’t have any time next weekend, so I spent some time this morning pricing up my creations (so far ~ a few more to make before then), and having a go at laying them out on a 6 foot table. I might even tidy it up properly for the day and I’ve still got to finish making a display stand for the mini totes, but everything else is good to go. I think! 

 

Gorgeous Little Scrappy Patchy Patchwork Pincushion

I don’t follow many bloggers, but I love, love, love the ones that I do, and Oh Sew Tempting is one of my favourites – she’s got some really clever ideas and makes beautiful things. A while back she put her mind to her scraps, as you do, and came up with a wonderful pin cushion tutorial. You can buy the pattern here at her Etsy shop, and you can see the fruits of my labour here;

 

 

I used the opportunity to cover my own buttons for the first time too – which was a lot easier than I was expecting. Isn’t it just lovely (if a little bit wonky – due to my laziness, not the pattern!) ?

Big Cushion ~ sweet dreams and a tooth fairy pocket

My eldest Little Person just had a birthday and she had been asking for one of my tooth fairy cushions so thought I’d go one step further and make her this pillow.

 I used an old bedsheet of hers from her cot days for the front. I’ve included a tooth fairy pocket and a ‘sweet dreams’ pocket with embroidered words on them. She sometimes has bad dreams and likes to ‘put her bad dreams into a box’ which she keeps on her bed.With this ’sweet dreams’ pocket, she can hide the nightmares away into something less bulky in her bed.

  

 

Other than the fabric I used for the back, everything else is from leftover scraps from my fabric stash. The moon and stars are from an old skirt of mine that I’ve recently cut up ~ it was made from a metallic thread, but no longer fits me (it used to look lovely in the days before the Little People and lots of cakes changed my body shape

I’ve appliquéd her name across the top in a variety of pretty fabrics – some of which hold special meanings for us. She’s just heading out of the pink, pink, pink stage (YAY!), so thought a combination of reds and blues would do nicely, and on the back I used a lovely fabric I picked up from Chawla’s which she really liked.