Part Deux Of The Crazy Catch Up

So yesterday I posted a whole bunch of the things I’d been up to in the blog silence with the promise of a few more to come.


There has been not too much else sewing wise other than the usual mending and repairing of clothing that many others would throw away but I don’t like to waste.
 I have however, made a rug from a whole bunch of upholstery fabric remnants.
Following an unfortunate night when our King Charles was very, very unwell, we had to remove the old carpet in our bedroom which left nothing but bare floorboards.  Poor little Fidget dawg - he’s better now, but it wasn’t nice for him. I won’t go into the gory details.

So the rug was born out of necessity, dog claws tap, tap, tapping all night long will make a Troll quite uppity and craving of the land of nod.  So the next day the rug was born simply so as not to have another lost nights sleep and so Fidget Dawg would have a softer floor under his feet should he decide to go a midnight wandering.

In the past week or so I have had a hankering for making some more sparkly shiny jewellery and this is what I have come up with.  Some I have been lucky enough to sell over in my shop and via my Facebook page already which is always a massive confidence boost. Some are still available, ready and waiting like eager puppies for the right owner.

This Goddess necklace is sold, but was an instant hit and sold in minutes!!!! Thank you.

This one was a commission piece based on the first and is also sold. How awesome is that!

Then I sat a long while and made several in one go.  Firstly a beautiful leaf dichroic glass leaf pendant necklace with carnelian, one of my most favourite stones ever.

Finally I made something with a Hag stone from my collection, I’m just in love with the photo.  I think it will make me giggle for years to come.  I love my Gargoyle - me and him share quite a few secrets together.  He’s the perfect gentleman and never tells them ;)

Holy Schmoley!

Well isn’t 2015 just running away with itself?

I feel like one of those wind up music boxes. I used to have one of these as a kid, I wonder where it got to.......

Anyway, before my mind wanders, back to the point.

 The year starts out all slow and the music is all dark and sinister sounding, like something from the land time forgot and then as the speed picks up everything is just perfect for a short while. The music plays it’s sweet tune and the notes are just perfect, piercing the air with crystal clarity.   That’s where I feel like we are right about now. The days are long and sunny, but the heat of the summer hasn’t hit yet and things haven’t got too oppressive - I don’t do well in the heat, it all swells up and things get a little ugly. I am a troll after all and we are not known for our sun worshipping!

I have been very busy this year, although been very naughty and haven’t been documenting any of it.
So here is a little of what I have been up to.

There has been eating... as always. Here we have strawberry gateaux specially made for Beltaine and devoured in earnest by all those present.

and some more eating, home grown rhubarb and peanut butter cookies which were the size of my hand!! Well done to middle trollfling for those.

Then there has been gardening.  We have to keep the local cat population in soft freshly dug earth to sit on after all ;)

And there has also been lots of making going on too.  This is a quilt made for a customer earlier in the year, all made from saved clothes and fabric remnants.  This is my favourite kind of project, reduce, reuse, recycle, make Mumma a happy troll....but not too happy, that would be unseemly ( for a troll).

There has been more reusing too. This cushion was originally just the cross stitch part in the middle, but the back was worn away and there was a feathery explosion so I raided the fabric stash and found some fabrics to make it into a new, bigger better and more importantly less explosive cushion. This is an in progress shot of it. The yellow corduroy is the back, and I just happened to have a zip of the perfect size and colour - serendipity in action.

I still have more to share, quite a bit really so..... maybe I’ll make up for lost time and do a SECOND POST( mother of all god’s - did I just actually suggest that)  tomorrow, but for now I am being yelled at to go and paint some walls. Enchanted green and some (shade) of white here I come.

Chocolate Pie

Let’s think about this for a brief moment - chocolate pie....... chocolate AND pie combined together in a thing that is chocolatepie.  Good grief - I could barely maintain any form of dignity when I stumbled across this most amazeballs of pins on Pintrest.  This could just be the most perfect concoction I have ever, ever, ever seen.  Stuff the cute baby pictures, meh to the furry animal pins, har to the funnys, get me to the pie site.

So as you can tell I like chocolate and I like pie.  I’m a Troll, in my world, chocolate and pie are sustenance worthy of mention.

This pie is ridiculously easy to make too - roll out some pastry into a flan dish.  Boil up your double cream mixture and put it into you pie case. More exact directions can be found in the link above the pre scoffing picture below.

Rich Chocolate Tart

  Eat and be merry - perfect for a wintery day and a weekend spent with my Troll family.

January Roundup.

Good grief where is 2015 going already!!

January is hurtling towards its end and the year seems to be getting ever quicker as the days and nights lighten.  Spring will be here before you know it (hooray). Those longer days make anything seem possible don’t they?

Well, crafty wise it has been a reasonable month. The first project was the  Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt which I set out to complete in one week.  Well I almost did, so I’m not unhappy about that.  The top was finished, but it still has to be quilted and bound. I didn’t stick religiously to the pattern that was provided - I like a little tinker with quilt patterns.

I did get one project completed from beginning to end which was Littlest Troll’s Stampy Cat bag. I will finish the next part of that tutorial soon.
It has had lots of admirers from other kids at the home ed groups we attend which is just lovely.  It’s always nice to see your work appreciated. I’ve also had a request to make another for a birthday gift - which is praise indeed and made me very happy.

So there we go, that’s January folks.  February is just round the corner and I’m aiming to for more completed things - get a few more items in the Etsy shop and I have a couple of commissions to make which will be fun. I’m also intending to get out in that garden of mine and dig up some of those pesky weeds before they run rampant for the year.

Grand Illusion

There is a lady by the name of Bonnie Hunter.  In quilting circles she is very, very, very famous.  Each year beginning on Thanksgiving she posts 6, once weekly clues, which by the end will result in a beautiful quilt. But you wont know what it’s going to look like until the final week! It’s known as a mystery quilt a long.

I did my first last year and although I didn’t finish the top of the quilt until the following May I enjoyed the process so much that I decided I wanted to join in the fun again this year. Here is a picture of last years quilt top complete although it still has to be quilted and bound.  Ooops!

This years quilt was called Grand Illusion - named after a hotel which Bonnie stayed at - you can read all about it on her blog here. . . . .

http://quiltville.blogspot.co.uk/p/grand-illusion-mystery.html

I decided that I wanted to change the colours she suggested to more autumnal colours so went with orange, brown, yellow, dark blue and two tones of green.

I did not begin until after the last clue was published on Bonnie’s blog, but beginning something new in the run up to Christmas is not ideal.  Plus I hadn’t actually been given the fabric yet as it was a gift from Daddy Troll!

On Monday of this week I decided that I wanted to set myself the challenge of completing the quilt I had started in much quicker time than the last so I could get going on the next thing without the guilty pangs of having another unfinished project in my bag.

I have set myself the goal of completing this quilt by Sunday evening, piecing, quilting, binding.  The whole kit and caboodle.

Now as you can see, I have made inroads towards this goal but...... I still have probably 20 or so hours worth of work left on this baby!
It’s Thursday - I’m going to be out most of the day.  Tomorrow is Friday and the baby Trolls and I are off to the Bank Of England for an educational jolly.
Saturday and Sunday are always hectic so this could be a bit of a squash and a squeeze!!!!!

Wish me luck because I think I may need it.  Luck and Gin!

Minecraft Cross Body Bag Tutorial - ish. Part 1.

This is a tutorial - ish because my instructions will assume you already have a knowledge of sewing.  There is nothing complicated, sewing in straight lines only but you will need fairly good accuracy sewing a 1/4 inch seam.

So here goes...
 If like me you are a homeschooler you will know of the phenomenon that is MINECRAFT and you will quite probably have a child that has played the game or watched some dude called Stampylongnose on Youtube.

I have two such children and one of them just happens to have a birthday this coming Sunday and had requested a Stampy cat bag some time ago.

So I searched for a tutorial to make one - someone MUST have made one I could just copy and that would be so easy right?

well I searched and came up with nada, zilch, zip, NOTHING. A whole world of Internet tumbleweed was all I found.

But what I did find was a pixel type picture of this Stampy cat thing and being a quilter thought I would just quilt a front and make the rest up as I went along.

So first I drew out this pixel thing in a grid shape. DON'T LAUGH!

You laughed didn’t you!  Oh you meanies ;)
OK so it’s basically an 8 by 8 grid with a specific set of colours on it.
Then I worked out that I would need a back, a bottom and sides and the same for a lining.
I ended up cutting the following pieces.

For the face

24 x 2” square white pieces.
20 x 2” square orange or yellow pieces.
16 x 2” square black pieces.
2 x 2” square dark green pieces.
2 x 2” square light green pieces.

This is what it will end up looking like when it’s sewn together.

For the outside

3,  3.5”x 12.5” dark green pieces.

1,  12.5” x 12.5”  orange or yellow piece. Sorry for the washed out photo, it was very dark outside when I took them.

For The Lining

2,  12.5" x 12.5” squares of your chosen fabric.
3, 3.5” x 12.5” pieces of your chosen fabric.

I chose a black fabric with owls on it that littlest Troll had chosen himself a year or two back.  This was the remnants from another project and happened to match the colours I was using for this bag as well - what a result!

Other

2 D rings.
2, 3” sections of yellow or orange gross grain ribbon wide enough to fit through your D - rings and lie flat.

1 bag strap - mine was re purposed from an old laptop case, but there are plenty of options available should you want to make your own. I’ll leave that bit up to you.

Thread - I used a yellow to match my yellow fabric, but you wont see much thread so you could use white, black, green or yellow.

You will also need iron on interfacing for the outside parts of the bag.  So enough to make the following.

2, 12.5” x 12.5” pieces
3, 12.5” x 3.5” pieces.

So that’s where I’ll stop for the time being.  I’ll make the next part about the construction.

Crafty Goals For 2015

Happy 2015!!!!

Well it’s all back to normal again after the holiday shenanigans, I hope you all enjoyed it and are all ready and set for the coming year.

 I like this time of the year, the days are getting longer bit by bit and there is a definite stirring from the Earth.  Little, by little the life is returning from its wintry slumber and the growth can be observed daily.  There is so much energy bound in those teeny tiny buds, just waiting to spring forth and green up the land.  It’s all quite exciting really.

2015 for me is going to be a time where I try to find my ‘thang’.  I have tried many crafts over the years that I have been crafting, but I would like to perfect some of those skills and concentrate on the ones I feel most akin to.

I like to quilt, to chop up brightly coloured fabric whether old or new and arrange it into beautiful patterns - so that is what I shall try to concentrate my time on this year.  Call it a kind of New years resolution if you will.

I think for me that clothes making is not so much fun.  I like the idea of it more than the actual doing, poor Daddy Troll still hasn’t got his coat, although progress has been made!!

Paper crafting is a big no for me, I tried it and we didn’t quite see eye to eye.  It was more like eye to straight in the bin and I don’t like to waste anything so I don’t go there anymore.

  Knitting is something I really enjoy but I will keep that for personal and immediate family use and for when I can squeeze it in.

Jewellery making is also something I really enjoy, but there are only so many necklaces and bracelets a Troll needs and so I may decide to sell off my collection of beads and jewellery making paraphernalia a bit later in the year.

So for the time being I am going to stick to my bright little quilts and sewn bags and the like.

When I am not there, you may find me gallivanting with the two baby trolls on some home ed expedition or we might be in the garden trying to make it grow before the slugs get it all.

What will you be doing this year?