ok so me and the zip have never been the best of buddies, i find them too tricky and fiddly and have broken too many sewing machine needles to think about, yet finally I accomplish it…albeit with a cushion where i can hide my messy unfinished ends inside lots of lovely stuffing.

Note to self find tutorial on succesfully making a zippered bag with tidy dealt with ends!

So here are my first two mini cushions made from lots of lovely free materials, you gotta love the fabric sites that actually send you decent sized samples and not something the size of a stamp stapled together.  If you want some freebie sample fabric sites then check out moneysavingexpert.com there’s a few on their freebies forum board! I like to think of freebie fabric samples under my eco warrier heading as after all there’s no waste (i.e. my hard earned pennies) just a shame the cath kidston site doesn’t want to send them anymore, it seems its popularity has rather rocketed the last year!

Being both a part time eco warrior and a crafter i inevitably hate waste and probably hoard far to much stuff in the hope that i will one day find a use for it, not only do i hoard my own ‘expired’ belongings, i find myself taking on others, i really must learn to say no when offered something, no matter how useful it may look!  This is one ethos i shall slowly but surely implement onto my partner who has the same attitude to waste. 

Anyways enough of that lets talk about the simple drawstring bag, which is relatively easy to knock up in an hour and perfect to give presents in, fill with lavender and rice for an alternative on the door stop, or a travel toiletries bag. 

To make the outer part, i simpy cut up an old dress (lovely fabric but horrible shape) and made a rectangle 10inches x 24 inches and a square 6.5inches x 6.5 inches.  I then cut the same from white lining material.

The longer side forms the bag whilst the square forms the base.  I sewed this in a standard lined bag fashion and then doubles up the hem of the top to form a ‘passage’ for my cord (leaving about a 2-3 inch gap for the cord to come out).  I will try to hunt out the tutorial i used and post this.  I am looking forward to trying a minature one.

My lovely button necklaces always seems to attract a lot of comments, particularly at work.  The design is quite simply, threading your yarn (i use coloured leather cord) through the back of the button over the front and through to the back, repeat this step and the buttons form a ‘brick wall’ of sorts, making the necklace double sided. For a fancier finish try doubling up the buttons with variations on theme and shape to create a thicker look.  I adore this blue one and it seem sto get the most wear.  I shall shortly be posting some on my FOLKSY SHOP at very competitive prices so be sure to keep checking (see link on right of page)

A bit of googling reveals these door sstops are quite popular.  Having recently moved i too wanted to make my home as cozy as possible and so worked out a simply pattern for a rectangular cube door stop.

I chose to make mine 11cm x 16cm with a 2.5cm seam allowance.  I made a velcro flap for the bottom and used an off cut to add a handle to the top.

I think it worked really well with some patchwork style material i found and my back room now has a really country cottage feel about it.

The pattern i have made i printed on A1 but you should be able to print out the seperate sections and stick together the door stop pattern. 

Download – door stop pattern

Pretty much all my crafting is self taught and more so now with the internet I have access to every tutorial or pattern I could want for! However there’s still that part of everyone that relishes getting a new book that going to show you and teach you something new!

For the world of crafting I have found the emergence of so many books to choose from rather tiresome, you either choose a book with plenty of projects in but often risk how much the book tells you about the fundamentals of the craft or you go hardcore on a techniques one of those dreaded encyclopedias of… And find the only complete projects are a few glossy photos at the back show casing the types of projects only people who are now blind and crippled could have acheived! Pardon my crudeness!

So what we want is that fantastic combination of both ‘wants’ and I found it in a book which I judged by it’s cover shamelessly and dismissed for months.

Stitch n bitch crochet the happy hooker looks like the type of coffee morning slash cosmopolitan demographic I just didn’t feel I was a member of and yet I bought a copy!

This book it simple fantastic and if you want to crochet and thoroughly enjoy it for the price of a book a hook and some yarn then this is your answer…and once you’ve gotten over the fact you will never have any inclination to crochet the cowboy hat and the cover you’re away!

I am a newbie to the world of iPhones I came across tuaw in a tutorial, now I’ve done dating so wltm gsoh and that oh lucrative ohac and being a female consumer bnwt always gettings me excited!!! So after dumbly googling it I discovered the unoficial apple website! Five seconds into an article about a freelance whatever using his iphone to assist him he told me of the wonderful wordpress application… Needless to say I didn’t read much further!

So no doubt you’ve guessed what format I’m posting in and although my format I’m writing this in and although my fingers are asking me why this is a good idea!!

Well I couldn’t really post a completely geeky fest piece on technology on my struggling crafty corner so here’s my latest crochet acomplishment my first granny’s square! Voilà and an impressive 12 inches…

I have been a fan of Etsy for sometime, and always wished there was a UK alternative displaying prices in GBP.  I often feel that the $ can be off putting to internet shopper newbies.  So after much naivety I finally stumbled onto Folksy! I think its a fantastic blend for the crafting community, combing buying and selling along with the people behind the products and the processes they employ to create such wonderful things!

Full of excitement i signed up and had created my shop with a few minutes, a quick whiz on photoshop and my shop banner was complete…

I have listed ted the tort as my first item, and perhaps priced him a lottle on the low side, but i often feel that people overprice things and gaining recognition is far more important to me than making money, in fact most of the things i make i end up giving away!

To view my folksy shop visit http://www.folksy.com/shops/poppypower 

Enjoy

May Bank Holiday – Finally after many practises Ted the Tort is created. 

The pattern was taken from Tiny Yarn Animals: Amigurumi Friends to Make and Enjoy.  This is a lovely little book.  My only comment on the book is that it is a little heavy on full page coloured photos of each project and somewhat lacking on how to actutally assemble the animals.  There is no information for beginners on putting the sections together so it is pretty much a ‘look at the photo and hope for the best tactic’.  This book is really only good for intermediate amigurumi-ites!! and i suspect if you are at that level already you will pretty much have most of the basic shapes used in this book down to a tee anyway…

Brimming with enthusiasm from my first draft i tidied her up a little, got rid of the trash black kohl pencil she had developed in the first one and experimented with full body.  I feel she should be shorter.  So here is version two.  Roll on May Bank Holiday so i can start experimenting with colour!

Inspired by the world of beautiful and bountiful crafting blogs out there featuring such wonderfully branded crafts, i was inspired to create a character and world of my own in which to unite my crafting passions from jewellery to wood burning!!

So after some serious thought and the aid of a inspiration board, Poppy has finaly arrived.

I have a lot of work to do but the main theme was to use curved lines and exagerated features!  I adore the work of fafi and the world she has created and i hope to use fafi’s idea of a collection of strange and unusal ‘animal’ friends to join my character.  I am busy scouring the pages of style magazine for suitable outfits, although fear i may be delving into a world of insanity whereby i am already asking myself ‘mmm…now is this something that poppy would really wear? hehe!’

At the moment i am swayed towards red hair with clothes a mixture of jade teal and white, thus symbolising a poppy.

So here she is version no 1.  let see just how far she comes through the creative process.