Thank you very muchly…

 

My youngest was lucky enough to be given a couple of unexpected gifts this week, so I thought she'd best thank them with a card. I quite liked this design, especially out of the ribbed card. 

Unfortunately, I didn't consider just how much I was cutting away from the front and so what was left was very delicate and flimsy feeling. You live and learn, hey?

Have a poptastic birthday!

It's been my nephew's birthday this week, so I thought I'd make him his own pop-up card (I bet you can't guess how old he is). There's no screen printing on this one, I've just cut the pieces from some of my coloured card stash, and then just kept the front nice and simple.

I really like this design so I thought I'd try it with other numbers, but as it turns out it looks best with a double digit.

Magic looping

It's just like waiting for a bus isn't it? I don't blog for ages and then I seem to get on every other day. I think it's more the case of having something important-ish that I know I really should be doing, but I just can't get any enthusiasm up for it. So I'm doing this instead.

It's the first time that I've used these funny circular needles. I have to admit, they did scare me a bit. After watching quite a few show and tells on Youtube I thought I just need to get on and do it.

The first few rows really were pretty tricky, but I think most of the problem was that my pattern only called for 36 stitches, so I keep having to twiddle it all round every couple of stitches. It's probably easier if you're doing something bigger like a hat.

I know it's not going to be very neat when it's done, but you've got to start somewhere. Anyway the person I'm making this for isn't too fussy abut these things, hmmm… I hope!

It was Knit in Public day on Saturday and I had every intention of doing a bit of this wherever I went. However, as it turned out, the only public place I went to was the cinema to watch Tangled with my girls. Not the best place for a bit of knitting. Oh well, the thought was there.

Nearly there

After a bit more fiddling, I've gone and sorted out the shape and size for my dino cards, and now it's just deciding on the colour ways. I'm thinking the simpler colours (with white text) are cuter, what do you think? Any preference?

I can't wait to set up my screen for these ones, if it wasn't for the Apprentice I probably would start on this tonight. 

Dino progress

My butterfly cards have gone down well when I've given them out to friends, and so I've been working on a new card design which is more boy friendly. So bearing in mind that these are all paper roughs, I thought I'd show the progress of how it's going:

first rough shape/construction, then wondered about adding scales

a slight change of wording

and then change of shape again (mainly head, tail and feet)

now it's just a case of sorting out the tail, and I'll be there.

These cards fit into a C5 envelope, so they're a bit bigger than my other designs. I just thought they needed to be big. 

I'm planning on printing these cards in all three colours, blue, green and orange. But I'm worried that the green one looks a bit like a tortoise! I'm also thinking of printing the scales/blotches in brighter colours, like purple on the blue, orange on the green and pink on the orange that kind of thing.

What do you think?

Starch quilt

This was once called my 'Sawtooth Star' quilt, but now, and for evermore it will be known by me as my starch quilt. For if you remember, this is the one that I first attempted to use starch on and then stained the beautiful white fabric (with said starch) to give it a kind of singed look.

Well it still looks singed in places, but I'm ploughing on all the same. I'm hoping that once completely finished I'll pop it into the washing machine and it'll come out looking perfectly white (where it's meant to be white).

Originally it was meant to be a baby quilt, but it's looking quite big to me. I can really imagine my girls using it as a picnic blanket for their toy tea parties though. I'm sure we'll get some use out of it.

New shop!

The new shop on the block. I am just so excited about this. Feel free to have a nosey round and give me some feedback, all is welcome. Now that I've got it all set up I'm going to start working through ideas that have been languishing on my desk for ages, and update all my shops with new designs.
Just watch this space!

Mum's the word

On one of my first visits to my quilting group I was taught how to make the block shown above (called Hourglass). Inspired and desperate to do more, I dashed home and cut out more fabric to do a selection of blocks. I then placed the cut fabric into a folder and instantly forgot about them.
Every now and then I come across said fabric and think 'Hmm, I really should do something with that'.

And here we are, some new blocks. The one above is called 'Twinkle Star' and the one below is 'Box Kite.

I'm planning on creating a whole set of sample blocks, all using similar fabrics and then put it together for my mum (she'd been dropping hints for a quilt). Sam, if you read this, don't show mum this post please. Three down, about 27 to go!