Sewing and Bargains

I'm doing another Craft Fair at the beginning of November so I wanted to make a few diary covers. This usually involves my desk getting covered with embroidery threads, and the only exception this time was that I decided to tidy them up too. I made cardboard 'bobbins' for some of them and spent ages untangling and winding and then putting duplicate spares in a bag. Then a couple of days later I decided to clear some more drawers and spread the threads out a bit, make them even tideier and easy to choose. These are all the drawers:

One of the pieces I'm using for a book cover is a piece I made years ago. I wanted to see if I could make a subtle plaid design by laying out bold stripes of colours on my two layers, it was more subtle than I thought, but I like it. I've cut to size and sewn the inside pocket edges so far:

You might remember this next piece from when I tried some commercial pre-felt from Heidi Feathers. The silk hadn't attached in a couple of places so I added blanket stitch, then decided to add some more simple stitching in the blocks of colour. I'm still working on this, and have added a bit more since I took the photo:

I went in to Manchester city centre this week, which I don't often do, so made the most of it looking for bargains. I found a couple of elasticated summer dresses for £1 each so got them because I liked the pattern, they were only tiny though, so once I cut the top off, the bottom was a bit bigger than a pillow case, but well worth £1!

In the same shop (Primark) I treated myself to a 'scarf' because I liked the pattern, it's actually the size of a door!

I saw this scarf in a bargain shop and thought I'd see if it nuno felts well:

And, I couldn't go to town without a trip to Abakhan fabric shop, where I got some more braiding:

And probably the best bargain of the day, I found a roll of silk fabric, down from £10 a metre to £3, so I had to get some :)

Making Things

I mentioned recently that I had a look through my box of felt pieces to make things with. I think I put as many pieces back as I kept out (I think anyone who makes felt knows how hard it is to cut pieces up to make things!) so I went through it again telling myself it's a waste to keep them all packed away in a box :)  I had quite a lot of pieces this time. I started looking at some of the bigger pieces to see how many notebook covers I could make. Some of you might recognise this flowery piece from my e-book, I'm trying to convince it it's big enough to make a notebook cover from! In the end I decided to make a couple of camera cases from it as it had a base layer of muslin.

I cut out a placemat and two coasters from a thick felt piece I made just before Christmas and found some pieces perfect for making into glasses cases and coin pouches. I added some stitching to these to make the felt stiffer. I tried to find the perfect embroidery thread to blanket stitch them, but I wasn't happy with what I had to waited for the threads I ordered from Rainbow Girl on etsy. They are just like DMC coton perle but with more colour variations. I also finished sewing together my other cotton gauze purse, but haven't sewn the button holes yet.

Quite a few of the pieces I had were perfect for gadget cases (camera, phone, iPods) so I ended up with a huge pile of cut out felt pieces waiting to be sewn up with the machine. I finished them by Monday, though I think half that time was spent trying to thread the needle, just as I thought I was about to get the thread through, my eyes would flicker and I'd miss :)

Machine stitching might make me feel like the cases are secure, but I never feel anything is finished properly until I blanket stitch it, so out came the threads again.

One thing I did manage to get finished this week was a notebook cover. This piece of felt really was hard to cut up!

When I made a pot pouri case last year, I kept the natural edge of the felt for the flap, I really liked the uneven edges. I liked them so much that I try to use the natural edges as much as possible now instead of cutting, and luckily this piece of felt was the exact width I needed for a book cover and I left both the inside flap edges natural and just finished them with blanket stitch. When I've managed to work out postage prices and convert to US $, I'll add this to etsy.

Talking of etsy, I'm trying to add a variety of different things to my shop there and this last week I added some more collage sheets. They are all A4 sheets with 9 ATC size (3.5 x 2.5 inch) images. There are a couple featuring English census returns images and I'm working on a series of sheets featuring altered versions of my original artwork... oils, pastels acrylics and gouache.

UK readers probably know that postage prices have gone up again, and not only that but the weight categories have widened too, so the prices/weights jump quite steeply. The new price list is available online now, but it seems they've tried to make it as complicated and as clumsy as possible. I went through it and made myself a couple of charts to simplify it. I think I copied all the info correctly, so if it helps, here's a PDF of prices for letters and small packages.