Christmas Cards

Here are the three I did for the church Christmas card. They chose scrabble. Feel free to use and send as E Cards! x




Woo! Christmas!

Christmas peg angel

It is nice having a little baby that just sleeps and feeds- it is a tranqil transition to motherhood and means I'm still able to make things. Don't worry I am not under any illusion that this will last!
I am making a Christmas card for our church at the mo and for one of the concepts wanted a little angel. Inspired by a sultry peg senorita that Mel gave me, I whipped up a holy peg angel. Here she is with her more exotic friend...

Gosh look what else I made...

(with a little help from my loving husband and the Creator of the Universe, obv.)

Ramona Lily
8lb 11
Monday 15th November, 9pm

Flapper band for a lovely little head

Ah, maternity leave is the bees knees! I basically just make stuff all day, maybe have tea and cake with someone, loll around on my birth ball. It's lush. I've also been initated in to the mums club with my two besties and my sister and their riot of rapscallion kids. Tomorrow it is a party for one of them who is turning two, so I whipped up some pretty head gear for her, 1920's styles with a few bits of lace, polka dot fabric from a pillow made into rosettes and then some delightful buttons.
To be delivered in its own little felt envelope, with the wrist from the armpit slipper jumper.
With a personalised stamp and a quick knot she can undo.

This is probably the kind of thing you make for a little kid before you have kids and know how unrealistic it is for them to keep something fancy like this on their noggin. Oh well, I'm soon to become a more reality based maker of kids things!

Impending motherhood...

So, birth pool is in the lounge (well, originally it turned up at my work and sat in the middle of my open plan office, all massive and logo'd up for three days that I was away = mortifying) 43 hand me down baby grows are washed and I had my last day at work yesterday. At 38 weeks this little bun is pretty much just getting a good crust on. I am still loving pregnancy, it is all pros and no cons- i.e still able to ride my bike but get the joy of people's double takes, hehe.

I am having a luxurious day reading the paper, listening to my lovely new Brooke Fraser album, watching the odd delicious youtube video while Tim gets on with painting the halls. In the last week we have had all our halls plastered, hoping to paint and get Carpet Derek in before this baby checks out.

I just saw this image and love it - thanks Juliet.

Tomorrow we have our first Make in our lounge. Make is a monthly craft afternoon, tomorrow we are crafting up social justice patches for the Craftivist Collective's social justice quilt. Exciting!

The 6 minute felt slipper

I think I have mentioned before that I am a rubbish sew-er, an impatient, corner cutting seamstress. This was proven to me big time today when I tried to make some simple felt slippers.

You see, excitingly, our house is progressing. This morning Carpet Derek came and laid 100% wool down on our bedroom floor after a good week of plastering and painting. This is fab, as it means that when the baby comes (I am 37 weeks today!) we will have at least one snug little room. However, today's dillemma was that we have this lovely new carpet in one spot, and rancid, dusty (cool looking though) floor boards everywhere else. It will be far too easy for that muck to creep into our creamy lushness. Clearly, I need some slippers to leave at the bedroom door!

Having just been to a jumble sale at the Camberwell Sallies, organised by Mel, and picked up a wooly jumper for 10p, I quickly stuffed it in the machine on hot and felted that bad boy.
I then googled "simple felt slippers" and came across a couple of really lovely options. Rather than limiting myself to one recipe, I thought I should sort of mix them. I was aiming for Martha's neatness but rolling with Mary Jane's more freestyle feel, and um, just like when I do baking combos, it was a fail. I got one slipper. It was properly ugly and about 3 times too big. I was pretty mad after measuring my foot and cutting out newspaper and Everything.

In my madness I put my foot in the armpit of the jumper. Hello!!!! I had stumbled upon the easiest felt slipper ever- it was basically ready made! How I have managed to make the most simple of all sewing projects even more basic I will never know.

It goes like this:

1. Put foot in armpit of felted wool jumper. Toes pointing toward wrist end of sleeve.
2. Snuggle your foot down till it feels cosy.
3. Cut off the excess jumper hanging off the back of heel, and excess sleeve hanging from your toes.
4. So a straight line up from your heel (should be about 8cm or so)
5. Sew a point around your toes.
6. Turn inside out.

Done! Then, if you have some lace, or other goodies you've picked up from a carboot, wack that on and voila.

If this takes you more than 6 minutes per slipper then you are a worse sew-er than me! (Or perhaps it just means you are meticulous which means you can go far in sewing world, my friend.)

Above- the corner of my original attempt next to the proof of my practice on newspaper (it's not worth it, even when I do practice it doesn't pay off)
Below- the six minute beauts that will save our new carpet, hurrah!

Bunting fiend...

I love bunting. It is transformative. It turns a room into a party and turns grotty pajamas into a lovely decoration.

We have about 400 metres of bunting stowed under the stairs because we make a new batch each year for the Fair Christmas Fayre that we run. So we have miles of it, even despite having left at least 200 metres of it strung up around Bishopgate after the Climate Camp last year (it features in a lot of the photo's of the day, like this one, really set off by the luminous coats of the riot police).

Normally I make it quick and dirty, sawing off triangles with whatever pair of scissors I can find, stitching it inaccurately to balloon ribbon. This is what you have to do when you are aiming to smother the world in bunting.

But this week I took my time, I was only hoping to acheive a metre and a half of it to give as a gift to our little two year old friends at their christening today. I sewed each individual triangle inside out (Yes! Seams and everything!) and scouted out some real bling ribbon.