Mummies and Bunnies and Twig Trees

The title nearly rhymed didn't it? I have had a busy but very enjoyable weekend. Saturday was spent mooching around in the good weather and then spending time out and about and playing crazy golf and eating yummy food with some good friends. Sunday, of course being mothers day here in the UK, was spent visiting the lovely mummies, eating more lovely food and generally catching up/chilling out. I really can't get used to loosing an hour to daylight savings though. Its going to be lovely having some daylight in the evenings (maybe I can actually take blog pictures in the week now) but I feel likes its earlier in the day than it really is, and getting out of bed this morning was a killer!

Anyway, I mentioned the other day getting back to some old school sewing projects and here you have it, some Monster Magic inspired bunnies ready to hang up in time for Easter. I designed the patten myself  based on an old bunny pattern I had (which have been described as looking like teeth wtf?!?). They are mostly machine sewn with the exception of the french knot eyes and the closing seam. The body is made from fleece and the ears from felt and cotton fabric scraps, these are such good little projects for using up those small left over bits you can't bear to throw away.

I really enjoyed doing this again. I love the little bit when you sew on their eyes so they have real faces, or when you stuff and sew their husks and make them come to life. Is that strange? oh who cares.

My sister has a lovely twig tree in her house and I wanted to steal her idea to use for displaying things on at the craft fair. I contemplated doing a tutorial for this but to be honest I don't think you need to be taught how to suck eggs so here you go:

Twig Tree Tutorial:
1. Gather some sticks
2. Paint them with emulsion (or don't like Rachel's)
3. Stick them in a vase/plant pot/ other receptacle
4. Hang things off it!
 If you want to secure the twigs I wrapped them in a cut up car sponge and then just shoved it in there. If you want to cover the top of the receptacle I used shredded tissue paper but you could also consider things like glass beads/sand etc.

So after the sunshine, the gardening, spending time with families and making these bunnies it really feels like it should be Easter already. The urge to go and buy a chocolate egg is getting far too strong.... must resist. Have you been inspired to make anything Easter related/themed lately, or have the signs of spring sprung you into florals? I would love to hear/see what you have been making.

Fabric Flower Workshop

Check it out... I managed to teach some lovely people how to make lovely pretty things!

We had our work team away day this week and our boss decided it would be quiet nice for us to do something fun for the last part of the day. She shares my slight obsession with craft so we decided it might be nice to all be able to make something on the day. We decided that some sort of fabric flower would be an excellent choice because not only are they pretty, but they are also simple enough to be able to teach in a short time without needing any specialist equipment. So I was tasked with researching different types of flowers which I could teach to a small group. I am really pleased with how well everyone's flowers came out, they all did an amazing job.

In the end I picked three different techniques to teach. Firstly, I of course went for the same felt flower which I used to make my wedding bouquets. I love making these flowers, they are so simple to do and yet so effective. We had a great discussion about how lovely it would be to make a bunch of these on floristry wire to give as a gift on Mothers day.

Next up we did some lace and button flowers. I got the idea for this one from a brooch which I bought at a craft fair years ago. I love that brooch, but on looking at its construction it is really very simple. The idea is to get a length of lace trim (about 50cm maybe) and just do a simple running stitch across the bottom edge of the trim. You then pull and gather the trim until it is tight and join  the two ends with the remaining thread. You will have a little gap in the middle but this is covered up by sewing or glueing on a cute button or bead to make the centre of the flower.

The last flower we did was a lovely pom pom fabric flower. I have bought so many of these as accessories in my life I can't believe I haven't tried this sooner. Rather than me explain there is an excellent tutorial right here

Aren't they all excellent. I am really pleased with how it all well and I would love to do this kind of thing again, I am thinking maybe a clasp purse workshop? I really want to do a knicker making workshop but that would require patterns and sewing machines and a lot of materials so this one is probably a little way off yet. If anyone wants a better description of any of these flowers let me know. There are however a million (slight exaggeration) tutorials out there already for these types of flowers (where do you think I found them) so I didn't see the point in duplicating them here.