Crafty Makes

Although I love to make clothes more than anything else as I really enjoy wearing the finished garments I also enjoy making other items. On this page are some of the things that I have made - they often make great christmas and birthday presents!!!

Bags

  

Memory Puppies

Made from the baby sleepsuits I just couldn't throw away!!!!!

Quilts!! I have been making quilts since I was about 12 - it was a summer holiday activity with Mum and my sister. In fact I think Mum still has the first quilts we made on beds at home. These are a few that I have made more recently. I love making quilts although I have a problem with finding space to put them all. Click the picture to see each quilt up close.

Knitting needle roll. 

I love the cute hedgehog fabric on this. I made the case in several parts so that I could quilt the outside to make it more durable. I then made the needle pockets by layering the patterned fabric on top of some plain calico and sewing the pockets of different sizes. The whole thing was then assembled by bagging out like a quilt adding the ties and the top flap to stop the needles falling out. It rolls up really neatly to fit in my sewing bag.

This is the third of these french notice boards I have made. The first two were presents for people and I forgot to take pictures before I gave them away. I really like them in comparison to pin boards and they are really easy to make- the hardest part for me was finding a DIY store that would cut me some MDF to size. There are some good instructions by fabulously frugal that I followed although as I had MDF as my base, instead of sewing on my buttons I used a staple gun to secure the ribbons at the cross points and superglued on the buttons.

I have recently been doing a little bit of upholstery - although I have to give all the credit to my friend Jo Nash who has been showing me how to do this. These were some old IKEA Dining room chairs that we recovered with some cotton fabric from The Fabric Guild in Leicester.


Dolls! I really enjoy making these dolls, Oscar in the dungarees is from a rag doll book although I had to design the dungarees myself. They are from an old pari of my jeans. The two girl dolls I made as a pair and were adapted from a pattern in a magazine (I think it was a Molly Makes issue) the blonde, Julie a "grunge fairy" with a puff ball skirt that I gave to my sister. The other is much more sensible looking, Charlotte and she lives in my dining room - my husband calls her creepy doll apparently she reminds him of the girl in the film the ring!


This was a project that came about one Saturday when I was supposed to be having people for dinner and I realised that I didn't have a table cloth - shock horror! So I went to pundland and bought a couple of packs of their tea towels....and Voila! I love this table cloth actually even if it isn't  sophisticated white linen. Also these are the chairs before they were upholstered.

These were a present. My friend Elle loves owls and also likes sewing. So I combined the two to make this fun family of owl pattern weights. they are filled with rice and have a washer in them to keep them flat and upright on the bottom. They are great for little scraps of left over fabric. I found the idea on one of my many mornings trawling pinterest - love that sight for ideas.

So this was another present project. My sister recently aquired an old Piano however, it did not come with a stool. So I thought this would make a great present for her birthday. I got the old stool pretty cheap from an ad on gumtree but it came with a hideous old cover to the seat. So with my new found upholstery skills (thanks Jo!!) I set about recovering it. I pulled off the old cover and the several layers underneath that too. Then put some new foam on to and covered the seat with some linen effect cotton that I got from the fabric warehouse in Leicester. I loved the little birds and thought the musical theme was fitting for a piano stool! Quite pleased with how it turned out for my first solo project.

Caterpillar shopping bag. I love the hungry caterpillar and I couldn't resist these fat quarters. I had them for ages before I decided what to do with them. The project actually came about just after christmas when I got my shiny new sewing machine with lots and lots of fun stitch patterns. I was looking for something to try them all out on and this happened. The words are stitched on by the machine too - fancy!! The bag actually came out a bit bigger than is practical but I still love it.