Autumn sewing events

Well, it's getting to that time of year when the nights are drawing in and I'm thinking of ways to get out there and get out of the house before it's gloomy and all that you can do to keep your spirits up is to drink hot chocolate under a cosy quilt, in front of a log fire and get ready for Christmas!

Here's an event that I'm particularly excited about for Crafter/Bloggers in Birmingham (UK) ...

Sew Brum Blogger Meet Up - Saturday 31st October 2015

http://englishgirlathome.com/sewbrum/ 

Fair Isle kids hat project

Seems like most of my projects get finished deep into the night so I'm off to sleepy town now.

I'm happy to say I pretty much finished a little fair isle knit hat in a day! So excited as it looks pretty finished. The pattern matches all around, just as I planned and the little hearts are just lovely. I think the next one I do will be more contrasting... Like yellow and a shade of dark blue; or mulberry and yellow; or orange and green, as it's nearly October!

And pompoms... Many pompoms...

It even got my niece's approval

Fair isle knitting workshop

I'm running 2 fair isle knitting workshops at Martineau Gardens as part of TSOS.

They are in August.

Come and check them out! I have some exciting patterns and colours for you to try! Coffee, tea & biscuits included.

New craft workshops

I'm excited to say that I'm using the studio at Martineau Gardens, as part of Tiger Skins of Sunlight, to hold knitting and craft workshops. All the information is on my Events page.

To book a place, please email: alexlaight@hotmail.co.uk

/// Mixed media bug-making 10:00 - 12:00 (with TSOS) /// Wed 15 July /// £3 

Art studio at Martineau Gardens, B5 7UG

/// Drop-in knitting 13:00 - 15:00 (with TSOS) /// Wed 15 July /// £2

It's a bit early but I have green wool so I will be focusing on "Knitivity" - Community project to make some simple knitted squares for a knitted Christmas Tree 2015. 

Come. I have spare knitting needles and wool!

Art studio at Martineau Gardens, B5 7UG

/// Knitting on 4 needles: Making tubes 10:00 - 12:00 (with TSOS) /// Thu 16 July /// £6

Art studio at Martineau Gardens, B5 7UG

/// Fair Isle Knitting workshop: Learn to make your own Fair Isle designs for a mug warmer 10:00 - 12:00 (with TSOS) Tue 25 August /// 5 places @£10 per session

Art studio at Martineau Gardens, B5 7UG

/// Fair Isle Knitting workshop: Make a Fair Isle mug warmer (potentially with your own designs) 10:00 - 12:00 (with TSOS) Thu 27 August /// 5 places @£10 per session

Art studio at Martineau Gardens, B5 7UG

Canada Day!

And, as it's Canada Day today, why not...

Copyright

'Canada Day (French: Fête du Canada) is the national day of Canada, a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution Act, 1867), which united three colonies into a single country called Canada within the British Empire'

 - Thank you Wikipedia!

Copyright

Copyright

New 100% wool fabric to play with

Can't wait to get stuck into this new project!! New murky green wool blanket just in - I love Ebay! Instagram post

Knitted blanket squares

Sewing together some knitted blanket squares in preparation for Sunday's craft workshop at Cherry Reds in Birmingham! 

I have been perfecting my sewing-together-blanket-squares techniques too. I think people with lots of different levels might turn up, so I'm thinking I might bring some extra wool in case anyone wants to do different colours but we'll see how it goes!

http://instagram.com/p/ypkBytxDi1/

The Knitter's Bible - A short review

Hands down, this is my favourite stitch directory. Really clear pictures. Some great stitches which are fun and, if not easy to do, at least the instructions guide you through the process well! Well worth a read. Easy to flick through as a reference guide.

The Knitter's Bible
by Claire Crompton

The Knitter's Bible - in full PDF

The Knitter's Bible to buy on Amazon

Inner embroidery hoop dilemma!

I didn't really believe that when it said "Embroidery inner hoops only" online that someone would actually sell just the inners but here I sit with 20 embroidery inner hoops and some wool, contemplating the fact that late night shopping can be a bad thing and that I now need to find something to do with all 20 of them or at least find something to do with one of them and a workshop idea to tote around town. 

The website did say "Use these for loads of crafts! They're really useful" etc etc. So people must be doing something with them and I'm not one to give up on a challenge! (... except the code in a day thing. Fail. But I coded a little bit and that's the main thing) 

Anyway back to my hoops. Apart from making hula hoops for sprites, I wanted to do something with them. 
Tried weaving - didn't really work. 
Thought about wrapping wool around the edge - couldn't really see the point
Flirted with the idea of dreamcatchers - bit cliché.

Googled a bit and found this on livingcrafts.com! -  Embroidery hoop weaving loom
- My problem with weaving initially was that the wool wouldn't hold but this lady has used an elastic band to keep the wool still so I'll give it a go.

I love to weave and this is a really simple way of maybe making some funky coasters. I have hessian so I might use a thick wool as a base and make a rustic-looking coaster, or using waterproof wool/strips of plasticky fabric. I do love the rainbow colours they've used here and I LOVE bright colours so we'll see. Much plotting and doodling to ensue on this front I think. And I could definitely do a workshop on this, whether that's through making the loom or weaving it is simple and would easily fill an hour.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

I have been making some flyers for this great crochet workshop on Thursday 12th February at 6.30pm 

It'll be really fun. I'll be showing you how to crochet an eyeball and generally having a fun time and drinking coffee/tea and having cake in the cosy, quirky surroundings of Cherry Reds cafe on John Bright Street in Birmingham, UK.

I'll be providing wool, stuffing and crochet hooks! There are 10 places available

This'll be the perfect alternative Valentine's crafting! Hearts can be fun but gory eyeballs are wicked!

Buy tickets: £5.50 inc. booking fee). 

How to make a Pompom bumblebee

IT'S POMPOM TIME!

I saw a tree in my local town covered in pompoms recently! Amazingly I had some free time this Christmas, so I decided to make a pompom in the same way I did at my Grandma's house when I was younger. So here is my recipe for lovely pompoms.

Tools

Pen/pencil

A pair of scissors

A pint glass (to draw around - or to contain liquids)

50p coin / Glue stick (or similar circle shape to draw around)

Materials

A big ball of leftover wool (I used black and yellow for a bumblebee but you can use whatever you'd like)

Thin-ish cardboard - I used an Amazon packet

2 googly eyes

Superglue

Card/paper (glittery card/paper makes nice wings)

HOW TO MAKE A POMPOM 

Step 1: Take a pint glass and some cardboard. Use the pint glass to draw 2 circles with a pen or     pencil (the shape dictates what diameter the pompom will have). Cut out the cardboard circles.

Step 2: Cut a central hole about the size of a 50p using some good sized scissors. It can be a bit tricky so get an adult to help! ;) The cardboard doughnut needs to be a good thickness (but the thinner the cardboard the larger the pompom will be, because you can wrap more wool around it).

Step 3: Take the two cut-out cardboard doughnuts and put them together like this.

Step 4: Make a few balls of wool that are small enough to fit through the cardboard doughnuts holes. I probably used 5 by the end (3 black, 3 yellow).

Step 5: Tie the TWO cardboard doughnuts together with the end of one of your small ball of wool and start wrapping the wool around the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 6: Well done! It's looking good so far! (Pat self on the back) Make sure that you wrap the wool around until you can't see the cardboard. Try and keep it even so the stripes will come out even. (If you are doing a plain pompom or using multicoloured wool it won't matter so much).

Step 7: (Can you tell at what time of year I made the pompom?!) Tie the black wool to the end of the yellow wool and keep "wrapping." It doesn't matter where the knot falls but if you can make it near the centre/edge of the woollen doughnut you can snip it off later.

Step 8: Keep wrapping the woollen doughnut until it's black (I was impatient but it's worth persevering for the stripes!). Knot in another of your yellow wool balls and wrap it until it's yellow. Keep doing this until there is no hole. Towards the end you'll just be pushing strands of wool through the hole which means you're nearly on the way to finishing your pompom! Yay.

Step 9: Put a pencil through the middle of your wool doughnut to hold the strands of wool in place. Now cut around the edge of the pompom until you can see the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 10: Almost there. Careful now. Get a strand of wool which is long enough to encircle the circumference of the cardboard doughnuts. Slowly poke the strand of wool in between the two cardboard doughnuts and keep doing this as you cut the woollen doughnut. Try not to cut the woollen strand while you're doing this.

Step 11: Now that your strand of wool encircles the pompom, wrap it around a couple of times and make a knot so that the pompom does not fall apart (they get stressed easily). Cut the cardboard doughnuts and pull them away from the wool.

Step 12: I used googly eyes. the sew-on ones are quite good as you can easily tie them to the pompom. I just used superglue here.

Step 13: Make sure it has a loop to hang it somewhere. As it's Christmas, I put mine on the tree and gave him some paper wings. I just cut them out of a white sheet of A4 but you could use card or even glitter paper!  

Step 14: EXPERIMENT!!! Hack your pompom and find out how it works. Here are some ways to make different coloured/patterned pompoms...

Crochet your own 3D detached, monster eyeball

Crochet your own 3D detached, monster eyeball

I woke up this morning and had no idea that, by tonight, I'd have a bit of a monster eyeball product line going on in my kitchen. I think my parents must imagine I'm having a nervous breakdown but sometimes it's just fun to do something for no reason. So... eyeballs.

In my previous blog post I showed you how to make a slightly 3D eyeball 

http://monstereyesevents.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/crocheting-monster-eyes.html 

This time I have added colour to the iris and made it 3D with an optic nerve for good measure. The great thing about this is how simple it is to make.

The finished product.

MATERIALS

This is what you're going to need to make your 3D monster eye. 

White wool (for the whites of the eye)
Green wool (for the iris)
Black wool (for the pupil)
100% polyester stuffing (I used some from a cheap cushion I had lying around)

**Red wool if you want a red optic nerve or blood vessels in your monster eye!**

Size 4.00 crochet hook
Scissors
Needle

MAKING EYEBALLS 

Make your pupil and iris by follow my previous 2D eye blog post and simply substitute white wool for an iris colour wool). I'm still not sure if I prefer one row of colour (for the iris) or two so have a play and see what you think works best.

Slip the white wool into your iris coloured circle and crochet around it. I have added a stitch for every crochet. Then just crochet around the iris 5 times and it turns into a sphere really easily. If you add some polyester stuffing as you go then you will get a feel for the shape as well. Change the wool colour to red and do about 3 rows of red skipping a stitch after every crochet so that the sphere closes. Add more stuffing if it looks saggy. 

Once your sphere of crocheting is closed do a chain of about 15 stitches to create the optic nerve. If you are feeling creative you could sew red wool or thread from the iris to create blood vessels in the eye.

Here is my little production line. Having made up all the pupils I wanted I added coloured irises, then made a sphere of white wool crocheting which turned them into 3D eyeballs. You will see that the colour parts in this picture still have their slipknot so that I could continue crocheting with white wool outside the irises.


I think it is quite satisfying making a production line because I feel like I'm making them much faster than if I did one eyeball at a time. It also means I can tidy up the different balls of wool as I go.


** Having taken some advice, from my sister, I have changed the optic nerve colour to red which makes it look more realistic! So after doing 5 rounds of the white wool for the whites of the eye, I have changed wool colour to red for 3 rounds and made it into a tail of 15 stitches.

Crocheting Monster Eyes!

These 2D monster eyes are a bit of a lark and simple to do. I'm going to make some 3D ones too ( http://monstereyesevents.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/crochet-your-own-3d-detached-monster.html ), for cuddly sock monsters! (I will put the tutorial in another blog post)

Materials

You'll need two colours of wool. Just whatever you have lying around will be fine as this won't take much wool. You might want to do another colour if you want monsters with crazy red eyes or blue eyes or glow-in-the-dark eyes! 

I've also used a size 5.00 crochet hook.

CROCHET YOUR SPOOKY EYEBALL

Step 1: I started with a slip knot and crocheted a chain of 4 stitches.

Step 2: As you make your 5th chain stitch, push the crochet hook (with the wool on) through the hole like in this picture and pull it back to create a circle.

Step 3: As you now have a circle, crochet into the next stitch in the circle and crochet into each stitch all the way around. If it gets a bit tight add another chain stitch and crochet into the next chain of the circle. Go around the circle as many times as you'd like to make the pupil of your monster eye.

Step 4: Add another colour. I'm using white as I want monochrome eyes but you can do whatever colour you want. I simply catch the last black chain on my hook and get the end of the white wool and pull it through, making sure the white wool is tight.

Step 5: Now that the white wool is part of your eye, you can continue what you were doing with the black wool circle. Crochet the white wool into the next stitch and, if the circle gets a bit too tight simply make another chain stitch and crochet into the next stitch in the black circle. 

Step 6: Continue with the white until it's as wide as you'd like. If you'd used blue/red for an iris, you could add the white of the eye in the same way at this stage.

Step 7: Poke your hook through the white crochet and pull those tricky wool strands to the back of the eye. Do the same with the black wool strands, making sure you pull them through the black crochet so the colour lines don't merge.

N.B. To make your monster's eye a little bit more 3D don't add extra stitches. Simply leave the crochet circle to get tighter as you crochet each circle and the eye will maintain a nice boggly shape.

Step 8: WELL DONE! You have made a monster eye. If you make another one, attach both eyes to a big sock (odd socks are best as I always think they might be a bit lonely in the odd sock bag) and stuff it with polyester stuffing - you can get cheap cushions from the rag markets, warehouses or simply use whatever offcuts of fabric you have knocking around (as long as they are cut up small). Sew up the bottom to keep the stuffing in and you can use smaller socks for arms!

Notes: My monster eye has a lovely 3D feel to it, but if you'd like a more flat effect eye then have a peek at this online tutorial to crochet a magic circle with double crochet - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PmaQJbyVt0

How to make a pompom!

It's PomPom time!

I saw a tree in my local town covered in pompoms recently! Amazingly I had some free time this Christmas, so I decided to make a pompom in the same way I did at my Grandma's house when I was younger. So here is my recipe for lovely pompoms.

Tools

Pen/pencil

A pair of scissors

A pint glass (to draw around - or to contain liquids)

50p coin / Glue stick (or similar circle shape to draw around)

Materials

A big ball of leftover wool (I used black and yellow for a bumblebee but you can use whatever you'd like)

Thin-ish cardboard - I used an Amazon packet

2 googly eyes

Superglue

Card/paper (glittery card/paper makes nice wings)

How to make a pompom 

Step 1: Take a pint glass and some cardboard. Use the pint glass to draw 2 circles with a pen or     pencil (the shape dictates what diameter the pompom will have). Cut out the cardboard circles.

Step 2: Cut a central hole about the size of a 50p using some good sized scissors. It can be a bit tricky so get an adult to help! ;) The cardboard doughnut needs to be a good thickness (but the thinner the cardboard the larger the pompom will be, because you can wrap more wool around it).

Step 3: Take the two cut-out cardboard doughnuts and put them together like this.

Step 4: Make a few balls of wool that are small enough to fit through the cardboard doughnuts holes. I probably used 5 by the end (3 black, 3 yellow).

Step 5: Tie the TWO cardboard doughnuts together with the end of one of your small ball of wool and start wrapping the wool around the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 6: Well done! It's looking good so far! (Pat self on the back) Make sure that you wrap the wool around until you can't see the cardboard. Try and keep it even so the stripes will come out even. (If you are doing a plain pompom or using multicoloured wool it won't matter so much).

Step 7: (Can you tell at what time of year I made the pompom?!) Tie the black wool to the end of the yellow wool and keep "wrapping." It doesn't matter where the knot falls but if you can make it near the centre/edge of the woollen doughnut you can snip it off later.

Step 8: Keep wrapping the woollen doughnut until it's black (I was impatient but it's worth persevering for the stripes!). Knot in another of your yellow wool balls and wrap it until it's yellow. Keep doing this until there is no hole. Towards the end you'll just be pushing strands of wool through the hole which means you're nearly on the way to finishing your pompom! Yay.

Step 9: Put a pencil through the middle of your wool doughnut to hold the strands of wool in place. Now cut around the edge of the pompom until you can see the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 10: Almost there. Careful now. Get a strand of wool which is long enough to encircle the circumference of the cardboard doughnuts. Slowly poke the strand of wool in between the two cardboard doughnuts and keep doing this as you cut the woollen doughnut. Try not to cut the woollen strand while you're doing this.

Step 11: Now that your strand of wool encircles the pompom, wrap it around a couple of times and make a knot so that the pompom does not fall apart (they get stressed easily). Cut the cardboard doughnuts and pull them away from the wool.

Step 12: I used googly eyes. the sew-on ones are quite good as you can easily tie them to the pompom. I just used superglue here.

Step 13: Make sure it has a loop to hang it somewhere. As it's Christmas, I put mine on the tree and gave him some paper wings. I just cut them out of a white sheet of A4 but you could use card or even glitter paper!  

Step 14: EXPERIMENT!!! Hack your pompom and find out how it works. Here are some ways to make different coloured/patterned pompoms...