Crafty weekend

We've had a lovely weekend here at Tea Towers, baby Emily & I spent Saturday morning having a go at making a pretty flower corsage at the wonderful Traders Outlet store in Sale. One of the new friends that we've made since moving up north (JanJan) has turned out to be a very crafty lady indeed - she has her own range of beautiful handcrafted cushions that she sells along with a number of other lovely handcrafted bits.

If you are at all local to Sale then it is well worth checking out the Traders Outlet store. There are so many beautiful hand crafted items to buy that I can guarantee you won't go away empty handed. JanJan & Jane Moran are going to start running a regular Saturday afternoon (1pm - 4.30pm, £20 per class including tea, coffee & a baked treat!) craft session with the first session being on 17th March making needle books & corsages.

Glad to be back

Hello and sorry to all my followers - I've missed keeping up with my craft blog and reading all your comments, hopefully now things are settling down here I'll be able to write more often.

I don't usually put much about my personal life up on this blog but as I just disappeared for almost 4 months I feel like I owe you all a bit of an explanation. Thankfully it is all good news :-) I'm pregnant again with my second little one and everything seems to be going well though I'm finding that this time round I'm a lot more tired. As well as this we have recently sold our last house and are in the process of trying to buy a new Tea Towers. Until we do we are staying with family and I only have one box of craft things to be getting on with so I haven't got much to show for myself.

I'll try to get a bit of craft done soon - to be honest I'm going a little crazy as I haven't crocheted anything for months now, but until then I can tell you a bit about a crochet course that I got the chance to teach just before moving out of our last home.

I love getting people to start crochet - it's been my favourite hobby for many years and when someone gets the hang of it and starts to see the fantastic things you can do with crochet it makes me very happy. The craft group that I wrote about in my last post were kind enough to give me the chance to run a 6 week crochet course there and though very nervous to be teaching a group instead of just one person at a time I jumped at the chance. I covered the basics for the first two weeks and then went on to teach granny squares, flower brooches and for the week before Easter we even had a go at making little bunny egg cosies.

For each week of the course I wrote a couple of pages of crochet notes as well as writing my own pattern for a flower brooch which I'll be sure to post here soon. I also wrote a 'recommended reading' list based on a good few of the books that I've reviewed here on this blog. I really hope that I get another chance to teach a class as it was a lot of fun and I love seeing all the photos of things that the ladies I taught are now having such fun making.


Thanks to everyone on the course for all the support and enthusiasm, I had a great time and will miss you all. Oh and thanks also for the delicious cakes, now if I could bake as good as this then I may make crochet my second favourite hobby...

Craft group goodness

For the last week I've been busy doing a lot of hand sewing, both at my usual Mum's craft group and also at a new craft group that I've just joined. Crafting in the evening with a group of other like minded women is really good fun - especially when there is tea and yummy cake to be had!

Though I'm a little shy with starting out meeting new people I think I'm going to fit in well at this new group - we're starting the year with a 6 week hand sewing course and I've already made this very sweet little felt elephant (the free pattern is available from here) as well a very lovable little felt scotty dog (from another free pattern which is available here).

Working with felt is always so soothing (at least once you've finished cutting out all the piece and can figure out how on earth you start blanket stitching) and I love how pretty a contrasting thread colour looks on felt.

I'm so tempted after all this felt goodness to go and spend a large amount of money at paper and string for even more felt... Before I do that though I should probably make a bit of headway through a few of the lovely felt kits that I won late last year - hopefully I'll have something to show you from them soon!

My other weekly craft group is also going well, with more hand sewing to show off from there. We've all been making sewing mice which double as a pin cushion and a thread reel holder. However, in my enthusiasm to finish my mouse I took him home and sewed his ears on flat, completely forgetting that I was supposed to sew the ears on with a kink that would make them stand up. So while I'm pretty happy with how he turned out I'm going to be doing some remedial ear surgery on him soon in an attempt to make him even cuter.

We are now moving on making to felt fairy cakes in a variety of pastel colours, they are pretty quick to make, you need two circles of felt (one slightly larger for the cake case, the other will be the main cake piece) and a smaller piece to add on top for the icing. You sew the icing to the top of the cake with any extra beads that you want to add as sprinkles, then you sew the two circles together with a running stitch that you pull tight to get a puckered edge, remembering to add some stuffing before you close it off completely.

The crochet gang

Over the last 4 years I've been on a real crochet mission. Though I've been doing crocheting for roughly 18 years it's only been in the last 4 that it has taken over my life and with all the inspiration that there is to be found online I have always had tons of projects on my to do list.

My enthusiasm for crochet seems to increase by the day, and with all that enthusiasm flowing over I always seem to be telling friends, family, complete strangers, just how great crochet is. I've managed to 'turn' a good few of my family over to crochet as well as a few of my friends. Both my sisters now crochet - one has only just started and the other has been doing it for a few years now and can't stop. In fact she enjoys it so much she has also started writing her own blog: Mummycat gets organised which is a fantastic read - be sure to pop over if you have a minute as I know she would love to see you there.

Hopefully I'll be able to spread the crochet word even further soon as I should be doing some informal crochet teaching at my regular mum's craft group - any suggestions for teaching a group of beginners to crochet would be very well received!

Patchwork progress

Some of you may remember my post back in September about trying a bit of patchwork at my weekly craft group.

Well I thought it was time that I showed you how it was getting on. As you can see I've joined all the little hexagons together now (using something called the "English method") and I'm almost finished sewing it down to the backing fabric.

It looks a bit of a strange shape doesn't it - can any of you guess what it is going to be?

I love my craft group :-)

For the last year I've been regularly going to a mums craft group which is organised and heavily subsidised by a local charity. This is the one time in the week where I get to leave Sam with a creche while I go off to chat and craft with a group of other mums. It has taken about 6 months for Sam to become comfortable with me leaving him as he is so used to my always being near him, but now he is very happy for me to go out of sight while he plays with all his favourite toys.

So now I get the full two hours to sit and join in whatever craft project the group is doing that week - bliss! For the last 4 weeks we've been making paper mache money box mushrooms and I've found that gluing lots of newspaper to rolls of cardboard and plastic plates has been very relaxing especially as I also get a cup of tea while I'm there.

As I had finished up my mushroom today I got the chance to try my hand at paper pricking - which is a craft I hadn't even heard of before. You place the piece of card that you want to embellish on top of a block of foam, and after gently taping a metal punched template over it you are ready to use a little pricking tool to prick through the template onto your card. The repetitive pricking can be quite addictive and this is another great craft to do while having a chat as you don't really need to think too much when you get going.

I love the finished effect that paper pricking gives - so simple and detailed at the same time (to see the detail more clearly click on the image to enlarge it).