an easy gift

A very good day to you all :)

Today we are going to make a gift.

It's quick, inexpensive and pretty!!

PERFECT!!

Firstly you need to choose a few different bits of fabric (off cuts work well!).

Then you need to decide what shape you are going to use. I have chosen birds! Which I down loaded from a cool site called Kiddley!

I cut 2 birds from 3 different co-ordinating fabrics (ie 12 sides, 6 birds) using my pinking shears.

Next I pinned them together with wadding in the middle for stuffing. Oh and added a bit of lavender in each bird too :) This is particularly good if giving this to someone who likes nice smelly things! (like me!!)

I used button thread, which is nice and strong, to stitch them up, making sure I added the ribbon as I went. The top piece of ribbon is looped. For the eyes I used gold beads which I chose to stitch on afterwards and pulled them tight to give the bird a little bit of shape. In all it took about 3 hours to make, including the time on the internet looking for the bird shape. Of course this is a great project to do with the kids! You can cut the shapes out of foam or felt and decorate before stringing them together with twill, ribbon or wool!! haPPy creATing Caz xx

A South African Pinny

Morning all and a big South African welcome from Di.

I have been so busy sewing for the past week and could not resist making a South African apron for my dear son in law Stu who lives in England and has lots of barbecues or as we call them "Braais'. What makes the apron special to me is that it was made from fabric that belonged to Stu's Mum which I was given when she passed away a few years back. Thanks Undine!!!!

Now barbecue is messy so I thought a big pinny would be useful.

I cut my pattern from my crafty apron making it a little larger to allow for binding the edges.

I bound the edges with wide red bias binding.

I then added a large pocket to hold tools etc. and a small one to hold the mobile phone.

I then added some tags to the sides and a loop to go over Stu's head. And now for the South African bit.

I added a "Jammer Lappie" which translated means a "Sorry cloth". Typically it's an old tea towel that really should be thrown in the bin but is used to wipe hands, tools etc when doing the braai. Well I am so sorry I do not have any "sorry cloths" so I made Stu a nice clean one and pinned it on with a big safety pin.

That's it for me for today. I hope that Stu enjoys his Christmas apron!!!

Love from all of us at IACW.

Alternative Christmas Pressie Wrapping

And a big hello from a few of us today! Wonder if you too get tired of normal Xmas wrapping paper and ribbons. Today we have a few ideas to make your gift a little more special by doing something different.

Caz has used Felt:

I was inspired by the cute little felt bag Andrea made back in June :) and the Christmas bunting I made in October.

The bag is made up of two sheets of red felt sewn together by hand with embroidery thread.

I had great fun making these and I can't wait to fill them with gifts :)

and a close up.....

Di has used fabric:

All of my gift bags are made from calico and left over fabric. They are easy peasy and quick to make!!! They are RAG bags and were inspired by Trish's lovely rag wreath and Caz's Christmas bunting.

This bag is made to look like a parcel and has draw strings.

Again I have frayed ends and something that hopefully looks like a Xmas tree on the front.

These little bags made from calico with a little lace and tied with ribbon. I thought they might be nice for my great neighbours to hold some special soap or smellies.

This is my favourite. A smallish draw string bag with a little Xmas rag wreath just pinned on.

Finally one last bag with a xmas stocking theme:

Trish has also used fabric and felt. Trish's drawstring bag is just GORGEOUS. The shapes are so simple yet effective. Trish used heavy cotton, felt and bondaweb to attach the felt to the cotton. She used white acrylic paint to 'frost' the tree and gold to highlight the bird .

And just a few more ideas. How about using: Normal brown paper and stamping it using potato stamps with red paint and glitter glue?String , garden twine and sisal instead of ribbon?

OK now all you have to do is finish that Christmas shopping and get Cracking with the Wrapping!!!

Love from us at IACW xx

Christmas Tree Decorations.

Today Caz and I are doing fabric Christmas tree decorations, I love Christmas and find bits and bobs to do all year round so its not a last minute rush. These birds I made back in July for my tree, I love felt as it is so versatile and doesn’t fray, I used red felt, gold thread, gold sequins, green thread and polyester toy stuffing. The candy canes are for hanging in my kitchen, which is having a Christmas foodie theme. They are very easy and quick to make, all you need is two pipe cleaners, I used red and white, twist them together and bend the top round to form the hook. Caz has made these gorgeous lavender filled tartan hearts for her tree; she used pinking shears to help stop the edges from fraying. These will smell and look gorgeous on her beautifully decorated and lit tree. I hope you have enjoyed today’s post; don’t forget to email us with any pictures of the items we have featured here. Today we are also doing a prize drawer to win a fab kit from Kirsty Wiseman just leave us a comment on today’s post and we will draw a winner on Sunday. We have exceeded the target for donations that we had set ourselves and are really grateful to all of you that have donated on our just giving page, Thank you, and a HUGE thank you too to all you lovely brave ladies that have scrapped your boobs and sent us the pictures. Trish xxx

Stitch mania

Good morning to you all!! Caz here, with another LO class :) And we are so honoured to have the lovely ~Angie~ as a guest DT member today!!

Stitching on layouts, whether by machine or hand, seems to come into fashion so often and it is one of the most effective ways to add dimension to a LO. In the layout below Angie has even added some hand stitched doodling which looks great and of course you can make up your own designs. She has also stitched around each square of patterned paper which gives the LO a quilt effect and around the photograph which frames Emily beautifully :)

~Angie~ says.....

I have been scrapbooking for nearly 2 years now. My children Emily and Adam are the main things that inspire me to scrap....I love to capture moments in my photos and on my layouts that otherwise may get forgotten. To capture little details of everyday life, to keep to look back on in the years to come. They love it when Mummy has made yet another page about them- I'm not so sure they'll see it the same way when as teenagers they look back at layouts with them having a strop! Currently I'm going through quite an experimental stage with my scrapping. I don't think I really have a style as some scrappers seem to do, but there are various elements and techniques that I use over and over again, and nearly all my layouts have some if not all of these included. What do I like? Chipboard alphabets, inked edges, buttons, ribbons, stitching- mainly by machine (as I'm generally too lazy to hand sew!! lol) I had great fun creating these two layouts, I find stitching adds great extra depth and texture.

Machine sewing around the edges of your cardstock also frames the LO, and I just love how Angie has stitched around each felt flower.

Our own lovely Joy has also contributed to this project with a totally different style of stitching. Joys stitches are randomly placed and hand done, she has also used fabric, ribbon and bits of a real pattern to match the theme of her 'handmade with Love' LO.

Aren't these just the MOST beautiful photographs!!

A massive thanks to both Angie and Joy for sharing their stunning work with IACW today.

And remember we love to see our readers layouts so please leave us a link to your gallery/blog so we can drool, lol.

haPPy creATing

Caz

xx

Christmas bunting

Very warm Sunday greetings to you all from Caz and Angela!!

Today we are bring you a little more Christmas inspiration to get those creative juices flowing :)

Buntings have been around for years, but i've noticed this year that they seem to have been a very popular decoration!

So we are bringing buntings indoors and using up those bits of Christmas fabric to make great decorations for the home :)

Caz

For my bunting I have cut triangle shapes from fat quarters using pinking shears, this meant I didn't have to stitch around each one {lol}.

I folded the tops of each triangle over a length of twine and hand stitched using thick green thread. I didn't want my triangles moving around on the twine so I popped a couple of stitches through the top to hold them in place.

I cut green felt in the shape of holly and stiched it to a couple of the triangles using red buttons and ribbons for the berries.

And on a couple more I again cut green felt into strips {3 different lengths} and attached in the shape of a Christmas tree. Brown velvet ribbon did the trick for the trunk and these gorgeous little yellow star buttons were perfect for the tree tops!

Angela

I have made some Christmas bunting that I would like to share with you.

I made it from 3 different fabrics, 2 Christmas decorative fabrics and gold satin to finish off the back. I cut the fabrics into triangles, using a template I had cut out of paper. I also cut out some Pelmet Vilene triangles to use as a support for the bunting. I sewed 14 triangles, 7 in white and 7 in green to the Pelmet Vilene and then I covered a large piece of cream felt with Versamark ink, and sprinkled gold embossing powder on it. I then heated this with a heat gun and let the embossing powder melt. I repeated this process twice. This left a beautiful gold felt :)

I then drew around some Heidi Swapp Ghost Letters onto the embossed felt to read "Merry Christmas" and cut these out. I then cut some gold fibre paper out in squares the same size as the letters and sewed the letters to the bunting.

I used gold cord to join the flags together and sewed these in place, attaching gold satin fabric to the back of the flags. Finally, I embossed some cream buttons with matching embossing powder and attached these to the cord using ribbon.

Thanks for visiting and don't forget to SCRAP YOUR BOOBIES for a great cause! All entries received at acreativeworld@hotmail.co.uk will be entered into a prize draw at the end of October. The lucky winner will receive a gorgeous collection of PINK embellishments.

There are also spot prizes through the month for anyone who donates through our JUST GIVING page!! Don't forget every penny counts.

haPPy creATing

Caz and Angela

xx

Christmas Sewing

Hi again, today we are bringing you ideas for handmade Christmas fabric items; we hope you get some ideas and inspiration. Trish xxx I will start with my Christmas pinny. I bought this gorgeous holly fabric from my local fabric shop and got a bit of a bargain, as there was a pattern miss so ended up with more than I had wanted, which was ideal. I put the fabric on the floor and laid my full length pinny on the top, gave myself a 1 inch allowance and cut round the shape, hemmed it all the way round, cut a medium sized rectangle, hemmed it and stitched it on for a pocket and used ribbon for the ties. As I had some fabric left I decided to make a hot pad for getting the dinner out of the oven, I just cut 2 squares approx 9x9 inches of the patterned fabric, the same from slightly thicker plain cotton fabric, and the same again from wadding (doubled up), pinned it all together then used my sewing machine to stitch diagonally across to form a criss cross pattern, then edged it with bias binding, very quick and simple to do. I still had a few scraps of the fabric left over, but not really enough to sew anything, so after hunting round the internet I came up with a great idea, A rag wreath, I made the circle with jewellery wire, it took quite a lot of wire to make it relatively sturdy, but you could always use an embroidery ring instead, I tore the fabric into strips approx 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, and tied it on the wire until it was full, I then tore a plain red fabric into slightly smaller strips, about half and inch wide and 2 and a half inches long and tied them in between, this wreath will hang inside my kitchen door. Di has done a lovely pinny/sack/shopping bag using fat quarters and calico.

I bought about 5 "Fat quarters " in a little shop in Hitchin. Cut then into 6 inch srips and stiched them together. (about 5 feet of strips) Then backed them with calico so that the whole thing would be lined, turned the whole lot inside out and the top stiched. Almost too late added the smiley face buttons using embroidery cotton . i should have added them before attaching the lining so that the stiching would be concealed. I then made the ties, turned them inside out and attached them to the side of the SACK. VOILA I had a Christmas sack, a pinny with a BIG pocket, and a xmas shopper!!!! It is robust washable and I think quite Joyful.

Bags of fun

Hi, it's Maria here with a little project that I worked on with my girlie wirlies.

But, first of all I must say a huge thank you to the lovely Karen for her fab post yesterday. I shall be sending Graham up into the loft to dig out all my tired old picture frames.

The girlie wirlies had plain cotton bags in their Brownies kit and rather fancied zhuching them up a tad. They knew what they wanted but as it involved some sewing they enlisted my help.

They selected some felt from the fabric box and cut the shapes with the Sizzix. Then they raided the button jars and set about planning the design.

I printed their photos onto some canvas that I found at the bottom of the fabric box. I stuck it to a piece of plain paper with repositionable Herma before putting it through the printer.

I whiled away the wait for them at drama class sewing the buttons around their pictures. I then sewed the picture to the bag and attached the heart. A few flowers along the top were attached by sewing a button in the centre.

Now, I'm no fantastic sewer but it only took an hour or so to put one together. And, most of that was spent trying to thread the needle!!!

Now, I just need to help them with their sewing and they can sew those Brownie badges on for themselves.

You can get plain bags from Baker Ross rather cheaply if you fancy giving it a whirl. I quite fancy doing a couple of larger ones to use when I go shopping. Please remember to share any of your creations with us as we always love to see what everyone else does. Ok, we're just nosey really.

Toodle pip

Mini Craft Apron

Hi, today I am making a craft apron from an old pair of jeans. I cut the legs of the jeans off just above the crotch area, the ripped up the centre seam at the back and re positioned to give the shape, pinning until ready to sew back together. Then I undid the seams at the sides and ripped along the waistband of the front of the jeans, just leaving the back, rear pockets and the complete waistband. I know it looks like a pic of my bum, but really it isn't lolI sewed the new back seam and used bias binding rather than hemming the sides and bottom of the pinny. I sewed lace over the bias binding and daisy chain braid on the back pockets, hand sewed beads all along the waistband just to add a bit of sparkle, I left the button on the waistband to do it up with and that was it, I now have a pinny with pockets for pens, scissors and knife etc while working. I hope you have enjoyed today’s project, we really want to see pictures of all the items you have made with our inspiration, so don’t forget to leave a comment with a link to any pics. Trish xxx

It's Monday.....

....and that means we have a little more Use Your Stash inspiration for you! If you're anything like me you can never throw anything out before seeing if there are bits on it you can use first :) I am most like this when it comes to throwing out clothes, I have to have the buttons off shirts, the lacy bits of bras, pockets off jeans and sometimes I love the pattern of something so much I have to keep the whole thing! But then these 'bits' sit in a drawer taking up space and I never sem to use them! Sound familiar?? I'm sure it does! :D So today I am challenging you to go dig through your stash and find that bit of fabric or lace, or jeans pocket and use it on a LO! Here is mine! A LO of my DHs son in a moody surfer/sk8er boy pose. I used one of his billabong shirts that was destined for the bin!! Chopped it up and stitched it to my cardstock, added some grungy stamping and some metalic rub ons that pick out the blue on the fabric enhancing it! A simple yet effective LO, and very cheep!!

Please excuse the not so great photos of the LO, but it's so windy outside I just couldn't get the LO to stay still enough to get some good photos :)

Thanks for visiting!!

Caz

xx