Thursday, July 29, 2010

the amish puzzle ball

So I was looking around for pincushion patterns today. I recently was playing around with traditional biscornu patterns that I found here: Biscornu Basics

I liked those so I thought I'd try some other things and made my way to a flickr group that does a pincushion swap. There were a lot of really cute pictures to look through there, and then from one of those pages someone linked up this: Amish Puzzle Ball Pincushion

I scrolled down to see the finished product and knew immediately that I just had to make one (who am I kidding I'll probably have a whole army of those rolling around in a few days lol). Then I started reading and omg 36 of these little pieces to make it, phew!! (And as a side note it used roughly a 12" by 12" piece of fabric to cut all the pieces from)


I got to tracing and cutting, which I think took the longest part. Then I went ahead and stitched the little "footballs" as I kept calling them, together on the machine. Somehow I'm sure the Amish wouldn't have liked how much thread scraps were left over from doing this on the machine, but I'm also pretty sure that it would've taken me nearly a week to do this all by hand with how angry my shoulder would've been at me for doing that much hand sewing all at once.

Here's all my little "footballs" sewn together and ready to be flipped and stuffed:


And here they are all flipped, stuffed, and stitched up. Just that was more than enough hand sewing for me for one day!


Then I sewed them together at the points so I was down to 4 little football circles, lol.


Then they all got sewn together at the points! All done!

And I included that last one to give reference of it's size. It's pretty small, and my first pattern that I made I went by what the tutorial said, 2 inches tall by 1 inch wide at the middle. Well that seemed quite tiny and I knew that since I was going to do this one by machine, and how I am with leaving pretty big seam allowances that I made it a tiny big bigger. I would say I added about a 1/4 inch all the way around, and it still came out pretty small. I'd love to make my second one like they did in the tutorial with a different fabric for the inside pieces, it looks great. I'm also thinking of adding some buttons or beads to the joints of this one, I really like the look of it on the tutorial. And I could see this being a fun kids or baby toy if I used upholstery thread. Not that I think it isn't sturdy, but I know how kids like to yank at stuff, lol.

Next time I'll keep a better eye on how long it took me, but all in all it didn't take very long at all. I would consider it a good full afternoon project once you get the hang of it down. If you were doing it all by hand... probably a good weekend project. And like I noted on the top, the tutorial didn't specify how much fabric, but I measured after I drew out all the pieces and it was about a 12 inch by 12 inch square that it all took up for this size.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

baby blocks



So I made these last weekend that we're going to give to Tony's cousin who is having a baby girl very soon. They took nearly an entire day and my shoulder was pretty upset at me, but I was feeling pretty inspired to do them so I wanted to get them done while I was feeling it. I think they came out really great, and I'm probably going to make more.



I included just this one closeup because the others came out a little blurry and I didn't feel like taking more pics at the time. I'm either going to make little booties to match or a blankie.

So now I'm trying to figure out what I could do on boy themed blocks instead of the flowers. So far all I can think of is maybe a shooting star. Like I could put trails instead of the vine and put a star for the flower. That's all I came up with so far though.

Now I've been working on this: zig zag quilt I've never actually completed a quilt that I've started yet. But this seems pretty easy and I'm breezing through it right now, already 3 rows in and I just started it today. I'm using mostly old fabric that I've never known what to do with and some clothing that Tony and I don't plan on wearing again but that we like too much to throw out. So far it's blues, greens, black, and white, and I think one grey. I'm going to need to find a few more pieces to finish it though, and I'll definitely need to get something to cover the back... or... if I can manage to wrestle the black silky sheet away from the ferrets I could use that. But who knows, they've had it for quite a while now.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Something cute and a second (or third?) try at this

So I know I've just stopped all together on this blogging thing a few times now.... but I thought I'd give it another go. Sorry in advance if anyone gets interested and I suddenly just stop posting again, I had good intentions when I started this all but I guess my heart just hasn't been that into blogging as I thought I might be.

Anywho-

Here's this cute little fabric dollhouse I made as a present for one of our friends whose baby just turned 1 (Not sure what happened with the pics, I gotta figure out what photo editing tools this laptop has).












The little birthday girl liked it a lot, and was pulling out the little stuffed animals and checking them out right away. And a lot of the female adults who also sew a little seemed even more interested, lol. They passed it around and asked questions about it and one even took many pictures from all angles!

I checked out a tutorial that I found here: fabric doll house tutorial link She has quite a few fun little things that I might be giving a try in the near future. Then I did some google searching for fabric dollhouses and looked at some flickr groups dedicated to them to get some inspiration on what I might want to put for details and such.

But when we went to get the fabric the place we went to didn't have plastic canvas (which I still think is very weird to not have a crafting basic like that), so I got some of that really heavy Pellon interfacing, the iron on kind. Come to think of it I never tested if it's the double sided or not. My plans changed part way through the house and I didn't iron it at all, I just sewed the fabric onto it. But they make a kind that's one sided interfacing and another that's 2 sided. It's great stuff that you can make a lot with. I made a purse with it: chinese food box purse which was always a hit, and I'm thinking I might make another as it's time for another purse. And I don't think I have a picture of them, but you can make great fabric bowls with them too.

Well, it's just about time for the ferrets to have their soup so I think I'll get going. I'll have some pictures (hopefully better ones than the house) of some really really cute baby blocks I made this last weekend. I'm quite proud of them they're so very adorable lol.
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