Wednesday 15 April 2015

Oh for the love of sewing! An Easter Bunny, some cute pincushions, a dress and a neon pompom loop scarf

Hello again!

I mentioned previously how much I loved watching The Great British Sewing Bee! I found it so inspiring!

At Easter we went to England to visit my family. I came back with a huge load of craft magazines. In one of the Mollie makes magazines I found an adorable Easter Bunny made from felt. I decided that I just had to sew one myself! I made mine smaller than in the instructions (basically the same size as the .pdf printout).

A Bunny Plushy

Here is the free template to download and print out:
molliemakes bunny plushy templates










Some cute little pincushions

This was another project I always wanted to try out. I used a jam jar lid as a template to cut out 2 fabric circles that I sewed together. I stuffed them with the cut off ends collected from various finished projects, a great way to recycle yarn ends! (Incidentally, I also used them to stuff the bunny!) Then I sewed some embroidery thread through the middle several times and cinched it tight! I added a pretty button to finish it off! I made some smaller versions as brooches!




2 tiny Brooches and 1 pincushion


My first dress

On monday afternoon after finishing my Minty Shawl, I decided that I wanted to have a go at dressmaking! I took a basic T-Shirt Dress and used this as a template. I spent half the afternoon on the floor! Cleo was my helper!!! I didn't like the outside of the fabric, I preferred the plain side which looks more woven. I managed to find this large piece of material (2x2m) in one of the charity shops (Kringwinkel). It was a bargain at 3 Euro!

By the evening my first ever dress was finished and ready to wear. It feels incredibly comfortable and is lovely to wear in this spring weather. I made it very long, it's a sleeveless Maxi Dress!




creating a paper pattern from an existing dress

Using this pattern to cut fabric

Cleo my little helper
Wear it as soon as it's finished!

Ta-dah! My first dress

Finished Maxi Dress with inserted Side Panels



A Neon Pompom Loop Scarf

Yesterday I did another sewing project - A loop scarf. I had bought a remnant piece of material in England in Aqua  Blue with thin Coral Red Orange Stripes. I cut it in half and attached the two pieces lengthways.

Adding the pompom trim (2m long bought at Veritas), proved to be a challenge, I needed to take the sewing foot off! Overall I'm very happy with another funkycrochet original! It's nice to know that I made it myself and nobody else will have an identical piece!







I loved the colourful threads



Here are some photos of my combined efforts!








Hope you had fun reading this post! I just saw it will be my 50th blog post, woohoo!!!

Do you sew? What was your first ever make? Looking forward to reading your comments!

Oh for the love of knitting! A little progress on the Linen Stitch Cowl

Hello again!

Just a very short post this time, showing you some pictures of the linen stitch cowl! It is growing steadily, but slowly as I'm using 3mm needles. I love how the colours interact with each other!
It has grown to 8cm wide - the cowl should be around 140cm round.





Have you tried Linen stitch? Feel free to leave me your comment below! I look forward to reading them.





Oh for the love of crochet!! A new Spring Jumper, a Minty Shawl and the Elise

Welcome back, my lovely blogfriends!

This post is well overdue, I know!! Sorry that you had to wait so long! I'm currently having problems with my laptop (it is getting old), it keeps getting too hot and then switching off after a short time. For this reason I've been hardly online lately.

The upside to this is that I have been very productive and I have a lot of new things to show to you!!!

This is a crochet only post today! I decided to group my projects by craft category. There will be some more posts coming!

A new Spring Jumper

At the very end of March we went to East Germany for an annual music festival. On this long trip I managed to complete my first ever crochet jumper!!!

It was a lovely project, I followed my very own ideas and had no pattern! It is a basic treble shell stitch in three colours. The yarn is Scheepjeswol Stonewashed XL. I had been itching to try out the thicker version of this yarn. And no, it is not itchy, but soft and squashy! (I first wrote about it in my previous post).







A minty Shawl 

I came across this wonderful interesting crochet pattern on this
blog:http://beesandappletrees.blogspot.be/  Martine calls it a crochet wrap. Sadly I don't know the original name for the pattern, but it is pretty and very easy to follow. I loved the rhythm of it.

Minty Shawl pattern here! 

I made mine with Sirdar Americana yarn (60% Cotton, 40% Acrylic). I bought it last summer in England, but sadly this yarn has now been discontinued! I'm hoping to find some more online!

I only had 3 balls in a lovely minty green colour, so I made a smaller shawl that wraps around the neck. For that funkycrochet touch I added some tassels!!!



small beginnings




Creating tassels by winding yarn around a book

adding tassels

Ta-Dah!!!







The Elise Shawl 


This pattern has been on my crochet list for quite some time! I think I saw it first on Meredith's lovely blog, you can read about one of her versions here!

To me it appears that this Elise shawl is indeed related to the wonderful South Bay Shawlette, you can find both (free) patterns on ravelry!

I started this last night and I'm finally getting to grips with it! I am trying out the new Scheepjes Softfun Denim, which was released for this Spring. It is very easy to work with and feels so soft!









I hope you enjoyed reading this post! I'm looking forward to your comments, they really make my day! What are you crocheting at the moment?