A while ago I mentioned that I was going to give Hexipuffs a go… I love the pattern, and I’d been wanting to make a quilt for aaaages, so being able to knit little parts of one inbetween other projects seemed ideal!… well, turns out they’re not for me – I couldnt get the shape to work and so had to tweak the pattern a few times, and it was all very time consuming and required a lot of concentration for each one (for me anyway). So here’s the evolution of my hexipuffs…

Top left: following the pattern left me with something shaped more like a clam shell – Top Right: after a bit of research online I worked out how to fix that using a seamless cast on, but then the top half of the hexagon was longer than the bottom half, I could have still made it work but I wanted them to be proper hexagons – Bottom Left: I finally managed to even them out… I have notes somewhere, but not sure what I did now! (If anyone is having the same issues and would like to know give me a shout and I’ll dig them out.) So this one I actually stuffed. The quilt may have defeated me but at least I’m no longer losing sleep over misshapen hexipuffs…

So, after 3 finished attempts (and about 300 half-way-before-undoing-it-alls) I finally got the shape sorted and then decided that was enough for me – I’d fixed the problem but it was going to take waaaaay too long to make enough for a blanket.

During this time my friend Amber had started work on a quilt using fabric hexagons, and a few weeks ago she did a blog post on the process. It looked a lot less stressful and required a fraction of the concentration the hexipuffs did, and I could sit on the sofa in front of the TV/on the train/anywhere to make them; not hunched behind a sewing machine (yet) so I was sold! Conveniently in that same week my Mollie Makes subscription gift arrived with a whole bunch of different fabrics for me to start with!

I decided to make my hexagons quite small (each side is 1 inch) so it’s going to take a while. I’m currently totalling 105 Hexagons and it just about covers the size of one side of a pillow, so I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m really enjoying it. I’m doing 3 hexagons from each different fabric print so I don’t have to buy quite as much fabric) so I’m waiting until I have enough before I sew them all together to make sure patterns are evenly dispersed – though it means that that part is going to be long and tedious

I’m quite happy for this project to drag on for a while though, as each time I sit down and sew a bunch of hexagons I feel like I’m making good progress compared to the hexipuffs.

AAAND finally, because you can never have too many craft projects on the go… Amber very patiently taught me how to make a granny square this week. Finally! I can crochet something! So I’m also working on a small blanket made of those… it’s quite a quick process though, the more squares I do, the more I pick up speed – and I can do them on the tube to and from work so easily. I decided to make each square one colour to cut time spent swapping colours, and I thought it might make it look a little more contemporary. I’m also making the squares a good size so I’ll have less bits to sew together and can build it up quicker.

As I’ve been missing for a while I thought I’d do a quick post about a few bits I’ve been working on inbetween all the wedding stuff before I catch you up on what I’m currently working away on…

I started subscribing to Mollie Makes; it’s super cute and I love some of the ideas in there. I ordered one of the back issues so that I could get the free kit to make this keyring/bag charm. Think I might use my fabric and felt stash to make some in different colours…

I worked on a few baby items too, using the most awesome chasmere – merino blend in a silvery grey (a lot lighter than it looks in the photos). First was a baby blanket from one of the Stitch’n'Bitch books for a good friend of my boyfriends, and then I made a hat and scratch mitts for a girl at work…

The most recently finished project was my iPhone case. I love it, and I get a lot of compliments on it. I bought the case from Firebox and used my stash of embroidery floss to come up with a colourful pattern (you only get 3 colours with the case). I made the pattern up as I went along and tried to make sure I used even amounts of the colours. I had intended to unpick it and redo it when I got bored of the design, but it took so long to complete, so I may have to buy a second case instead!

I have done a little work on my Hug cushion, though I’m nearly done with the colour which means I’ll need to start filling all the white areas, but that seems incredibly tedious so it’ll probably sit in my craft basket for another 6 months. I should probably try and do a little each week…

So that’s just about it for now, I’m starting on a few other projects that I’ll update on soon, and have my eye on a whole bunch of other new projects!

When I found out that Felt Mistress was doing a London workshop I immediately snapped up two tickets, luckily when I asked Charlie Sews if she’d like to go she was as excited as me!

So on Saturday 30th June we tootled off to Foyles and met the lovely lady herself and she showed us how to make some awesome monsters.

We each chose a brown bag containing all the bits we needed to create a monster, and were given the choice of colour scheme too, and there was a bunch of trimmings, buttons and additional felt to use, alongside templates for additional features so we could go crazy and customise the monsters however we wanted.

I nabbed a bag with the turquoise felts (I’m a sucker for turquoise) and Charlie Sews went for the pinks and purples – so we instantly decided, as I was clearly making a male monster and she was making a female, that they were destined to be together.

I wanted to add lots of detail to my monster so I picked up a few additonal colours – purple & orange, and some black for his accessories – a big ‘tash was top of my list of must-haves so I cut that out first, followed by the glasses and nose, and I used one of the existing pieces from the bag for his chest hair…

The first thing I sewed was the chest hair, sewing on a pattern to keep it in place rather than sewing around the edge of the piece. The next bit was the nose, and Charlie Sews very kindly taught me how to to blanket stitch (finally! it’s about time I learned!) so that I could put a little stuffing in it. The hard job was attaching the eyes, adding these was as far as I got during the workshop, then we packed up and headed home (via Bodeans for a pulled pork sandwich. yum). Once home we both couldn’t wait to crack on, so I sewed on the ‘tash, tacked the nose and glasses in place, sewed on the eyebrows, and gave him some nipples…

That was more than enough work for one night, but the next day I was back at it, giving Lance (as he was now named) some orange trousers, and a sequined belt. Most importantly, before sewing him up, I gave him a tattoo – ‘Lola’ emblazoned on a pink heart – it must be love!

So here he is, Lance, in all his nipple bearing glory. I’d strongly recommend going along if Felt Mistress does any more workshops, it was so much fun and we met some really lovely folk.

If you’d like to meet Lola, the love of Lance’s life, you should check out Charlie Sews’ blog as she’ll be posting photos soon

On New Years Eve 2011 one of my best friends got engaged, and in June this year I was lucky enough to be bridesmaid at her wedding. I was also trusted with a lot of jobs for the wedding. More fool her!

Charlotte had a lot of different ideas for the theme she wanted but finally settled on a festival theme as her and husband to be (Josh) are big Glastonbury fans.

The colour scheme was bright colours – pinks, yellows, oranges and a little red – and pretty hippyish and laid back.

They sent me a link to a poster they’d found that they liked the style of and I used this as the inspiration for the wedding invited we designed….

Charlotte had a pretty clear idea of what she wanted but she was quite happy to leave me to crack on with stuff. The final invite had a bunch of little bits and pieces – there was the invite itself which was the illustration printed onto card, and the details printed onto velum which Charlotte then sewed together on her sewing machine with gold thread, then there was the RSVP cards which were business card sized and came with a “Yes” and “Sorry” sticker. There was also a postcard with a map and directions from the Abbey to the reception venue, and details of local taxi’s and hotels…

The next big job on the list was the cake topper. Charlotte and Josh had no say in this as they weren’t to see it until the big day. It took quite some time – a lot of evenings and a bunch of full on weekends, but it was worth it in the end…

A lot of tiny detail went into this one, and I decided to try something new with the bunting and kebab skewers, but it worked really well as it finished off the topper nicely and framed the figures when they were sat on top of the cake.

To give you a bit of an idea of scale here’s the bouquet…

I traveled to the venue the day before the wedding to help set everything up. Between fluffing pompoms, hanging pompoms, assembling paper lanterns, tying ribbons to things, claming down the bride-to-be and sticking up bunting, I was given the task of writing out the seating plan on a giant chalkboard, which wasn’t all bad; I got to hide away in the giant teepee, listening to the rain and doodling away…

So it got to about 8pm and all the other helpers had headed home, so me and the bride sat down to decorate the wedding cake – Charlotte had bought plain iced cakes from Marks and Spencers and we’d picked up some coloured M&Ms so stick to the outside – what I hadnt realised was that Charlotte wanted me to paint one of the layers – so with no idea what to paint on it, and no pencil and paper to practice or scribble ideas I had to just go for it…

I wasn’t best pleased with the painting – the food colouring wouldn’t take to the icing so it all ran and pooled at the bottom of each painted shape which was a shame, but the whole thing looked pretty ace on the day with the topper on top…

The whole day was fantastic, and Charlotte did such an awesome job pulling her festival theme together, guests even brought their wellies due to the typical british, festival weather…

Big congrats to the awesome Mr and Mrs Wooding

Finally, after a good year or so, I’ve finished my jumper!  Many thought it would never happen. Even I thought it would never happen.

In September last year I posted on my blog after sewing in roughly 6 million ends, and after leaving it in my knitting basket for 7 months I figured maybe I should finish it off.

It wasn’t a big job (it’s taken me maybe an hour all in) but the longer I put it off the longer I could avoid discovering that it didn’t fit… as it turns out, IT DOES! It could do with being a little longer in the torso but nothing a vest top underneath can’t fix.

The seams actually sewed together a lot neater than I thought they would, the raglan arms were created by binding off stitches at the beginning of each row which created a stepped edge, and I wasn’t sure how nicely the pieces would fit together so I’d considered just decreasing the rows next time, but I guess it’s best to stick to the pattern.

So the next project I’m looking at is the Beekeeper Quilt. If you’re even the tiniest bit interested in knitting you’ll have heard all about Hexipuffs and how addictive they are, so a couple of months ago I finally gave in and bought the pattern.  It’s going to be massively time consuming so it’ll probably continue to run alongside other stuff too (like the Emily Peacock Cushions I’m working on – nearly finished the first one! Hurrah!) but I can’t wait!

Well, I finally did it… I sorted out my website and updated my blog! It only took me, erm, 4 months… hurrah!

There’s still a few tweaks to do on the site but it’s close enough for now so you’ll just have to make do…

So, what have you missed the last few months?… I moved into a new flat in Mornington Crescent, made my first ever Christmas Cake, had a very crafty Christmas making as many presents as I could, attempted to do a doodle a day (it lasted about 20 days), became slightly obsessed with Instagram, went on a giant egg hunt around London, baked (a lot), worked on some wedding invites for Charlie Sews Stuff, turned 27, went to Cardiff for Doctor Who Conference and most exciting of all… got myself a shiney new job at Mind Candy! Good times all round!

Aaaanyway, I thought I’d better post something vaguely interesting in the hope you all might keep coming back to visit, so I thought I’d share one of the Christmas presents I made this year (well, I say Christmas present but the poor recipient didn’t get it until mid March…)

My good friend Meg is, like myself, a bit of a Doctor Who fan, so when we agreed to make each other Christmas presents it was always going to be Who-themed.

I hadn’t made anything with felt before and decided to give it a go. I wanted to make something practical (an iPhone or iPad cover) but that went out of the window in favour of a felt TARDIS and Matt Smith (Meg is yet to realise that David Tennant is a far superior Doctor)

I didn’t want to push my luck by attempting to make anything 3D so I kept it all pretty simple…

First I drew up my cartoony Matt Smith, making sure I drew all the layers I’d need to cut out. I then used that drawing as a template and traced all the individual pieces I needed onto tracing paper. I roughly cut around each shape, pinned the paper to the felt (or for smaller pieces just held it in place, being careful not to let it budge) and cut along the pencil lines though the paper and felt.

The next stage was to put all the pieces together to work out what order they all needed to be sewn together, I jotted down some rough notes to avoid any silly mistakes halfway through!

I was pretty pants at taking photos of the process, but the next stage was fairly straight forward… sewing it all together! I used a bit of wadding to pad Matt out a little as I went, it also made him a bit sturdier, and I tried to match the thread colour to the felt where possible…

The TARDIS was made in the same way; drawing it up, tracing out the indivdual pieces and then sewing it altogether, but then I had to do all the embroidery for the door panel and sign above the door, this probably took longer than the rest put together as there was a lot of unpicking and re-sewing! There was also a ribbon sewn into one of the side seams with a loop on the end which allowed Matt to be attached to the TARDIS via a small button hidden underneath the back his jacket…

So, that’s about it… Matt went down with his new owner very well (despite the fact he was so delayed) and he even tagged along to the convention with us (photos on my twitter account)…

Well, that’s the first one done, here’s hoping I manage to keep on top of updating the blog this time around!

Just a quick one; here’s a link to the video from Innocent about the Big Knit 2011 – it’s what I was knittin’ hats for innit…

Recently I’ve been looking at a lot of charity knitting and I’m finding it’s a great way to keep my fingers busy without ending up with a houseful of stuff I don’t really need!
I’ve found a bunch of knitting projects, for all for very different causes -

Preemies UK – knitting clothes, blankets and all sorts of useful/comforting things for premature babies
Knitted Knockers – knitted prosthetics for mastectomy patients: sounds a little bizzare but they really do help and it’s nice that the subject is being approached with humour
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home – knitting Catnip mice for homeless cats
Innocence Smoothie Big Knit - knitting wee hats for smoothies (you’ve most likely seen them in stores) to raise money for Age UK

I decided to start off small so as not to be too disheartened (making small things means I can churn out a lot of them too) and knit a bunch of Catnip mice for Battersea – I used 4 contrasting colours of wool and knit the ears in the same colours but switching them round so each mouse had contrasting ears. I brought some more wool back with me last time I visited home (I have a monster stash that I’m bringing down to London a bag at a time) so I think I’ll be a little more adventurous with the next lot…

Last week and friend of mine tweeted about the Innocence Smoothie Big Knit. This year they’re looking to collect 650,000 knitted hats (those who can’t knit can send back last years hats – they count too!) and for each bottle of smoothie wearing a hat that is sold they’ll donate 25p of it to Age UK.
I had set myself the goal of knitting 10 hats by the deadline of October 14th, but after knitting 4 this weekend I think I can probably set myself a higher goal, and so I’m going to aim for 40 hats – which would help them raise £10 (25p per hat)

So here are the first few – The pom-poms are pretty big, I know, but I’m using a plastic pom pom template I had, rather than cutting out a whole load of them from card, and this is the smallest it allows me to make them, but I still think they’re kinda cute. I stuck with the intermediate pattern for now, but I think this week I’ll give the advanced pattern a go (It involves ears flaps, but is still pretty basic)…

It’s worth checking out the website, they have a hat of the week too – people do some pretty amazing stuff!

Once the deadline has passed for the Innocence Hats, and I’ve knitted a small army of Mice, I’m going to buy some baby wool to knit some pieces for Preemies UK – starting with hats then moving on to *drum roll* cardigans! – need to learn how to knit a buttonhole :s

In other news I finally finished sewing the bzillion ends into my jumper and knitted the neck!… and now I’m putting off sewing all the seams together and avoiding the inevitable – that it probably won’t fit! ha!

Next up was Marie and Chris’ wedding. I’ve been friends with Marie since we’ve been about 4 so I was lucky enough to be asked to be a bridesmaid (for the first time!) and do lots of other bits for the wedding.

The first thing on the list was the wedding invites – both daytime/ceremony and evening – unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the evening ones and the only daytime ones I have were taken on my phone.
They wanted something really simple which tied in with the colour scheme. Marie bought pre-made cards then I added a strip of ribbon in blue (there was also a thinner white ribbon on top of this but the spray mount wouldn’t hold them so I had to take them off annoyingly) and then their initials on the front with some diamantes – not usually a fan of diamantes but they just finished it off a little…

The next job for Chris and Marie’s wedding – and just as time consuming as the invites – was the cake topper. For this job I didn’t really have to refer back to the bride and groom much as I wanted it to be a surprise for them, the only input they had was mostly from Chris; requesting that he be wearing a Hawaiian shirt (which Marie knew about) and that Marie be stood on a yellow pages (which she didn’t know about). So neither were allowed to see the topper before the wedding; Marie wasn’t allowed to know about the yellow pages and Chris couldn’t see what the dress was going to look like, so it meant they had to just leave me to get on with it!
There were a lot of late nights spent on it after work so I didn’t waste much time taking photos of the process and stupidly only took a finished photo on my phone, hopefully the photographer got a decent one…

Now that I have a bit of time I have a few little projects ready to start, as well as ongoing ones! but I want to do a separate post on those in the hope it’ll force me to complete them… and make it look like i’m getting better at updating…