Place mat tutorial

 The Valentine's Day place mats I mentioned last Wednesday are finally finished! I was not sure about the binding and in the end used the colour of the writing. The pink fabric is from Summersville available at Etsy. 

Finished! 

 So how did I write the quote on the linen fabric and followed the Wit and Whistle tutorial. Here is what you need: 

• Linen fabric
• Fabric Marker Pen (Sharpie pen)
• Letter stencil

I would advise you to put pages underneath...

Here we are.. Simple really. Let me know if you are making one!


It is Wednesday... Just... SO I am linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Placemats are finished, yeah! I can move on to the next quilt - involving shirts and upcycling, more on this next week...

In progress and a real IT achievement (for me)! (Updated!)

It is Wednesday, and therefore it is W.I.P. Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced. 

What to report ... I made some progress with my two placemats for Valentine's Day (yes that would be for yesterday... or 14th Feb 2013 as the case may be now). Actually I saw it coming and I did not over do it on the hearts, so we may be able to use them before next year. 

The left hand side fabric is from Summersville on Etsy,
and right hand side one some linen fabric bought on Amazon

A tutorial to come on how I printed the quote on the linen fabric. Who can guess what it says? 


I can report NO progress on the shirt patchwork ... so there is no point to talk about it. 



I also need to make something out of these fabulous scraps I received from Indianna Dreams. As none of us really had some scraps, we decided to swap some fabric pieces. I was SO excited about it. She chose so well for me - look at all the grey and yellow. Need to put on my thinking cap now... 

Scraps

Winnowing is on its way, I am at that stage when I misjudged how much yarn I needed, and I am waiting, anxiously I may add, for that package. 

Winnowing waiting to be finished

FINALLY! I do have a button you can grab on the right-hand side bar... It took me AGES to get there... for something that is quite easy in the end... But everyone seems to have a different way to do it. (Sorry for those who came on this post before the updated version, it did not work, it should be fixed now and you can actually have your button...)

Anyway here are the steps I followed (a mix of different helpful blogger suggestions):


1. Choose your picture (I used my banner one... made sense right). I edited the picture with Picnik. 


2. I resized it to 125x 150 (should not be bigger than 150 to make sure it fits on other bloggers side bars)


3. Upload the picture to an online photo gallery service. I tried through Picasa, but my picture never appeared in the end (if someone managed to resolve that problem, please let me know). So I used Photobucket in the end - it is free and very fast. You get the HTML of your picture on the right hand-side.


4.Got to layout in blogger, to the design bar, and add an HTML gadget to the place you want your button to show. 


5. You can add a title ('Grab my button')


6. Copy the HTML Code you can find here. 


7. Paste the above HTML Code into the HTML gadget


8. Replace YOUR WEB ADDRESS by your blog address


9. Replace BLOG TITLE by a blog title of your choice (mine says Inspirations for Handmade)


10. Replace the IMAGE HTML ADDRESS by the HTML Code you found on Photobucket


11. Save it, test it and let me know how you got on! 

Basically not a lot ...

It is W.I.P. Wednesday, and what do I have to report - basically not a lot... On the positive side, I am making progress with the Happiness project - started running again, my house is getting more organised, I am sort of keeping to the Weight Watchers plan - and we have started our Britain in our kitchen blog (our 2012 challenge of eating only British food at home). I have also attempted to do some felting - with a varying degree of success (same wool, same temperature, definitely not the same result).

I was hoping to make a pouch out of those but the texture is so different, I may have to rethink this. I saw a patchwork felted blanket on pinterest... I may get tempted (although this project involves having many more jumpers).

I have also received my new Echo, Lotta Jansdotter, fabric which I love - this is

the colour scheme of my parents' new kitchen, and I am thinking of making some table mats for them (any interesting pattern out there? or inspiration?).

I also really really want to make a sewing machine cover - I do have a pattern in mind, so now it is a case of sitting down and getting on with it. And the small spring buds in grey (the right hand-side fabric) would be perfect!

As far as the knitting is concerned Winnowing is still going - hmmm -, and this weekend I had the joy of having to unstitch 3 entire rows - brilliant. I did make it good

- started the last part of the chart pattern - and then stopped. I will go back to it! I have now seen more Winnowing finished and it is really a beautiful garment, worth the 500+ stitches I am going to end up with at the end of the chart pattern.

Hopefully over at Freshly Pieced people will have more to report and get me inspired!

New Toy - Part II

Pictures of the sleeve for my yarn winder are finally uploaded! I think M is soon going to be sick of grey and yellow - I hope you are not yet, because I am hoping to make one more grey and yellow 'thing' for our little room this weekend.

Let's start by the fact that I love this yellow fabric bought on Etsy at Stefanie's shop. I have a bit of a thing about geometrics as we know, and this is undoutedly my favourite fabric. I love how the top of the sleeve turned out. I was not sure how to end the sleeve as the yarn winder is cylindric. I decided an easy closing method - using strings. It makes it much easier to use.

As I mentioned on Monday I made a second cushion cover (well only the top part) which I really did not need (it stayed 6 months untouched - that was clearly a sign, right?). So I cut it (breathing in and out along the way) and rearranged to make a square pattern. The cushion cover was too small for the length of the yarn winder - hence the need for more fabric at the top and bottom.

I was also going to add my fav yellow fabric at the bottom - but hmmm well maybe it was too much. Added some Kona solid banana from Simply Solids that I had left from the Cherry House QAL. Not a lot of quilting involved, a couple of lines at the bottom and at the top between the grey and yellow fabrics to reinforce the change.

So as we are Wednesday I have finally a chance to link up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced!

Off to Paris this afternoon, I am hoping to fit in a trip to La Droguerie (totally on the way back to the Eurostar - or not).. Will let you know how I got on Friday!