Happy Halloween!

Mwahhhaaah! Happy Halloween to all you spooks out there. Yet again it's been a while since I posted, but at least I have been making something. If I'd had my thinking cap on I'd have taken some photos as I was doing it, but this Halloween mask is really sooo simple to make it I think you can do without them. First take a rectangle of grey felt long enough and wide enough to fit round your eyes (you could measure this, but really you'll get a good enough result by guesstimating). Then take a square of medium weight iron on interfacing the same size as the felt and iron it on to the back. Next iron on some bondaweb onto the front followed by the spiderweb lace (cover with a tea towel when ironing this on). Then you just need to draw your mask shape on to the back of the interfacing and cut out (you may want to practice and make up a paper template first). To get the right positioning for the eyes I put my glasses down on the back of the mask and marked round them. If you don't wear glasses then you could try holding on to your face the wrong way round (interfacing outwards) and marking the points for the outer corners of your eyes that way. It's a good idea to cut one eye first then fold the mask in half and draw round the cut out for the second eye to ensure that they're positioned symmetrically. Now you just need to sew on some elastic (measure it round your head from one side of the mask to the other and remember to make it a little shorter so it isn't loose). Here's how the finished mask looks without spookyvision:


Looking back to my halloween photos from last year shows just what a difference a year makes. Two have grown and one (me) has shrunk. I don't know why I haven't got round to blogging about it, but since March this year I've been doing weight watchers and finally reached my goal weight last Tuesday having lost 2st 11.5 lb - quite a chunk of me really. If you're struggling to visualise just how much that is (and I can never quite get my head round it) it's basically as much as the young skeleton in this years picture - don't think I'd fancy carrying round one of him all day now, but I was!

New word

New word
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Slowly and surely new words are starting to emerge. Mama, dada and brother have been around for a while now. The latests two are:


knee (as in 'I want to sit on your' or just 'knee, knee, knee' in lottalingo.
no - I think I'm going to be hearing a lot of this last one.

Flower Garden Bag

Flower Garden Bag
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Don't seem to get much time for crafting at the moment, but did manage to make a small handbag for one of my friends daughters last month. These a quite an easy make and they're a good way to use up the jelly roll strips I bought a while back and have been wondering what to do with (though could just curse myself for not getting a coordinating fabric from the same range - now discontinued - to use for the lining. Just goes to show you really should bag that fabric while you can even if you don't know what you're going to use it for (ahem).

Quite shocking to see that the last time that I blogged was Easter - not very good going. I've had to switch comments on to moderation now after that last post was deluged with spam comments in chinese (?) script.

Happy Easter

089
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Happy Easter everybody! Trying to avoid too much chocolate for the little ones this year (especially as I'm weight watching at the moment so watching other people eat piles of chocolate is torture), so I though I'd have another go at one of the projects from Poppy Treffry's book, this time the egg cozies. I am sooo pleased with the way they turned out - I'd never have thought I had it in me to draw something like these little chicks with the sewing machine, but it was really quite easy once I'd followed the picture. I tend to be the sort of person that normally buys craft books, pours through them then never makes any of the projects inside, but this book really has me itching to make all the items inside it. Well done Poppy for a fabulous book!

Happy Birthday

Birthday card
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Can't believe how quickly it has come round, but my little daughter is now one! The last year just seems to have flown by. It feels a little sad as I don't really feel like I had the time to enjoy my time off with her like I did with my first one, but I guess that's just the way that it goes when you've got more than one little one to contend with.

Anyway I thought the occasion deserved to be marked with something special - I've been itching to have a go at making one of these machine embroidered cards since I got a copy of Poppy Treffry's 'Free and Easy Stitch Style' for christmas (a great book by the way - I would reccomend it to anyone wanting to have a go at this style of machine embroidery/applique). I thought it was a great idea to cover the whole card with fabric - I've seen lots before which just have a little embroidered or appliqued motif stuck to the front of the card, but covering the whole card with fabric gives it a really nice finish and has the bonus of making a good dent in my fabric stash too. Assuming I can find the time, I can see myself making quite a few more of these especially as I have a number of birthdays coming up in the near future.

New resoloutions

Well last year I started with no resoloutions so I can truthfully say I didn't fall behind on any of them! This year though I'd like to try and get a bit more done on the crafting front so I was delighted to see that Helen has started A Make a Month group on flickr Crafting 365 certainly ain't going to happen for me, but I think one make a month is a nice achievable target to set and if I manage more then so much the better.

I had already planned to make a taggie blanket as a birthday present for my little girl who will be one in February and is starting nursery soon (yikes - where has the time gone)! She seems to be rather taken with blankies at the moment so I decided to take the plunge and buy some minkie to make one. Originally I was planning to make a patchwork one with some lovely Liberty Tania Lawn fabric I bought recently, but after taking stock I realised I'd never get it done in time so I raided my stash of Japanese prints and found this adorable fabric which I hadn't quite known what to do with.