Gift Bazaar 1944

Found this at the "Classy Flea."

Fun ideas for days. I have plans for the pig. Wait and see.


She looks just like all the picture of my grandmother.


Such cute baby bibs.


Love that pig! There are more images up at my flickr.

Lenard

Meet Lenard. He started his life out on someones back as a wool sweater. Lenard now leads a far more glamorous life as an international poster bird for the crafty reuse of said sweater. To create your own international poster bird follow my step by step.

Pinkie Ramone

Pinkie was born last night at the class I taught at SCAD. Everyone had fun and 5 new plush monsters were brought into the world. I shared the article published in Craft by Moxie to help the students get started.

 

How Cute is this?

A couple of my students came out to Kraftworks last week and when they arrived back at school they were insistent that I teach them how to make plushies. I already had some cool eyes and an idea of how to create dolls based on drawings from the class this summer, so I said sure. One more teenager who can sew is a great thing.

So they brought in some old clothes, mostly tee shirts and a wool jacket with fake fur to recycle for the project. Officially these guys are in my photography class, the original thought was to create a plushie menagerie to use as part of one student's final portfolio. His enthusiasm quickly transfered to a number of other students.

One of them suggested I teach a craft class, innocent fools. If there were only enough hours in the day.

Here I am sporting one of the creatures I made at the Mary Ray Lecture on Saturday. Photo complements of Mary Ray

Charcoal Man Plushie

I made my first Plushie. It was great fun. I have wanted to play with childsafe eyes for ever and my Indie Art Class at Scad gave me a valid (Class Supplies) reason to order some. I was inspired by a cool book I recently got Invasion of the Plush Monsters. I was a bit more free form the night of the class, but here he is. My personal Charcola Bricket.


My hubby think he should be renamed after the cavity residing in our 7 year olds mouth.

Melly and Me

Hope you all are having a great summer. We are. We just checked in again at the Melly and Me blog and Melly's a new auntie and quite proud. The laptop bag she's working on ain't no slouch either.

Here's a link to their patterns. We love them so much and we're proud to be able to carry them for you in the US.

New Patterns from Melly & Me

Well, I am automatic order with the folks in Upper Ferntree Gully and there are new patterns in from Melly and her sister Rosalie Quinlan. Introducing Petunia, Dudley, Florance, Blossom the butterfly and a new purse pattern Flower Garden. We also added one of their quilt patterns Billie, which I am making a sample of using Malibu Monkey.
From Rosalie we have 6 of her beautiful primitive dolls and her new book called Gifts which is perfect for those of you starting your holiday gift making. Proceeds from her book support Breast Cancer Research, she is a surviver.

Working toward the GOAL - Handmade Holiday

I am feeling pretty good about the upcoming Holiday. I made the pledge to do a handmade holiday. Friday I took the girls to the school to work on clay angels and ornaments. It was a disaster, of sorts. I think any time you take your kids to do something you love to do by yourself you are setting yourself and them up for frustration. They were fairly good about listening, but try explaining waiting for clay to get leather hard before moving the ornaments or how to slip and score clay so their amazing sculptures don't die in the kiln. I went back on Saturday, mostly to clean up, but I was seduced by the silence and started to make a few small things. All of the sudden it was noon and I needed to get home. I can't wait for tomorrow to check on all of our work and begin to load the kiln.


I continued with the good work on Saturday, I cut out the cutest doll from a great new book I just picked up called, Toys to Sew. The doll has the longest legs I have every seen, way cute, as are most of the projects in the book. It is a MUST HAVE!!!

I found an old pattern I clipped from a 1985 Quilter Mag from my mom, supposed to be a guardian angel. I am going to rework the pattern and make her seated, she looks goofy flying.

AND last I drew up a cute kitty to make into ornaments. We have a bunch of kitty lovers in our family. All of the photos are of the patterns in natural. I will use printed fabric on the final projects.

I went to 2 great holiday sales in the past 2 weeks, "The Work of our Hands" and "E*L Sapo" I found some great things at both of them. There is another artist market at Chastain Art Center, that I hope to sneak off to this week.

What's Pink & Purple & Cute All Over....

This little guy is just TOO cute for words so I had to include some pictures of course! Rumpled Quiltskins. That's the name of the patterns and I fell in love with them when I saw them. I wanted to make all of them but settled on three...the Elephant, the Lion, and some fishies. Lions have fluffy manes, these fishies have lots of pieces, so I thought I'd start with the elephant.

This pattern is not for the faint of heart or the easily discouraged. There are lots of pieces (some rather small), some "gasp" hand basting, some rather precise seaming, and some stay-stitching and clipping. The machine stitching is rather time consuming as you have to quilt all these pieces individually before assembling. It wasn't hard and I just drew the lines on the muslin backing, put the right color in the bobbin and stitched on the lines. The instructions say to use tracing paper and a wheel and transfer the markings to the right side. I didn't have tracing paper but I did have lots of thread and a pencil! I was told they are not "stuffed animals", they are "soft sculptures" and I think this is a better way to look at these little creatures. However you look at it, they are 100% adorable and worth the effort.

The fabric is Lonni Rossi, which you all have seen me argue with before! Fortunately for this little guy, directional fabric was not an issue as it was in small quantities. I do have to confess though, I tried to get Pickled Mushroom on the bottom of one of the feet. Much to my dismay when I got to that part, the instructions said that the feet were oversized to accommodate different size legs! The resulting words turned out to be "ickle hroo". Hence this elephant will be named Ellie Ickle Hroo.

The End.