Camera pouch (hopefully)

Hey there everyone and happy new year to you all. I’ve missed being here but I’ve just not been at all motivated to craft much, so I’ve therefore had nothing to blog about. But today I got on with making my nephew’s Christmas present as we’re celebrating Christmas with them next weekend as we weren’t able to meet up on the holidays.

Anyway, my parents bought him a camera (which he’s already received) and my mum suggested I make him a pouch to keep it in. I wanted to make it padded, so I was able to have a go at using my free quilting foot for the first time.

I followed the instructions on this spoonflower blog, but adapted the sizing according to my mum’s measurements. Unfortunately now it’s done I don’t think it’s quite big enough. But now I’m going to wait and see and then if it’s too small I’ll make another one. The second attempt always goes better! Annoyingly, though, I don’t have enough of the dragon fabric to make a second one, and I think he’ll really like that fabric.

On the positive side :

• My quilting looks ok
• The pouch holds together!
• I’m really pleased with how it looks
• It’ll be useful for something else even if it doesn’t fit the camera!
• I’ve got pretty good at changing the feet on my sewing machine, even when it involves changing the foot fixing part as well
• I got to listen to cosmo sheldrake (one of my sewing albums!) for the first time in ages!

I’ll let you know if I end up making a bigger one! And I’ll hopefully get onto more crafting and you’ll see me here a bit more often 😉

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A cute embroidery

After inktober I seem to have lost my crafting energy. I’ve got more caught up in TV and books. But this week I’ve been embroidering a cute little mermaid, designed by tamar nahir yanai. I bought it to make for a little girl who is turning 7 this month. I was drawn by the fact that it would encourage me to learn new stitch techniques as it included the cast on stitch and the woven spider Web stitch, which is never done before. Having done these I’m really pleased with the different texture these give the finished piece.

I loved how the colours worked together. I wish I’d taken photos as I went along as the turquoise was the last colour I worked with and that made the whole design really pop.

I’ve enjoyed having a little project that taught me new things but that I could do whilst watching rubbishy TV!

Rather unsuccessful morning

At our craft session in church this morning my plan was to crochet the fourth square for my spirits of life shawl, and possibly begin to join them together. Instead here’s what I ended up with

Two hours of crochet, frog,crochet, exasperated sigh, frog again and I had little to show for it. Having finally got the central part of the square done and then looking at the pattern for adding the corners I realised I’d been working from the wrong document and have done the pattern for the original 4 squares, not the ones I was meant to be doing. Can you spot the difference?

So, now I have to start over with this particular square and just hope that this mistake doesn’t leave me short of yarn for finishing the project. If I happen to have any cotton left at the end then I might add a couple of rounds to this to make it into a coaster!

Sketch journal

I may not have been blogging, but I have been drawing every day still. I’ve started a sketch journal, and the idea is to draw something from that day. None of the pictures in and of themselves are amazing, but i’m enjoying thinking back over my day and trying to draw something about it from memory. The pages as a whole look cool with a little description underneath as well. I can’t show you the descriptions as they often mention other people, but hopefully these pictures will give you an idea of what I’ve been doing.

Inktober day 31 (final day!) – slice

Wow! I can’t believe I’ve actually achieved and completed this challenge. I genuinely drew one picture every day through October. I’ve had the opportunity to try out different styles (cartoon, realistic, portrait, single line etc) and learn shading techniques. I’ve found that drawing every day really does reduce the pressure to produce a perfect picture as you know there will be another chance to draw something new the next day.

Sometimes I’ve been brave enough to just draw with pen, other times I’ve started with pencil and gone over it with pen. Both have been valuable in their own ways.

I wasn’t sure how I would do with the challenge, or even if I would complete it, but I’m proud of myself for keeping on going, for facing the challenges and for not letting fear stop me from trying.

Today’s final prompt was slice and that made me think of a slice of lemon. Here’s the photo, and here’s my drawing.

It’s not my best (though I don’t think it’s my worst either… That dubious honour will always go to my roast chicken!), but it was cool to really look at the photo in detail and think about how the segments are made up. Interestingly I don’t think I can say which is my best, because they are different styles, but my favourites are: my chicken, battle of ypres, Rapunzel, the goldfinch, the turtle, Paris, the wine bottle and glass, the drain swirl, and my hedgehog. Which was your favourite from the month?

Inktober day 30 – jolt

Well today’s prompt was a bit of a difficult one. I had no idea what I was going to do for this. A google search of images linked to the word showed a character from sonic the hedgehog, who is called jolt. With nothing better to do I decided to copy him. Here is my first photo of him

After taking the photo I thought his eyes looked a bit lifeless, so decided to shade part of them in.

Unfortunately I think that made him look a bit drugged, which wasn’t what I was aiming for! I suppose I could get my white pen and go over it again?

There, still not great but I don’t know how else to fix it now!

From an uninspiring prompt I actually had quite a bit of fun with this picture.

Only one day left and the final prompt is ‘slice’. Anyone got any cool ideas for this one?

I hate bias binding

Oh I thought I was getting better at attaching bias binding round the edge of things but it turns out today’s might be my worst attempt ever. I just hope the recipient of this can overlook the shoddy workmanship and is won over by the cute little hedgehogs and mice!

next time I need to just get out the instructions again and follow them instead of thinking I know what I’m doing!