Two Owls Design

Christmas Run-Up: Handmade Presents part 2

I often approach gift buying for others, especially couples, from the perspective of 'what would I/we as a couple like as a gift?' and work from there. In fact I've now come to the conclusion that when designing patterns and products the most successful designs are those I've made for myself, things that please me seem more likely to please others too. Designing what I think other people want feels a bit cynical and never produces a truly satisfactory result. Well unless I'm working to a client brief in which case doing whatever I pleased wouldn't exactly fly. Anyway I digress, this post is actually meant to be about the patio pots I made (assembled is possibly more appropriate) to give as 'couples' gifts this year.
I love having a colourful, planted pot at our doorstep throughout the summer and when the withered remnants were removed this autumn, inspired by my Mum's beautiful winter hanging baskets, we decided to replace it with one planted up for winter. So from there I got to making several (11 in the end) to give to friends and family for Christmas. Each one contained an ivy, primrose and either crocus, dwarf daffodil or iris. If you're looking for a money saving gift to make this only fits the bill if you can get hold of good value outdoor pots, nice ones can be expensive, pushing the cost up before the plants and compost are added on.

I think that's about it for the Christmas posts, I can get around to starting 2012 properly now.

Christmas Run-Up: Handmade presents part 1

I knitted this hat from a pattern in this book back when I was pregnant with Rowan, the condom hat as it was affectionately known. Well in an attempt to beef up Rowan's Christmas stocking I thought I'd knit a new, bigger one for him that we could wrap up for the big day. Aidan can be quite perceptive at times and I thought if he saw me making the hat and then it appeared in Rowan's stocking from Santa, his suspicions might be aroused about where the gifts really come from. So it was knitted covertly.

The pattern went up to size 6-12months, which is a bit small for Rowan now so I took a chance and went up a needle size to 4.5mm still using 4ply wool (1 ball was plenty), this time in an inky-blue (less condom-y). Fortunately it fits really well and should do for the rest of this winter and spring.

Christmas Run-Up: Sewing part 2

This set of 4 coasters was one of my Christmas makes, a gift for my friend N. Last year I gave her a set of red and white spotted and striped mugs so thought I'd make some coasters to go with them this year.

They are backed with a coarse natural linen and the quilting is fairly minimal. I don't know where I first saw striped fabric used widthways for binding but I love the effect. It was after making these that I decided to make a set of Christmas coasters for us to use up some of the leftover Christmas fabric scraps after making the stockings. It's a great way to utilise smaller scraps of fabric and batting, the binding is fiddly with so many corners but that's the only downside. 

 

 

Christmas Run-Up: Sewing part 1

One of the never-made items on my Christmas 2010 to-do list was a stocking for Aidan, so it automatically went on the to-do list for Christmas 2011. Having booked a stall at a local winter market, I decided to make a batch of stockings to sell and let Aidan pick out some fabrics for me to then make one each for him and Rowan. As it transpired he chose a Cath Kidston floral print amongst others and, foreseeing a showdown next year when he's appalled at having a flowery stocking (without any memory of having chosen it), he was allowed to take his pick from the stock batch instead.

I ordered some Christmas fabrics from The Eternal Maker, they had a really good range with some prints that I hadn't seen in any other UK online shops. In fact I've fussy cut out some squares from my favourite 3 prints with the intention of making 4 coasters for use next Christmas.
I can't resist using little bits of my favourite prints in things for our home to preserve them forever, I have a plan to make a scrap vomit quilt one day which can act as a library for my favourites.

The stockings have been pretty popular and the leftover ones were listed in my Folksy store. It felt very festive parcelling one up and tramping through the snow to get it in the post in time for Christmas.

EDIT: I tried really hard to get this out on the 3rd Jan to comply with my post a day goal but I lost it twice and had to start again and then when it was finally done it just wouldn't post. So please ignore the Wednesday bit at the top, it's Tuesday's post and I've not failed on day 3, ok?

Christmas Run-Up: The Gingerbread House

December is always a busy month but this year was the first time we'd experienced all of the school activities in the mix too. Fitting in the present making and buying, wrapping and delivering alongside the school events, family events, my stock making and trying to get it all completed before the early school break-up wasn't easy. There were a few Christmas casualties, no cake this year and not everyone got a card from us (sorry). Many of those that did receive a Christmas card were wished 'all the best for 2011' initially which was corrected, not entirely unnoticeably, to 2012 upon realisation (20+ cards in, urgh).

The week before Christmas did end up reasonably clear to concentrate on activities for the boys though. We made a gingerbread house over a couple of the days, finally using the cutters I bought years ago, long before Aidan was born. We followed this Simple Gingerbread House recipe which was great - the accompanying photo to the recipe looks far from simple though. The tip in the recipe to roll out the dough directly onto the baking paper on which it will later be baked, enabling the cut out pieces to be transfered to a baking sheet by lifting the paper, is a really good one. Ours did not look like the photo (well, we had different cutters). Ours looked like this and was good, messy fun to make.

It may well become an annual activity, or biannual as Aidan wants to make one for his birthday too.

The gingerbread recipe worked perfectly well for us with Doves Farm gluten-free plain flour. 

NB Nestle Smarties are NOT gluten free.

Happy 2012!

Just a quick one to wish everyone a Happy New Year! I am now officially (in my own mind) back at work and the plan is to blog every day this week with some catch ups from over Christmas and new makes and plans for the year ahead.

2011 has been a difficult year for us as a family but will still be classed as one of the best ever as Rowan was born last February. This is my favourite picture from 2011 (possibly ever).
May 2012 be a fantastic year for everyone, full of joy, laughter, good cups of tea and beautiful fabric.

Wintry Market

Christmas is fast approaching. This makes me feel a little bit nauseous as despite declaring in the summer that this year would be different and all my shopping would be done before the onset of December, once again I'm massively behind. On the plus side though I have now ordered the turkey and can stop lying about having done it to my mother-in-law.

I shared a stall with a friend at an outdoor winter market with last Sunday. It was a very cold, wet and windy day. Icy rain water would collect on top of the tents to be dumped, without warning, on unsuspecting customers when the wind got under the canvas.
Red tents + grey day = not great photo. Needless to say it wasn't a very successful day and one that I'm fairly sure I won't be repeating next year. The feeling in my toes has just about returned now though.

Free Polar Bear Pattern

This polar bear pattern is now available as a free download over there >>>>>

He's not difficult to make, no round soles of feet to sew in, no tricky snout to wrestle with and his scarf is a good way to use up any scraps of fabric. He measures 26cm from nose to tail.

Due to a broken printer I've not been able to print out the pattern pages to check they come out to scale etc. so if anyone hits a problem with them let me know and I'll sort it out. The same goes for the make-up instructions, I've tried to make them as thorough as possible but often the snags only show up when someone else tries to follow them. Also each of the four pages have to be downloaded separately as I don't have the software needed to combine them.

Free Polar Bear Pattern Coming Soon

The plan this week is to get the pattern for this little chap onto the blog.
The make-up instructions are almost done, the photos taken so it's just a case of drawing out and uploading the pattern itself. So barring any half term holiday disasters it should be ready for download by Friday. There I've done it, I've set a deadline.

Quick Quilty Fix

Sometimes on a bad day, the need arises to be productive and make something, however small, in an effort to salvage something positive from the day. Monday was one of those days. It wasn't a bad bad day as such, just a tiring one spent trying to soothe a grumpy, teething baby that desperately needed sleep but refused to succumb to it.

When he did finally drop off in the afternoon I set to work making a coaster/mat, which I decided last week would be handy to put under a vase when it contained flowers to prevent watermarking the surface below. Ok it wasn't really top of the list of things that needed to be done but a little non-essential, comfort-crafting was required to reduce the stress levels.

I drew a square on a piece of paper the intended size of the finished mat, divided it into 4 squares and then marked a pinwheel design. Using some tracing paper I copied the two shapes (adding a seam allowance) that combine to form the smaller square and then repeat 4 times to form the overall pattern. From there it was just a case of choosing some fabric and getting on with it.

The only remaining, weather-weary flowers left in our garden have been sacrificed for this picture just so that the coaster can be shown in action. With hindsight a more detailed outer design, rather than a central one which just gets covered over, would've been a better idea.

It was a good little project to try being new to quilting as it allowed for some experimentation which, had it all gone wrong, wouldn't have really mattered as neither a lot of time nor material was at risk. The quilting running against the stripe really altered the appearance of the striped fabric.

The coaster is backed with some striped, heavier weight cotton/linen. With hindsight I'd have used it on the bias as it can be very difficult getting the back on square and any skew can be made obvious by any vertical quilting and the binding. Fortunately this was small enough to make aligning the front and backing fabrics easier but I wouldn't like to try it with full-size quilt.