A souvenir of Bangalore

I've been working fairly slowly the last few weeks on a new project. I want to make souvenir postcards of places I travel to so as I'm currently living in Bangalore I started there.

I used different materials and techniques to make it. The background is painted with fabric water colour dye and finished with pastels. The main body of the rickshaw is appliquéd onto the background. I stuck it down with bondaweb and stitched it down. The details are added in running stitch with embroidery thread. 

The front and back have pelmet vilene in-between them to make the whole postcard stiff.

I embroidered the back to make it more postcard-like.

Easy to make felt baby shoes

I was reading A Beautiful Mess (really awesome blog) the other week and found this amazing post about DIY moccasins for children.

The author Katie had adapted the idea from Purl Bee's pattern for felt baby shoes.

Awwwwww! It's at times like this that I wish I had children to make things for. Not to be deterred I decided to make some anyway. The pattern is super easy! I made the above shoes in above 30 mins - and that includes faffing time.

They're not quite finished as I don't have any elastic and as you can see the fabric pen hasn't faded yet. But.... I was so excited I just wanted to share this awesome new project.

I Spy: Ben Venom and heavy metal quilts

Ben Venom. Image from http://benvenom.blogspot.co.uk/

I was reading this list of male crafters when I spied Ben Venom. He makes the most amazing quilts made out of old heavy metal t-shirts. Apparently he tours around the U.S. with them. I love his designs and the up-cycling involved. Amazing!

Don't break my heart

A friend of mine was going in for heart surgery. She asked for cheesy and bad-taste songs. I sent her as many as I could think of and then made her the above. The background and heart are felt. I made the words by painting onto calico with fabric paint. 

Exciting new Indian clothes: but bad material

I know that I've kind of fallen out of the blogging world in the last few weeks. That's because I've moved to India! I've been busy moving from hotels to a flat and settling in. I have unpacked my craft materials and am in the process of making something for a friend so stay posted - I'll be blogging that soon.

For now I thought I'd share these amazing "dresses" (they're not dresses but I don't know what they're called - help anyone?) that I bought the other day. These are my first Indian clothes and I'm hoping they will allow me to blend in a little (ha ha ha - unlikely!). I love the patterns on these. I'm particularly smitten with the one on the right because of the garish clashing of bright pink and lime green. Awesomeness. 

The only downside to these is that the quality of the cotton is really bad. I'd been told this would be the case with Indian cottons but it's still a little surprising. The cotton is very thin and kind of rough. Definitely not cosy. I'm hoping with a few more washes it'll soften up.

A map of New Zealand in felt

I made this map for my father as it was his birthday the other week. It's New Zealand. We went there once together so it has fond memories for us.

Can you spot the mistake I made?

A way to use a jellyroll

This is very simple way to use a jellyroll. I've decided jellyrolls are one of my new favourite things. In case you don't know what a jellyroll is - it's a bundle of fabric cut into strips for you. They're very useful for using as borders in quilts. However, I decided to use them to make the main body of a quilt wall-hanging.

This was super easy to make! I just machined the strips together and added the border. Then I put this on top of some plain backing material with some fleece in the middle to act as wadding. Next, I hand-stitched simple lines in running stitch to quilt it.

It's not quite finished in these photos as I haven't sewn up the edges yet. That's because I moved to India before I was quite finished.

I think this is simple but effective. It's a great way of using a roll of beautiful fabrics.