Happy Easter

Happy Easter to you all. 

Check out the awesome cake Naomi made!

And a little crafty finish from me, a coin purse made from a vintage sheet

Beach-combing Jewellery

Naomi and I went to a workshop yesterday on making jewellery from sea-found objects. It was great fun. Here are a few of the pretties I made. At last a use for the sea-glass mountain in the conservatory!

Also, just for fun, a cuddly skull I made today. I think we should probably call him Sir Skull, because he looks rather aristocratic

Gifted Gorgeousness - March

Welcome to the  March edition of Gifted Gorgeousness, the monthly SAL run by Jo of Serendipitous Stitching, where we show off our gifted related crafting. This month I'm sharing this dress I made for Eloise.

The pattern is Butterick B6167, and I've never had to do so much re-drafting on a pattern in my life! For a full review of the pattern see here
I used a remnant of a border print fabric which called for some creative cutting and not a little fluent cursing, but I jiggled it out in the end.
Extra gifted gorgeousness brownie points because I used the dressmaking pins Barb gave me, and I sent some of the fabric offcuts (and believe me after the trouble I had getting it out of my too short fabric cut there weren't many) to Jo for backing her Hallowe'en ornaments.

Mwa ha ha ha ha

That was my Evil Scientist laugh in case you didn't recognise it.

I've just finished knitting this flask of potassium permanganate

(pattern from Butterfly Love on Etsy here)

Sodium dichromate is on the needles already

Take Two

The Monthly Challenge, restitched, on pre-stained fabric, without the colour runs. 

The chart is from Pineberry Lane and can be found here

Finished in a deliberately primitive style (I can do blanket stitch neater than that, honest), with tea stained lace, a twine bow and a rusty bell

Mind you, the final placement of one of the tea stains is a bit dubious

Rudolf!

 I nearly trod in that! I ought to rub your stupid red nose in it!

Fail!

I learned a lesson this week, and that lesson was:-
Check the colour fastness of your threads before you squeeze a cold tea bag over your finished piece to age it.
Feel my pain!

This is what Dexter Morgan's Father Christmas must look like
Oh well, back to the drawing board
This month's challenge reveal will be slightly delayed
On a brighter note, I found these teeny tiny daffodils in a hidden corner of the garden. To give you an idea of scale, my funky little mid-century jug is about 6 inches tall.

Soldering On

Ouch. Sorry. Couldn't resist. Here is another fused fabric piece I've done. I photographed this from two angles so that you can see the 3D effect of this one. It one uses bronze coloured organza, metallic copper bias binding, and a  bit of a charity shop scarf left over from when I added a bow neckline to a t shirt a couple of years back.
It is much more twinkly in real life because of the organza, but it's really hard to photograph it to show that using natural light, and it's too much of a faff to get the studio lights out.

Also Jo told me about a campaign by Concern Worldwide called Stitch for Syria, which aims to help Syrian refugees by teaching them embroidery. You can find more details here. To get involved they ask you to sign up and  download a small pattern to cross stitch. They are collecting the finished squares to make a wall hanging for their aid centre in Lebanon.
Here is mine. It took very little time to stitch. The hardest part was tracking down the aida they specified - I don't do aida normally, but I found the little bit that comes in a magazine cover kit is just the right size