Black and White Baby Blanket + Baby!

My lack of blogging over the last few months has been because I've been busy growing my house and growing my family. It's been a busy year! More on my house extension another time, but first: here's my baby!

When my maternity leave started in September one of the first things I wanted to do before my son arrived was make him a blanket. I'd read that newborns like high contrast black and white patterns so I started by going through my fabric stash and pulling out every black and white piece I have and cut out squares from them.

These are the patterned squares which include a few oil cloth pieces to vary the textures.

These are the black squares which include some leather effect pieces, a velvet piece and a suede piece, as well as regular cotton.

I also cut out a number of white squares but I only had white cotton fabric so they're not particularly interesting.

Once I'd cut out my squares I laid them out, alternating between black, white and patterned pieces.

I collected the squares into piles of each row and sewed them together into strips, using a 10cm square piece of paper as a size guide.

Once I had all the rows sewn I attached them all together.

I then sewed long strips of plain black fabric around the edge of the patchwork as a border.

Next I cut a piece of wadding and a piece of plain white cotton fabric the same size as my patchwork layer.

I sewed the black strips around the edges all three layers and also tried sewing across the layers in true patchwork style. This got a little untidy where the fabric started the crease, especially on the back, but not bad for a first attempt at this sort of thing.

Then I just needed to tidy the loose threads and then out the blanket in my son's arrival, which happened a few weeks later.

And here he is at 6 days old trying out the blanket for the first time. I think he liked it!

Framed Miniature Front Door

Today I'm sharing this framed miniature front door. What I like about this miniature project is that it also doubles as decor as it can be hung on the wall.

Check out the video at the bottom of this post for the full run through of how I made it. But first, here's a few details.

I created the brick wall by using a handmade stamp made from a rubber. I used this technique a lot when I was at uni, as you can see here.

I added some 3D elements to give the piece some dimension, like the plants on the doorstep. These were made using little bottle brush trees which I trimmed to give a flat side and painted a more realistic colour.

I think these would make great presents to celebrate a new home or commemorate leaving an old one. They'd be easy to personalise and you could even write the house address on the mount.

Miniature Kitchen Scene

Recently I've been flexing my miniature making muscles with a series of little kitchen set ups.

I started by making a little kitchen cabinet to be the base of the scenes. The work top is a sample of wooden window blind from when we recently redecorated my husband's office and was perfect for this use. All the scale measurements were made based on the size of this piece.

For my first scene I decided to make miniature toast, including a toaster, plate, jar of jam, knife and the toast itself. I had a few challenges with this, like, how do I make a jam jar? Answer; a wooden bead cut in half with the top of a split pin. 

Then I made a cookie scene because you know I like getting salt dough involved. In addition to the cookie dough I also made a bag of flour, a cookie cutter, a rolling pin, and a baking tray. I think the baking tray might be my favourite part!

Check out the videos below for a more in depth look at how I made these and what materials I used.

And let me know if you have any ideas for other kitchen scenes I could make.

Baby Yoda Pencil Topper

I recently finished watching the second season of the Mandalorian so wanted to make a mini Baby Yoda, a bit like the Groot ones I made a few years ago. To give the model a purpose I made in into a pencil topper!

I started by making a wire maquette which I wrapped in foil, to save on how much Sculpey I would need to use.

Then I covered it in Sculpey and sculpted it into Baby Yoda.

Once I'd baked the Sculpey I painted the model using acrylic paint. I left the body blank as I was going to cover this with fabric to make his little coat.

I used felt for his coat, which I glued to the Sculpey, and strips of fleece for the trim.

Super cute right??

Check out the video below to see the whole process of how I made it

Decorating our Bedroom

I started writing this post in September but then it took me ages to get around to taking the photos, and then even longer to put it all together. I blame Christmas!

So anyway, we moved house at the end of June and the first room we wanted to decorate was our bedroom. In my relationship, my husband is the one with the design visions and I'm the practical one who makes it happen. He has the Pinterest boards for each room, and I spend ages online trying to find the best deals.

When we moved in, this room had a blue feature wall and the built in wardrobe had been painted to match. We liked the cream colour of the other walls, so bought a matching colour just ot freshen them up, so we just wanted to change the blue one. We chose this dusky pink paint which is Raspberry Meld from Wilkos. This shade of pink was also one of our wedding colours which means our new curtains look like they're made out of the bridemaids dresses!

Andrew was set on having hanging pendant lights either side of the bed instead of bedside tables so I left it to him to contact an electrician and make that happen.

For the artwork above the bed we ordered some digital prints from Etsy, got them printed with Snapfish, and put them in Ikea frames. It was actually a set of three images so we printed the third one smaller and used it elsewhere in the room.

I inherited our bedside tables/drawers from my Grandad and refinished them to match our bed, which we already had from our old house. I sanded them down (using my 30th birthday present from my parents!) and treated them with furniture wax.

Now on to the wardrobe!
It wasn't in our budget to rip this thing out and get a new one made so we worked with what we had. The righthand side had a lot of little shelf cubbies which weren't very practical for us so Andrew took a hammer to them to open up that side. We installed a short hanging rail at the top for my dresses, and used the existing shelves at the bottom with some plastic baskets we already had. We painted the whole thing in white gloss paint, which is never my favourite thing to work with but it looks so much better.

For the side of the wardrobe I had the idea to use wallpaper to add a bit of colour and fun. We found this pink with gold palm trees print from World of Wallpaper and I successfully hung my first ever piece of wallpaper.
We bought some corner shelves from here, as we're not quite up for making them from scratch yet. I've only just bought a drill, give me time!

Our blind is from Blinds Direct and our curtains are from Ikea, hanging on an Argos curtain pole which I managed to put up all by myself.

One of my favourite things that we did for this room was a buy a projector. When I put up the blind I immediately thought that it would make a great projector screen. After some contemplation over whether it was an unnecessary luxury, we decided to buy a projector with the last of John Lewis vouchers we got given for our wedding. And I'm so glad we did! If we wanted to watch something before bed we used to use a laptop which is not ideal. We bought an Amazon Fire stick which plugs straight into the projector, which we have at the foot of our bed. All the wires run under the bed and the whole thing is controlled by the Amazon remote. Also, our blind is a black out blind, so the images don't show through the other side. I'm not sure what the neighbours would think of that.

We might add a few more things to this room, as there's still some blank spaces, but for now we're really happy with how it turned out and it was the first step toward making this house feel like ours.

Christmas Canvas Banner

 

This Christmas banner is another craft project that I completed during the first lockdown. I often get ideas for Christmas projects during the Christmas period, by which point I'm too busy with my Etsy shop to make them happen. So I made use of all the time at home earlier in the year to make some of these Christmas ideas. 

I started by cutting out two banner shapes from canvas and drawing a circle on one of them.

I used my Cricut to cut out holly leaf shapes from different shades of green felt. Then I sewed them around the circle on the canvas.

I printed out a 'Merry Christmas' template and sewed over it with red embroidery thread. Then I tore away the paper when it was finished.

I forgot the take photos of the final stages! Oops!

I sewed the two canvas pieces together, right sides in, then turned them right sides out. Then I folded the top over, enough for a wooden dowel to fit through, and sewed that in place.

I also added some red pom poms on the front as holly berries.

Then I added some ribbon so the banner could be hung.

It turned out so good! Hopefully next year Christmas craft fairs will be back and I can find a home for it.

Patchwork Christmas Stocking

Last summer my sister was helping me sort through my fabric drawers and encouraging me to get rid of the little scraps. She noted how much Christmas fabric I have piling up and suggested that if I hadn't used any of it in a year then I should probably re-home it.

So in order to save my beloved Christmas fabric I made this patchwork stocking!

I started by drawing out a template of a stocking on brown paper. I made two of these so that I could cut one up into the sections I had drawn out.

I used the paper sections to cut out shapes from my Christmas fabric. I'd labeled the sections with letters so that once they were separate like this I knew how they'd go back together.

Then I started sewing them together on my sewing machine, in pairs or threes, according to the template.

Then I joined the smaller groups together to form one big piece.

I cut out a back piece from red fabric and placed it with the patchwork front, along with some interfacing, and sewed them together.

I turned the stocking right side out and made a lining using the same stocking pattern and the red fabric.

 

Then I added a fabric loop so the stocking can be hung up.

It's a perfect celebration of all my Christmas fabric!