Making Fairy Dresses!

Posted on 19 May, 2017 by patchworkfairy

It’s been quite a while in the planning but I’m almost ready to open up The Patchwork Fairy Etsy shop selling the new range of patchwork fairy dresses. There’s lots of tulle, lace and ribbon and it’s all very pretty!

Pink, yellow, blue lace being sewn onto lilac gauze

Sewing some lacy trim on a fairy underskirt!

Pink lace being sewn onto lilac fairy dress

Pink lace trim

As well as the new range of dresses there will be the fairy necklaces and earrings I’ve been selling for quite a while now.

Camali Fairy Pendant

Fairy earring with blue wings

Here’s a sneak peak at a sweet little lemon yellow dress! The bodice is crocheted in lemon cotton with little pink flowers. Around the middle of the dress is a trim of yellow, pink and white fabric flowers.

Lemon yellow cottton bodice with yellow and white tulle skirt.

So to find out when the finished items go on sale and grab an opening discount check out the Patchwork Fairy Facebook page over the next couple of days!

New Year means tidy the craft room!

Posted on 19 January, 2017 by patchworkfairy

Well it’s New Year and that means it’s time to tidy the craft room! I can no longer make anything in there as there is no room! I can’t post a picture because it’s too awful for public viewing! I may, once it has been restored to normality, post some before and after pics!

But for now, here here is a brief roundup of some of my recents makes and adventures!

This ribbon was on my presents from my son – far too good to throw out!

This crochet flag was finally finished!

My crochet flag of Guyana for the Sixty Million Trebles Project

This was a post Christmas walk!

View over the boating lake at West Kirby

This is my latest stash increase as I am addicted to crochet planned pooling!

My new red heart yarn for planned pooling

This was a refreshing walk in the North Wales wind!

Twilight on Llandudno Pier

And finally, it’s back to Patchwork class and a new project!

My latest fabric selection for a new patchwork wall hanging!

Well that’s all for now! I’ll be back with some updates on the planned pooling projects once my craft room is tidy! 😏

Love Autumn!

Posted on 14 September, 2016 by patchworkfairy

I love Autumn!

Although summer is good in lots of ways it doesn’t have a starting ‘feel’ like spring and autumn do! There is something about how the air smells in September which transports me back to ‘new term’, ‘new pencils’ type feelings of anticipation and excitement.

I do enjoy being able to shower without shivering in summer and getting dressed quickly because I don’t need layers but I adore wearing my boots, woolly hats and scarves and fingerless mittens again!

We’ve had an unexpected pleasure in our garden this Autumn too – lots of blackberries which are soooo good with meringues and clotted cream 😋

Handful of blackberries!

Another autumnal pleasure is the crunchy red brown leaves which start to cluster on the pavements or whizz round in the air on windy days! I used some decorative ones as a setting for my new fabric gift tags!

Heart shaped fabric gift tag!

Gift tag with embroidery

These hessian and linen gift tags make pretty keepsakes for the receiver of the present! They will be for sale in my Folksy shop shortly! See sidebar for shop link

Funnily enough the weather has changed this week and it’s now sunny and warm outside – not at all autumnal – might just go and take in a few rays and embrace the end of summer (again).

Back Home from Holiday!

Posted on 7 August, 2016 by patchworkfairy

Back home from holiday!

Boo 🙁

My new camping blanket made from fabric called “Windy Days” came in handy and was appropriately titled!

new camping blanket

windy days are good for surfing!

gransdon catching a wave

not so good for watching so thank goodness for the beach tent – cosy behind the gauze flap!

Inside the beach tent – Cosy!

we are a messy group of 16 covering 3 generations on the beach and there’s always something to look for, someone to chase after, or someone taking their sunhat off (again) !

Messy beach day!

It was a lovely week though tiring. At the end of the day it was nice to have my sweet little caravan to come home to for a cuppa!

inside of small caravan showing red seats

newly covered seats and cushions!

bench seats

I enjoy making things for my caravan and the awning, especially when I use things from my stash. However, I’m off to the Festival of Quilts next week so I might just acquire a teensy-weensy bit more fabric ….. 🙂 …….. It’s good to be back home from holiday!

Crocheted Fairy Tea Cosy!

Posted on 19 June, 2016 by patchworkfairy

I finally finished it! My first crocheted fairy tea cosy!

Crochet Tea Cosy in teal snd purple and pink in the shape of a Fairy House with flowers and Leaves sewn on.

My first one!

It’s taken quite a while as I had to adapt the pattern for my Tea Pot and crocheting all the adornments and sewing them on took longer than crocheting the base cover! I’m keeping this as an ornament for me and going to start some more smaller ones as presents for … you know…(whispers quietly) Christmas!!

The pattern for this was originally found here but fortunately now part of it has been translated and stored in the files of one of my Facebook crochet groups. The other way I managed was by opening up the Russian web page in google chrome as it automatically asks you if you would like the page translating. It’s not perfect but it is a good help if you are an experienced crocheter

I’m still making my Sophie too!

Crocheting in the garden!

and working on a fairy dress for my Grandaughter’s first birthday – it’s not sewn up yet as I need to have a fitting session – not easy with a wriggly nearly-one-year-old!

Baby girl's fairy dress in pink, blue and lemon lace.

Charlotte’s fairy dress WiP!

So once the dress is finished just the cake to design! Think it might just be a fairy house! Pictures will follow after the party in 2 weeks!

Linking up with Handmade Monday at Lucy Blossom Crafts

Linen and Liberty Love!

Posted on 12 June, 2016 by patchworkfairy

It’s no secret I love linen and Liberty so what better combination for a quick make the morning we were going on holiday! I’m one of those people who needs water wherever I go – even in the UK – so I can’t imagine being without it abroad in hot weather 😓😓

Well it’s easy to take a water bottle with you but not so easy to carry it when you’re sight seeing with a small lightweight handbag. I knew we were going away months in advance but somehow I left it till the day we were travelling to the airport hotel to start creating a bottle carrier! Nothing like time running out to get the creative mind in gear pretty quick.

So here it is – and it worked very well. The ribbon came wrapped round the linen fat quarter bundle and made a comfy and quick carrying strap for over one shoulder. It’s so light I didn’t even notice it was there most of the time

Bottle carrier for my purple Chilli Bottle!

The trim is a couple of Liberty scraps machine appliquéd on!

Linen Water Carrier

On holiday I had bottled water bought locally but I’ve since I’ve come home I’ve bought a handbag size Chilli Water Bottle. This lightweight bottle is like a thermos flask inside and keeps your water as cold as when it was put in there, for many hours. It’s a brilliant little bottle and saves money as I now buy large bottles of water and keep them in the ‘fridge for decanting into my Chilli Bottle. If your tap water is pleasant to drink it would be even cheaper to fill up!

So that’s it – I’m easily pleased!

New Year, Old Fabric!

Posted on 11 January, 2016 by patchworkfairy

Happy New Year 2016!

The title isn’t a misprint! One of my new year resolutions is to use up my old fabric stash and not buy any new fabric! So far so good as my first project of 2016 was to make a replacement bag for a favourite hessian shopping bag I received as a Yule present a few years ago. I saw the exact same colour hessian in Abakhan last summer and bought the fabric with the intention to make the bag right away, but in reality just added it to my stash and forgot about it. So last week I dug out the fabric and made a simple small shopping bag lined with yellow spotted cotton. I really like to make the interior of bags in a light coloured fabric as it makes finding stuff inside much easier!

Pink hessian bag with Liberty print heart appliqué

I used some of my (ahem) small stash of Liberty to add a heart shaped appliqué on each side and then found a lovely white-cotton-with-lemon-spots fat quarter for the lining. I’ve had this fat quarter for about three years so using it added to the virtuous feeling 😀

The yellow spotted cotton lining

My second craft-related resolution is to clear out and streamline my craft room and to keep it an uncluttered and stress-free area …… yeah right! But I have made a start – might even be able to photograph it for the blog if I keep up the enthusiasm 😀.

Linking with Lucy Blossom Crafts

Auditioning the Fabrics

Posted on 22 November, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Hello! I haven’t been around on here for quite a while so today I decided to write about ‘auditioning’ the fabrics for my grandaughter’s new quilt!

I’ve been getting over the knee replacement (much harder than anticipated) and also the return of the dreaded Sciatica!! Having two bad legs has been pretty difficult pain wise and then to find there is an 18 week waiting list to see the Pain Consultant has been very demoralising. Especially since the initial appointment only leads to another waiting list for the actual injection treatment, which is the only thing which made me better last time.

Anyway DH did some research and suggested buying a home ultrasound kit and it actually seems to have made a difference. I’ll never know if this time the sciatica was going to be milder or whether the daily ultrasound treatments have stopped it in its tracks so to say. So I’m cautiously optimistic that I am improving and ohave started going about for a bit longer without any terrible repercussions.

I’ve only managed a limited amount of sewing in the last few weeks and it been more a case of sitting down with crochet hooks and a bag of cosy yarn! But never mind that today! Today I must tell you of a new term I learnt in my weekly patchwork class, it’s called ‘Auditioning’ the fabric for a project. So, if like me, you thought you were just messing about with your stash when you were wondering what to make and/or what to use, you weren’t, you were auditioning your fabric for a place in the final item, in my case it is a quilt.

Auditioning Patchwork squares for the quilt top!

DD is obsessed with pink girly everything after having two boys but I think it’s nicely balanced with some non pink in it.

That’s it for this week, hopefully I will be able to make it to the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate on Saturday and I’ll have lots to write about next Handmade Monday!

ATC August 2015

Posted on 23 August, 2015 by patchworkfairy

This week I thought I’d share my ATC which I made as part of the ATC August 2015 swap over at Very Berry Handmade! I haven’t got a lot else to show as whilst recovering from surgery my days are mainly taken up with exercises, resting with ice packs and sleeping!

So what is an ATC swap? It stands for Artist Trading Card and is a small, handmade card which is crafted to a theme. It can comprise all different crafts as long as there is some stitching involved. The them this time was a bit more flexible than previous swaps as it was ‘My Favourite………’ I chose to add the word ‘crafts’ on the end and so made a card with a mini quilt, some crochet, a mini Quillie, a little greetings card and some freehand embroidery.

i had a lot of fun making the card, it distracted me from the immediate aftermath of surgery and focussed my mind on something other than the pain! It’s not my best work as I just wasn’t in the best state to craft it but I decided it was ok enough to send to my swap partner in France! I had collected all the things needed to make my card into a little box before surgery and so everything I wanted was within my grasp once I was back home. It will be a while before I am back in my craft room, but part of that. Is my fault as it’s so messy in there it’s dangerous when you are walking with two sticks!!

Little card with mini patchwork quilt, some crochet and a little greetings card.

ATC My Favourite Crafts

Linking up with Lucy Blossom Crafts!

Cutting a straight edge on fabric

Posted on 28 June, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Been making curtains this week – for my sister’s new (secondhand) caravan. We got some really nice flowery fabric in the style of Cath Kidson as my sis wants to do out the whole ‘van in floral vintage style. The fabric is from Abakhan in Liverpool and is incredibly wide – it’s the widest I’ve ever worked with at 6 foot! The pattern repeat is quite small so it’s made it fairly simple to match up a pair of curtains.

The pretty roses on the fabric

One major problem I have when using patterned fabric is how to cut straight edges so that the pattern doesnt go wonky across the curtain. With rotary cutters and a long ruler it’s easy to cut a neat straight line but it could be a straight line which doesn’t follow the straight grain of the fabric and hence the pattern ends up wonky!

I thought I’d describe how I make sure my curtains are properly squared in case anyone else out there has been wondering how to do it, especially when there is no selvedge as a starting point!

Firstly inspect your fabric for some nice frayed ends – you might need to pull a bit to get hold of an end but tweezers come in handy for this bit!

Nice easy to grab strands!

See the strand coming out

Strand removed

Two strands removed to form two cutting lines at 90 degrees to each other

So with a bit of gentle pulling of one or two strands of fabric you can pull them straight out and leave a blank line – it’s a bit like drawing up curtains – pull gently and then smooth out the fabric and pull again till the strand comes right out.

As you can see above once you have pulled a vertical and horizontal thread out you have two perfect lines to cut along!

Once you have your perfectly aligned cut fabric you can move onto hemming! My Wonderclips come in very handy here as they’re much easier to use than pins – for a start they don’t hurt you!

Keeping the hem in place with Wonder-clips

So that was my week – and will be more of the same next week as I haven’t finished them all yet! Hopefully I can take a picture of the caravan all decked out soon!

Linking up with Handmade Monday again this week 😀