FINALLY

well yesterday was a sewing day...a few clothes for the kids and this, my gratitude wrap for the swap im in organised by mel goodsell. BUT, after many months of know my sewing machine was dieing...it kicked the bucket! ive been putting money away for a while generally from my card publications to put towards my machine and i was still a little short. My loving dh told me to get a new one anyway. woohoo!

im in love right now with the stitching work of janelle winds journal covers with belts and mardi's pattern test ones. so i decorated my wrap with something similiar. (i know i will be buyiing that pattern when its released! THAT bag is just beautiful)
the inside, and i beg of my swap partner to not look closely a the stitching, this is what i was in the middle of stitching when the said machine started the kick the bucket!, im still thinking of stitching it again, but will have to think about time frame before that. the belt i stitched today on my brand new wonderful machine!
And this is it my beautiful new machine. i went the breast cancer release machine, it was good value for money and a good next step for me after 11 years of a very very basic machine. and it came with all the quilting foots i need and generally meets my needs. its just so lovely to stitch with, it doesnt thump along, or move the table when i really get it going. and just because i didnt want to stitch paper as a first project here is a felt food tutorial that was promised before said machine started to really die on me..: )

Biscuit felt Tutorial - jam drops.

(machine stitched version)

brown felt

red felt

hobby fill

machine.

Roughly cut two large brown circles and a small red one to act as the jam.
Stitch the jam circle to one of the brown circles.
Stitch the brown circles together. I used my new overlocker type stitch, more because i wanted to see what it was like ... :)
leave a small section not stitched

and add hobby fill. stitch closed.
to add a bit of feature, stitch around the red circle once more through all the layers of the biscuit. (like quilting really)
And there u go finished biscuits.
My first lot of biscuits i made i used blanket stitch on the edges and to attach the red circle. it was also easy to do it this way.

FINALLY A RAK
i promised this weeks ago and then got sick.
so here it is, if you would like to start your felt food collection i have some strawberries and todays biscuits to give away, but also added to the rak is one of my knited dishcloths. if you want to try one leave me a comment on this post and i will get lilly to draw a comment in a few days.

Felt food Tutorial - strawberries

You will need

red and green felt
a sewing machine
needle with green and black thread.
small amount of hobby fill

1. cut a 2 1/2 inch x 2 1/2 inch square. (a smaller or bigger square will give a smaller or bigger strawberry)

fold in half diagonally, and stitch one edge.

2 Turn the strawberry in so the seam is on the inside. Use a pencil to help turn the tip.




3 cut off the point at the unstitched end.

4 stuff with a small amount of hobby fill

5 squeeze together the middle of the top and stitch 4 stitches.

6. Squeeze together the opposite ends and stitch completely closed

7 from a small amount of green felt cut a circle. then cut small triangles out of it to create the top leaves of the strawberry

8 stitch to top of strawberry. I just stitched down the ends.

to finish off add some black stitches as the seeds on the outside of the strawberries done!

I have some felt strawberries for sale at 50cents each..see the market store

movie day

Since we moved here we have had a little saturday afternoon movie date. Me and the kids. We make popcorn and sit together under a blanket right at the moment and watch the disney playhouse movie. lilly loves making the popcorn, and pushing the buttons on the microwave to melt a little bit of butter. and we sit up with two bowls of popcorn and watch. yesterday they enjoyed and i suffered through cinderella 3! but its more about the act of doing something together that we all enjoy.

we also made more bread yesterday. heres the link to the recipe i use http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/10857/basic+white+bread
ive been talking to my dh about baking...he is a chef and he told me to knead the dough longer than the recipe says. so tomorrow when we need more bread im going to do that see if that changes the loaf. it does already make a good loaf, im just interested and trying different ways.
the felt food has been back on the creative table the last few days too
some jam drops (the real ones a very popular in this house)
and some fillings for our sandwiches too.

my ticker is shortly going to hit 10000...which sort of blows me away. Anyway im going to make up a bag of felt food to RAK once we hit the 10000 mark to celebrate and as a way to say thanks for coming to read my dribble.... :)

some creative - ness!

we seem to be back to our creative stations in this house and its the best thing that could of happened.!
ive had a few people ask me for the secrets of finding to time to do so much of my own crafting, scraping and general creative stuff we do
i dont know about the secrets....but heres what we do
our dining room on any given day looks more like an art studio, or sewing room. we have a large square table i cover in a plastic cover and we all create together. some days on together things others on different things. but we r all together talking, learning and spending the time doing quality things.
today i did some sewing and the girls wanted to paint. its all too easy with water colour paints! yes the powdered discs that come in a tray. it takes no time at all to teach kids to use them, they r cheap and the powdered discs last longer, and we find the colours to be pretty bright. the most important part of this type of painting...ITS EASY TO CLEAN UP! it all just wipes clean with a damp cloth. they will sit and paint for AGES!
mix it up is my other thing. we painted today, so tomorrow we might (make soap if our things arrive) or draw with oil crayons or something different, i do have a salt dough recipe thanks to mel goodsell for giving me the idea. cooking too is a big hit in our house.
and i think my other secret is to search for inspiration....mine usually comes from mel goodsell or soulemoma...u would also be surprised what you can goggle or blog hop too.

yesterday i made the kids a loaf of felt bread. they have no requested things to make sandwiches. luckily i found a flickr group with lots of sandwich ideas to help me on my way.

ever since we moved in here i have been searching for something to put on the girls walls that covers the horrible paint in their rooms. (they need painting badly and seeing as we dont own here and wont be staying here forever i cant be bothered to winge about it to the landlord.) anyway

i joined janelle winds block of the month quilt little bluebirds in a start to putting things up in emilys room to make her walls nicer. our first block (which im nearly finsihed) came with this journal cover to make.

I have so many people i really want to send a thankyou card too after everything we have gone through, and i finally got started on them tonight.

i went searching for sketches first

these r older sketches on the cardvaarks blog. all the papers from my lime tart kit and the dictionary pages from an old one i picked up at the op shop for like 20c...i have gone for pages that had words relating to being thankful.

these cards use sketches from the hero arts blog that chris millar shared with us today...thanks so much chris it got me started creating today.

and finally....ive decided to turn my journal cover into a place to keep a few cards at hand...im going to add a pen and some stamps and use it as a gratitude folder, thanks soulemoma for the idea.
we r back off into melbourne tomorrow for another visit to the hospital

more kitchen maddness

and two posts for the day...thats a first!

felt donuts i made, with the apples....i will get a basket for all the felt food to live in when im next in a cheap shop...and i have alot more felt food to make, i wanted to do it tonight, but its very cold in the sewing machine room right at the moment so i thinks it can wait!

also made a felt milk bottle. the toaster we got at the toy shop...its so cute!

the oven with knobs now, and we know not circles had to made do with square the bit we needed for the drill we couldnt get hold of today...first time i have missed bunnings seeing as it would of been open!...also the towel set i made earlier.

and finally this is what she will see in the morning.

the present has a tea set in it from her sister.. : )

sorry for all the kitchen pics but i know a certain grandpa that will be very interested seeing as he help build the kitchen

felt food

finally got to start on the felt food for emilys birthday present last night and today

so far

we have eggs and apple wedges

next a donut or two...bread...pizza...more fruit and some meat i think

im going to be here well into next year i think lol