Glitter houses: part one

I've been working on another craft project I've wanted to do for years, some vintage style glitter houses. I found a very charming 1968 pattern that is available at Little Glitter Houses. Just scroll to the bottom of the page if you're interested in the pattern which is from a vintage magazine. Instead of drafting the pattern to size it up, I printed the patterns at the actual size to make miniature houses. I've painted them and the next step is to add some glitter.

I'll post the results soon, but in the meantime I just wanted to mention that City of Craft is this weekend! I'm not a vendor but I can't wait to be an admiring shopper.

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Crafternoon Tea - pincushions!

Finally finished a nice batch of crocheted pincushions, with fabric tops and felt flower and leaf embellishments. This time around I dipped into my stash of barkcloth fabric to make the tops and I love how they look!

I've also added some colourful pins to each one, and finally tried out the Wee Wonderful shrinky dink pin tutorial. As you will see this tutorial dates back to 2005 but I've wanted to make them ever since then and this seemed like a good opportunity. Does anyone else have a lengthy craft idea "to do" list that will probably never get finished? It's a great way to get inspired if your craft projects are feeling a little lacklustre.

I couldn't find shrinky dink supplies in Toronto, so ended up with the equivalent, some shrink film from Deserres. It worked out really well, the pins look sort of thin and pathetic but once you shrink them the designs look sharper, the plastic is thicker and they end up very tiny and cute! I've had fun making a bunch of these, mostly just simple fruit and flowers, but a few animals and little anchors for the pincushions with nautical colours.

So each OOAK pincushion will come with cute pins, and makes a sweet present for the sewer on your holiday shopping list!

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Crafternoon Tea

So for this year, my one and only craft show will be Crafternoon Tea on Saturday December 6th 11-4pm. For those who haven't been to this craft show before, it's a chance to find a lovely mix of handmade local wares, combined with an afternoon tea service with a delicious selection of sandwiches and cakes. The show is in Leslieville, here are the details:

Crafternoon Tea

Saturday December 6th

11-4pm

Queen Street East Presb. Church

947 Queen East (S. E. corner of Queen E. & Carlaw)

Toronto, Ontario

I'm busy today working on some cute pincushions so I'll try to post more pics before the show.

I'll have wristlets, needle books, pincushions and various small items such as embroidered brooches, pouches, and the miniature books pictured above.

I hope you can visit!

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Spoonflower sewing notions prints

I happened to notice, a bit last minute, that the current Spoonflower contest has a sewing notions theme so of course I wanted to try it out. This is one of those contests where you need to create four fabric designs in a coordinated set. Denyse Schmidt will be one of the judges once the voters pick the top ten, so I felt inspired by one of my favourite fabric (and quilt of course) designers ever!

I ended up creating a coordinates set that has all the usual suspects - the stripe is made from lace:

Lace stripe

Some spools of thread create a check pattern:

Checkered thread

The pins look like polka dots to me:

Polka dot pins

And lastly the floral includes a little vintage toy sewing machine:

Toy sewing machine floral

It can be a bit hard to see the details in the preview for the contest voting so I did scale the prints up a bit for the coordinates yard to make them more visible. I also created all the fabrics as separate prints in a medium scale. I've ordered samples so once those arrive I can make the fabrics available on Spoonflower.

Can't wait to see what everyone creates this time around! Have a look (and vote!) here.

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