Stitched Up :: Nottingham Craft Group

Amsterdam, beautiful city of arts and crafts

I’m biased, I love Amsterdam anyway but visiting again recently for our honeymoon and getting a chance to look around the shops made me realise what a crafty city it is.

Of course, there are art galleries everywhere, large and small, which could provide me with years of endless entertainment but there are also crafts, antiques and vintage shops.

Just on the street of our hotel there was a lovely little shop which sold kitsch fabrics that you wouldn’t see in shops here, then there was the patchwork shop and bead shop and on it goes.

If you love to rummage through antiques there are no end of little boutiques with lovely window displays just calling you to go in. Here’s an example of one we found on the last day…

We also stayed in Brussels and in my ignorance I hadn’t realised that it was known for lace making, like Nottingham. In fact Belgium used to export lace to England.

What I did know is that Belgium makes fine chocolate and beer and now having tried it I can say its definitely true. I know its not strictly craft related but here is a photo of one of the really pretty chocolatier shops in the city. Yum!

Wedding crafts

It feels like such a long time since I posted anything on here and I’ve really missed it. The thing is that I’ve been tied up with the whole getting married and honeymoon malarkey. Now I’m back to reality (well kind of) I thought I’d share some of the crafty things that went into mine and Jez’s wedding.

I’m not going to waffle on for ages because I already did that over at Green Girls Global in my ‘Hand-made, eco wedding’ post but this is just a quickie to show some of the hand-made things we had.

Cotton bunting
Of course there was the cotton bunting, miles and miles and miles of it! I love it so much though that I had to have a little bit hanging up in the house. In fact its still there! I’ve already talked about that though in ‘I heart bunting‘.

Table places and favours
Some things seem like a really good idea until you actually have to do them and the favours were a bit like that. My bright idea was to make origami boxes and then put in each of them a spring bulb. Although the boxes are very easy to make, they took ages (about 55 of them) - here’s the box making tutorial. Then, to cut a long story short, when I went to put the bulbs in them I found that despite keeping them cold, dark and dry all winter they had gone soft and spongy and apparently you just can’t buy spring flowering bulbs in the spring. Anyway, dad came to the rescue with some bulbs from his own garden (even better) but then I had to re-make the little labels that went with the boxes because they originally said to plant them in the autumn! It all worked out well in the end though.

The lollipop name places were something I’d been wanting to do for a long time. I’m very lucky to have some extremely talented and creative friends and my friend Lydia (a graphic designer) designed a motif for me which I could use on the invitations, table places, menus & thank you cards.

The motif was a maypole, because the reception venue was on Maypole Green, and things that remind you of springtime. So I took elements from the motif to make little labels for each name place and printed out all of the cards and menus at home.

Cakes and flowers
Jez’s mum, another creative lady, made our wedding cake and chocolate cupcakes and she and I spent a weekend cutting out all of the little sugar flowers, hearts and butterflies for them.

On the same weekend we painted and decorated plantpots with more butterflies, hearts and flowers. The plantpots were filled with Impatiens or Busy Lizzies and I had quite surreal afternoon two days before the wedding sat in my kitchen surrounded by white flowers with the imminence of the wedding sinking in.

The outfit
Now, I know that Claire is too modest to say anything about this but it is so beautiful I have to show you. Originally with my dress I was going to wear a bolero but when I put it on it just didn’t look right. So, I decided to have a shawl instead. Having everything in white (well ivory) felt a bit strange so I wanted to add a bit of colour and I thought that embroidered spring flowers on the edges of the shawl would look really pretty. The only embroidery I’ve done before is a picture of Garfield when I was about 10 years old so I wasn’t sure how far this past experience take me in making something for my wedding 20-odd years on.

To my great relief Claire offered to do this for me and I had no doubt at all that she would do a fantastic job. There is so much detail in the leaves and flowers and the tiny beads add lovely highlights. Everyone commented on the day at how gorgeous the shawl looked and how talented Claire is and I definitely agree with them!

Claire also surprised me a few days before with a garter that she’d made all in our wedding colours. Is there no end to this lady’s skill?! Thank you Claire, I love them both x

Well, I said I wouldn’t waffle on and then I did but it was fun to look back on all the preparation and creativeness that went into our wedding.

Looking forward to yours next Claire!

Morsbags

If , like myself, you have fabric stashed that might never be used then this could be of interest. morsbags sociable guerilla bagging

Fannar

Some days I’m quite bright, other days I’m very stupid.  Yesterday was one of my Very Stupid days.  My RSI has been incredibly painful, but yesterday it didn’t feel too bad, so I decided I could finish Fannar.  Fannar is a jumper I’m knitting for Macuwita Sni.  It’s a pattern from Best of Lopi, using chunky Alafoss Lopi yarn.  I started it at the beginning of the month and made good progress until my shoulder and arm flared up.  It has been sitting on my coffee table ever since, staring balefully at me.  It only needed a few hours work, so yesterday evening I picked it up and finished it.  Here it is.

Okay, so it looks very nice, but even while I was knitting, I was thinking “Oh dear, my shoulder and arm really hurt”.  Did I stop knitting?  Nope, I carried on regardless, with the result that my RSI screamed blue murder all night and is agony today.  See?  Very very stupid.

So it’s back to hand sewing for the foreseeable future.

Easter playday

As my better half took off on his motorcycle on Friday heading for the first day gathering of the Round Britain Rally, I had the chance to play with some cotton sheeting that I had dyed a few weeks ago. With the help of a few skeleton leaves, fabric crayons and metallic fabric paint, I completed this small art quilt . Machine stitched.

Finished Object

I’ve taken an enforced break from knitting, as my RSI has flared up. Still, any excuse to do a bit of hand sewing eh?

I started this Cicada pouch at our meeting last Wednesday and finished it on Friday evening.

The pattern is from Kumiko Sudo’s book Kokoro No Te, although I printed it out at a smaller scale, so that I could fit all the pieces onto one 9 inch square of patterned fabric, plus a bit of plain fabric for the underwings. The fabrics are polyester and rayon chirimen crepes which I get from Fabric Tales in Japan. I love Fabric Tales because most of their fabrics are available in 9 inch sample squares, which are perfect for little projects like this, plus I can get lots of different patterns for the same money as I’d pay for a metre of just one fabric.

As chirimen is quite a brittle fabric, the pieces are reinforced by lining them with felt.

Latest Internet projects finished.

Last Wednesday night saw me trying to finish this little lady, that is without spilling my beads over the table too many times!!. This fairy developed as part of the Take it Further challenge run on the internet by Sharon B in Australia. Each month you are given a concept and a colour scheme, you can work from either or both. This months concept was :

Do you ever notice the little things, the small moments, the details in life? This months challenge is to do just that, pay attention to the tiny details. Sometimes the small things become emblematic for something larger.

The inspiration for this was a photo of a butterfly taken last year, more details here if you are interested.

This is a quiltie, 5 inch square made for the Unlimited Textiles internet swap group and finished on Tuesday, again we have a concept or word to work with, this months word being Egypt. As you can see it is a winged scarab, embroidered , painted and quilted.

For Baby Ben

Last July one of my very good friends told me that she was having a baby. What brilliant news! Straight away I decided that I wanted to make something for the baby with my new found love of crochet.

Since I only know about 2 stitches I decided that the easiest thing would be to make a crochet patchwork blanket. Well, that might have been easy but it certainly wasn’t quick. My crafty buddies at Stitched Up can vouch for that, giving me support and encouragement to keep going with the endless squares. No, I did enjoy it really!

Ben is now 2 months old and I’m just about ready to send his gift to him, a blue, green, yellow and cream patchwork blanket and a cotton bag to carry it in. Adorned, of course, with blue and white felt bunnies.

Hope he likes it!

Colwick Woods

Okay, so this is a bit off-topic, but I thought I’d share this strange sight from Colwick Woods this morning. This tree is on the edge of the field and we walk past it every day without really noticing it. Not this morning though:

Here’s a closer look at the grisly specimens:

Try as I might, I couldn’t get a decent picture of the view across the lakes, as I was aiming straight into the sun:

All that open space on one side, but move your camera slightly and you see how close you are to the city. On the right of this picture, you can see the edge of the race course, plus houses in Colwick and the Meadows leading towards the city centre:

Pip loves going to Colwick Woods - for her, it’s a new adventure every day.

Okay, better have a bit of craft content! I’ve finished another Baby Surprise Jacket for Macuwita Sni. Here it is straight off the needles:

Here it is finished:

Sally Twinkle!

I’m so excited because I’ve just discovered that the best craft shop ever (in my opinion) has a website - Sally Twinkle!

Anyone who is remotely into crafts and has spent any time in Mansfield will know Sally Twinkle. This shop has been going for 40 years and is, as they say, “haberdashery heaven”.

Although I say its my favourite craft shop I haven’t actually been in there since I lived with my parents in Mansfield and that must be about 12 years ago now. Finding their website though made me really want to go back and visit, not only does it have so much craft stuff the ladies, or the ‘Twinkle Girls‘, who work there are lovely.

Unfortunately you can’t buy online from Sally Twinkle but you wouldn’t want to, that would take away from the fun of visiting the shop.

One time I went in there to buy hundreds of beads to make a lampshade (don’t ask!) and the lady who served me counted each bead out one by one and was quite insistent that I wasn’t allowed to touch them to help her. It took a quite while and Jez had to go and stand outside because we were nearly cracking up!

The Sally Twinkle website has a fab page about the history of the shop. I didn’t realise that they had a huge fire in 1979 and then a sports car smashed into the window a few years later!

Anyway, check them out at www.sallytwinkle.co.uk.