DIY Doily Confetti Cones Tutorial

I've been doing some wedding crafting!  I wondered whether I should keep some details secret, and only share them after the wedding... but then I thought "nah!"

I will show you how I made them... it's very easy!  And best of all, I had all the supplies to make the cones already!  I had bought the doilies years ago with ideas of wrapping things in brown paper with doilies and bakers twine - luckily I barely used them!

1 - Gather your supplies:

• doilies - mine are 30cm diameter
• double sided tape
• scissors (to cut the tape)

2 - Use two doilies together, for a bit of strength - they tend to stick together anyway.  Fold the bottom of the doilies up by about 3cm:

3 - Fold the left hand side in, from the middle point at the bottom to the middle point on the left hand side:

4 - Cut small squares of the double sided tape and place along the diagonal folded edge, removing the backing.  (I took a photo of this, but you couldn't really see the tape, so I didn't include it.)

5 - Roll from the right hand side, making a point at the middle of the bottom edge, where your diagonal fold starts, rolling round, then sticking your taped edge down:

Your doily confetti cone is complete!  Make as many as you need... I've made 50!

When you are ready, fill with the confetti of your choosing.  I found some dried petal confetti on ebay...

This was only filled for these photos, though - I'm going to leave the petals in their plastic bag, in a dark place, to try to keep them looking and smelling their best for the wedding day in May.  I'll fill them nearer the time - but making the cones themselves is a task that is good to do in advance.  Another thing ticked off the list!

You could also add little embellishments to the cones, like an adhesive bow.  I haven't decided whether to do that yet, or not.

My next challenge is what to put them all in, to hold them on the day!

UPDATE SINCE THE WEDDING:

Here are the photographer's shots of them at the wedding... showing how I chose to display them... I used a round tray from Tiger in a pale bluey colour - it was only £5!

Photo by LJ Photographics

Photo by LJ Photographics

Check out more of my wedding crafting here.

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Tilda LemonTree Fabric - Blog Hop

Tilda have a new collection out, called LemonTree.  I was lucky enough to be sent some fabric from SewandSew, in order to take part in this blog hop showcasing the pretty new designs.

I partook in a similar blog hop a couple of years ago - but I prefer this new range, as it's a little bit brighter and more cheery!  That would follow, as this is a Spring release and that was an Autumn release - and Spring colours are more me!

This is the selection I was sent...

I decided to make a couple of cute little drawstring bags, and used a bit of all the fabric except for the purple and green one at the bottom.  I think I needed other fabrics from the range to coordinate well with that one.

The pattern I used was from A Spoonful of Sugar but without the lace motifs.

I love the pompom trim I used on the red one!

The lining is the second to bottom fabric in my top picture, which is so pretty - I need to make another project which shows it off more!

The blues are pretty too... the bottom fabric is so gorgeously whimsical...

I lined it with one of the fabrics I used for the outer of the red bag, positioned vertically rather than horizontally...

I think I'm going to use them to hold gifts - it would be lovely to receive a piece of jewellery presented in a pretty bag like this!

You can visit the other crafters taking part in the blog hop, using the links below - lots of lovely ideas and inspiration!

Monday 19th February – SewandSo

Tuesday 20th February – Little Black Duck

Wednesday 21st February – Vicky Myers Creations

Thursday 22nd February – Tea and a Sewing Machine

Monday 26th February – Helen Philipps

Tuesday 27th February – Strawberry Patch Ramblings

Wednesday 28th February – Dinki Dots

Friday 2nd March – Just Jude Designs

Check out my sewing projects here.

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Tilda Fabric!

Do you like Tilda fabric?  I've been sewing with the new collection from Tilda - LemonTree!

Check back on Wednesday, to see what I've made!

See my sewing projects here.

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Completed Crochet Colour Blocks

I've been working on them since April last year, but I have now finally finished my 12 crochet colour blocks!

They are each about 29cm x 29cm, which is fairly big.  I love the bright zingy colours - gorgeous King Cole Bamboo Cotton which is one of my favourites.

I've had the colours and layout planned out in an excel spreadsheet - and they will all be joined together in the arrangement shown below...

I have a dark navy to border and join each square, and hopefully make the bright colours pop... not that they need much help in that respect!  I thought it would be a good contrast and enhancement for all that brightness.

The plan is to complete three rounds of navy around each square, joining as I go.  I will then do a few rounds around the whole piece - depending on how much yarn I've got left!  I'm very excited to see this come together!!



Check out my completed crochet items here.

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Pattern Cutting and Garment Construction - Weeks 3, 4 and 5

I've not been keeping up with my updates on my clothes making course, so I am grouping lessons 3, 4 and 5 together.  We're now half way through the course!  There will be a week's break for half term, then 5 more weeks to go.

I have now created a mini body with collar!

This is all just practise work, with cheap thin calico material, just to learn the skills we need.  This is why it's not full length, to conserve material, as it was the collar we were focused on.

This was made using the pattern pieces we created in week 2.  I won't try to explain how you sew the collar on the shirt, as I couldn't get my head around it until we actually did it.  However, I'm pretty proud of how it turned out - it's quite neat!  (It is even and equal as well - it's just hard to get it to behave for a photograph!)

Even though it hasn't been made to anyone's size - it was just using whatever blocks we happened to grab when we drew out the pattern on paper - I thought I'd try it on, just for fun...!

It makes me feel like I might be able to make myself a shirt that I can actually wear!

We then went on to start to make a sleeve with cuff and slit.  We drew up our pattern pieces (again - the arm was made shorter to conserve material).  My cuff was measured wrong somehow, so I shortened it when I was making it with the fabric - so it wasn't as long as the paper pattern piece in the end.

That little bit of pattern piece is the cuff slit facing.  That was a fun new skill!  You cut that little rectangle of fabric and interfacing.  You sew it to the sleeve, where you want your slit to be, with your stitching going a couple of millimetres to one side of the centre line, then angling to a point a little bit down from the top, then coming back down a couple of millimetre to the other side of the centre line.  You then cut up the middle, between the stitches, as close to the point as possible without snipping it.  You turn the facing round on itself (again - something I couldn't get my head around until I saw it!) and you end up with a nice need slit!

The sleeve/cuff slit came out really well actually - I'm not sure how!

The cuff gets sewn on it pretty much the same way as the collar.  There is an overlap as you can see above, for the fastening.  I don't think we are bothering with the fastening on these practise pieces.  My cuff isn't quite finished - one half of the folded fabric is sewn on, but I need to do another line of stitching around to catch the other half of the fabric which is on the inside.  I also need to sew the sleeve into the body piece.

I'm not sure if we will be continuing with that in our next lesson, or cracking on with our main wearable garment!  It feels like completing our final piece in the 5 weeks we have left is going to be tricky!

I am really pleased with how much I've been learning, though.  I'm so glad I decided to take the course!

You can read my other posts on the course here:

Week 1
Week 2

Check out my sewing projects here.

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Completed Knitted Shawl!

Yay - I have finished my knitted shawl!  I bought the pattern and yarn when I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show in October and pretty much started it straight away.  It's taken a few months, but I haven't worked solidly on it - I've been working on other things inbetween.

The shawl has a garter stitch border around it, to stop the curling you get with stocking stitch.  However, I did find that it still wanted to curl, so it made blocking necessary.  I didn't actually take any photos before or during blocking - sorry.

I don't know about you, but I find blocking such a pain!  I'm too impatient, and don't want to wait!  I knew I had to do it, though.  I pinned it all out and thought I'd try steam blocking, which I haven't done before.  I heated up my iron and pressed the steam button to puff steam out all over the shawl.  I don't actually think that's the right way to do it - I definitely did something wrong, as it didn't work!  When I felt the shawl, it didn't feel very damp - but I left it for a few hours to see what would happen.  When I had unpinned half the shawl, it curled up straight away.

Ah well!  I pinned it back down again and squirted water from a spray bottle all over the knitted fabric.  I left it a couple of days to dry before unpinning, and that had done the trick!  I'm not much of an expert on blocking (clearly) but I do wonder if I should have soaked it completely before pinning out.  I thought that it would take forever to dry, though.  Hmmm, who knows - maybe something to experiment with in the future.

Although I dislike actually doing any blocking, I love the finished effect!  It is always so worth it!  The fabric drapes so much better and the curling is gone.  The effort always pays off.

The pictures in the pattern showed the picots around the edge more defined and 'pointy' than mine.  I could have pulled them all out with pins as I blocked the shawl, but I actually preferred the way they looked as they were - a bit of a softer look - so I specifically avoided pulling the points as I pinned.

Quite a pleasing first finished item of 2018, I'd say!  I'm hoping for many more finished creations this year - last year was pretty sparse.

The Details
The yarn is For the Love of Yarn in the colourway 'Fun at the Fair' - in fingering weight.
The pattern is 'Knit Me' by Inspiration Knits.
4mm circular needles used.





Check out my (very few) completed knitted projects here.


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Pattern Cutting and Garment Construction - Week 2

Last week I had the second lesson of my course.  Read more about the first lesson here.

This time we didn't even get onto the sewing machines - it was all paper based.  That's fine with me, as what I'm really interested in learning is the whole pattern side of things - working with patterns, adjusting them, understanding them in order to get a great fit.

We were working with body blocks - a front and back one - ready for attaching a collar.  We therefore did not need the whole of the body blocks, which is why my pieces are short in the photo above.


Front Block
We learnt how to remove a shoulder dart - which transfers the dart material elsewhere on the block.  In this case, it transferred it into a lower dart that went up the front - which meant that that dart grew wider, but once it was sewn it would be no different than it would have originally been.  It just meant that the dart was removed from the top.  It's one of those things you have to see in real life to make it click - so don't worry if you have no idea what I'm talking about!  It was really interesting to me to understand that.

We also added extra to the side of the pattern that would make the button band down the front.

We then added 1.5cm seam allowance around the block.

Back Block
For the back, we just added the 1.5cm seam allowance.

Collar
Then we drafted an inner and outer collar, using some standard measurements, and the neck measurements of the front and back blocks which we will be attaching the collar to.

We then added 1.5cm seam allowance around the neck pieces.


Would you believe that took us the whole two hours?!  We were supposed to cut it all out of calico fabric and have a go at sewing it together, but time ran out.  Therefore we'll be doing that in the next lesson.

I have to admit that I can't actually see us ending the course with a finished garment, as it all seems to take so long to do.  The time absolutely flies by!  Again, I don't mind really, as I'm more interested in the skills I'm learning rather than ending up with a finished item I can wear.  I'll have plenty of chance to do that in my own time - it's the knowledge and understanding I'm interested in.  I might be wrong, anyway, maybe I will finish a lovely shirt or blouse!

You can read my other posts on the course here:

Week 1
Weeks 3, 4 and 5

Check out my sewing projects here.

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Knitted Shawl Progress

I thought I'd pop in to show you how I'm getting on with my knitted shawl!

It's coming along rather well and it finally feels as though the ball is actually getting smaller!

It's curling a bit at the ends, but I think once it's finished and blocked it should be ok.  (Who knows?  We'll find out!)

I'm still completely in love with the feel and colour of the yarn - look how beautiful it is!

I think it will still be a few more weeks until it's finished, judging on the rate I knit at, but I'm getting there!


The yarn is For the Love of Yarn in the colourway 'Fun at the Fair'.
The pattern is 'Knit Me' by Inspiration Knits.


What do you think?



Check out my (very few) completed knitted projects here.


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Pattern Cutting and Garment Construction - Week 1

I've begun the year bravely, and started an evening course!  It's at my local technology college and is called Clothes Design - Pattern Cutting and Garment Construction.

I tried to sign up to this course years ago, but on the day I was supposed to start it was cancelled due to lack of interest.  I looked for it a few times afterwards, but it was never running.  I stumbled upon it by accident this time, I hadn't really been thinking about clothes making lately.  However, I'm not sure how often it actually runs, after my last experience, so I had a bit of a feeling of "it's now or never!" - possibly a bit dramatic, as I'm sure there would be plenty of courses I could sign up for at various places over the years to come!

With the wedding coming up, I did wonder whether it was a good idea to have another thing on my plate, but it's only 2 hours one night a week, for 10 weeks.  I think there will be a bit of work to do at home too, but that's surely manageable.  We shall see!

My Goals
What I hope to achieve from this course is more knowledge and skills with regards to sewing clothes.  I am especially interested in the fitting aspect of the sewing - making garments fit my body shape.  I want to have skills that I can use in the future to make my own clothes that actually fit me well - rather than trying to find clothes in the shops which never seem to look right.  In this way, I might be able to design and make my own garments, or know how to alter existing patterns to fit me better.

You can read in a post from 2014 how much trouble I had trying to make a simple top fit me!  It's funny reading that now - so many changes since then...  The pictures show my old hallway with brown carpet and granny wallpaper, before it was decorated.  More importantly, that post references my ex-boyfriend... and I'm now getting married to someone else!  Funny old life!

Anyway, on to my first lesson which I completed this week.  We sewed some seam samples... (these are just using scraps of calico, so are a bit scrappy)...

Open Seam

Back

Front

I've sewn many open seams before, so this wasn't tricky.  However, I've never overlocked the edges - this was my first time using an overlocker.  They create such a neat professional finish, but went so much faster than I expected!  The first press on the peddle created this...

... it just flew away from me!  And it cuts as it goes, so there is no unpicking and correcting it!  I started again with that sample, which was the welt seam...

Welt Seam

Back

For this seam, instead of pressing the two ends open (as with the first seam) you overlock them together and press them to the side.  You then top stitch over to keep it secured to the side.

If I was doing this again properly I'd probably top stitch nearer to the overlocked edge - or maybe have less of a seam allowance when I sewed the initial seam line.  Apparently it's up to you where you top stitch, depending on what you are making and your personal preference.

Felled (or Flat) Seam

Back

For this seam, when you sew your two pieces of fabric together initially, you have one edge poking out more than the other, rather than lining them up evenly.  You then fold the longer piece over the shorter piece, enclosing the raw edge of the shorter piece.  You then fold it all over to one side, enclosing the raw edge of the longer piece.  Then you top stitch this down with a stitch close to the edge of the folded flap.  (This is probably better explained elsewhere online!!)

Front

I think this could be more neat and even - but I suppose it's ok for a first attempt.  If the fabric wasn't so see-through it probably would look better too!

Altering the Volume of a Sleeve
We also started work on how to alter the volume of a sleeve.  We took some sleeve blocks and traced them onto pattern paper.  We then had to mark the elbow line and split the upper arm section - above that line - into four pieces, flaring them out.  We stuck this to another piece of pattern paper, and rounded off the pattern lines at the top, where they had been fanned out.  We didn't get much time to do anything more than that - so I'm not sure whether we'll be continuing that next week or not.

New Things
- Sewing a welt seam
- Sewing a felled seam
- Overlocking
- Seeing/using a sleeve block

Considering that this was the first lesson and we also had to do the usual induction type things, I thought we covered quite a bit.

Homework
The aim is to complete the course with a finished shirt or blouse.  We should be thinking about what we'd like that to look like, and gathering inspiration before the next lesson.  The teacher wants us to all end up with an garment that we will actually want to wear, so she is quite flexible about what we make - it could be a dress - but would like it to have a collar and sleeves, so that we are challenging ourselves and learning some technical skills.  That sounds good to me!  Although, I'm not sure what I want to make... I've no idea!  Better get researching, I suppose...


You can read my other posts on the course here:

Week 2
Weeks 3, 4 and 5

Check out my sewing projects here.

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Extreme Knitting!

Rob is very good at present buying, and one of my Christmas gifts was a massive ball of unspun merino.  I was so surprised, as I didn't think he even knew about such yarn!

He bought this epic extreme yarn.  I'd not heard of this company - I don't know how he found them, or even thought of this as a present!

I couldn't wait to get started...

I found a youtube tutorial online for hand-knitting - it's so easy!  You don't use needles or anything, just pull up the loops and leave them as you work, as you can see above.

I used 7 stitches across, and just kept knitting until the yarn was finished...

You can see my knees here, to give an idea of scale.

It's so squishy and soft and snuggly - I love it!

I'm not sure what to do with it now, though.  I'm thinking a big chunky cushion, which would mean...

1) I'd need to buy another ball for the back (this one was 500g) - perhaps a different colour like bright pink might be fun!  I could then have the cushion either way round, depending on my mood.

2) Or I could make a fabric cushion cover and sew the chunky knit to the front.  I'm not quite sure how I'd sew it on, though, any tips??

Let me know what you guys think - which option do you think would be best?  And what do you think of my extreme knit square so far?!

Check out my completed knited items here.  There aren't many, but I'm hoping to change that this year - I'm working on a beautiful knitted shawl that you can see the start of in this post!

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Creation Consolidation - 2017!

Happy New Year!

I like to do a post at the end of each year (or beginning of the next) to gather together all my crafty creations of the year in one place... so here it is for 2017.

2017 was very exciting for me, as Rob and I got engaged!!  The wedding is planned for May this year which is coming very quickly... eeeeek!!!

This post is about the craft, though, so I'll move on (but I just had to mention it!)

I've only included finished items here (there are lots of works still in progress) - click on the titles or the pictures to be taken to the blog posts for more information...

Crochet Finger Sloth

Zip Pouch

Crochet Easter Eggs

More Crochet Easter Eggs

V-Stitch Crochet Baby Blanket

Small Crochet Eggs

Chunky Hanging Pouch

Crochet Pineapple

Bridesmaid Proposal Message in a Bottle with Crocheted Heart

I pattern tested Hello Sunshine Crochet Squares

A Christmas Wreath

Crochet Christmas Spiral Decorations

Crochet Poo Emoji

Felt Balls

I didn't get that much finished this year - I think wedding planning has taken up a big chunk of my thoughts and energy!  I also spent a lot of time on my colourful crochet blocks - hopefully I'll get that blanket finished this year.  There is also the baby blanket that is just awaiting a border.  So I guess I've done more than this post suggests - not that it matters, who's counting?!

If you are interested, here are my consolidation posts from previous years:

2013
2014
2015
2016

I didn't do a round-up for years before that, but you can see other finished items at the below links:

Crochet

Knitting
Sewing

Here's to a happy creative 2018 for us all!

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