Minesweeper pillows with sound effects!

Everyone has wasted hours playing minesweeper when they're supposed to be doing something else more productive, but few people have gone to the effort of bringing the game into their real lives. Meet instructables member BritLive who crafted these fabulously geeky pillows.

What I like about these is that  inevitably some people who come round to your house wouldn't realise what they were. So, in effect these pillows would act as geek radar. And even the non-geeks would surely be amused by a bomb explosion upon sitting.

(via Craft)

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Matryoshka Keyring and a Daft Badge

I made this quick keyring to go with the Matryoshka pouch that I made the other day, which is now lined:



The lining isn't exactly professional, but it's not too bad and doesn't catch on the zip, at least. To make it, I just followed the directions for the pouch, but omitted the zip. Then it was a not quite so simple mater of sewing it to the outside (I used dark thread in the bobbin and light up top so that the stitching didn't show too much).

Since this was a birthday present for my oldest friend (we've known each other since we were babies, she's not that old) and she's about to go on maternity leave, I wanted to make her something baby-related too. So, here's the daft badge that I whipped up:



I used scraps of fabric, some cardboard and a safety pin to make it, along with the lettering stitch on my machine that I've been dying to try out. The lettering is on some bias binding and I've zig-zagged the edge of the middle layer of fabric. It's all stuck together with iron-on hemming tape, although the base fabric (some orange needle cord left over from a dinosaur I made for my nephew) is attached to the cardboard with stitches, as is the safety pin (not shown).

As I was writing the card it suddenly occurred to me that "not long now..." could be misconstrued when sent as part of a birthday gift :)

PS Please excuse photos - had to use the camera phone at night (which is pretty much all the time here in Finland).

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Boxy Matryoshka Pouch

Finally made a start on my Christmas presents, with this practice boxy pouch:



I used three bear's excellent tutorial and fabric from Japanese specialist nuno.plus. I found the ebay version of the nuno.plus shop quite by accident and only noticed that its the same shop mentioned in the tute later on. Yet another spooky coincidence.

I think I'm going to do lined versions for the actual presents, but in a non-properly way, just by using two pieces of fabric together. That will still put the seams on view on the inside, but it will make the pouches a bit stiffer and it will keep the make-up time short.

Right, better get on with them then! Now that my get-up-and-go has come back (it went away for a week or so, I know not where, hence the silence), I'll be in a veritable making frenzy. At least that's the plan...

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Thread-Catcher Cube

"What's this?" I hear you ask. "A slightly wonky fabric cube, in a cute colourway?" Well, yes, but that's not all...



See that stuff on top? That there be threads, caught neatly by this, the all-new, ingenious Thread-Catcher CubeTM!

I had a "eureka!" moment when I was clearing up after a sewing session the other day and noticed that my trousers had threads stuck to them. It was but one small leap from that to a custom thread-catcher, with fleece as the grippy fabric of choice. The dotty fabric is a tea-towel, the fleece from an old top.

Up until now I've been chucking the threads in origami boxes made from magazines, but now I'll use the cube ("Use the cube, Luke, use the cube...").

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From Runner to Clutch

This clutch bag started life as a table runner, which I bought back in July with a load of other fabric. As soon as I saw the runner I knew I wanted to make it into a bag, but it's taken me until now to get round to it.

I used a pattern from Making Handbags: Retro, Chic and Luxurious Designs, finally assuaging the craft book guilt I always have when I've bought a book and not made anything from it.

I'm quite pleased with the way it looks, but in reality it's a bit soft and squishy, so I'm not sure it will be all that great in use. And the question is - with or without the tassel?

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Book Review: Sew Everything Workshop

Although I am not a total novice when it comes to machine sewing, I am self-taught and have a tendancy to bodge things when I don't know how to do them properly. With this in mind, I decided it was about time I got myself a how-to book and S.E.W. Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp, came to the rescue.



And it's great! It's fun to read - I read the whole thing in one sitting, it's so engaging - and very easy to understand. The book also comes with 25 projects to do (and these are ones you will want to make, from clothing, to accessories and gifts), along with 10 paper patterns in a folder at the front. The whole book is ring-bound, which should make it hard-wearing.

The only downside to this book is that it inspired me to upgrade to an electronic sewing machine, which was a bit of a shock to my purse moths. The machine is a Singer 9940, discontinued now so I got a good deal on it. And it does practically everything except make tea!

But back to the book - I have already recommended it to my non-sewing best friend, who rushed out and bought it and is now hoping for her first sewing machine at Christmas. I'm planning to make some projects from it too, which I'll post here.

I had hoped that the author, Diana Rupp, had a blog, but it has the dreaded "under construction" message at the moment...

EDIT: I did find the SEW Flickr group, so you can check out some of the projects people have made from the group:

www.flickr.com

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Slimeless Snails

My brother and I used to race snails in our garden when we were small - now we can recreate the fun indoors without bothering any actual snails with Ric Rac's Racing Snail Tutorial.

Made from felted jumpers, the snails seem pretty easy to make and the one in the tute has a really endearing expression:



If you want to go the whole hog, there's a racetrack to make as well (see below). I reckon the whole thing would make a great Chrimbo pressie (I'm mentally preparing a list of things to make already).



Via CRAFT Magazine.

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Gardening Apron; Craft Book Club

At last I have made a project from Sew and Stow: 31 Fun Sewing Projects to Carry, Hold and Organize Your Life, only 3 months after I bought it. That might actually be a record for me! Here's the finished article, which is a moving-in present for my best friend (who I am sure won't read this before I see her on Sunday):



I'm hoping I'll be quicker off the mark with my next craft book, The Big-Ass Book of Crafts, which I've just ordered from Amazon Marketplace. I reckon I'll manage it too, since I've joined what's possibly the first Craft Book Club, over on Crafty Daisies. The idea is that members get their hands on the month's book and make one of the projects. We then share our creations and discuss the book online. Fab idea in my book (heh), so why don't you join up too?

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Customised Furniture

Our first collaborative project! Hubby and I worked together today to bring an idea to life that's been festering in our collective brain for quite some time. We were finally pushed into action by our dog, Monkey, who decided to pee up our trusty orange Ottoman-thingy yesterday. We think it was a show of jealousy for Hubby's Mum, who was visiting and making a big fuss of VV.

Anyhow, on to the project. I'd show you a before pic, but my dratted camera is refusing to let go of the lovely photos it has. Soon I will show it who is boss and let go of it... So, I'll have to describe the original piece of furniture instead. It was a cube of foam, with an orange slipcover. We've got two of them and they've justified their paltry 20 euro price tag a million times over - we put our feet up on them, rest our laptops on them, and eat dinner off them. (And apparently, if you're called Monkey, you pee up them too!)

Here's what one of them looks like now (sorry that they aren't the best photos, we had to use a camera phone):





Oh, what's that? Oh yes, it's a special slot to stow a laptop, that's what. A small (and we think, cool) effort on our part to declutter our living room. At least now my laptop has a place to rest when it's turned off. It'd probably overheat if we put it in there turned on, so this also gives us a good reason to shut it down when we're not using it, something we've not been very good at doing.

The whole thing took us a couple of hours, all told. Hubby was the chief foam cutter and had the excellent idea of reassembling it with the aid of cocktail sticks (to hold the cut parts together, internally). I was chief seamstress.

We're thinking up a treatment for Ottoman number 2 now. And is it an Ottoman? We used to call them poofs in the UK, but perhaps that was peculiar to my family. Don't suppose it is spelled like that, either.

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A Crafty Corner to Call my Own

Insanely jealous of my best friend and her new house, replete with a designated craft space, I just had to do something. So, I claimed a small area of VV's room for myself. Since he's still in our room I'm sure he doesn't mind. I promise to move once he does!



I am pretty sure that my craft output, at least sewing-wise, will increase now. It was just too much effort to get the sewing machine out every time I wanted to use it. Now any time I get a spare 5 minutes (and it's usually only 5 with VV about), I can nip on the machine and make something. Check out the next post to see what I made today...

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Pimping the Pushchair

We've recently acquired a Maclaren buggy/stroller/pushchair for VV, to make life a little easier when we go away. VV's head slumps to one side when he falls asleep in it, so I fashioned a head rest for him out of some of my stash fabric:



We road tested it yesterday on a day out in Stockholm and it works pretty well. I think it needs a few minor tweaks, namely interfacing to the back and extra ties. I'm now planning some frog "seatbelt buddies" to complete the treatment - hopefully in the next couple of days.

Oh yeah - spot the deliberate mistake. Small prize for the first correct commenter...

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Neat Little Hand-Sewing Tip

I read somewhere (can't remember where, sorry) that when sewing with a double thread you should cut two threads and then tie the end together, rather than use one long one and fold in half. I thought this sounded like a bit too much effort, but decided to try it when doing a quick repair job on VV's bouncer seatbelt just now. Works a treat! My thread always got tangled when using a doubled-over thread, but I put that down to my skinflint thread buying habits. Seems that is not the case, and it's actually due to the threads catching each other. When you use two threads aligned in the same direction, they glide past each other instead.

While I'm on the handy tips front, I put another one into action the other day. Well Mr Crafty Cactus Lover did. He was talking to me on the phone from work and wrote down some numbers on a nearby whiteboard. These included VV's social security number. But - eek! - he wrote them in permanent marker, and this was a board in a conference room. No fear, Ribs to the rescue. I read the other day (again, I forget where) that if you scribble over permanent marker with a non permanent pen, you can wipe the whole lot off with the board eraser. Also worked a treat. I rule!

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New Fabric, Yay!

Anttila has a sale on, so I popped into their fabric department. Lo and behold, lots of great prints at next to nothing - we're talking 1 and 2 euros a metre here! So, I bought these:



No idea what I am going to do with it all, but I just couldn't resist. Am now re-reading all my craft books and revisiting all my StumbleUpon favourites and Google Reader shared items for inspiration. (Sidenote: I vacillate between sharing and starring GR posts, so there's a lot hidden away in my starred list. I think I'll stick with shared from now on.)

Since I had this new pile of fabric, I decided to find a proper home for it. I cleared a shelf from our walk in cupboard (closet to you Stateside folks) and, voilà, a neat fabric stash cum sewing supplies shelf:



Sadly this does not include the enormous bag of cast-off t-shirts and other items that I also refer to as my stash (I'm such a hoarder, which is why I subscribe to Unclutterer). Must sort that out someday...

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Sewing bonanza

At last I've worked out how to keep VV happy so that I can get things done, including (most importantly; hang the housework) crafting. And the secret? It's BBC Radio 2 - Terry Wogan to the rescue. Actually, it's really my terrible singing-along to the rescue. If I sing and pull funny faces while I sew, VV is happy in his bouncer.

The results of this discovery are two waterproof bags for wet nappies and an out-and-about changing mat. I made the bags from poor quality PUL that my mother in law gave me. She bought it to make washable nappies from, but it doesn't wash that well and is a bit too stiff. Perfectly fine for washable bags though, so I made two. One has a Velcro closure (the spotty dog one) and the other has a ribbon tie closure. The latter doesn't work very well, so we'll have to tie the ribbon around it too. Not happy about that, but there you go.

I'll use the Pooh one to hold dirty nappies next week when we visit my Dad and his wife Maria (who knitted the lovely blanket that's also pictured) in Calpe, Spain. We can wash them every day, so we don't have to use evil disposables. We will use them for the journey, but we found some biodegradables for that. Mind you, we are flying, so we're being pretty evil anyway. Next holiday (to the UK) and we're going by boat and train.

I'm particularly pleased with the changing mat, which I made from some wipe-down tablecloth fabric with some old towel sandwiched between. So, we're all set for our trip - back in a week's time!

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Things I want to do...

There are so many things I want to do, all rattling around in my head, that I thought it prudent to note them down. Here goes, in no particular order:

1. Catalogue all my books in Library Thing. Totally anal I know, but I love it. Have persuaded myself that there is a point to this wanton time-user - if our books ever get lost, burnt or otherwise destroyed we can work out a sensible insurance claim. Of course, that will require household contents insurance.
2. Get household contents insurance (see #1).
3. Post more often to my blog. See, I'm doing this one already!
4. Finish making the rest of the fleece nappies. They have already been cut out by hubby, so it's not that much work.
5. Make a nappy bag that both of us will use (no flowers, then). Needs to have cunning strap arrangement so that it works with the baby wrap.
   
6. Make a boring wrap for hubby to use. Again, no flowers.
7. Get on with The Tapeworm. Progress thus far has been slow.
8. Declutter. No small task, but I'm getting great tips from Unclutterer. My hubby pointed out that nearly all the clutter is mine and I have to agree. We started today with a new rule - nothing new can come in without something going out. So, we took a vase to the Salvation Army shop before we set off on our Saturday Adventure.
9. Become more ethical. Very large task, but we've already started. We use washable nappies and we've just signed up to an organic veg box scheme. Yep, there is one here in Finland, but it doesn't run in the winter, when nothing grows. We also just bought some biodegradable nappies to use during the journey to and from my Dad's place in Spain at the end of the month. Sadly we're flying, but next time we'll go by train. I've been thinking ethical for a while, but Leo Hickman's Life Stripped Bare: My Year Trying to Live Ethically has just spurred me into action.

That's all I can think of right now, more to follow and hopefully progress reports too...

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Saturday adventure wearing the baby

Since VV was born, we've taken to going on a Saturday 'adventure'. Mostly, this has been to the shops, but today we went to the Finnish Museum of Natural History. I've wanted to go there for what seems like forever, but it has been under renovations for almost the entire time I've been visiting and then living here.

The museum was great, although the signage was only in Finnish and Swedish. Mind you, that's not so bad in my opinion - I'm always compelled to read everything out of some perverse sense of duty, so it was nice to be relieved of that. Best thing in the museum by far were the two stuffed moose. I've wanted to see a moose since I came to Finland and this is the nearest I've got to them yet. They are simply enormous and fabulously gangly (I have a fondness for gangly animals, giraffes also being high on my list of favourites).

One of the photos with this post is of me and the moose statue outside the museum. The bulge is not my stomach, but is in fact VV strapped to me with a wrap. I'm enormously pleased with the wrap, which is actually just 4.5 metres of fabric (75cm wide). It's the fourth carrier I've made (not that there is much making, except hemming, which is still to be done) and it's definitely the best. Before that I made three ring slings in progressively lighter weight fabrics. The final version does work well, but I find it makes my shoulder hurt and if VV isn't in quite the right position it's uncomfortable too. Wraps are the way forward.

Since I did extensive research for the baby carriers, let me share my favourite sources with you:

Jan Andrea at home on the web - I used the ring sling instructions from here to make mine. Easy to follow and very neat (in both senses of the word) pleated shoulder.

wearyourbaby.com - great information on all kinds of slings. I'm using the instructions on how to wear wraps from here. Some git seems to have attacked the site in the last day or so, but hopefully the site will be back up soon.

TheBabywearer.com - extensive site, with personal stories, advice on which carrier is best for you and lots more besides.

I totally recommend baby wearing, regardless of the semi-daft moniker. VV sleeps nearly all the time he's attached to me and I plan to try the wraps that you can supposedly breastfeed in while on the move. And I'll make a manly wrap for hubby, so it's not just me lugging the darling 6 kilo lump around.

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Bought a new book

And very excited about it I am too! Having recently decided that I actually rather like sewing, I broke my loosely-enforced craft book embargo and treated myself to Sew and Stow by Betty Oppenheimer.

Based on a quick read through, it looks most excellent and appeals to both my crafty and anal sides. Now to choose a project...

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First Cloth Nappy

After extensive research (OK, random surfing while watching TV), I decided to use the free Ottobre pattern, but with some amendments of my own. The results can be seen in the rather poorly focused picture.

I wanted to use microfleece for the part that touches the baby's bum, because it wicks away the moisture very efficiently and should prevent nappy rash. For the outer I wanted to use something cute and I found this cartoon spider fleece which fits the bill.

On the next nappy I'll:

1. Add an extra flap on outer top layer so that I can hide the elastic on the back.
2. Zig-zag the inner layer at the back before I put the elastic in.
3. Remember to add small pockets that you turn the hook part of the Velcro into when washing (otherwise it ruins the fleece).
4. Print out the pattern more carefully - look pretty large to me.

I've made a pocket or stuffable nappy, so the next step is deciding how to make the 'stuffees' with which to stuff them. My plan is to try and recycle fabrics that I already have - apparently the key is to use 100% cotton, hemp or bamboo. Not much of the latter two in my stash, unsurprisingly, so cotton it is then. Also, since I am not using a waterproof outer layer and don't want to use outer wraps (would make the spider fleece a bit pointless), I need to work out how to make the bottom layer of the stuffees waterpoof to prevent moisture wicking to the outside layer.

PS: Here's my original inspiration >>

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First Baby Ring Sling Completed!

At last started (and then finished a few hours later) the baby ring sling. I had bought a special hemming foot for my machine, but found out that it didn't fit. After a short sulk, I came back all the more determined and did the hemming by hand. Dead easy, so easy in fact that it seems a bit pointless to exchange the foot for the right one.

The pleating was pretty tricky, mainly because the material I chose is very thick. Two machine needles later though and it's all fine and dandy. Tried it out with Monkey (the Chihuahua) and an Elmo toy (less wriggly), and H and I have declared it a success.

I'll definitely be making another one in a lighter fabric. And I'll post some pictures tonight.

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Recycled Shopping Bag #1

Made from some of H's old t-shirts (a horrible promo one from work and another I'd already hacked up a bit), this is my first recycled shopping bag. Took me about 4 straight hours to make; could probably do a similar one in less time now.

First time I had used the sewing machine to do appliqué (actually the first time to do appliqué ever), which was no mean feat since my sewing machine has a Finnish-only instruction book. Practising that took some time. The lettering in general was the time-eater, but not actually that difficult.

Next bag won't be made out of t-shirts, since the finished object is really only any use if buying cereal, cotton wool and packets of air. Got some good ideas, so will be making some more soon.

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