So, following tradition (well if you can call one other baby blanket making event tradition) I’ve made Milo a blanket. This time its a cotton quilt of the Very Hungry Caterpillar with appliqued gingham flowers, apples and pears.

It turned out a square shape (because of the print) so it might make a better play or changing mat than a blanket but I don’t mind what his mum uses it for as long as she likes it.

The blanket is bright and colourful like this funky little chap I found on the garden today. I wonder if he’s very hungry too…

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.

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.

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.

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!

My friend Alicia has lupus, along with a whole array of other auto-immune diseases.  As a result, she isn’t able to enjoy a lot of the crafts she used to do regularly.  A few of us are sending her cards and small gifts to cheer her up a bit.  Stas has sent her a corkboard to display them.  I’ve been giving some thought to what to send her that could be easily pinned to the board and wouldn’t take up too much space.  I eventually settled on a butterfly made with rayon chirimen fabric.  I buy small squares from Fabric Tales in Japan and just love the dainty colourful designs.  I’m not sure that green was the best choice for a butterfly, but I had some tiny scraps that were just big enough for this little project.  It was a bit fiddly, but I’m really happy with how it turned out.

The village hall is, well, like a village hall – peeling paint, drab colours and a slight mouldy smell and so is in much need of decorating. I’ve bought the world’s supply of muslin to cover the walls and I’m hoping that dim lighting will work its wonders too.

I think it was last July that I started this bunting after getting the idea from a place called ‘zig zag bunting‘ who make and supply it for special occasions, including weddings. “I’m not buying it” I thought “I can make that for half the price and really easily”.

The amount of time its taken me to get to this stage is no reflection the difficulty level of making bunting, it really isn’t hard. Even for someone like me who is a real amateur when it comes to crafting it can’t get much more straightforward than sewing two triangles together and then to ribbon.

Anyway, after many weeks at Stitched Up cutting out the flags and appliquéing flowers and sequins I finally have something to show. Actually, ‘appliquéing’ is a bit of a grand word for what I did but you see what I mean.

The image below is just a 3 metre stretch and I’m yet to go for the marathon sewing session where I’ll finally attach all of the little flags to the miles of ribbon that Claire kindly gave to me.

The colours we’ve picked for our wedding are pink, green and lemon. However, I don’t have any yellow bunting flags and I know I’m going to regret it if I don’t make some. So, more triangles to cut out, decorate and sew. Will this project ever end?!

This is the blog part of the Nottingham craft group ‘Stitched Up’ website.

Here we’ll post about our projects and the things we’ve been making at our craft group. We’ll also keep you up to date with any news or changes to our meeting time or place – so watch this space!

Stitched Up meets every Wednesday and you can find out more about where and when on our ‘About’ page.

If you’d like to join us then do come along. We’re a friendly bunch and really want to welcome new members to the group. It doesn’t matter how much craft experience you have or what your favourite type of craft is.

Get in touch with us if you’d like to know more.

We’ll look forward to hearing from you!