Amanda’s Musings

I had a little idea last night for some scissor covers and now realise that they would make a really nice set along with the pincushions I sell. Here’s a sneek peek at draft 1 of the idea. When I do get around to making these for the shops they may vary a bit but these work well for my personal use:

Look what my lovely hubby bought me after all the sickness of the last few days!

I took some photo of the felt book so far and here it is. So far I’ve cut the pages out and pinned three;

Hopefully I’ll make steady progress!

Apricot blossom from our backyard

Since my last post both Michael and I have had varying versions of the virus that Keziah had all weekend. The last few days have been hard, I’ve had to dig very deep in order to handle the situation and I really do thank the Lord that Lucinda hasn’t caught either Kezi’s bronchitis or the virus. Amongst the trips to the bathroom, the piles and piles of washing and the sleepless nights Luci has been a very easy baby to have. She has slept peacefully most of the time and even went 6 hours between feeds on Sunday night (hasn’t done that since though).

I have even managed to get working on Lucinda’s felt book as I mentioned in a previous post, pinning down three pages already. Haven’t taken any photos of that yet but I will do later.

Its amazing how sickness sets you back so much. I had grand plans to spend the day at carousel shopping centre on Saturday as well as get working on the invitations to Kezi’s birthday party, our SIM display, my Polyclarific display and more over the weekend. I’ve done none of that, instead I’ve washed Keziah’s quilt and bedding at least twice (before wising up and putting her on a smaller mattress with just a mattress protector), our bedding twice and loads and loads of other washing. Oh the joys! Hopefully we can get back to normal in the coming days, whatever ‘normal’ actually is!

When Keziah was born I made her a few special gifts. Some were hand sewn, some knitted and some were painted. I am determined to do the same thing for Lucinda. I really don’t want her to grow up thinking that I didn’t have time to make her special things. On the top of the list is a hand stitched felt book. In order to see what I mean you have to pay a visit to my old blog. Here are the links:

Keziah’s Felt Book
Malachi’s Felt Book

A page from Malachi’s book

A page from Keziah’s book

The second book I did was for my little nephew Malachi and his had an Aussie theme. I had a great time designing these as I went. Now my plan is to come up with one for Luci and one for Malachi’s little brother (my second nephew) Ty. This will be a work in progress for a little while and I will attempt to do the two at the same time! I did make a start today at last by pulling out my large pieces of felt and seeing what I’ve got. Turns out I’ve got a lot! So here’s the first shot in a long WIP!

I just love bright colours, especially when it comes to kids things so I couldn’t help but take some extra pics of the felt all lined up.

I have no actual plan as to the theme for these two books, usually I just work it out as I go so it will be interesting to see what they turn out like this time.

Digging around in amongst the things that made it to our new house I found this sheet of embroidery. I’m not sure exactly what you call it but most of us would have seen the finished product in our grandmothers houses as doilies or tablecloths. I quite like it, I like the quality of the fabric and intend on completing this one. I want to try to get the stitching very fine, high quality just like my Nanna used to do. I found a second piece which was half done (not shown) so I’ll try to do that too. Anyway, I love finds like this and the fact that it belonged to her makes it even more special!

Ok, who said ‘weird title’ when they read that? Spoonflower is a great new way to have your own fabric printed. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. As far as options go I don’t think its very cheap but it all depends what you do with the fabric. I intend on using small amounts of it to make little bags to sell. I’ll be getting more printed in the future for sure!!

Here’s my two fat quarters with my designs. I have also shown the original moleskine drawings for both. Its exciting to have my very own designs on fabric!

I took some photos this morning of the hand stitching I’ve done in between everything else lately. I haven’t been listing anything in my shops over the last month and I have no idea as yet what I will do with these. With only a couple of days left of June, I still haven’t sold enough to buy 6 bikes for the Pastors in Ghana, my total still sits at five and a half. Thank you Stacey for your offer in the comments of the last post (I’ll be in contact!).

Anyway, here are the little things I’ve been hand stitching. The denim ones will eventually go into the shop.

And the Work In Progress:

This post is actually not about feelings but about actual felt. : ) I couldn’t help myself with the title. In amongst the madness of packing and cleaning for this weekend’s move, I still have time to blog. This is basically because I HAVE to sit down for an hour or two after doing anything due to sore hips etc… I think this is probably a good thing, normally I’d be rushing around like a crazy person getting everything done and instead I feel much less stressed due to these breaks.

So, back to what this post is about. I’ve recently started listing hand stitched felt items in my online stores and today I have added 6 new felt items to my Etsy store. The main reason I did this today was so I can pack these items away into the ‘listed’ box ready for the move as they’ve been sitting here ready to be listed for a week now. After listing them I took a few screen shots of my hand stitched felt section in my Etsy store and below are the shots. Don’t they all look happy and bright together! In the range below you can choose from plain luggage tags, luggage tags with a pocket on the reverse side, brooches and pincushions.

I’m still sending the profits to the work of SIM (Bikes for Pastors this month and next month). So far I’m still at 5 bikes but I’ve had a few sales over the last week so the number is slowly climbing. Praise God!

My final act of creativity before we shift house this weekend is this t-shirt. I’ve designed and created it for a competition on one of the sites I sell my polymer clay and felt items on called MadeIt. The theme of the t-shirt was to be around the letter ‘M’ so this one is named after Keziah and entitled ‘My Mischief’. The design came from one of my moleskine sketches as you can see in the picture below:

The stitching was done by hand and changed slightly from the original design but overall I’m quite happy with the outcome. I wanted to have a go at putting one of my designs on a t-shirt anyway so this was a good chance to have a go.

Ok, so here’s the finished product along with some little modelled shots by Kezi. She was a bit sleepy in this shot so she doesn’t look like the mischievous self that the t-shirt is named after!

I have started to stitch a couple of new things now that I’m on my way with the brooches and have completed the booties. A few weeks ago I did a survey to which over 50 people responded. I asked what people think I should do with my felt ‘patches’ and I had quite a few suggestions. One of the most common suggestions was to create denim jeans patches (those in the US called them blue jeans patches) and so that’s what I’m trying to do.

I’ve had to put this aside for a week until I complete my t-shirt for the madeit t-shirt competition but so far so good. Here’s a sneek peek:

I quite like them without any stitching on but I can’t help myself. I don’t feel like they are finished without the stitching. The back of these has the glue for ironing onto jeans.

I am continuing to send the profits from all sales to the work of SIM around the world (bikes for Pastor’s still this month). Sales have not moved a lot in the last week so feel free to spread the word!!