Tutorial: 'Balloon Girl' embroidery & applique

Here is the pattern and a tutorial for the little girl with balloons that was the centrepiece of a patchwork cushion I made recently. I drew her in Adobe Illustrator (as I am not so good at drawing on paper!). Her dress and balloons are appliqued fabric and the rest is hand embroidered using three basic stitches.



STEPS:

1. Print the pattern (download it as a PDF from here and print it to A4)

2. Trace the pattern onto your fabric. You can refer to my tutorial 'Tracing an embroidery pattern' for this. If you will be using the pattern to make the centre panel of a patchwork item (as I have done here with a cushion) I suggest you make your patchwork first, then trace the pattern and embroider/applique. This will make sure the design is centred in the finished product.

3. HOW TO DO THE APPLIQUE - Cut out the girl's dress and one of the balloons from the paper pattern. For each item (ie dress and 3 balloons), cut a piece of fabric large enough (in a rectangle or square) and a piece of 'Heat'n Bond Lite' the same size as the fabric. Put the fabric down on your ironing board (right side down) then the Heat'n Bond on top with the glue against the fabric and the paper facing up. Press your iron down on the paper backing with even pressure (no steam) for approx 4 seconds until the glue has bonded onto the fabric. Take the paper patterns you cut out and put them on top of the paper backing face down and trace around each. Cut the pieces out along the trace line. Peel off the paper backing, place the dress/balloon on your main fabric, and iron with no steam for approximately 6 seconds with even pressure until your applique has bonded. With black thread sew all the way around each balloon/dress 1mm from the edge.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is important you use the Lite or 'sewable' version of 'Heat'n Bond' as the regular version will clog up the needle of your sewing machine.

4. Embroider the girl's face, hair, arms, legs, and the balloon strings with back-stitch. The girl's eyes are satin stitch and the bows on her hair and ankles are made with lazy daisies for the loops and backstitch for the two bow ends.



And there you go! A very easy project and I hope you enjoy making it. Please leave me a comment with any questions.

Daydreaming in peach

I have started taking part in 'showcases' on Facebook recently. For those who aren't familiar with the market for hand-made items on Facebook, a showcase is where a group of craft businesses get together and create an album of products for sale, and offer it to their fans (on a first-come-first-served basis). Showcases usually have a theme, such as 'Black & White', 'Boys only', 'Pretty in Pink', 'Vintage Christmas' - you get the idea. It is a great mechanism for Facebook business pages to expand their fan and customer base, as well as selling products, and networking with other crafts people. But even more importantly, they are great FUN!



Now that you all know how showcases work, I can tell you all about the one I am taking part in next week. It's called 'Daydreaming in Peach' and it's hosted by Peach & Aubrey - the theme is "a celebration of childhood dreams, pastel colour and all things lacey". This is my entry - a 'Peaches & Cream' set consisting of a patchwork cushion and padded bunting.



The centre panel of the cushion is my own drawing - it's hand-embroidered, and the girl's dress and balloons are machine applique. I am going to share the pattern and my method for this little cutie in the next post. The fabrics are my own mix - mainly vintage Lecien and Fig Tree prints.




The showcase is starting on 2nd August, so if you are interested in checking it out, you can get more details from my Facebook page. I will publish a link to the album there nearer the time.

Before I go, a few thoughts on blogging. You may have noticed that I don't blog as often as I used to, sometimes not even every week. The culprit is my Etsy shop which has turned into a bit of a monster. Originally it was meant for the few people asking me if I could make them 'one of those'. To my surprise, the demand for my items has snowballed, and whilst I am not complaining about the shop's success it also leaves me very little spare time for personal sewing projects and blogging about them. So here's my new resolution - not to pay much heed to the blogging-frequency-clock in my head, which starts to ring alarmingly when it has been 5 days since my last post. After all, as I read in this excellent article about sewing blogging the other day: "For a sewing blogger, not posting consistently or not posting for weeks is okay. A silence from the web usually means that you are in front your sewing machine, making your next masterpiece. And sometimes, the longer the silence, the better." I hope you agree!

Things for boys - part 3

Today I want to share with you my final project in the 'Things for Boys' series (you can read parts 1 and 2 here and here). This time I made a padded bunting with a nautical theme for a friend's son, a little boy called Darcy.



I made my first bunting when I was pregnant with Alice and had the nesting urge BIG TIME. I was such a rookie sewist then. Alice's bunting looks great but at the time I wished the flags were a bit more substantial in size and were a little less 'floppy'. So when I was making a quilted mat recently I thought it would be fantastic to apply the same principle to bunting - make it with wadding I mean. I don't know why more people don't do the flags this way, I think the end product looks ten times better and hangs much nicer too, just with the addition of a layer of thick wadding in the middle.



It took me half a dozen tries to get the right level of 'puffiness' but I got there. Here are the flags all finished and ready for binding.



I appliqued the letters with Heat n' Bond and then machine appliqued around each letter / shape. The applique was done last (ie after the flags were constructed) so the letters really 'puff' out. The name on its own seemed a bit lonely so I added a couple of bookend flags with a boat and a lighthouse to finish it off.



I am so pleased with the end result, I will start taking custom orders in the shop soon. I also have several other boy sets planned, and of course, some gorgeous girl sets will be available as well. Hope you like them!

An upcycled memory cushion

A friend came to me with a brilliant idea recently. She asked if I could make her a patchwork memory cushion, using her baby's old flannel wraps, and with her name and birth details hand embroidered in the centre. What a fantastic use for those cherished flannels with so many special memories!



The sewing of the cushion should have been quite straightforward - a simple patchwork envelope cushion. No frills (literally), no bells and whistles. But I kept making silly mistakes (like sewing the cushion front the wrong way round or having the teddies upside down) so my seam ripper got quite a work out. And having never worked with flannel before, I found it a bit tricky to get perfectly butted patchwork seams, especially as the centre panel is cotton and stretches differently to flannel... So it took some trial and error but I am happy with the end result. Most importantly, my friend is delighted with it.



The central panel is hand embroidered (using my usual tracing technique for which I have a tutorial here). With the amount of embroidery I do I should probably look into getting an embroidery machine, but I am one of those strange people who finds hand embroidery very satisfying. It also seems the end product is made more special by all the effort that goes into doing it by hand. I know, such a glutton for punishment. But worth it, especially for a cherished item as I am sure this one will be.

Things for boys - part 2

I am back with the second installment in my 'things for boys' series (you can read part 1 here). It's time for crochet hats! I picked three designs, all pre-approved by Alexander before I started to crochet. Lucky I have an adorable little boy who makes the cutest model (when he cooperates)!

The first design is an aviator hat in gorgeous chunky beige wool with cream trim and wood button detail. The pattern is by Beezy Mom's Creations on Etsy.





The second hat is a pretty simple but pretty cool pattern that I found on Ravelry. It's called 'Brainwaves Beanie' and it's by Playin' Hooky Designs. He looks so grown up in this one!




With two 'sensible' hats, I wanted the third one to be 'fun', so I started looking through Etsy for some cool animal designs. I knew I had found 'the one' when I came across this pattern - a pirate owl! Alexander's squealy excitement when he saw the picture confirmed my choice. FUNKY!




I know this post is supposed to be about boys' things - but who says only boys can be pirates?! See, my little girl here rocks her own pirate owl hat. You can probably imagine the reactions we get when we take them out wearing these hats.



Back soon with the third and final installment in the series: personalised bunting for boys. See you soon!

PS - the hats are available for purchase in my Etsy store, with worldwide shipping.

Clamshell blanket

Remember the clamshell pram blanket that I started making for Alice a couple of months ago? It was based on this colour inspiration board.



It's done. Just in time too - the Australian winter is really beginning to bite.



The little madam was not a very cooperative model today! There were quite a few pictures of her crying or pulling grumpy faces at me, or crawling away. I managed to get a few cheeky shots though.



The pattern is by Sandra from Cherry Heart,  she has a great tutorial on her blog as well. There is also a clamshell-along group on Ravelry, if you wanted to have a crack at it yourself.

New sewing room - the big reveal

Drum roll...... ta-da! Here is my new sewing room. It is finally ready and I absolutely LOVE it!



I am especially pleased as the furniture and fittings (desk, cabinet, shelf, pegboard, accessories) came in at just under my budget of $300. I would have loved to have thrifted some items rather than buy brand new, but as I wanted the room ready as soon as possible, I went for the next best thrifty option: IKEA.



The room is the smallest in the house so it was a bit of a push to squeeze everything in, but I am glad we decided to keep the guest bed. I have already been crocheting on it this morning, with a cup of tea by my side.



I am a bit of a fusspot when it comes to dust, so I had to have a cabinet with glass doors to keep dust off my fabrics and yarns. This IKEA cabinet is just the right size - big enough to hold my current fabric and yarn stash, but not so big that I would be tempted to go on a fabric shopping spree to fill it up! I have my fabric on the top half, and the bottom half has my yarn, minky, and interfacing. Unfortunately my felt sheets were too large to fit the cabinet so they are sitting on top for now until I can figure out a more permanent home for them.



I had the pegboard cut to size at my local hardware store, and my husband mounted it onto a frame. It was a yucky dirty white colour so he gave it a lick of paint using some leftover pale pink paint from Alice's nursery.



For wall art, I created my own 'Keep Calm' poster, using the poster generator by Keep-Calm-O-Matic, then printed it and popped it into an IKEA Virserum frame.



I also displayed some of my hoop embroidery on the angled wall next to the desk. I am imagining this wall covered with hoops in a few years' time.



It is so nice to finally have a space that is completely customised and away from the hustle and bustle of family life. And with plenty of storage too.



But I have to say, the absolutely best thing about it is: it has a door ;)