He's long gone.

My Bub (boyfriend) has decided to up and leave me, for a week of touring with his rockin' band. He is now bathing in beer and eating sausages in Deutschland. (Darling, Please stay away from the currywurst. They'll only make you sorry.)

As a send off and a forget me not, I made him this bag:It's got this very cool green dice patterned fabric on the outside and black fabric with white skulls and crossbones on the inside. Both of which he bought! (I'm plaining a halloween dress out of the latter.) The bag actually is made from the same pattern that I drew up for my tote bag (see the leopard thing a few posts below) but, he's got longer skinnier handles as per his request. Long strapped bag are more manly, don't you know.

I hope it serves him well.

Keep on rockin'.

Foxy.

AFTER LONG LAST!

The skull and crossbones quilt is done. I am ever so pleased with it. I mean, this thing has been knocking about for a while. Mocking me and calling me lazy. But, I showed it that I've got the fortitude to 'getter done'.

Yeehaw!

Foxy.

My oh my mushroom!

I've been meaning to knit one of these for a while. According to the pattern, it's supposed to be felted but the wool I was using wasn't doing it. Oh well, I'm proud!

You can knit one too, the pattern is here:

http://kathrynivy.com/patterns/free/myriad-mushrooms/

Foxy.

Darn it.

Feeling inspired by the darning that's been going on at Prick Your Finger I decide to join in and mend my old black cardi!It sort of looks like my cardi has scars now.

Foxy.

Quit it. Err. Quilt it.

I've been working on tying up my patchwork quilt. I'm half way through it. Check it out: Foxy.

Tote it on over.

I drew out the pattern for this simple tote bag the other day. The bag is big enough to hold a notebook. Not that I still carry notebooks around. I’ll probably use it for shoes or knitting. Then I rummaged through my fabrics and found this old leopard print fabric that I had wanted to make curtains out of. (Then though, leopard flannel maybe a little too much for curtains.) This anchor and wheel lining was also in amongst my ‘fab’rics!

Foxy.

Come Together

We're starting our monthly craft get togethers at the end of the this month. See, we made a flyer:

Foxy & Pony.

Swishy Sweater.

I recently bought a navy blue merino cardigan. It was darn cheap and fit really really well. BUT, it was a little plain. No pizzazz. Sure, you should have staple (plain) items in your wardrobe but still there is room for a little something special about them.

After buying the plainest jane of navy blue jumpers, I headed over to Kleins just off Wardour Street. They are a rather ace haberdasher. In the backroom on the ground floor they have all their buttons. There I spotted exactly what I had been looking for! A whole box of rhinestone buttons! Gasp. I grabbed the ones I wanted and paid £11 for 6. Ouch.

I got the sweater and the buttons home and sewed them on. Then I didn’t care about the price of the button anymore. They made my sweater be all it can be. Yes!

Check it out: The picture is a little blurry! oops.

Foxy.

I'm goin' Crazy Quilts.

Oh no let's go....CRAZY!!!

My Great Aunt Pearl used to make crazy quilts. Even when she was 90 years young. (I guess you could say I come from a family of die hard crafters!) I've always loved the one that Mom has which Aunt Pearl made. It's got some really amazingly awful fabric in it but, it works! AND to top it all off it's backed in brown. Yum. Still it it a thing of beauty.

Recently, I've become aware that I've got a lot of scraps of fabric laying around that are good for nothing but, a crazy quilt. However, I still haven't finished my skull and cross bones quilt that I started ages ago. (I will be finishing it quite soon though because pondering the great quilt work of Aunt Pearl has helped me solve the final problem of that quilt. Anyway...) So, instead of making a razy quilt for the bed, I've decided to make crazy quilt placemats!

Here's the beginings of them:

Foxy.

Abuse, Reuse & Recycle. The story of a scarf.

I think everyone has shrunken something wool by putting it in the laundry. The most memorable one for me was this amazing pea coat my mom bought me for Christmas when I was 15. I had been a pretty bad girl that year so it was kind of amazing that I got anything at all but, that’s not what I’m on about here. About two months after I got the coat I decided that it ready for a wash. I don’t think I had ever washed a coat before so maybe something was on it? I’ve never really questioned why I washed it. But I did! If that wasn’t enough I decided it needed drying too. Well, that was the end of that coat. (The lining so fine, which sort of made it all the more hideous.)

Last year, the washing machine struck again. A certain someone that is not myself but does live in the same house as me and might do my laundry from time to time happened to unknowingly slip one of my favourite black sweaters into the ‘felter’. It emerged child sized. I was a bit distraught. But I dried it and decided to put it in with my other materials in the hopes that I would be able to cut it up one day and give it a new life.

The sweater came out the other evening after I had enough time to morn and it was cut! I used the bottom bit, from below the arms down. That was cut into 4 equal pieces and then I used the sweating machine (zig zag stitch) to put them back together in the form of a scarf.

I was pretty happy with it but, it definitely needed some adornment. I recently bought some spray style fabric paint. So I figured this was a good opportunity to try it out. I rifled through my stencils and found the skull and crossbones. I laid out the stencil on the scarf, sprayed it, let it dry a little and sprayed it again.

The end results were pretty darn good. Maybe too go. So, I decided it needed a little more personal. I then got out some grey wool and embroidered around the outside and inside of the skull and bones. That did it.

Check it out:
Now, I know you shouldn’t go and reward such hideous behaviour as sweater or ‘jumper’ shrinking but, it is getting cold out and that certain someone did need a scarf.

Foxy.

Diagonal Knitting!

A few years ago my Grandma gave me some really lovely Ultramerino yarn for Xmas. It was made by these people: http://www.artyarns.com/newsite/yarn_main.htm. It also came with a mutildirectional scarf pattern that she picked. (The story does go beyond this, someone told me that after finding the pattern in a book in the yarn store my Grandma told the clerk there she wouldn't buy the yarn unless they would make her a copy to the pattern. Reluctantly the clerk did it.) Well, I tried the pattern but there were a few key areas on it that made no sense to me. In fact, I'd say that that pattern beat me.

So a partial knit bit of this...

has been sitting on one of my knitting needles for a long time.

The other day I decided to have a look at it again. Years mature you and I thought maybe I was ready to tackle the 'demon' err diamond scarf pattern. No. It beat me again. So, I instead went and looked for a similar simpler pattern.

I found one here: http://www.burningbright.com/Karen/knitting/Accessory-Scarves/Multidirectional_Diagonal_Scarf.htm.

It's a good pattern and is very well explained. After a few days I have half the scarf done! (Though it does have a few little mistakes. I can't bring myself to take it apart and start all over again. It's therefore a scarf full of character.)

This is what it looks like knit:

Foxy.

Foxy Freakin' Cowboy Shirt Dress

A moment of pure craftiness hit me a few months back. I've had the pattern for a cowboy shirt dress for a while. I got it after I missed this lovely cowboy shirt dress on ebay. Anyway, after my second attempt at making a cowboy shirt for my beau failed, (once again too small!) I decided it was time to make something for myself.

I went over to Mermaid Fabrics in Hackney Central. They have loads of stuff in there. Generally, for stuff with really good patterns I go over to Rolls and Rems in Holloway but, sometime you'll find something really super cute in Mermaid. I got a pinky-orange faux crepe type material and decided that I would go through my trunk of fabric at home to look for something for the yoke. At home after some consultation I decided to use up some of my ace Alexander Henry black tattoo fabric. (I just love that stuff.)

There where also a few options for the piping but, in the end I went with red which worked out well. The dress, overall was pretty easy though I did get a little confused when it came to the sleeves. Once in a while directions fail to make any sense to me. Even with diagrams!

Funny enough the most difficult thing about this dress was finding colored pearl snaps! I sent away for some from a company here in the UK called Millcroft Textiles. On their website they looked like normal pearl snaps but when they arrived they were those funny plastic cover metal things, like this:

Eek! The people at Millcroft kindly took them back and refunded my money but, then I still had to find the snaps. After a bit of looking around I found the Bee Lee Company in Texas. They have a very wide assortment of stuff, however I didn't manage to order anything from them because they don't have a online catalogue. I like shopping online. (I will in the future get some of those nice diamond snaps from Bee Lee.)

Instead, I went to Wendy at The Snap Store. http://thesnapstore.com/catalog/index.php. I got some pink, red and black snaps. I thought I use the pink ones initially but, when they came it was pretty apparent they wouldn't quite go. So I went with the red ones. They ended up looking amazing.

I wore the dress out to DJ, check it out:

The pattern:
The dress:
Foxy.