Hello Kitty fabric in the mail

As someone who loves Hello Kitty and pretty fabric I was excited to hear that Liberty of London and Sanrio were collaborating. Unfortunately by the time we visited the UK and went to Liberty's they had sold out of everything in the range except a huge mound of memo blocks! I managed to find a nice Hello Kitty and Liberty pen in a Waterstones bookshop in London so I left the UK happy that I had at least one thing from the Hello Kitty, Liberty collection.

When I got home I had a look to see what, if anything, from the collection was available to buy online. I found a cute plush Hello Kitty in a liberty print dress on ebay, but nowhere seemed to have the fabric. Every website had sold out. So I then searched on Etsy for Hello Kitty Liberty fabric and came across Colchique. She makes bags and children's clothes including this baby kimono made with Hello Kitty Liberty fabric. I wrote to her to ask if she had any offcuts of this fabric that she didn't need and she replied saying that she did. I bought her offcuts and they arrived today in the post making me the proud owner of the above selection of Hello Kitty fabric!

Making curtains is not for me!

Last night and today I've been making curtains for our new place. It has a weird curtain system with clips instead of curtain hooks or tabs so in theory it's all really simple and all you need to do is hem around big rectangles of fabric, clip them up and you've got your curtains. The thing is that straight lines are just so hard to do - especially when they have to be 2 metres long! I have to say that I didn't enjoy making them at all cos I knew that they were all wonky and there was nothing I could do to make it right! The fabric was so slippy and stretchy it was hard to keep the tension right and I had to use the lines on the living room floor as a guide to pin up the hems! Anyway they're finished now and tomorrow we will try hanging them up and see if they work...

How I made this bag and other things...

I haven't posted a blog for 10 days - I think that's the longest time since I started blogging. Why? I guess life has been busy! We're in the last 2 weeks of our summer holiday programme at Klub Novi Most and every day is busy working with young people, preparing activities etc. And as well as all that we've been to camp for 2 days, we've had a visitor from the UK for 2 weeks and we've been house hunting in Jajce.

The house hunting is now over as yesterday we found a really lovely place :) our visitor from the UK is gone and there's no more camp so maybe the pace of life will slow down a bit now.

This bag is something that I made as an example for a sewing night we had at Klub Novi Most on Friday. We had 7 girls come and each of them made a bag similar to this one. It's a very simple reversible bag:

• For the pattern I drew round a piece of A3 paper, folded the fabric in half and cut it about 1cm away from the lines so the fabric is as big as 2 sheets of A3 paper.
• Then I ironed the fold and using a sewing machine I sewed up the 2 sides along the lines I had drawn.
• I did this again with another fabric.
• Then put one inside the other and sewed the tops together. To do this you take the 2 bag parts you have made, turn one the right way out and leave the other inside out. Then put the inside out part inside the part that is the right way out. then fold in the tops of both parts, pin them together so they match and sew.
• For the strap I just cut a piece of fabric as long as I wanted it, folded it in half and sewed along the side. Then I turned it inside out and sewed it to the bag.

Dress Making?

So - I've noticed that I start nearly all my blogs with 'so'! Anyway, she is finished - all that is needed is to make the dress, and that is where I'm stuck. I had a go at drawing some ideas and kind of thought about making some paper patterns - but I really haven't got a clue how to do it, so I'll wait to hear back from my friend and see if she'll help me later on this week.

Sarajevo

So I am in Sarajevo at the moment with not much internet access so I haven't posted any blogs for a few days. I will be here for a few more days so there won't be much action on here and I won't have much time for making amigurumis - but here's a photo of one I made earlier! I was really happy with how the hair turned out - and the socks and shoes :) you can see more pictures on my Flickr account.

Pretty Patterns

So here is the fabric I plan to use to make some kind of top/dress for my still un-named amigurumi. It's from Liberty of London. I haven't got any further in deciding when and how I'm going to make this dress - but when I do I'll let you know.

Making progress

So this is her so far - she still doesn't have a name. I have some really nice fabric that I want to use to make a top for her - it's from Liberty of London so hopefully soon I can show you some progress being made on that - we'll see! I used eyelash yarn again to make her hair - funky fur by Sidar and actually it was easier to use than some of the other eyelash yarn I have tried.

New Project

So this is my latest project - she doesn't have a name yet, we will see how she turns out. I'm thinking of trying to sew her some clothes instead of the clothes being part of the amigurumi - but I need help from a friend, never made a pattern before. We'll see how it goes!

this might help someone...

So I said that I found it hard to crochet with the fluffy wool - this is how I made it easier. I tied some thread to the wool and crocheted with both together - the thread made it easier to see where the stitches were.

a gift for a friend

This was the first time I experimented with using eyelash yarn - it was pretty hard to use! It's very hard to see the individual stitches and so it's hard to keep the right number of stitches in each row, especially when using the more fluffy yarn used on the jumper sleeves. But I did it - and I'm very happy with the result - as is the friend I gave it too :)

box of bits

a box of bits is essential for every kind of crafter! amongst other things, in my box you can see a variety of eyes which I buy from Enami Eyes and some patterned fabric from Liberty of London.