Blanket Stitch and Monsters

We're having another Craft Party on Monday night and one of the things available to make will be Felt Mistress's Monster from Issue 7 of Mollie Makes. I made this one as an example for people to see. People always compliment me on how neat and intricate my amigurumi dolls are - and I guess they are! But when it comes to sewing and cutting material my ability to be neat and intricate just goes out the window! Straight lines are not my thing. I like how this guy turned out, but if you could see him in real life you would see how inaccurately I cut the shapes and how wonky my sewing is! And for those of you who are into sewing I have a question... How do you start off the first stitch when you are going to use blanket stitch? When I do it the first stitch always comes out wonky. Answers gratefully received!

Jajce Craft Party #2

We enjoyed our Etsy Craft Party in June so much that we decided to do it again last week. As you can see, we had a great time. Craft Party #3 is coming - just need to choose a date...

Doodling on holiday

I'm back from holiday and I thought I'd show you this - I had a go at some doodling embroidery whilst we were away. I'd never done it before but it's pretty easy and very relaxing!

Mollie Makes in Bosnia

Mollie Makes is a new UK magazine for 'those who love the crafty life'! It's full of ideas of things to make, interviews with crafters and lots of lovely photos. It even comes with a craft pack stuck to the front of the magazine containing all you need to make one of the projects inside. I heard about it last week on twitter and quickly asked our soon to be visitors to pick me up a copy in WHSmith before coming out to see us. I got the magazine yesterday and I'm pretty sure I'm the proud owner of the first ever Mollie Makes magazine in Bosnia and Herzegovina :)

I sew cute :)

If you read my blog yesterday you will know that I got loads of exciting parcels all in one day. Well here is the contents of one of them! An awesome Christmas present from my sister - the I sew cute sewing kit from Fantastic Toys. I love it!

more of my sewing endevours...

This week I've been to a sewing course that was held in our church for a couple of hours each morning. While most people were interested in making clothes for themselves I decided to try making clothes for amigurumis!

'a' is my first attempt at making a summer tunic top type thing. It was a bit bulky round the top but not too bad as first try.

'b' is my second attempt and turned out a lot better.

'c' is one of my dolls wearing the top - it doesn't really go with her outfit but I had to try it on a doll to check it was the right size.

'd' shows my first attempt at making jeans - they're unfinished and a bit too small so I'll try again later.

All in all I think it's pretty good progress for 3 mornings work and has given me the basics I need to keep going. Eventually I'm sure I'll make something I'm really happy with.

And if you're interested in how my curtains turned out you can see one of them in my blog post finally - a space to be creative.

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...

Trying New Things

One of my best friends is having a baby very soon and because there isn't much choice of funky baby stuff available here in Bosnia Herzegovina we're making it all ourselves! She has decided that 'Owls' is the theme for the baby's room. This is my first attempt at making plush using a sewing machine and I think it came out ok. I'll keep going and make a few more and see which one turns out best!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway if you want the chance to win a super cute pumpkin!

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.

Etsy Craft Party

Welcome to our Etsy Craft Party! The people at Etsy encouraged Etsians all over the world to have craft parties on 18th June in celebration of Etsy's 5th Birthday. I have a friend,BlessedFlower, who is preparing to open an etsy shop and so together we decided to organise a party here in our town Mostar. There are not many Etsy sellers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and there is only one other in our town (well 2 cos they're a married couple, but it's one shop!). We wrote to all the Etsy sellers in BiH to let them know about the party but most of them live in the capital city, Sarajevo and it is too far for them to travel for one night. But the other Etsy sellers from Mostar came and it was great to meet them. They make amazing jewellery, you can check it out in their Etsy shop - Lottaart.

The idea of our party was to have fun encouraging other people to be creative. We prepared different activities for people to try:

• crocheting bags with plarn
• making sock monkeys
• sewing flowers
• making altered art journals

We also had a good supply of cookies, brownies and other snacks :)

Everyone had a great time and hopefully we encouraged those already creative people to try new things and we awakened the sleeping creativity in everyone else!

Tutorial - How to make bunting from old magazines

How many of you went to an Etsy Craft Party on Friday night? I organised one here in Mostar and we had a great time. I'll post some photos and write more about that another day, today I want to share with you how I made bunting for the party, cos you can't have a party without bunting!

What you need:

• old magazines


• 10 metres of 1 inch ribbon


• pins


• scissors


• sewing machine

How to:

• take a page of a magazine and fold it into 4 (see picture a)


• cut the paper from the bottom left corner to the top of the first fold and then from the top of that fold to the bottom of the next and from the bottom of that fold to the top of the next fold and from the top of that fold to the bottom right corner of the page. (see picture b)


• throw away the 2 end pieces and you have 3 triangles of bunting.


• pin the triangles to the ribbon. (see picture c)


• repeat this as many times as necessary to make the length of bunting you want.


• sew the triangles to the ribbon. (see picture d)

And it's as easy as that!

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.

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.

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.