Enjohn the 3 headed monster

Enjohn the 3 headed monster, originally uploaded by MandyMade.

Meet Enjohn the 3 headed monster. It's school holidays at the moment and Aidan was itching to make something, he'd exhausted lego building so turned to my sewing machine. So we looked through all of my softies books. He came across Tri-Plod from "Invasion of the Plush Monsters" by Veronika Alice Gunter. He was designed by Ian Dennis.

We had to enlarge the pattern (one of my pet hates about some of these books) so had to visit dad at work so he could enlarge the pattern. He printed it on a thick card so we could use it as a template, very handy, then a trip to spotlight for the materials. The pattern asked for 1 metre of felt, total over kill, 30cm would have done it, so we now have plenty of red felt to make something else. The blue fuzzy material came as a fat quarter so that was handy, more monsters can be made of that. I think the eyes could have been smaller, it was a bit tricky inserting them, there wasn't a size in the pattern so I had to guess.

This book is supposed to be for beginners, I thought this pattern required more than a beginners knowledge of how to make a softie.

He's been on lots of adventures, especially with the first softie I ever made, Tu Tu, and will go on lots more, until school goes back I think.

Happy Monster making

Mandy

A year in Review 2010

It was a bit's and pieces year last year, I made all sorts of things from different crafts. I attended Sew It Together and joined the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild, attended heaps of craft fairs and bought way to much fabric. 

I had a bit of a bad health year, not just me, it seemed like all of my family had a bit of a bad year, I won't go into details. Then I got pregnant again, yay. 6 years after being pregnant with Aidan, what can I say, sometimes these things take time!! I thought if I got pregnant again I'd be all about craft and I'd be making heaps, the opposite happened, I completely lost my crafty mojo. Unless something had to be made it was just too hard to think about. So my list of things I wanted to make just didn't get done. Oh well, at least everyone is now healthy and I've finally got my mojo back, some might say it's nesting!!

So last year I declared 2010 as the year for domestic projects, well I guess that is now going to be carried into 2011 on a larger scale as there will be another little person to make stuff for.

I'm going to make another make wish list that I'll keep in my side bar and hopefully cross off this year, but who knows, I may get a baby this time that wont let me get any time to myself, so I'm going to play it by ear.

There are a few things that I want to do though:

• Comment more on others blogs - I've been too much of a lurker, I want to change this
• Get more involved with quilt or sew alongs - there has been heaps I wished I have joined
• Complete the quilts I've started
• Look into craft markets to have a stall - I want to have something original though so I need to come up with something while working out the pros and cons of having a market stall.
• Sew from my stash before shopping - my stash has got out of hand, I want to weigh what I have and maybe 1/2 it, but that also depends on how many projects I'm able to make!!

Ok so just a few goals for the year, we'll see how we go.

So this year is going to be full of changes with the introduction of new little person in our lives and also not working at my career for 12 months, I think that is going to be the biggest adjustment!!

I know this is a month into 2011 but happy new year and may you get all of your crafty wishes for 2011.

TTFN

Mandy

A late birth present for Eva

I know it has been a while between posts but I have been very busy building a baby (now 35 weeks) and haven't felt too crash hot about sitting at a sewing machine let alone at the computer to blog about it. Well now I have finished work (since Christmas!!) I've had a bit more energy to sew and sit at the computer so we'll see how we go now.

Above is a gift I finished a while ago (November to be exact) but haven't written about, I wanted to give it to baby Eva first. So before I do a year in review post I thought I better write about this one first. I had ideas of what I wanted to make Eva but none seemed to get made through the bit of a sewing slump I had, until I saw "Once Upon A Time - Girl" in Homespun Mag 11.10, designed by Natalie Lymer of Cinderberry Stitches. It was perfect. I was home sick with a cold so whipped the stitchery up in no time. I had a few problems with the kind of thread that Natalie suggested but just ended up going through my extensive dmc thread stash and used that. I used a jelly roll from spotlight and trimmed it to the correct width, it would have been ok if they sold honey buns as well. Anyway, I found that the material wasn't cut straight at the fold which was very annoying, if you are going to use one of these rolls watch out for this. I also found that my 1/4 inch foot isn't, nothing joined up. I found that the gauge is out but the metal part is ok so from now on I ignore the gauge, very annoying. I'm happy with the finished product and had no problem with the pattern at all, just need a boy to stitch the other one for now!! More close up picks on flckr.

TTFN

Mandy