Within my own church, there are 5 ladies (including myself) who are expecting babies in the next 5 months. Add to this a number of friends with babies who are turning 1 very soon and it all got me thinking about making more baby/toddler-friendly softies. With this in mind I picked up some polar fleece and I must say – this is great stuff! So soft, stretchy and they’re available in numerous gelati-inspired colours. Why I’ve never used this stuff before . . .

I sketched up an original pattern, influenced by Japanese softies, and came up with a little creature that I must admit I’ve really fallen in love with. I don’t have a name for him yet. He is intended for the soon-to-arrive baby boy of a a good friend.

He is made of polar fleece, tartan flannel, a fun Japanese print, and wool felt (no loose embellishments). I made him a little felt duckie as well. Why the very long arms, you ask? Well, to cuddle his duckie of course!

I really, really like this little creature and I will definitely make many more. And below is my attempt at making one of Carly’s Mini-Moopy Bunnies. She’s actually not so mini – about 50cm tall from top of ears to toes. I made her for a special little girl who’s turned 1. The polar fleece makes her super cuddly. The pattern is definitely worth a try – I got to use up some fabric scraps and was the least stressful softie I’ve put together so far.

Thank you very much for all the lovely comments regarding my back-tack 3 creation – I am especially over the moon that Amber (the recipient) is excited about it. I had no idea she loved turtles!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been working on some owl softies/cushions on and off for the last 2 weeks or so. They finally all materialised over the weekend and have taken up residence on one of our couches.

Each owl is one-of-a-kind, made of various cotton (and one 1970′s polyester!) prints, wool felt, and an assortment of vintage buttons. All have quilted bellies (with cotton batting on the underside) and are backed with a wool-blend, mocha-coloured flannel. I had a lot of fun putting these little guys together – especially thinking up colour combinations and what kind of motif/embellishment to add to one of their wings. Each one stands 33cm tall and about 25cm wide.

My daughter was so excited when she saw them lined up in my studio. She rushed over and gave each one a hug. She also insisted that I take a picture of her with them on the sofa – so here they are together:

The owlie cushions are currently available in my little shop and you can see individual photos of each in my Flickr gallery. This will probably be my last major project before Baby #2 arrives. We went to see my Doctor today and she said the baby had dropped into position, so it could be any day now!

Softie inspiration has come in buckets today!

First up, I found out that the Morphe 2 Softie Exhibition is happening in Adelaide this October! I have a few original softie patterns that I haven’t yet tried out so I am hoping to give them a go and include them in my application. Of course, I have no expectations whatsoever that I will actually secure a spot as an Exhibitor but it never hurts to try :-)

Carly has also made available a pattern of her adorable Mini-Moopy Bunny, free to download from her blog. It’s a good pattern for softie-crafters of all skill levels and there’s so much scope for making each one unique. Go check it out!

And after some craft blog surfing I stumbled across the wonderful Madame Trapo (aka Eglair Quicolli) from Brazil. There is no other word to describe her dolls except for AMAZING! When I saw her Yoko dolls, I almost fell off my chair – and then I saw this:

Such wonderful detail, creativity, whimsy and colour! She even makes Ninja dolls! Please visit her shop to see all her creations.

I’m so completely inspired at the moment – I foresee a weekend full of softie activity for me (and it helps that today is my last day at work – maternity leave here I come!).

Firstly, thank you so very much to all of you who posted such encouraging and supportive comments on my last post about my very first bag! The crafting blog community is so incredibly generous and kind, and your comments have really boosted my sewing confidence to try a few more bags – especially with my Mum, Mum-in-law’s, and Sister-in-law’s birthdays coming up in the next few months. Thank you so much.

Next, A WARNING: If your name is AMBER and you are the owner of this blog, please turn away right now if you don’t want to see what will be in your mailbox in the next few days!!! Let’s give it a few seconds . . . . :-)

Okay, so onto the Back-Tack 3 softie. I really wanted to use one of my own original patterns for this project but it was hard to adapt them to fit the rules, which were:

1. Black and/or White;
2. One other colour which was not to take up more than 20% of the creation;
3. 5 Buttons;
4. Not taller than 20cm;
5. The receiver’s initial somewhere on the softie

I settled on the fabric first (a print from Robert Kaufman and a print from Henry Alexander) and then finally decided that the turtle pattern in Aranzi Aronzo’s book would best showcase the fabric. Let me say upfront, I found the pattern quite a challenge – not one for the faint-hearted! The hardest bits for me were piecing together the shell and then the final step of attaching the head and legs and tail. It took some time for me to figure how to do it in my head and then it was quite fiddly and slow-going actually doing it. If you’ve tried this pattern, I’m really interested to know how you found working with it!

I used wool felt for the head and tail, and for the embellishments: 5 red flower buttons, a red gingham ribbon, an “A” alphabet bead and attached some ‘googly’ eyes. So here she is, Little Miss Retro Turtle – hopefully Amber can give her a much better name than that! She measures about 11cm high, 26cm long and 22cm wide.

I had also found this wonderful almost canvas-like fabric that was black and white with blue/green embroidered butterflies. I had wanted to use it for this project somehow and decided that perhaps it would be put to good use as part of a crafting apron. I’m not sure of Amber’s measurements so I thought it would be best to err on the side of caution and make it larger rather than smaller in size. I teamed it up with some black & white polk-a-dot fabric, a few vintage blue and green buttons, and personalised it by attaching alphabet beads that spell out her name. It has 3 deep pockets and measures approximately 50cm wide and 27cm long.

And here is the final package that is on it’s way to Amber – thought I’d throw in some delicious marshmallow sweets for her gorgeous children!

I sincerely hope Amber likes it! I really enjoyed the whole process of putting this package together for her – it’s kept me on my toes and I feel that I’ve grown just a little bit more as a crafter through this project. I’d highly recommend joining up for Back-Tack4!

I’ve had a little phobia of making bags – for some reason they have always seemed so complex and difficult and I’ve shied away from attempting bags of any kind.

To get over this phobia, I ordered the “Machine Made Patchwork” book that I’ve read so many good reviews about on other crafty blogs – and while I was at it, I thought I might as well pick-up Aranzi Aronzo’s “Whimsical Junk Stuffed Animals” book, purchased both from Crafty Creations on eBay. See the Crafting Japanese blog for links to Flickr galleries on both these books.

They arrived in the mail yesterday – yes, just in time for the weekend! – and as soon as I started flicking through the patchwork book I was overcome with the urge to – drumroll, please – create a bag!

After tucking my little girl into bed, I got down to business. I decided to pick a few things from different patterns in the book that I liked and made up my own pattern – this bag was going to be for me so it was definitely going to be customised! After 3 hours of stitching, I ended up with a tote-looking bag, quilted, and with one thick strap (which I prefer over 2 thin straps). It has a large pocket inside and is lined with moss-green denim. I used some of my favourite cotton prints for the outer covering.

Here is the other side of the bag and a closer look. I have yet to attach a button and looped ribbon for the closing mechanism.

It’s slightly wonky but very sturdy – in fact, my sewing machine gave up on me a few times in protest of having to sew through some of the very thick pieces! But I’m really happy with the finished product. It’s just the right size to fit all my essentials. I’ve learned a lot through the putting-it-together process and will make quite a few adjustments when I decide to try my hand at making another bag.

Hey and it wasn’t so scary after all!

Not sure how it’s happened but over the last few weeks, I’ve developed a little thing for owls.

It all started with this fabric collage that I actually completed on my birthday, which happened at the end of April. I almost forgot all about it! It’s made of cotton damask, courduroy, oriental brocade, Japanese silk, wool felt, and sequins. I used a little bit of stitching and also attached a chinese friendship note.

It’s called “Thinking of You“, and is yet to be matted and framed.

After completing this, I did some sketching of owl patterns for softies, which ended up in an experimental print merging fabric and the sketch.

Over the last few days I started putting some owl softie/cushions together – here’s a sneak peek:

And this afternoon, I received this gorgeous linocut framed print that I ordered from the very talented Littlest Flower of – you guessed it – an owl!

Wonder how long this “Owl Thing” is going to last? :-)

My nephew is celebrating his 4th birthday this month and I wanted to make him a stuffed robot – something that he could cuddle up to while he was reading or in bed. I searched the internet for a simple robot pattern but couldn’t find any so I sketched up my own – which turned out to be fairly easy given that it’s all straight lines and simple shapes really.

This crazy bot is made of printed soft flannel and cotton, plus wool felt embellishments appliqued with a zig-zag stitch (must say I’m becoming a real fan of this stitch!). Tristan is quite a cheeky little boy so I thought I would reflect that in the robot’s face – slyly sticking out his tongue.

So he’s off to the USA today, headed for Tristan’s home – hope Tristan likes his new friend!

Just had to share this with you. I checked into Prints & Patterns today and was greeted by a post on the delicious work of Lotta Glave, a Scandanavian illustrator and designer. Here is a screenshot of some her fabrics from Prints & Patterns – head on over there for more information. I’m still trying to figure out how/where I can purchase some of her fabric.

Also through a link from Prints & Patterns, I came across Design for Delight, which is a seller of vintage goods (including fabric) in Amsterdam. They also have an online presence and here is a screenshot of some of their vintage fabrics available on their website (and yes, they ship worldwide!):

Quick – hide your credit cards!

Here’s another merging of fabric and ink drawing – this time a sketch of a robin in a tree and some red, retro print fabric.

From this:

To this:

You can see a larger image of the print in my Flickr Gallery.

I decided to take a little break from sewing and wanted to make more collages. After drawing up some sketches I started to think about merging the pencil and ink drawings together with fabrics digitally, so that the fabrics ‘colour-in’ the sketches in the same way that I cut fabric into shapes for fabric collages.

I did a few sketches and then laid out the pieces of fabric I wanted to use.

It took me a while to figure out how to achieve the effect I wanted on my Graphics program – basically it involved merging the image of the sketch with the images of the fabric and then removing parts of the sketch so that the images of the fabric could come through. After a few nights of playing around with the fabrics and sketches on the screen, I ended up with these 3 illustrations – I can’t really classify them as collages.

“Two Trees” – this one merges a pencil drawing of trees and a Japanese fabric print of lanterns and lights. I then digitally filled in the background with solid colours.

“Mama Owl’s Moonlight Serenade” – this ink drawing came about while I was toying with some original patterns for an owl softie I want to eventually make. The sketch is merged with a Japanese fabric print of colourful chrysanthemums.

“Elephant Jungle Song” - this ink drawing is influenced by the one above and is merged with a retro fabric print. This one would look right at home in a nursery or child’s bedroom I think.

I think the Owl one is my favourite of the three – it also took the longest to complete. I’m happy with the results and I’ve got a few more sketches in mind to try out as well.

Oh and Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mums! Hope you get showered with lots of love today!

And just wanted to say thank you to all of you who drop in and leave your wonderful comments and suggestions – they really make my day and motivate me to keep creating, learning and growing. Thank you so much for the encouragement – I am working through them and hope to email you personally with a thank you soon (if I haven’t done so already!)