Wool pom poms!

The nights are getting longer and the temperature is dropping. You might be thinking about maybe wearing a hat or scarf for the first time (i cannot wait!). This means that now is the perfect time to start thinking about wooly pom poms!

As you will remember i had a go at making paper pom poms recently and this reminding me how much i like making the wool variety. In fact these were one of the first crafty projects i ever tried when i was little. I remember being in a school play aged 7 or 8 and whenever we had rehearsals my friends and i would spend the time waiting around making hundreds (ok, maybe not hundreds but it felt like it) of pom poms. I have no idea what we did with them but we were like a little sweat shop!

If you'd like to make your own pom poms it's really quite easy. First of all you need to cut two donut shapes out of card.

Then tie your chosen wool around the donuts and knot it together to secure it. You then twist the wool round and round going through the donut shape.

Once you have tied enough wool to fill the hole in the middle tie it off to secure it. Then get another length of wool and while carefully cutting between the pieces of card thread the wool between the card (see the above photo).

You then need to tie that length of wool securely together which means you can carefully remove the card and all the wool will be securely fastened in a pom pom shape. You can then trim the wool you used to tie and it will look like the rest of the pom pom.

Yay! Bright and wooly pom poms, i might be guilty of putting them on everything right now. Do you like pom poms? What would you put them on?

It's nearly that time of year again....

.....no, not Christmas (although i cannot wait for that and it's just around the corner! Woohoo!). I'm actually talking about this year's The Big Knit! Innocent Smoothie works in partnership with Age UK every November which means that for every bottle they sell with a little hat on 25p goes to Age UK. Which is fab!

I love The Big Knit, trying to find those little bottles with their cozy wooly hats. Plus i then always end up putting them on things like the plants around my house!

Every year i say i'm gonna make a few little has and send them off but i never find the time to actually do it. This year i am gonna try my hardest to make at least a couple. If you'd like to get involved you can find out how here. They are now collecting hats so if you do want to make one and send it in now is the time to do it!

At the very least i will be buying a few more little hats, hopefully i'll find a few of the really crazy ones. Some people are so creative and they make amazingly intricate hats. Let me know if you're taking part and have made something cute or if you find a brilliant hat!

New curtains.

When i purchased the Charlie Brown fabric to make the cushions i also came across a pair of vintage curtains. I couldn't let them pass me by now could i!

(I apologise for the darkness of the following photos, it was a very dark and rainy day when i took them and even with the lights on they came out like this. Bleurg).

 

I thought about what i could make with them and after some consideration decided that they would be perfect for making a small pair of curtains. I just had to work out how to make curtains!

Rather than follow a pattern or read instructions i did what i quite often do and made a design up myself. The window i wanted to cover was slightly longer than the curtains so first of all i had to make a band to go at the bottom of each pillowcase/curtain. I went with navy blue.

 

Next i made some tab tops for the other end of the curtain. These were pretty easy i just cut out some rectangles of navy fabric, folded them together and sewed down the long side to make a tube and then turned them inside out. These were then pinned into place and sewed on.

Lastly, i needed to sew up the hole in the pillowcase where the pillow would have gone in. And they were done!

I haven't had a chance to hang them yet so i took some photos of them on a broom handle so i could show you! What do you think? Do you like them? Our home now has two wonderful injections of snoopy and the gang!

Decoupage lampshade.

I have been trying to find a lampshade that i liked to go in the baby's room. It needed to be bright and colourful and fun. I was unfortunately having no luck whatsoever finding something i liked.

Then it suddenly struck me: i have bags and bags of bright and colourful kawaii fabric and the boring lampshade that came with and old lamp i bought a while ago. Bingo! Decoupage.

I have used this technique before to cover jars, but only the once and i haven't really had an opportunity to use it since. But since i already had PVA glue and a brush stashed in a cupboard i made a spur of the moment decision to give this boring white shade a makeover.

It's also a really good way to use up all the scraps of fabric that i have had lying around for ages that are too small to really do anything with but too cute to throw away. Yay!

 

 

You need to really make sure that the fabric is sodden with PVA and then it sticks really easily to the fabric of the lampshade. Then it's just a question of positioning.

 

You may notice on the above picture the fabric overlaps at the top over the lip of the shade. I ignored this until the whole shade was covered and then, while it was still wet, i just went around the inside edge and  cute a nice neat straight line.

 

I made sure that i went over the fabric with lots of glue so that it would all stick properly and give a good finish.

I then left the whole thing to dry overnight, balanced on a bottle of gin! Once it had dried it was nice and smooth and hard. I then gave it another quick coat of PVA to seal it and then left it to dry again on the trusty gin bottle. 

 I am rather pleased with how it's turned out. Plus it now ties in with the baby blanket i'm making for the cot and the large quilt i made a few years ago which is on the day bed in the baby's room. Fab.

Sneaky peak....

I am currently working on a little secret project. I can't tell you what it is yet, but i can show you two taster pics.

Hee hee! I wonder what it will be?

Charlie Brown.

Well hello there! Are you having a good week? I hope so. I have been snuggling down at home as the weather here has been rubbish! I have had a jolly old time though as it has meant that i can get on with making lots of the things i have been itching to start for ages. Yay!

First off, cushions. I need a lot of new cushions for the baby's room as well as the lounge and can never find one's that i like. Since they are so easy to make i bought some vintage fabric and whipped up a few of my own.

I bought some wonderful vibrant Charlie Brown fabric a while ago. I decided upon Charlie Brown as it is my husband's favorite. I also had some vintage Cath Kidston flower fabric (which you will remember from a previous post if you read regularly) which i used for the backing.

They took me about an hour to make and i am so pleased with them. And my husband loved them!

What do you think? Do you make your own home furnishings? If so let me know what you make!

Giant pom poms!

Howdy!

Now the other day i promised that i would tell you how i made the wonderful giant paper pom poms that i had as decorations at my baby shower.

Now i have to confess these are not my creation, nor did i come across them. My best friend found a tutorial and told me how great they looked so i have to give full credit to her. Especially since they came out so fab!

First of all you need tissue paper in the colours your would like your finished pom pom to be. We went for a mix of pastel colours in baby shower friendly hues.

You then need to lay out 9 sheets of paper on top of each other flat on a table. These need to be folded along the short side (about 1.5 cm thickness) so that it ends up as one long thin folded strip (i forgot to take a photo of this stage, sorry!).

That long strip is then folded in half and string or ribbon attached around the middle (see above).

Once that is secure, take a pair of scissors and round off the edges of the fan, the opposite end to where you have tied the ribbon. 

When you let go of it, it will now look like you have two fans attached in the middle. If you want to hang your pom pom up you can then attached ribbon or string to that middle tie for later.

Now the tricky part! You need to (very gently) start pulling apart the individual pieces of tissue paper. This can be a pain to do as you want to try not to rip any of the tissue paper. As you do this the round pom pom will start to take shape.

You can then tie it up with the string you have already attached! Yay! They looked so impressive, i wish i'd know about them before as they would have been the perfect decoration for birthdays and weddings. What do you think? Give them a go!

Bunting!

Howdy! Are you well? Having a good week?

I have now started my maternity leave so i am hoping that i can spend some more of my time nesting and getting a few of projects i have been working finished. I will of course show you what i've been up to as i pootle on.

Last weekend i had a wonderful baby shower thrown for me. It was amazing! I went and stayed with my brilliant best friend and we spent the day before the shower making a lot of cake and some cute decorations.

I especially liked the bunting and giant pom poms we made! So here's a quick tutorial on how to make bunting just like mine (i've decided i'm going to put it in the nursery as i couldn't bear the thought of throwing it away after the shower).

First of all find a book with pictures that you like and want to use for the flags of the bunting. I'd nabbed this book off my friend as it was about to be car booted! (very cute and kitsch).

I then tore out the pages i liked and drew around a triangle template i had made (which i forgot to photograph- opps!). This way it's very easy to make all the flags the same size.

Next cut the flags out and arrange into the order you're happy with. Then use a hole punch to make two holes in the top of the flags to thread the brown string through.

All that needed to be done then is for it to be threaded onto the string and hung up (in my case high enough that my friend's gigantic cat can't get at it!).

What do you think? I was so impressed by how it turned out and it took a matter of minutes to make! Hooray!

Next post, giant pom poms......