Sunday, January 18, 2015

a little bunny for a little girl

crochet bunny

I've been wanting to make this little bunny
for such a long time.
I found the free pattern from 
my favourite yarn site..Ravelry.
Over 600 people have already
made this adorable creature
so, as usual, I'm late to the party.

Here she is waiting to get her act together.

crochet bunny wip

I think I might have to make another one.




Friday, January 16, 2015

Mollie flowers dancing in a hoop

I have a 5 year old niece who lives in Texas which
is over 2000 km away from me.
So you can probably guess that I don't see her very often.
But the last time I did I discovered that she loves
making things so I promised that I'd crochet her something.

So I decided to combine a 6 inch embroidery hoop
with crocheted flowers.

flowers dancing on a hoop

I thought that this would look nice
hanging on her wall.
The flowers themselves are from a wonderful
free pattern made by Brigitte Read
The embroidery stitches in the centre
are simple french knots...
not difficult even for a beginner.

The only problem I had was how to make
the back look presentable.
back of embroidery hoop

I tried pleating it with the idea of
sewing them in place but
the centre part looked frayed and messy.

So I searched Pinterest to see how others 
have finished their hoops
and ended up using this one.
hoop tutorial

 I would suggest that you look over
her tutorial first to see what steps are involved.
She explains them in detail.

For my backing I picked a purple floral fabric.
I wanted to stick with a flower theme.
First I put my embroidery piece
and my piece of fabric wrong sides together.
I inserted them into the embroidery hoop
making sure everything
 was nice and tight.
As you can see in this pic of the back
I also trimmed the fabric material to about
3 inches just to make the next step easier.

DSC08467

 Next I folded the fabric layer
over the hoop and using a pen I marked
 where the fabric hit the base of the hoop.
Do this all the way around the hoop.
Then cut along this line.

  DSC08469

Next put glue (I used Aleene's fast grab tacky glue)
 on the edges and inside wall of the hoop,
then carefully pressed the fabric onto the hoop.
I let it dry well for a couple of hours
before starting on the embroidery layer.

DSC08473

I repeated the same steps for the embroidery layer
Here is a pic of it ready to be cut.

DSC08476

And here is a pic of it cut and glued.
 I did end up putting on a little extra glue
for this final layer.

DSC08480

Not exactly perfect but good enough
for a first time and for something that
will be against the wall.
Any thoughts?

Crochet Max from the Wild Things

 Who doesn't love Max!! I'm really happy with this cute little guy Pattern by Carla Mitrani  You can find her on Ravelry  Max Patter...