Quilt for Lydia

After making my patchwork quilted bag I got the idea in my head to create a quilt for my little niece Lydia. Hopefully it will be something she can keep even after she out grows it! (She isn't even 8 month old yet!).

My first thought was that it would be made of patches and of girlie colours, pinks, purples etc as well as having her name on it on 5 of the squares. So, I had to first work out what size is best to do for a child's quilt then decide what size to cut each square to, making sure that I had enough for her name to fit across it. I decided on 7 squares across by 9 down and the finished square size would be 5" (after sewing together with a 1/4 inch seam.)

Once I had cut out all of my squares, making sure that I had 7 across and nine down when laid out, I took my time laying them out on the floor in an order that I was happy with. The next step was to start sewing the squares together. I had been sort of following some videos on You Tube on how to make a baby quilt, but I added my own ideas to it too. I sewed (using my little sewing machine) the first 7 squares together, sewing 2 sets of 2 and then sewing all 7 together, constantly checking that I still had them in the right pattern. I repeated this for the following 8 rows.

Then I sewed the 9 strips of 7 together. - Tutorials on how to do this can be found on the You Tube link above (there are 4 videos in total). Once the squares were all sewn together, forming one sheet, I placed the sheet onto some quilt wadding with a big sheet of pink fabric underneath, got a whole load of pins and pinned the 3 pieces together before taking it back to the sewing machine.

I rolled and pinned the edges up to make it easier to sew each section. (Constantly stabbing pins into my hands. Ouchy) I tried to make the sections as different as possible, as I am such a novice with a sewing machine, it was a nightmare trying to get the tension right on it. In the end I used the zig zag stitches for a lot of the sections on the quilt, I liked the zig zag pattern better anyway :)

Once I had finished I then had to crop the edges of the wadding and the back pink sheet to the size of the front of the quilt.

A few close up shots...

I sewed around each cupcake by hand

The last step was adding the bias tape around the edge to complete the quilt... then I noticed how untidy the back of the quilt looked, mostly from my hand sewing around the cupcakes. I didn't want Lydia to get her little fingers caught in any loose threads, so I spent a few days sewing around each cupcake on the back too and sorting out any loose threads...

a bit ugly looking, but no little fingers can get caught in that! :)

The finished quilt 

I signed it ;)

I was pretty pleased with my finished quilt, I had my doubts half way through when I kept having issues with my sewing machine despite turning the tension dial to every tension possible, I just couldn't get it right... then I found out there was another tension option on the bobbin! And... tada!!! (After a bit of trial and error).

Lydia seemed to like the quilt, well, she tried to pull a cupcake off of it!! hehe! And her parents were pleased with it too, so happy faces all round!

It only took me a couple of months to make the quilt in the end, admittedly I spent most of my weekends making it as I had spent all my money on presents so couldn't afford to go out and socialise! :)

Lydia on her quilt :)

If you click on the pictures, you can see them a bit larger.


If anyone is interested, I got my material from ebay and Hobbycraft :)

Trying something new

I brought some pretty owl earrings the other week and really like them, so I thought I'd try a few owl-like designs out that I could maybe apply to my knitting/quilting as I have noticed a few stuffed owls that look pretty funky on the net recently.

My earrings, bit blurry as taken on my iPhone

By fongstudio: Etsy (not my work)

Owls are pretty simple creatures to draw! :) Body, eyes, beak, couple of wings and some feet if you fancy adding them! Here is my Owlie :)

 Cute isn't he? :) I thought he might need a tree to perch on or something...

Then my little kitty cat popped into my head, so I thought I'd have a pop at drawing a cat. A tabby cat might be a bit more of a challenge, so I drew a brown and a grey cat instead :)

Maybe the owl and the pussy cat can go to sea on a beautiful pea green boat? :D

Not sure what I could do with my new little friends... watch this space! ;)

...

How about a Christmas card Owlie and Kitty? :) <-- Thoughts please?

First Owlie© Greeting card?

First Kitty Greeting card? cats climb trees, right?

Can't do Christmas without Rudolph...

First Rudolph Greeting card?

Please excuse the 'the house of steph' watermark across all my images, I just don't want them to be nicked before I have decided if I want to do anything with them or not! lol :P

Helping out me mates...

I am always offering to help people out when they need help. Here are a few things I have done to help friends out...

Kirsty wanted a fairy themed scene above her daughter's bedroom door after I had helped her paint the bedroom (and most of the house). She wanted a picture of Tinkerbell in the theme, so I thought I'd better test out my drawing skills as I hadn't attempted anything since Year 11 at school! Okay, so she hasn't got a face, I have never been too good at drawings faces, but the rest of her isn't too bad?! lol

I also help mates out for logo ideas, business cards and flyers etc. Even helped create a couple of basic websites on Google Sites.

Ben asked me to do some cards and flyers for him and Chris

This was a Shifty and Ben business idea, I don't think they ever bothered with the business in the end

A few logo ideas for Mr Bateman

Keet uses these to generate more business for himself

A carved mushrooms poster

Rehabilitation Promotions Flyer

Charity Ball Poster I did for Andy Carroll

I also created some Celtic 10th birthday party invites for my friend Claire's little boy Charlie :)

Some little mess-about things...

All things Christmas

I had this idea to create and have printed my own Christmas cards. So I designed one, then had a look on the internet to see if there is a site that will print your own card designs for you, but they all seem to be ones that you design online from their 'bog standard' templates, which wasn't exactly what I am after! I will carry on my search for somewhere that will print my designs at a reasonable price.

Here is my first card design:

A bit of jewellery

The House of Steph was 'created' back in 2006 when I was dating my Ex-boyfriend Scott Playle, (he was impressed by my designs and encouraged me to try and sell some online). I had started to really get into beading, creating different pieces of jewellery for myself, mainly necklaces and bracelets as I didn't have my ears pierced at the time! - I know, being 26 years old and not having my ears pierced is a bit crazy! lol

I even started up an ebay shop (named The House of Steph) selling a few of the mobile phone charms that I had designed and attempted to sell on ebay. I only managed to sell a few items before realising that people weren't really interested in having to pay my prices for something dangling off their mobile phone when they could pick one up from the market for half the price! After leaving the shop running without any sales for a month or so, I decided to cut my losses and close the shop. Going back to just creating jewellery for myself and for friends every now and then.

My outfit for my friend Siba's wedding in 2008 was white, black and yellow. I searched high and low for some nice jewellery to match this outfit but had no luck, so I of course, decided to make my own! (A much better idea!) I would then have a set of earrings (I got my ears pierced in 2007 at Claires Accessories in Stevenage, my friend Erica came with me to hold my hand lol), a bracelet and a necklace that all matched!

My white, yellow and black jewellery for Siba's Wedding.

Here are some of the bracelets that I created, most of them I gave to my friends and brothers for birthday presents, they seemed to love them and wore them all the time! They even came to me for a replacement one when theirs broke as they had got it caught on something etc. They were only strung together with a piece or clear elastic, so were easily broken if caught on something!

Bracelets designed and created by me

I do have some images of the other jewellery I have created somewhere, I will have to dig them out and upload them!

I do more than just knit!! :)

OK, so I have a few creative bones in my body, not just a knitting bone...

I thought I'd do a quick blog of a few other creative aspects of me. I used to be into beading, as in beaded jewellery. I still have all the kit at home, but trying to do anything fiddly these days is a chore with my hyperactive house cat running about the flat like a mad woman! She has a constant need to plonk herself on my lap and take a nap for a few hours in the evening just lately. She happily snuggled into the jumper I am currently knitting last night as I manoeuvred around her to continue knitting a jumper that I started knitting for myself in the summer. (I hope it is a better fit than Adam's Christmas jumper!! :)

Anyway, this is a non knitting blog!!

Lets start with some examples of Halloween face paint I have produced in the past, starting at the oldest first.

This is my mate Leight, I did his face paint for a halloween party him and Chris were going to. He was going as a zombie/vampire type creature, I think the look turned out pretty effective (as it was my first go at face paint since I was little). He was actually worried that people at the party wouldn't recognise him as he didn't really look like himself. (Good effort I'd say!)

The next attempt at face paint was the following year for Kirsty's Halloween party! I liked how Leight's face paint had looked the previous year, so I thought I'd try it on myself with the added effect of white contact lenses and big back combed hair! I also had a quick go at creating some party invites for Kirsty to hand out prior to the party.

My face paint...

Kirsty's Invite

Not quite Halloween, but Strawberry Fair in Cambridge, still had a bizarre outfit and wacky makeup though :)

Then there was Halloween 2009, a Halloween party down The Plough in Datchworth was in order! I still had a second pair of white contact lenses to use as I got 2 pairs the previous year as the first set hadn't arrived the day before Halloween, so a guy from the contact lenses company met me in Wheathampstead to give me a pair! (What a nice guy) The pair I had originally ordered turned up a few days after Halloween, leaving me with 2 pairs! - Happy days! As I had already gone for the zombie look the previous year, I scrawled the internet for ideas, coming up with the Fallen Angel idea! :) I had a little practice first on my eye make-up a few days before.

My first idea for the Smith's Heaven & Hell themed New Years Eve party was to go in red and black, I had Erica's devil fork from Halloween as she left it in my car. Had planned a simple makeup idea which involved a bit of red eye shadow and some black eye-liner... I had a little accident with the red eye shadow, so ended up doing my whole face and neck red! Scared my kitten half to death and felt so embarrassed getting into the taxi... apparently I looked like Darth Maul? (Whoever that is?!)

 

My latest edition to the fancy dress creative phase is the 2010 New Years Eve Party at the Smith's!! I wanted to re-use my black contact lenses that I had brought for Halloween that year, so decided to go as a teenage witch-type person (The Craft or Harry Potter's female mate (I can't spell her name! Ha!)). Re-using a school girl uniform as well as my contact lenses! I spent over 2 hours putting my hair into tiny little plaits after I had washed it that morning, left them in all day then spent over an hour taking them all out!! LOL - NEVER again!!