My first felt work

Again, it's been a very long time since last I blogged. The reason is simple enough. I haven't been all that creative lately. I have had something to do anyway though. I've made a sale on an "old" item and gotten an order for a new purse which is almost done and will be blogged soon, I promise. In the meantime I'll entertain you with a little something I made for my friend Charlotte's birthday. (That's today by the way. YAAAY for Charlotte!!)

As the title suggests I've worked with felt for this project. I have worked with felt before, like when I made this bag for Ester in Croatia, but this was the first time I attempted to use the felt for more than just a simple one-piece decoration.

First I need to do some explaining so that you'll all understand the gift. Both Charlotte and me are great fans of the british TV-show Doctor Who and (almost) all things related to it. The main character in the show is called The Doctor and he travels through time and space in a spaceship-time machine called the TARDIS, which is one of the most awesome contraptions in sci-fi history. In my opinion, that is. But anyway, this is what The Doctor's TARDIS looks like:

So, now we can move on to the actual creation.

I decided to make Charlotte a TARDIS pillow, but I had no blue fabric and no money to purchase any. BUT, I did get my hands on some cheap felt in various colors and some black, slightly strechy fabric and there I had it. I could make a pillowcase out of the black fabric and the TARDIS itself out of felt! So the process began.

I first drew up the various bits of the TARDIS and cut them out of paper, then I cut them out from the felt. Then I cut the pieces for the pillow case (also my first) and sewed that together with my brand new sewing machine (I'll give my girl her own post later) and then I stitched the bits and pieces of felt-TARDIS on to each other and the case, stuffed an Irma pillow from IKEA inside and voila! TARDIS pillow!

You can't see from the picture (obviously), but the pillowcase closes in the back with two regular black buttons.

I'm happy with it. Yeah, it's a little wonky, but I'm wonky, Charlotte's wonky and not to mention Tho Doctor, he's very wonky. ;)

In addition to this I'm adding a picture of the bag I sold earlier this year and a link to the post in which I presented it the first time. It's no problem if you want a bag like this, just send me an e-mail and I'll get on it as soon as I have the time. You can find my e-mail adress in the right side column on the main page of the blog.

Bits and Pieces

A new apology and a finished project

So.. First of all I want to say that I'm sorry about being so incredibly slow on this post, but I haven't been very productive and also I haven't been able to get pictures from my camera and onto my computer for quite a while so the blogging haven't exactly been easy. Plus I've been very very lazy since before Christmas. But anyway..In the end of November I got an order. My very first international order. It came from a girl in Croatia, with whom I used to play World of Warcraft (yes, I am -that- pathetic). She wanted a bag and so I started making a bag after her descriptions. On March the second it was finished. I know it was slow work but alot was going on, like Christmas and a couple of injuries (there will be a picture of one of them further down the post) and such, but my "customer" was okay with it.
The bag is 30cm (about 12") wide, about 45cm (17,7") long and the strap is 120cm (47,2") long. The bag itself is made from wool and as you can probably see by now the technique is needlebinding. The buttons are regular hard plastic and the red heart is felt. The lining of the bag (which you cannot see in the pictures) is a cotton/elastan mix. And for those of you that actually recognise that sort of fabric, yes I have recycled an old pair of pants from technically being trash to being a usefull part of my crafts. Not the first time I've done something like that either. I just might do a post on that at a later time. But back to the original bag. The only thing I should have done differently was that I miscalculated the length of the strap so it's a bit short for the girl that ordered it, but she managed to find a way to use it anyway so everyone's happy.
Here are the pictures of the finished product.

The bag from the front:

The bag's lid and buttons up close, unfortunatly the flash stole a lot of colour from it:


The bag's behind:

The felt heart and the stitching up close:

Ester with the bag in various ways and poses:




And here we have what sometimes happen when you work on your own and don't know the difference between finger and fabric when you're using the sewing machine:


Thanks for having a peek!

Stay creative!

My first proper bag

Here is my first semi-large needle binding project, Beate's Bag!

The yarn I used is rather thick, durable washable wool.
The bag itself is 40cm (15,7") long, 38cm (15") wide, the lid is 17cm (6,7") and the strap is 65cm (25,6").
In addition to the bag itself there's also two seperate "compartments" inside the bag. One small pocket for mobile phone and such and one suitable for a wallet, lipstick, camera etc.

This bag was made for my friend Beate in exchange for a leather case that I can have in my belt. Just a few days ago we met up at our favourite leather shop and bought the materials for the case. I'm going to post pictures of it once I've gotten it, and believe me it's going to be beautiful! It will even have spirals on it and that's sort of my trademark.

Stay creative! And comment!