Guest-Posting at Sew Ready To Play Today

Do you remember my good friend Louise from I'm Feelin' Crafty? Ya, you met her in person back here? Well... she is hosting a merry event this month called "Sew Ready To Play".  In Louise's words, the idea behind the series is this: "You pick a game and sew anything that is inspired by that game". The event is in its 3rd year (check out all the goodness from previous years HERE) and guess what... this year I get to "play" along!

Nifty, eh?

Sneak a peek at what I made...

Hmm, can you tell what it is?... To see more, hop on over HERE!

♥M

Guest-Posting for Sewing 101: Exploring Loopy Closures

Happy October!

It just so happens that on the first Saturday of every month, Chris from Pickup Some Creativity hosts a gem of a series called "Sewing 101" wherein guests share their sewing tips and tricks. I (little me) have the privilege of guest-posting today with an exploration of loopy closures...

Loopy indeed. View the entire post HERE!

Guest-Posting at The Crafty Crow!

Today I am most privileged to be guest-posting at The Crafty Crow. Amazing! Thank you Cassi for the sweet invitation. Sorry, I'm gushing and blushing over here...

Now go on over THERE and have a look-see, and then have yourself a fantastic day!

Series 6: The Box Chain #3 - King Hat

This post was originally part of Home Spun - Threads' Summer Soirée: Craft Camp for Kids. I'm re-posting it here now and including it in Series 6: The Box Chain. In today's tutorial, I actually show you how to make the chains step-by-step. Exciting stuff. I hadn't done that before. But here 'tis . Hopefully any questions you may have had about the box chains will be clarified (although I do think you know how to make these already).

So for installment #3 of the series, the boy and I are sharing how we made his box chain "king hat". He's got a whole collection of these home-made "king hats", as he calls them. This is our most recent addition! Let us begin...

Tutorial: Box Chain King Hat

Basically, our king hat is just a band of craft paper onto which we've attached box chains made from junk mail and old gift wrap. The chains do take some time to make so I like to divide this craft over two days so as not to bore the little guy. We make the chains one day, and put the whole thing together the next.

Supplies needed for this craft:

• junk mail and/or old gift wrap
• brown craft paper (or any large flexible paper; newspaper works great)
• pair of scissors
• ruler
• PVA glue/glue stick

If you already know how to make the box chains, skip on over to step 10. For those of you who've not yet heard of these snazzy little box chains, let's go through steps 1 to 9 lickety-split. It's super-easy; your children will love making these versatile chains once they get the hang of them.

1. Cut your junk mail and/or old gift wrap into 1/2 inch (1.2 cm) strips.

2. Take two strips and glue the ends together at 90° angles to one another.

3. Take the strip that is hanging vertically down and fold it up, keeping the 90° angle.

4. Now take the horizontal strip and fold it over to the right, maintaining that 90° angle.

5. Fold the vertical strip back down, yep, with the 90° angle.

6. Fold the horizontal strip back over to the left at a 90° angle.

7. Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you get to the end of your strips.

8. Glue the last little end down.

9. Here's what your finished box chain looks like. Happy, simple box chain.

10. Glue several chains together to make longer chains. We made 2 chains long enough to fit around my little guy's head. (Note: Do not overpull the chains.)

We need some little box chain gems as well. It is a king hat after all.

To make a gem:

11. Take a short chain, some glue and a short strip of paper.

12. Slather glue on the short strip of paper.

13. Glue one end of the chain to the strip of paper.

14. Glue the other end of the chain to the strip as well. Repeat many times. We made 12 gems in total. Pretty gems.

15. Cut out a piece of craft paper to fit around your child's head adding 3 inches (7.5 cm) for an overlap. We made ours 24 inches (60 cm) long by 9 inches (23 cm) wide. Fold the craft paper in half lengthwise. Apply glue between the layers leaving 3 inches (7.5 cm) at both ends free of glue.

16. Apply a very generous bead of PVA glue to the edges of your craft paper. Do not apply glue to the overlap shown in Photo 16 (last 3 inches or 7.5 cm). Place your long box chain on the bead of glue, making sure that the chain comes in contact with the glue along the entire bead. No chains on the overlap. Glue on the gems as desired. Let the glue dry.

17. Complete the crown by applying glue to the back, front and between the layers of the overlap. Bring the overlap around and insert it between the layers of the other end.

18. Press the layers together to complete the crown. And look-ee, you are done!

And here it is: the end product...

One king-hat for his royal highness. Gord knows he possesses nary a cell of royal blood but that certainly doesn't stop him from acting like he does, my sweet little monarch.

To visit the first two parts of this series click here and here.

Do have yourself a lovely day and I'll see you again on Wednesday!

Guest Posting at Home-Spun Threads!

Aimee from Home Spun - Threads is hosting a great event during the month of May. She's calling it her "Summer Soirée - Craft Camp for Kids".

It features a slew of great crafters making a slew of great kid crafts. How handy is a whole collection of kid-crafty ideas designed to keep your little ones busy and beaming this summer? SO handy. I'm over there today, still on my little box chain rampage, guest-posting my head off. Go on. Take a peek right here.

You have a lovely day now, and I'll see you soon.

Edited to Add: Just found out my Dragon Tail Necklace is featured in Craft Zine today. It's a good day, isn't it?

Guest Posting at Me Making Do: A Crafty Creative Christmas

I'm over here RIGHT NOW!

Quick, I'll meet you there!

P.S. I will be back very soon...

Tutorial Revisit - Teddy Bear Swim Needle and Hook Book

Here is a tutorial that I published as a guest-post over at Sew Can Do on the 23rd of July, 2010. I thought I'd post it again today at Michele Made Me because I had so much fun designing and crafting it!

Here it is: The Teddy Bear Swim Needle and Hook Book

Today I am showing you how to make a 'Needle and Hook Book' to hold all of those sewing needles and crochet hooks. It is a colourful little project made of felt and yarn.

So, here's what you will need: yarn, felt in many colours, embroidery floss, fabric, scissors, a couple of sewing needles.

All that, plus your trusty sewing machine.

Now, my design process is kinda simple. I just take out several felt colours that I feel go well together and start working! From these colours, I choose a main colour.

Here, I chose blue. From this blue I cut out a 10"x 10" square. That's my background.

From my other coloured scraps, I very uncarefully (no templates here) cut out a bunch of differently sized circular shapes. I cut out a BUNCH. If I have too many I save them for a later project.

I start to place my circles in some appealing way on my blue background, layering some of the circles, grouping them in complementary ways. Until I create a design that pleases me. In other words, I GO with it... I BECOME the felt, so to speak.

Once I have a design that I like, I pin a section of it to the background.

The rest of the felt design, I remove from the background and carefully set aside somewhere safe so it doesn't get all messed up. Don't want to have to start re-designing all over again!

Working on this one section from the bottom layer up, I start embroidering the edges of my pieces with embroidery floss (your colour choice). Here I use the most basic blanket stitch for every edge. For each eye, I use a french knot.

I repeat this step for each section of the design, until the whole thing is embroidered onto the background.

Now I can embellish the whole piece with some couching. In this case the couching is done using yarn, and thread (to hold the yarn in place). You'll need a large sewing needle for the yarn and a smaller one for the thread.

I start the couching by making a knot in the end of my yarn and bringing the yarn up through the background as shown. I do the same with the needle and thread. The couching process is also very free-form. I design as I go, placing the yarn where I think it looks good and then sewing it in place with the thread.

I do as much or as little as I like. The design dictates how much couching is needed.

Once the couching is done, I cut out two rectangles of felt 4-1/2" wide x 10" high.

I place them on the reverse side of my background.

I machine-sew them in place with a 1/4" seam allowance.

Next, I cut two rectangles out of a matching fabric. One rectangle measures 9-1/2" x 19"; the other measures 9-1/2" x 5". Here I fold the larger rectangle in half right sides together, making a square.

As in the following pic, I machine sew a hem in the top of my small rectangle. I place the small rectangle between the two layers of the square. Then I pin the edges of the square and machine-sew (1/4" seam allowance) all around the edges leaving a 3" gap in the bottom edge.

I flip the whole thing inside out and press. Now it looks like this.

I close up the hole in the bottom with some hand stitching.

And machine-stitch down the centre of the square. I also make some smaller channels by stitching a few lines in one of the pockets as shown.

You see it better here...

Now I pin the fabric square onto the felt square, back sides together.

And I machine stitch down the centre to attach the fabric square to the felt square. It looks like this from the other side.

Do I like the look of all that machine stitching on the front? Naw, it looks bad! So I couch on top of the machine stitching all around the edges and down the centre line.

To make it look like this... Much better! Look at those little teddies swimming around! They are having so much fun!

Now, we're almost done, but not quite!

Finally, I make a fastener using a small piece of felt which has a 1-1/2 " slit in one side and is reinforced with blanket stitching. This piece is stitched to the back of the book and embellished with a circle. And a special "made-from-scratch Michele-Made-Me" covered button is used to finish the whole thing off!!!

Here is the end result!

And here is another one I made for a friend using pretty much the same process.

Now it's your turn! Have fun!

P.S. I'm linking here.

Guest Posting at Life, Love, Green: Toilet Roll Crafts

Amber has kindly invited me to guest-post on her blog 'Life, Love, Green' so that I might discuss my obsessive recycling of toilet paper rolls in the making of a number of my crafts. So I am doing that today! Over there. Check it out!