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Monday 30 December 2013

Easy Gift Fabric Hand Warmers - Tutorials

This year I wanted to give something handmade to my colleagues for Christmas and came across some interesting tutorials in blogland for making hand warmers. A great and simple gift idea, suitable for a man or a woman. This is what I came up with:


Quest'anno volevo regalare qualcosa fatto da me ai miei colleghi per Natale ed ho trovato degli interessanti tutorial nel mondo blog per creare degli scaldamani. Un'idea carina e semplice, adatta sia ad un uomo che ad una donna. Questo è quello che ho creato:


I chose a different fabric for each colleague, something that reminded me of that particular person or that has to do with his/her job...

Ho scelto una stoffa diversa per ogni collega, per qualcosa che mi ricordava quella particolare persona oppure connessa al suo tipo di lavoro...


For my colleague who's responsible for road maintenance:
Per il collega che è responsabile della manutenzione delle strade:


For my colleague who has to stamp a lot of documents:
Per la mia collega che deve timbrare tanti documenti:


For my Boss who always has to write a lot of e-mails:
Per il mio Capo che deve scrivere tante mail:


For my colleague who's always helping others:
Per il mio collega che aiuta sempre gli altri:


For my colleague who likes crosswords:
Per la mia collega a cui piacciono i cruciverba:


For my colleague who's always very elegant:
Per la mia collega che è sempre molto elegante:


For my colleague who... wears glasses!
Per il mio collega che... porta gli occhiali!


There are some great tutorials in Blogland, with different sized hand warmers and with different contents. Mine have uncooked rice inside and were made using a 5" charm square cut in half, making two hand warmers each 2.16" in size. They're smaller than usual but I thought it was handy using a charm square and would avoid you carrying around a heavy bag of rice in your pockets when they cool down!
These fantastic fabrics are all from Leona's (@ Leona's Quilting Adventure) TEXT Me a Charm Swapdedicated to swapping charm squares of Text fabric and Low Volume fabrics. Through this swap I received a packet of two sets of 56 charms. I must say I was really impressed, they're were only two doubles in all these charms even though not everybody posted photos of what they were sending. I would never have had the possibility of collecting charms of so many different fabrics.

Ci sono dei fantastici tutorial nel mondo Blog per creare scaldamani di varie misure, con contenuti diversi. I miei contengono riso crudo e sono stati creati usando dei quadrati "charm" di 12.7cm, tagliati a metà, per creare due scaldamani di 5.5cm. Sono più piccoli del solito ma ho pensato che fosse una buona idea usare i quadrati "charm" per evitare anche di portare in giro un sacchetto pesante di riso in tasca quando si raffreddono!
Queste stupende stoffe sono tutte dallo scambio TEXT Me a Charm Swap organizzato da Leona's (@ Leona's Quilting Adventure). Grazie a questo scambio ho ricevuto un pacchetto contenente due gruppi di 56 quadrati "charm". Sono stata molto colpita quando li ho ricevuti, c'erano solamente due doppioni nonostante non tutti avessero pubblicato le foto di quello che avrebbero spedito. Non avrei mai avuto la possibilità di collezionare quadrati "charm" di così tante stoffe diverse.



Here are some interesting tutorials in Blogland you can use for making hand warmers:
Ecco dei tutorial interessanti nel mondo Blog da usare per creare scaldamani:


Winter Warmers from A Spoonful of Sugar:



Homemade Hand Warmers from V and CO. (the tutorial I used): 



DIY Hand Warmers by Armommy:

hand-warmer-valentines-10



Tuesday 24 December 2013

Merry Christmas Stocking and giveaway alert!

Our Christmas stockings are hanging on the fireplace, waiting for Father Christmas... This is our latest Christmas stocking, fresh from the sewing machine.
I've been wondering for ages how I was going to use this giant ric rac I bought from a DottyRose stand last year... You hoard things and suddenly they have a meaning, don't they?! There is a very nice lady I met once at a course, who says she always talks to her fabric and says. "Don't worry little fabric, you wait, your turn will come!". She is so right! Don't you think so?


The merry Christmas tree fabric is Haute Ho Ho a Maywood Studio Collection.


How about the heart shaped pom pom, made using a Clover Pom Pom Maker? Being lazy, I thought the pom pom was going to come off the little machine exactly heart shaped, instead I discovered you have to trim it by hand to give it a more precise heart shape. After the initial shock and some help with the sniping, a (more or less!) heart shaped pom pom appeared.


Thought I didn't want to quilt the tree fabric too much so I decided to... follow the trees! 



Would like to invite you to visit my very first Blogland friend Jessica @ A Bushel and A Peck who's having a great Jelly Roll giveaway over the holidays:

High Street - Jelly Roll - by Moda


Ella, Lucy and I  would like to wish you all a

Merry Christmas!



Tuesday 17 December 2013

Making Christmas: Christmas Lollipop Decorations and Wine boxes

A quick update on my Making Christmas list. Here are some Lollipop decorations:

Un veloce aggiornamento per la mia lista Creare il Natale. Ecco delle decorazioni Lollipop:


And I decided to transform some old wooden wine boxes that have been hanging around for a while. I'm terrible at collecting "containers", always have been. My parents know something about this... from tins to all sorts of boxes. For once they came in use: I painted a couple white and transformed them into "display boxes". This is a single bottle box:

E ho deciso di trasformare delle vecchie scatole in legno per vino che sono in giro da un po'. Sono terribile nel collezionare "contenitori", lo sono sempre stata. I miei genitori nè sanno qualcosa... dalle latte ad ogni tipo di scatola. Per una volta sono stati utili: ho dipinto un paio di scatole di bianco e le ho trasformate in contenitori espositivi. Questa è una scatola per una singola bottiglia:



I like the matt effect of this paint that lets the veins of the wood show through.

Mi piace molto l'effetto opaco di questa vernice che lascia trasparire le venature del legno.


Used this larger wine box to make a Christmas display box for the Bird decorations I made last year.

Ho usato questa scatola per vino più grande per creare un espositore per le decorazioni che ho creato l'anno scorso.


Linking to Making Christmas Blog Hop, this week hosted by Susan at the Bored Zombie.


MAKING CHRISTMAS 2013


Saturday 14 December 2013

Ella's DIY Pom Pom Christmas Door Decorations

Ella made these super cute Christmas Door Decorations using pom poms and handmade decorations, without having ever looked at Pinterest! She's nearly nine now and getting more and more creative. Love the exclamation mark.

Ella ha creato queste carinissime Decorazioni Natalizie per porte usando dei pom pom e delle decorazioni fatte a mano, senza aver mai guardato Pinterest! Ha quasi nove anni e diventa sempre più creativa. Adoro il punto esclamativo.



And here's another door:

Ed ecco un'altra porta:




Wednesday 4 December 2013

Fresh Sewing Day: goodbye November!

On the first day of December I was back to work for the Global Scrap Bee. This month I'm Queen Bee (exciting!) and I really really would like to make a Polaroid quilt. I fell in love with the Polaroid block from the first time I saw it on Debbie's blog: A Quilter's Table.

Il primo giorno di Dicembre sono tornata a lavoro per il Global Scrap Bee. Questo mese sono l'Ape Regina (che bello!) e voglio veramente veramente cucirmi un quilt "Polaroid". Mi sono innamorata dei blocchi Polaroid a prima vista vedendoli per la prima volta sul blog di Debbie: A Quilter's Table.




C'è un fantastico gruppo Flickr qui.






I can't wait to see what all the Bees come up with!

Non vedo l'ora di vedere cosa si inventeranno le mie Api!


Linking up to Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts

Aggiungo il mio link a Fresh Sewing Day a Lily's Quilts.

Lily's Quilts

Here is what I've been up to in November:

Ecco cosa ho combinato a Novembre:






Linky Party 2014



Thursday 28 November 2013

Apple Baby Hat: November challenge for Across the Pond Sew Along

Here is the Apple Baby Hat I made for this month's challenge for the Across the Pond Sew Along. The hardest part of making this hat was actually... taking the photos! It is so difficult taking photos of children, they move sooo fast. In the end I took some photos just of the hat, I was getting quite desperate!



The Apple Baby Hat is made using the pattern for the Dino-mite Hat from Patchwork, please! by Ayumi Takahashi. I just swapped the spikes for a quilted leaf and a fat stem.


Of course, the apple fabric helps give the idea too. The red and pink meant that I could use pink minky on the inside (to make it nice and warm) and pink velvet tags for tying the hat under baby's chin.

 

I think I just have to get faster at taking photos or take a thousand to get one good shot!
 It was fun though!



Amy Made That!...by eamylove



Saturday 23 November 2013

The Quilt Photography Workshop: Japanese Fabric Zipper Pouch

 This month's challenge at Beth's "The Quilt Photography Workshop" is all about colour and using white balance to get the truest representation of that colour. To practise using the white balance on my camera (actually a Nokia N8 phone) I decided to use a Japanese fabric zipper pouch I made using a beautiful bundle of fabric from Nunoya.

Nunoya is a Spanish based company specialising in Japanese fabrics retail and wholesale. Their shop is located in Barcelona's historic centre but they also have a very good on line shop. I found out about them at a fair in Milan. Take a look at the Japanese fabrics they stock in their on line shop, you'll be really impressed! From Echino to Nani Iro by Naomi Ito (stunning double gauze fabric), from kawaii to traditional motifs.

Back to the challenge: I started off by taking photos of the pouch using the white balance presets on the phone, taking the same photo using each time with a different setting. Here's the result:


Custom white balance setting

Daylight


Cloudy
Tungsten
Fluorescent



I then tried out the manual exposure  function on the camera. I can only change using preset exposure ranging from -2.0 to + 2.0. Here are the photos I took:


-2.0


-1.5


-1.0


-0.5


+0.5
To finish off, I tired changing the colour of the background, with the same order of white balance: custom, daylight, cloudy, tungsten and fluorescent:









Look at the difference the background makes, it's incredible. Conclusions? My favourite is actually the first photo. I know, after all that, it's the custom white balance setting, on a light background! But to be honest, the truest colours are in the cloudy version. This challenge has been super interesting and I've learned so much!

Plum and June