A busy day......

Hello Lovely Folks how are you all doing?  It has been a really busy day as I have been working but also found some time to get out and do a little 'craft' shopping in readiness for some new projects.  I hope you are all keeping well and are happy as we cruise up to 2014.
 

 I have been mulling over the resolutions I want to make and last night I was reading through a very old book of mine which I have had since I was 10.  It is very well worn as I have read it a thousand times and when we were very young I would take it on every camping holiday to Cornwall - it is by Enid Blyton's Book of the Year and it was given to me by an elderly farmer's wife when we camped in their field.  The book had belonged to her daughter who had grown and left home.  The lovely lady asked me to always care for it and enjoy reading it.  As you can see it is fairly poor condition as it was when I received it but I just loved it.

 

Looking through it I found a lot of leaves which I had collected in childhood - in those days my ambition was to become a write like Enid Blyton and to publish books about nature and the wild!  Apologies for the poor quality of pictures but the light is not good tonight and I am in work tomorrow so won't get chance to take any in the daylight.

 

I found a little resolution paper which I used to make every year and you can see what I was going to do that year.........I think it still is the same resolution I would have today.

 

 

On the back I had written the date - 1962 - a long time ago.  As you can see this was written with a fountain pen which was my main gift from Santa that year along with my new doll.

 

 

Last night I wanted to have a go at a project wallet for some of my things.  Last week I had found a lovely range in Waitrose from Julie Dodsworth - I had not seen her range before but fell in love with the lovely designs.  I bought a pack of two tea towels for £9.00 and the quality of the fabric was just lovely so couldn't wait to make something special with it.

I was planning to use Aneela Hoey's project pouch - have a look on her lovely Etsy shop to see all her lovely range.  I am sorry Lovelies as I tried to copy the image but couldn't download it for some reason.  Do pop over to her shop and have a look though.

The project pouch is the same as the lovely one I received from my special friend for Christmas as shown below.

 

 

You can see the second Julie Dodsworth tea towel below - it is white with little hearts on it so really cute.

I had to cut out a back/front and three separate sections for the pockets.  The front and back pieces were lined with fusible interfacing and Aneela suggests heavy weight for the outer fabric and a medium weight for the lining.  The only problem I had was that there was a lot of fabric to sew through when all the pockets were lined up.  However it was important to have the interfacing as the pouch needs to be quite durable and able to hold all the bits and pieces.  I left the little Julie Dodsworth labels on as I thought they were really sweet and added something different to the whole piece.

 

I didn't quite have enough fabric to make the little fastening but managed to find a piece of tea towel from one of my Christmas projects which I felt went quite well with the colours of the main fabrics.  This project pouch takes two tea towels in total plus a little for the fastening piece which is quite good as there was very little waste.

 

 

As you know Lovelies I do have a congenital problem with cutting or sewing anything straight and my husband was a little upset that the fastener was a little wonky as was the Velcro - I had decided to forgo the suggested button and buttonhole as I was running out of time and was a little tired. 

This is the completed pouch although it is not the neatest of jobs and I have a long way to go before I reach the standard of my lovely Friend and her wonderful gift to me.  However, I can live with it for the time being and plan to do some more so that I can improve.  These will be so useful as I do plan to be much more organised with my tools this year as I have so many bits and pieces all over the place and spend so much time looking for things.  Are you the same as I am?

 

The photographs do not really show up the sewing that well so it looks better than it is but for the first trial it is ok and I can live with it.  I am going to make another one straight away and see if I can improve on the bulkiness of it and make it look a little more professional.

 

For some reason my Lovely Readers I have a great desire to make some owl cushions.  I don't know why but I have been thinking about these for a couple of weeks now.  I make quite a few of these a while ago and then gave them all away, realising afterwards that I hadn't left one for myself!  I am sure that you have also done the same as me.

 

 

 

I had found a pattern from a lovely company called sewintocrafts who sell on Ebay and this is going to be one of my new projects - I have searched high and low for the pattern I used before but cannot find it hence the new one.  You can see why one of my resolutions is going to be more organised. 

 

Sorry Folks this is a very poor set of pictures but they were taken from the documents themselves and haven't come up very well at all.

I was passing Abakhan today and called in to see what they had on offer as it was a discount day.  I picked up some lovely trimmings which I can't wait to use.

 

 

 

 

 

Aren't these just so pretty, cannot wait to use them.  Which one do you like?  Finally I also managed to get a real bargain with this yarn which is so lovely to knit with.  It is one of my favourites and it for a special project which I cannot talk about here but will show you later when it is finished.  I am itching to get started on this one.

Well my Lovelies it has been so nice to talk with you all tonight.  I do hope you are all well and safe wherever you are in our wonderful world.  I am wishing the best for every one of you in the coming year.  Have a great evening/day depending where you are in our globe.  Speak very soon, big hugs to you all.  Dorothy :-)xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx