Launch of my new Stompy's Craft website and Folksy shop.

Just a quick update, to say that I have launched my new website for Stompy's Craft. The purpose is to showcase my products in a more coherent way than I can within this blog. To view my new site please click here.

I have also created an online shop in Folksy, so please hop across and have a look around.

To make my life a little easier, I have combined my two old blogs into this one, where I will (when I get the time) post about my current crafty projects, whether just personal or for Stompy's Craft.

As it is now the season for Christmas craft sales, so I will get back to post here again as soon as I can.

Thanks for popping by

Stompy xx

Fun school holiday project... waste cardboard castle.

This summer holiday we finally got round to creating a bedroom for our youngest – out with the cot , in with 2 beds (more on that in my next post)

After a trip down to Ikea, and a journey back with a trailer full of flat pack boxes, we had a lot of waste cardboard.

So with some packaging tape, I created for my daughters a 3 room play “castle”.
As the weather wasn't great at the beginning of the holiday the castle was played with in the house, but I was really just waiting to have a good day so we could paint it outside in the garden.

On the last week of the school holiday, myself and my two daughters (5 and 2 3/4  years old) spent a great afternoon painting the castle (and ourselves).

Thanks for looking
Stompy x

Emergency Hat Stands

I was not sure if I would have the time to make some hats for a sale tomorrow, but I managed to squeeze in making a few. But then I realised I would have to display the hats on my stall - what to do....
Then as I was watching the kids bop each other with their balloons (a freebie from the local shoe shop) and after searching the house for any spare balloon stick I came up with these emergency hat stands.
Cheap, and easy to store....

thanks for visiting

regards
stompy x

New Kits for the Summer Holidays

Ooophs - no posts for a while, I've been busy making up new stock (for a little summer stall, see details below), toying with the idea of having my own website shop, and coming up with 2 new kits.

Sale Details

Coffee, Cakes and Craft in aid of Macmillan Cancer Care

at Grove Village Hall, Oxfordshire OX12 7JY

on Saturday 27^th July at 2:00pm

Anyway let me introduce my Stompy's Collage Costumes.

 A packet filled with lots of collage fun to encourage children to use their imagination – creating costumes for their paper characters. There is no right of wrong way of making these collages – so no rules apply!

The Stompy's Collage Costumes Kits include:

• 5 characters printed onto A5 cardstock
• a selection of fabric and patterned paper pieces
• a mixture of buttons, gems, punched paper shapes, ribbons, and sequins
• a glue stick

All you will need to supply is a pair of childrens' scissors, which are sharp enough to cut through fabric. Please DO NOT leave the child unattended when making up these kits.

Please note that this kit contains small pieces and therefore are not suitable for very young children.

These kits are “handmade” and no two kits are the same, the contents may vary from the photographs shown.

Bumper Party Packs are available to provide each child with their own character and enough collage pieces for all party members to use, please contact me directly to discuss requirements.

The second kits are the Stompy's Simple Stitches.

A delightful kit for little sewers, as every little one (girl or boy) should have the opportunity to sew. A mixture of yarns, felt and binka make up these fun pictures, with no formal pattern to follow.

These kits are great to build the confidence of beginners.

The Stompy's Simple Stitches kit includes:

• piece binka (just the right size to fit a standard picture mount or frame)
• pre-cut and punched felt pieces
• “blunt ended” metal wool needle
• lengths of different colour yarn
• self adhesive googly eyes (robot kit only)

Please note that this kit contains a metal needle and small pieces, and therefore are not suitable for very young children.

These kits are “handmade” and no two kits are the same, the contents may vary from the photographs shown.

Kit feed back – Beatrix aged 4 ¾ “ "At first I thought it was too tricky but then I saw what I'd done and I was very pleased".
Her mother said “I did have to sit with her and encourage her to do it herself - I don't think she would be able to do it on her own yet, but her confidence grew when she saw what she'd done and she wanted to add the sun.”

Summer Hats...

With Newbury bathing in this brilliant sunny weather, I was really glad I had made some sun hats for my daughters a few weeks back.

Using head measurements and an old hat, I came up with a flared bucket hat design.

The brown hat was very simple to make, cutting out 6 outer panels and a top and then the same in lining material. They are very economical on fabric too. This hat was finished with a decorative zigzag top stitch around the edge and a yoyo flower with glitter button (this is on a brooch pin and can be moved)

The blue stripy hat was a lot more fun though. Made from homemade jellyroll strips (using up my scraps again) I hoped this size would fit my youngest daughter who is 2. However when sewing 16 panels, even just being 1mm out made the hat a lot bigger than I hoped. Think more work is needed for this one. The hat is then lined with a light weight pink gingham.

I hope to make more hats, and add them to my Stompy's Craft range of gifts, but hat making has been curtailed as I have a sale coming up at the end of this month and I have to replenish my stocks.

Sale Details

Coffee, Cakes and Craft in aid of Macmillan Cancer Care

at Grove Village Hall, Oxfordshire OX12 7JY

on Saturday 27^th July at 2:00pm

Having fun with free motion sewing...

I'm not sure whether Pinterest is a good or bad thing – as I find that I want to try lots more crafts. I don't really have the time, and what will I do when my little one finishes having a short day time nap?

I justified trying free motion sewing as it helps with quilting and I could use up scraps making doodled images – well that's the theory.

 

So after a couple of practices I had a go of trying to doodle my little Petal Fairies that I draw for my daughters. The top one was my first attempt and then the second one was a lot better, but will be improved with more practice.

I used a medium to heavy calico cotton and with these pictures I used a wooden embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taught.
After stitching the characters, I then coloured in some parts with fabric pens.

Next time I sew one, I will use metallic thread for the wings – will post to let you know how I get on.

So then what to do with these little pictures, well I had some pink patchwork and green scraps leftover from the rag quilt, and as my littlest one loves bags, I made her little tote bag using the picture as the main panel.

 

Thanks for looking today.

stompy x

Patchwork Duvet Cover Set - Finally Finished...

I started making this quilt cover and pillow case set for my eldest daughter for her new room and bed (she was moving out of the little bedroom to make way for her baby sibling).

The original idea for this set was to use up the scraps of fabric that I had collected (over bought!) while making bits for the nursery. I had made the appliquéd ABC chart for my daughters first Christmas, but had only used up some of the tiny scraps making the bird peg rail and there was still plenty left over.

The white backing fabric was a single flat sheet from my local supermarket – it was the cheapest option especially during their sales.

The character is cut out of Mitsy Mouse Lilac fabric (Prestigious Textiles Safari Park Collection).

 

The large patches were machine stitched and sewn together using a French seam (to strengthen each seam). The appliqué was held in place using iron fusing before being stitched with a small tight zig zag. To close the duvet cover, I used the popper tape you can buy from haberdashery shops.

The quilt was finished, but the pillow case just got left on the to do pile...

So after a couple of years the pillow case was finally completed and now the whole set is now in use.

 

Thanks for looking today... stompy x

First Time Rag Quilt

 

One thing I have a lot of is scrappy bits of fabric, dating back many years (think there is some Laura Ashley fabric from 1975) and finding things to do with these scraps is always a challenge. I then stumbled across Rag Quilts on Pinterest.

As my littlest one will be moving in to a proper size bed soon, we need new bedding for her and thought that I would have a go at rag quilting.

I had quite a bit of pink and green scraps (to match her bedroom) – but did end up having to buy a few lengths of new fabric. (Sadly our town has recently lost our haberdashery/fabric store and the store that is “out of town” is stocked with Ends of Roll, so the choice isn't great). My best buy however was the backing fabric, which was a Double fitted sheet from our Sainsbury's supermarket during a 25% off sale. Note – not their basic range, that's way to thin.

So then started the quilting...

The quilt is 13x8 squares.

The squares with seam allowance were approx 18cmx18cm (7”x7”)

The wadding squares were approx 15cmx15cm (6”x6”)

 

Using a rotary cutter (absolutely essential) I cut about 60 pink patterned, 60 green patterned squares, 110 wadding squares, and accidentally well over 200 backing squares (using both the Sainsburys sheet and an old ripped sheet from the cupboard).

I sandwiched the squares (backing – wadding – patterned) pinning in two opposite corners.

Once the squares were pinned I started sewing the crosses. To make it quicker (and not to waste cotton) I sewed straight onto the next square so would end up with a “bunting like” length of half sewn squares. They were then snipped apart and then sewn in the other direction to finish the crosses.

The squares were then trimmed to size, this made lining up the seams so much easier.

Once I had decided on a pattern – the squares were sewn together (wrong sides facing).

I was surprised how little time this took – I was expecting a mammoth task. When I was making this I went down with a very nasty cold and throat infection so wasn't working at my usual capacity, but the sewing together only took me an evening to do.

The seams were then snipped whilst laying in bed (not the best idea as you get a lot of shedding of fibres at this stage – doh!).

My little one loves the end result – so does my other one – so it looks like I will be trying this technique of quilting again.....

Thank you for stopping by and looking - regards Stompy

Octonauts Birthday Cake

 

 

We had promised our daughter she was allowed one big birthday party. Emily's friend Lennon has his birthday only 2 days later we decided to do a large joint party. We got in some great entertainment for the children (all 40 of them) AB Entertainments, Lennon's mum did all the food catering and I made the cake.

A huge 12x12 lemon madeira cake with a cake GUP-A and sugarcraft Kwazii, Captain Barnacles and Pesco.

The GUP-A and the characters were quite fidderly. The "water bubbles" hid mistakes and held pieces in place. The decoration of the lower cake was pretty easy - just lots of flattened icing sausages for the weed and round icing balls for the pebbles and "corals". The end of a paint brush added the holes and details of the corals.

The children - especially the birthday girl and boy - loved the cake. The mum's and dad's were surprised that I had no issues chopping it up.... but the cake was quite yummy too!

 

For the madeira cake I used the recipe from Lindy's Cakes but scaled up using the Pink Whisk calculations.