Needles notebook

I sent a birthday present to T42 from one of the forums I take part in, I love her creations and especially the way she combines needle craft in many of them, that's why I chose to make a needle notebook for her and took the opportunity to take pictures of the process so I can post it here. It's the same as the black and white one I gave to Michal and posted last week.
T42 is the one that took the picture of the completed notebook as I sent it off before I had the chance to take a proper picture so thank you T42!
First choose your patterned fabrics, I like using 2 different ones, one for the outside and a different one for the inside but you can use just the one pattern.
Start out by cutting out 2 pieces of fabric, size 15X20cm (6X7.8inch) each.
Cut one of the pieces in half, now you have 1 piece size 15X20cm’ (6X7.8inch) and 2 pieces 15X10cm’ (6X4inch).

Cut out relatively thin and light iron-on interface, a piece for each piece of fabric, cut the interface a little bigger than your fabric to make sure it’s all covered. The interface will prevent the fabric from fraying at the edges.

Take out your ironing board, lay out the fabrics on the interfacing, note the glossy glue on the one side of your interfacing, you need to have the sticky side up and the left side of your fabric on top of it.
Iron just enough to make the fabrics edges stick to the interface (5-10 seconds), now flip and iron from the back side. Do the same with all your fabric pieces.

After it cool’s off trim the edges of all 3 pieces.

Take your 2 small pieces and sew the length just on one side. I used a dark color thread so you can see it better but rather have your thread the same color as your fabric.
Lay both small pieces on top of the larger piece (the right side of the fabric on the right side of the fabric) their sewn side turning inside and sew all round.
I added 2 pieces of ribbon on both sides before sewing together so I can later close the notebook by tying a bow.

Now turn it over to the other side, you will get 2 pockets.

Iron both sides, inside and out to flatten it.

Cut out 2 pieces of double sided thick interface and place each piece inside each pocket.

Iron from both sides until it sticks; this will create a harder cover.

Inside your notebook sew a piece of felt; I used the blanket stitch round the felt.

Embellish your cover and there you have it.

Next time I’ll show you how I embroider letters.

I'm going away for the weekend so if you have any questions I'll be able to answer in a couple of days. Have a great weekend!

A present for a dear friend

Yesterday we celebrated Ruti's and Michal's birthdays. For Ruti I made a fleece blanket and knitted round it and forgot to take a picture.... For Michal I made a pin cushion with pins decorated with polymer clay flowers, a matching needle book in a black and white matching fabric bag. So many birthdays in winter, the next one is mine (-:

Michal's card

And Ruti's card

Saturday morning

It was a freezing morning but the sun was shining and the birds were singing so we put on our hot clothes, fleece accessories and went hiking in the Jerusalem area with friends and then had a picnic. The rain in the area at the beginning of the week and the cold temperatures brought out the Cyclamen, isn't it beautiful? We had a great time.

Fleece & fabric scarf

How about a project for the weekend? It's the coldest day of this winter so far and is there anything cozier than fleece? You already know I am crazy for scarves so a combination of the two suits me just fine (-:

A few weeks ago I made a fleece scarf with fabric on both sides

Then I saw Aliner’s scarves, and I was inspired to make one using more than one fabric. Aliner creates the most magnificent things from fabric, I love her work visit her ETSY and her blog in Hebrew, even if you can't read it just look at the photographs of her work.

Start out measuring a 1.50m’ X 35cm’ (60 inch X 14 inch) piece of fleece, you can use a few colors of fleece; here I combined a piece of cream color as well as the main olive shade I used.

You can make it wider if you like wide scarves; take into account that the width measurement divided by 2 will be the final width of your scarf. Lately I like my scarves not so wide…
Choose your patterned fabrics, I purchased mine at Artishok, you can use as many as you like.

Cut out relatively thin and light iron-on interface, a piece for each fabric, cut the interface a little bigger than your fabric to make sure it’s all covered. The interface will prevent the fabric from fraying at the edges.
Take out your ironing board, lay out the fabrics on the interfacing, note the glossy glue on the one side of your interfacing, you need to have the sticky side up and the left side of your fabric on top of it (don’t you just hate it when you end up ironing the sticky side and it sticks to your iron?)

Cover with a thin cotton cloth and iron just enough to make the fabrics edges stay on the interface (5-10 seconds), now flip and iron from the back side. Do the same with all your fabric pieces.

After it cool’s off trim the edges.

Assemble all the pieces together with pins any way you want just make sure you lay the right side of the fabric on the right side of the fabric beside it.

Sew all the pieces together so you get one long piece.

Iron the stitches open, do it with a relatively cool iron and keep the iron mainly on the fabric and not the fleece as we tend to refer to fleece as fabric but it’s not, no fibers there, it’s closer to plastic then it is to fabric, it’s synthetic and can actually melt from the heat of the iron.

Now fold your scarf in half, all length, making sure you lay the right side of the fabric on the right side of the fabric, so that you get a long scarf about 17cm’ (7 inches) wide.
Sew all the way around leaving the bottom part open so you can turn your scarf to the right side.

Now turn it.


Cover with a thin cotton cloth and iron gently just to flatten it a little.

Now hand stitch the bottom part you left open.

And there you have it.
Good luck and enjoy (-:

Baby blanket

My friend's daughter gave birth to a baby girl, second granddaughter to grandma (-: I made a fleece blanket for the baby. It's made of 2 layers of fleece to make it nice and cozy, one with a teddy bear pattern and the other a plain red, I added a little teddy to match and tied a red bow to his neck, I just love teddy bears!
Grandmother Gila (she'll probably kill me for calling her that) is a very talented woman, she creates the most exquisite tiaras, fabulous hair jewelry for brides and today she is participating in her first fashion show!! She has a magnificent product and she's a very special woman which I love very much and wish her all the success in the world! I'll post pictures of her tiaras soon.

Winter indulgence swap

The greatest swap we ever had in the forum! Each was supposed to create for her partner something as a present and add a do it yourself craft kit with material and instructions and something to warm the throat, could be a hot drink or a winter recipe.
I prepare my package for Maya (nickname: Boten) a dear woman! I started out making a scarf in browns before I knew who I was making it for and when I found it was Maya I realized the only color she doesn't like is brown...So it was back to square one for me. I made another 4 scarves before I was satisfied and eventually couldn't decide which to send so I ended up adding 2 to the package, 1 made from a combination of fleece and fabric in Black and white which is one of Maya's favorite color combinations and the other knitted with my favorite broomstick pattern in ceram colored wool which is one of my favorite colors (-:

I created a craft kit containing wool, a felting needle and instruction how to create a wool fairy and added a fairy I created and a voucher she could use for a wool fairy workshop at my home.

For the throat warmer I added my recipe for hot chocolate for two accompanied by 2 mugs and dark chocolate.Then, as I still had space in the box I added a fabric covered notebook, a pair of nice warm socks (that I forgot to take a picture of) and a ring (-:

I wrapped everything in a colorful box, added a cute card and sent it off by express mail.

I had a great time preparing this!

It's birthday season!

So many birthdays during winter! Last night us girls celebrated 2 birthdays, Orit's and Ifat's. Orit received a long long scarf made from 15 granny squares and Ifat a felt covered notebook and a fabric bag. As usual we had to much to eat and then had the birthday ceremony, there were 10 of us, each presented her card and gift, and they received such gorgeous gifts! My birthday is right around the corner (-: