Spring, Sweet Spring!

I am in the mood for spring!
I welcome spring colors with all my heart and in a romantic whimsy created this sweet spring bag. It reminds me off good old times, beautiful old Daher tins and Royal Albert tea cups, which I admit, have been haunting me quite a lot. My collection of beautiful vintage tins is expanding and they have no doubt influenced my work too, it's all so romantic and vintage-y.

It's just funny I should feel like spring.

This is what I see when I look out the window:

But this is what I think I see when I look out the window:

Am I an optimist or what? 

MuffinTopKnits.com Now Open

Ha! After quite the bit of tweaking my own website is now up and running! Go check it out and please, please, please, gimme some feedback. Site is muffintopknits.com
After staring at the screen all weekend I'm getting "blind" to the site, there might be horrible misspelling and errors I'm not even seeing :D

New Product Line? Junk Art!

As I am by no means master of my craft yet, I have some discarded felt projects in my closets, like mentioned in my previous blog post. I'm trying to find creative ways to use all the left over materials. My closets are also bursting with useless costume jewelry; earrings missing their pair, pendants without chains and so on. I also have a bad habit of buying cheap trinket jewelry I never wear.


So why not combine them with my left over felt projects? Why not give the forgotten trinkets a new life as junk art brooches? Here's a few examples of my experiments with junk art:

What do you think?

Pin Cushion Out Of Left-over Materials Tutorial

 First off, my apologies for the horribly yellow poor quality photos. Working in the evenings without any natural light makes taking good pictures near impossible.

Anyways, I have a few felt projects stashed up that didn't turn out the way I wanted, a few rectangular knitted felted pouches that are not very neat around the edges. These date back to time when I was only starting to experiment with felting.

So I came up with a few ideas on how to give a new life to a felted piece using only left over materials I have in my stock anyway.







Here's what I started off with:
- a tartlet tin
- scrap felt and fabric
- little pieces of left-over felt for stuffing the cushion, fiber fill or similar will also do
- thread
- hot glue
- faux pearl necklace for embellishment

My mom is a wizard with thrift stores, she makes such incredible finds and they are always bargains. Unfortunately I haven't inherited that quality, but lucky enough she has donated me loads of her excess stuff, like these old little tin tartlets. I myself am a hoarder and have saved stuff like little pieces of left-over felt from various wet felting projects and they are perfect for stuffing up this little pin cushion. I've also got loads of old costume jewelry and beads saved up and wanted to use some of them on this project too.

I started by cutting out the embroidered piece of the felt patch (and saving it for later, naturally!) and cutting a small circle, just a little bit bigger than the tin.

Then I cut another piece out of scrap fabric to make the bottom of the cushion and sew the pieces together inside out. I left an inch of the seam open and turned it back around.


As the top of the cushion is felted wool, it's thick enough to hold in a rougher stuffing without looking lumpy so left over felt was perfect for this project. I cut the scraps into a fine fluff.


After stuffing the cushion I checked if it still fitted the tin and as it did, finished the seams.

I hot glued the cushion into the tin placing tiny dabs of glue both on the bottom and around the edges.

 And voilá, my pin cushion was ready!

 

 

 But as I have tons of old costume jewelry I decided to slaughter some of them and gave an old necklace a new purpose placing the faux pearls along the edge of the rim. I hot glued them too, just because I'm lazy.

And it turned out wonderful!

So Many Projects, So Little Time

Last week I sold a third of my entire stock. WHAAT? Yeah, as unbelievable as it is, someone bought six of my items in one single order. This was after one of my creations making it to the front page of Etsy and my views going through the roof. I've never had a big stock of bags anyways but after this -in my own modest scale- massive sale my stock was once again even smaller. I was astound. Surprised. Flabbergasted.

Now I've got the positive problem of having to create loads of more new items to be sold. Which is nice. But there's not enough hours in the day! I've got seven bags in various stages of unfinished at the moment plus four little pouches, and I'm going back and forth between them. Knitting a bit of that, throwing this to the washer, embroidering a bit of the third and simultaniously making plans in my head for a million more bags. After a while it get's exhausting. I find myself not having energy to even think of any of them let alone make anything, the chaos of bags makes me panic and freeze.

I'm in serious need of a kick in the buttocks. What do you do when you've found yourself up to your ears in unfinished work?

Lazy Sunday Treasure Hunt

For your amusement and mine, here are two gorgeous Etsy treasuries, the first "Chic Sand" is by Ale from ixela and the second is my very own collection "I want to go somewhere with You"

Hope you like them, I certainly do :)

Blue Morning

"A good friend is always welcome"

One of mom's many thrift finds

What could be more beautiful, than waking up in a delicately decorated white guestroom bathing in the blue light of the cold winter morning? I took these photos at my parents place and goes without saying my mother shares my passion for embroidery, though her part is not to make them but simply enjoy the work of others.

"Morning moment - precious as gold"

 After a cup of joe and a hearty chat with the old man, me and paps ventured outside to greet the beautiful, yet terribly cold day. Got some great photos, could've taken loads more, everywhere you turn you're surrounded by beauty here in Southern Finland. What a fine, blue morning indeed!