Gone To Earth

Tutorial - little beaded zipper pull

It may be a bit grand to call this a tutorial, perhaps it's more of a suggestion, a way of prettying up your zip containing creations and adding your unique creativity. It's an embellishment idea for a beaded zipper pull.

I like making pouches, wristlets, purselets, zippys or whatever else you'd like to call them and sometimes I get into a bit of a rut with just putting ribbon through the zip pull. Yes - it does look nice and yes, it helps make the pouch look finished but I'm just a little taken with beaded zip pulls at the moment. I think they've a lot of potential if you're making clutch bags or anything which needs to look a bit special, steal attention and say 'want me' . (Bags, I'm talking about - tsk! honestly! :) )

.... I'm using this as a 'stunt' bag - an illustration!

They can add a touch of glitz, glamour and sparkle. Use them to accent the colours you've used in the bag itself.

All you need are a few beads of your choice, and there are sooooo many beautiful beads out there and so many ways you can combine them to make a unquie addition to your zip. You'll need a head pin or eye pin and some tools to cut and bend the head or eye pin with. (.... Oh! and a zip to decorate.:) )

... a set of pliers to cut the wire with, some round nosed pliers to curve the wire over with and something to make sure that everything is squeezed tightly shut so that it won't come adrift....

I used a head pin with an antique brass finish, but you can get them in lots of different finishes and precious metals.

Thread the beads onto the head pin ...

and trim, (using your wire cutters) the pin so that there's approximately 1 centimeter protruding beyond the beads.

Then use the round nosed pliers to curve the remaining part of the head pin around to form a loop - a bit like a tiny fish hook..

... I won't bore you with how many times I lost the seed beads trying to take this photograph.....

Hook it onto the zip pull and squeeze and flattten slightly to secure.

There, one pretty little beaded zip pull - especially to make your bags and pouches stand out from the crowd!

Hope you can have some fun with it!

A bloggy award...

I've been a bit naughty in not posting this sooner but I received this from Indigo Blue

Pretty little badge isn't it with its lovely blues and greens....

I'm not sure I really deserve an award for 'Best Blog Comments' for my ramblings but nevertheless I'm thrilled to have received it and now I need to pass it on. That's always the difficult bit isn't it? Well, Andrea received it from Kitty and has already passed it to Marmaladekiss, so as the Rules seem to have disappeared somewhere out in the eather I thought I'd pass it on to these people;

• Dottycookie
• Dreaming of Wild Roses
• Ragged Roses
• Fabric and Bags
• Lacehearts
• Sew love to Sew
• Willywagtail

Enjoy and please pass it on as you see fit :).

On another subject entirely, do you twitter and have you joined any 'twibes'

Twibes is a twitter tool for finding more twitter followers. I can't explain exactly and preceisely what they are other than to say that as I understand it they're a little little a 'group' (twibe - tribe.... get it?) Twitter explains it as 'A Twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic.

So now you can identify like-minded folk to twiter with or at! There are ones for 'Crafteroo', for handmade, Etsy and more seem to being added each day. If you can't find one you like you can start your own Twibe - currently this is limited to three per twitter account. So, if you 'tweet', take a look. There may be something there that interests you.

Today..

It's been another glorious day weather wise, so I've been hanging the washing out to dry....

.... I've joined in on this giveaway, (Link) 'cos that would make any washday happy wouldn't it? Aren't those little chicks adorable? .... and I've done a little sewing... but as you can see, I'm not quite there yet....

.... just pieces - but the zip is in, hooray!

In fact I haven't quite decided on the final 'shape'. It's flared at the front, it'll be a wristlet, pouchlet or zippy kind of bag. The flare means it has a plumpish, full-ish kind of shape. I was going to box the corners but I think it might be more in keeping to 'round' the bottom and use darts instead.... I'm undecided at the moment. What do you think?

The bonus with the flare is I can add a button, just where it opens out and for once I'm quite decided on that..... :)

The pattern giveaway....

So how're the Easter holidays going? I've just realised that the children have Monday off too because it's a training day. I quite like those. We live on the border of three counties which tends to mean that if you nip over the border the 'natives' will have returned to their normal routine; so for us, any outing we dream up is generally quiet and blissfully empty of hoardes of people.

Remember these patterns from Anna Maria Horner?

...and this one...

Well, the number that was picked out of the bowl was comment number six. So, Kitschy Coo if you'd like to e-mail me your address and choose which pattern you'd like then I'll send it off to you.

Have a good weekend. I'm hoping that the sunshine will return and banish this dark 'threatening rain' type of weather for a few more days at least. Am I wishing for too much, it is only April after all.

Look at what came in the post...

... this arrived in the post yesterday after negotiating it's way through Customs.

All nicely wrapped in pre-loved sewing patterns and a froth of pink tissue paper, the patterns I'd ordered from Anna Maria Horner. There's the Ruthie Clutch;

The Socialite Dress;

... and the Multi-tasker Tote bag....

with four pockets on the outside and more inside....

So, because they're all new in the shop, the children are off school (mine and yours ... ? Some of the comments I've been reading on Twitter and blogs have made me smile - slavery indeed!). Plus, it's almost Easter, I thought I'd have a little giveaway by way of an introduction.

Just leave me a coment before midnight on the 15th April and you can choose an Anna Maria Horner sewing pattern from the shop (subject to availability of course - or you can choose to wait for new stock!). Then, when the children are back at school and you can snatch some time to yourself, you can stitch yourself up something pretty.

The Tea Time swap....

How does that song go "........everything stops for tea....".

Well, like all good swaps they comes a time after all the ..... what shall I make? what would she like? type of quandries, when you post of your goodies to your swap partner.

... and you receve a fascinating box in return and it isn't Christmas, your birthday or anything...

Tor had been very busy on my behalf;

A pretty hand painted mug for 'Time for .....' written on it, some Assam tea, which I know I'm going to really enjoy.

She'd also made me some candles in red and green from beeswax.

I like beeswax candles, they give off a faint aroma of honey when you use them. There was even a cute little candle holder, that she'd made. Even with my liking for candles and I've quite a collection of bits and pieces that hold candles - it's good to have a custom made candle holder which holds on tightly to the candle.

The yarn is sock yarn. It's so soft.... it's gorgeous. I've never actually knitted socks before but feeling that yarn has made me think.... I do like to have warm, comfortable toes perhaps this is something I should try...

The little tin at the front of the photograph which you can't quite see is a vegan lip salve, which I think smells like honey and my daughter thinks it smells of butterscotch. It's an interesting mix of olive oil and lemon, orange, sultana and raisin infusions plus a few other things. When you wear it however, it's very kind to dry lips. when it's all gone I may have to look for some more.

Thank you very much, Tor.

For Tor I sent this, ( minus the yarn which I forgot to photograph )

As Tor liked knitting and crochet ..

... a crochet hook roll

and a little wallet for tea bags....

and inside;

This little wallet could just as easily be a little card wallet, really.

There's a Flickr pool (Link) where you see all the lovely things the other 'swapees' (is that a word?) made and swapped - it's worth a look. Lots of different crafts going on.

So, I'm sending BIG thanks to Vonnie for organising this. It's been good fun.

Seams to me .....

I do have a pretty serious book habit .... and I really wasn't going to buy 'Seams to Me 24 New Reason to Love Sewing' by Anna Maria Horner. I've loved her fabric designs for a while and I've read her blog for ages, which is a nice mix of her family life and her own crafting projects. (...and yes I'm waiting for some of her patterns....)

....fabrics from the Garden Party range

I was going to resist. No, I thought, you've so many sewing, craft type books. One magazine review I'd read suggested that this was more for the beginnng sewer and although there are always new techniques to master and new approaches to learn - perhaps it wasn't for me.

But, I failed, I succumbed to temptation and I'm pleased that I did.

It's a spiral bound book with a pattern envelope at the back, housing the pattern pieces for the various projects.

In 'Seams to me' Anna Maria talks about your 'sewing space', be it a corner of a room or a huge great studio and about the things you will need in it. She suggests things to think about when planing to buy a sewing machine. There's a section on tools; cutters, measuring tools, sewing guages, needles, pins, threads, bindings, elastic, interfacing/interlinings, thimbles, fabric and of course colour and colour, print combinations.

She talks through (with diagrams) seam finishes, adding zips, gathering and binding. She outlines sewing by hand, thus adding style and handmade charm to your projects by using just a few embroidery stitches.

There are 24 sewing projects in the book, which are divided into; Organize with ideas for tidying up and organizing your life. Such as a magentic pin board, which although pin boards maybe nothing new, this one is different to any I've seen before. I love the way that the magnets used to 'fix' notes etc to the board are 'cunningly disguised', enclosed in fabric yo-yo's, and yo-yo's with a difference. Some of these yo-yo have centres which are left open enough to reveal another fabric inside. Very pretty and clever. I can think of a few uses for that technique.

In 'Stylize', there are a couple of pretty bags. Gorgeous cuffs - which would show off beautiful buttons and your favourite fabric and give you a distinctive style of your own. Dearest daughter wants one of these... There are skirts for little ones, although it could easily be adapted for 'bigger' ones. There's a bias cut skirt for grown up girls which can be playfully decorated with fabric squares and there are still more projects.

The 'Decorate' section contains amongst other things, a quilt, pillows (cushions) one of which is a pretty patchwork which includes gathering one of the sides of the squares resulting in a really lovely textured cushion. Did I mention that there are projects featuring lovely, lovely buttons; some on that pretty cuff, some in frames, some on a pillow (Doodad pillow).

In the 'Domesticate' Section there are five more lovely projects; a couple of aprons and a beautiful decorated dish towel and if I'd made that and someone actually dried the dishes with it, I think I'd cry. The dish towels are appliqued, yo-yo's as flowers this time, embroidered and look absolutely beautiful.... I think that I'd be more inclined to use them as wall-art than for washing up activities.

I love the way this book is written. I like the way the projects are explained. I always like to know why I'm being asked to do something in a certain way and that is kind of how this is written. I also like the way that Anna Maria says why she choses the fabrics she does, why she combined those particular colours and prints. For example, she says that she wanted the quilt to have an 'All American' feel so she went for a play on red, white and blue using some greens and browns as accents. To give the quilt more of a contemporary feel she suggests using more solid coloured fabrics as opposed to prints. I sometimes think that this is one of the hardest things about a new sewing project..... it's not always about what are you are going to make as what you going to make it out of ? what colour? does that print dominate too much Arrrh!

All I have to do now is decide which project to have a go at first.... I'm sorely tempted by the patchwork cushion and as the cuff probably won't take that long to make, I'll have a go at that as well, once dear daughter is home from school and I can measure her arm that is.