More movies...,

Can you spot mine??

The book is out now.

I am a mole,

...and I live in a hole.

(or in this case, a garden in dire need of some weeding!)

Meet Nelson,

...he was the inspiration behind my Fox softie!

The bleepers!

I thought it would be fun to show these, the ones that didn't go quite right...

the toadstool that will not stand up, (when I photographed it before, I cheated, and used blue tack on the bottom!)

And the owl egg cosy, that was too narrow to fit over the egg, (cue back to the drawing board with the pattern!)

This one, however, is a wip... a fish,

I'm beginning to hit a stage where things need to change direction slightly. I have plans, but none of those can happen without the work itself being right. I know I love working three dimensionally, I also like working small, the choice I need to sort out is between a style that is cute or do I go down the more realistic route.

At the moment, the fish, is neither one or the other, I'm at a crossroads. The danger of the cute, is the crossover with the toy market, which I want to avoid, (too much red tape for the handcrafted) and the danger of the realistic, is am I actually able to pull that off well, or will it look like I'm trying too hard?.

What do you think...?

Fabric, material, cloth,

...whatever you call it, it is my favorite medium to work with.  Anyone who reads this blog regularly will have noticed that I work from a limited range of fabrics, the same prints will crop up over and over again.  This is partly due to lack of storage space, funds and also because my crafting philosophy stems around the idea that it doesn't actually need to cost a huge amount of money to sew.  Many of my fabrics are from old clothes, mine, the children's, family members, and thrifted.  When I do add to my collection with bought fabrics, it will be something carefully chosen, I window shop a lot, but only occasionally buy.

Manda posted in detail the other day about fabric, and I'm also an advocate of buying fabric from overseas.  Last Thursday, I took the plunge, and purchased these two prints from ChokiChoki via Etsy, today is Tuesday, and they arrived this morning all the way from Japan.  How's that for speedy service!  I've had my eye on the telegram print for a while, and fell in love with the vintage sewing print while browsing.  Unwrapping the package, I was briefly disappointed to see they were a little darker that I originally thought, but then realised I still had my sunglasses on, sunglasses removed, problem solved!

(the sewing print is on linen, lovely weight of fabric)

Speaking of Manda, I have pinched her idea from this Flickr photograph for having swatches of fabric hung up over my desk,

...very handy and very organised!

And speaking of Flickr, here's a tip, NEVER (accidently) delete cookies from your computer, without taking a note of your yahoo id and password, otherwise you will find yourself unable to log in to your Flickr account, for hours and hours.

Not that I did this..., 

yesterday, 

just sayin...!