Shipley Fun Times

Hey y'all

Belated post to mention a few crafting things the craftergirls have been up to for the past few weeks.

1. Crafting Chez Bainbridge

Amy hosted craft night a few weeks ago, much fun was had, pizza and chocolate eaten. And not only was there fantastic hospitality, but Fiona also brought some pretty darn (yarn!) goodies in the form of homemade beetroot chutney, a mahoosive bag of wool to share and some Moomin related treats!

Don't know what Fiona has said to get this face from L!

Nom!

Moomin!

So very very much wool - my stash has already gone in to two seperate blankets and the beginnings of some Christmas decorations :)

Some not at all creepy patterns...

This is amazeballs - I'm sure either my Auntie Doris or Grandma made this for my Barbie when I was little!

The blanket is enlargening - and in constant blur!

Sorry to not write more - I am both tired and ill and can't remember anything else! Amy was there too but seems to have hidden from the camera all night!

2. Collected Threads Exhibition and Craft Market at the Shipley 

Laura and I headed up to the Shipley - a fantastic but small craft and design museum and gallery, which is part of Tyne and Wear Museums, and happens to be mere minutes from both of our houses!

Craft activities! And yes, we did partake.

Want this rug! Knitted giant tubes made on a 19th C weaving machine!

Lions and robots!

Fantastic patterened rug

Rainbow rag rug made with fabric scraps

Very fuzzy photo of the craft market!

Shipley Gallery

Textured wall rug artwork piece

Fantastic exhibition - a rare glimpse at some of the textile collections held by the Shipley with lots of different textures and techniques to pore over. Definitely worth a look if you are in the region!

There also happened to be a good little craft fair on that day, taking up most of the main hall and selling some delicious cupcakes (<3 Pet Lamb Patisserie) and a number of interesting little stalls selling some funky items. Laura bought some brilliant dinosaur socks, and I got a Mexican style skeleton butterfly box!

3. Shipley Lates

Lots going on at the Shipley this month! Laura, Fiona and I all moseyed on down to the gallery for an amazing evening of crafting. 7 different stalls with lots of different fabrics and instructions to play with, and all covered by the incredibly reasonable £5 cover charge! And wine too, what more do you want! We had a good time, although some of the crafts I found a bit too difficult after 2 glasses of wine, but I loved making the silk button broach, and the random curled up wool things - not sure what to do with it, maybe a tiny hat/fascinator?! 

Scraps of wool that we curled up and sewed together! Why, not sure but it was cute!

Possible tiny hat?

They usually do a few of these each September, but this year they decided to cram all the activities in to one evening and it really paid off. 

And that is it for now - very busy times coming up at work over the next month so won't be much crafty happening :(

Love Ali

xx

Craft Night a la Swaddle

Hello everyone! 

We had our second Craft Night since starting the blog on Monday night. It was over to Laura's this time (we take it in turns to host, share out the cooking etc.). 5 of us made it this time, and were treated to some very lovely home made pizza, chips and salad, and a particularly lovely Chocolate Cheescake, with strawberries and cream, nom! We then made our way up to Laura's study/craft room depending on what time of day/night! 

View from Laura's kitchen, lovely sunny afternoon :)

We had a new friend joining us this time, craftertime is expanding! Laura's friend from choir Becky came over to say hi and do some squeaky knitting! It is great to have a new face, and to help us expand our crafting repertoire - Becky was knitting a doll of Audrey Hepburn! It was only the start, but she did get the body done, including some accidently inverted row we generally decided were in the right place for her boobs!

Laura was working on her beautiful granny square afghan, this has been a fairly long term project she has been returning to as an 'in betweener' and is sooo close to being done, depending on how big it ends up being. 

We had a good discussion about the relative number of blankets we have in our houses, compared with the number of people that live there - Laura's other half had assumed her blankets were gifts... no... But came happily to the conclusion that as long as we are happy, and not bankrupting ourselves/pimping ourselves out for yarn and fabric, we are all good!

Amy was starting a new project. A self confessed fan of learning a craft to achieve an end product, rather than to actually learn it, took up a challenge from Mollie Makes to make some crochet star bunting. Having been a while since Amy's last project this took a little more effort than expected! I was trying to be a good tutor, but after half a bottle of rose this wasn't the easiest! We came up with a few different versions, the pattern was not written clearly, a shame as I fancied the book it came from and have now been put off! 

I did manage to try again whilst sober, and did manage it, but pattern was still annoyingly difficult to follow!

Fiona was working on sewing a read rectangle! Early starter on Christmas crafting, Fiona refuses to go anywhere need crochet (mutterings about the devil's craft...) and started off with the border for her embroidery - watch this space for more!

I was mainly drinking wine and helping Amy with her crochet to limited success, and trying to finish the wiggly edge on my crochet blanket, I've been lusting after crocheted edged items on Pinterest for a while, don't quite know why but felt my bed blanket needed some additions! I also brought along a blanket I'm making for a pregnant friend, but as it was just sewing in the ends I didn't actually touch it all night!

And that be it! Oops, almost forgot, we had Amy's lovely little friend come to join us too! Totoro is adorable, very cute and also a fantastic back rest!

Gives you a sense of the scale of Totoro!

See y'all next time,

Ali

xx

Diary Cover

The boy is out tonight so I'm finally covering up my cheap, cheap, cheap diary. I bought it just after Christmas for only a few pennies from Wilkinsons as I badly needed it for work. It has been annoying me for 8 months now but now it is covered and looks much better!

I used the pattern from my newest crafting book by Chloe Owens all sewn up, which is billed as having '36 exquisite projects, using applique, embroidery and more'. It is a beautifully produced book, with Chloe's illustrations throughout. It's probably the best craft book I've bought in a while, the projects are all the right side of doable and cute without being too twee :)

It is a very simple project, basically just a rectangle of fabric, edged in the right way. What I quite like in this book is all the machine applique, which since making the blankets for Nat's babies, I've been wanting to do more of.

Here is the diary before hand:

Pretty boring, I am partial to polka dots but I'm sick of the sight of these ones!

And here is the final result! I used a heart applique rather than a little bird, much simpler and although I'm not usually a fan of covering things in hearts, I like it in this red polka dot!

And that is that! See y'all next time :) We have a craft night next week, so that will probably be the next post.

Love Ali

xx