Easter approaches

Now I'm no knitter but sometimes your fingers just itch for a sess, don't they (?) and besides, there's something about Easter with all its eggs, rabbits an chicks which makes me just desperate to make something themed. Thanks to Ravelry there's no shortage of any sort of inspiration. I think I made the wee chicks last year. Intended as egg cosies, I ran out of steam after 2 and as we are a family of 6 I pretended they were decorations and filled them with cotton wool balls.
  This year I couldn't resist knitting their Mama and found an amazingly easy and satisfying pattern by Sue Stratford at The Knitting Hut which uses up any old bits of wool from the stash. I think the different weights just add to the charm of this project. Great respect to all the knitting designers are there - I take my Easter bonnet off to you!
   As you can see my little hen turned out to be a rather kooky character who really makes me smile. She looks quite startled at the sight of her chicks - just wait till the other eggs hatch!
  By the way this is my first photograph taken in the little light box I have just acquired. I'm no techy either but soooooo impressed with the difference it makes on my first try out.
  This little family will adorn our table for the next week or so while I return to the sewing projects.

Introducing the sleepy sheep

It's Easter (chicks, rabbits, lambs), Wales is well know for its flocks and of course many of us have resorted to counting them in a bid to sleep... so a sheepy sleep pillow simply had to happen sometime!

And it's so funny how, when you are working with upcycled fabrics, the perfect textiles seem to find their way to the top of the stash at the perfect moment. Ok well, in the case of my sheep body this time, I was putting away some pillow slips and hey-ho, I spot an old cot mattress warmer which was just perfect for the sheepy body. Back in my stash I rediscovered some grey skinny cords (too small around my bum!) which were just the ticket for the sheepy face and ears.

Plus this sleep pillow design just had to be a bit less time consuming than the others. I have been really quite rubbish, so far, in coming up with ideas that I can polish off in less than a day, even when I'm totally up to speed.

Here's the back to show you the sundress fabric I used because I felt my sheep should be in a beautiful flowery meadow...

... and here's the completed front. The pillow is full of lovely herbs which have made my sheep fall asleep, rather than jump over fences!

I'm sooo happy with that contented expression ... as the crafters say each one is handmade so will be individual but this sleepy sheep ain't bad for starters.

Work in progress

I really think I could spend the rest of my life designing sleep pillows but sometimes you just have to get out of your comfort zones and explore other crafty herbal solutions in life....
  
  So it has been great fun this week thinking about housefiles.

 Yes you read that right but soon they will be making their presence felt on picnics and worst of all, at bedtime when you're nodding off with your lovely sleep pillow.

   I'm not sure where this idea came from, 
but every summer I hate having to resort 
to spraying aerosols around, containing 
goodness knows what, and the sticky patches 
you attach to windows and doors for insects
to fatally attach themselves to are not much 
better, especially as you end up with a housefly graveyard at the end of the summer. There has to be a better way and I have found it!

Inspired by the way the cicada is celebrated in southern France (see above) I took a closer look at drawings of the common housefly and, guess what, they are a thing of total beauty as indeed are all God's creatures up close and personal ... 


Turns out, when you research plants 
and their properties, just as some are a magnet 
to insects, others not so much, in fact the 
opposite. I'll spare you the science bit but plenty 
of herbs and spices which smell quite lovely to us (lavender, bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon sticks) are a total turn off to houseflies ...  d'you see where I'm going with this?

Last year when I was still immersed in my 
previous life as a local magazine editor, 
I stitched up a quick design, filled it with some 
lovely herbage, hung my Buzz off at the kitchen 
window and by golly no more flies in the house 
driving me nuts when I was cooking!
   Revisiting a design months later is always 
such fun - great to be your own critic sometimes 
so I did less hand stitching on the latest versions which saved time and allowed me to cram more detail into the front of the design.
  One thing I did not change one bit was the fragrant filling because, as they say, 'if it works, don't fix it'.

This year there will be no need for insect mass murder but instead a swarm of buzz offs will adorn every entry point to the house and deter and houseflies tempted by our summer cookin'. I will have had hours of pleasure making them and hope they will bring a smile to the faces of all who see them!

Sleep gets sew psychedelic

When I first found this remnant in the scraps basket of my local Sue Ryder charity shop I completely fell in love with it. You know that stomach churning moment when you spot a creation of delight which is evidently real textile trash to others? Hmm I was smitten and besides, I seem to have a very slight penchant for green which carries through to gardening, lifestyle as well as its many lovely hues, btw. This sleep pillow was such fun to work on - the trouble was knowing when to stop with the stitching and how far to push it with the contrasting colours.

  Not sure if this is what other crafters do but I always put my finished samples through the washing machine to freshen it up and check for sturdiness and I really loved the way the Mola work frayed a bit more.

  For the 2p I paid for the remnant (ok, I exaggerate but you get the gist!) I'm so thrilled with how much fabric is left for more of these ...  or maybe a few accessories for my workspace. 

    My plan today and for the rest of the week was to crack on with more designs, to work on some new herby ideas and to be a bit nerdy and do a spot of scholarly research.

   But when the fabric caught my eye just now strewn across my crazy upcycled chair (abandoned in the shed of our last house but one) I couldn't help feeling that I may just have to 'steal' some of it from future sleep pillows and make a cushion cover or two...

Another secret of great cwsg

If last -week's discovery was free stitching, this week's lesson has been in Mola applique work, inspired by a fab article in the latest issue of Making magazine.

  I had this super-groovy curtain fabric I thought would work for a sleep pillow and suddenly it all made sense. You have to like frayed edges and the shabby, lived-in  style, which (who guessed?) is so up my street ... and away you go!

  It felt like the front panel was going to need further embellishment so I sorted out a selection of complimentary and clashing thread and set to work. Not yet finished but d'you kinda get the gist of where this is taking me?

  Relaxing is not the word for what it has felt like to take my needle for a walk and have some fun with all this. I feel soooo guilty when the rest of the family come in from their somewhat more stressy days at school and work this week and of course, I have been sleeping like a baby, tucked up with my sleep pillow, of course!

Shut-eye - at last

Another first version of a design finished and guess what - another great night's sleep!
 Is there a pattern emerging here? (Or was it as a result of the quite amazing yoga session I had yesterday?)
  This making malarky always takes longer than you think. I love the way designs for sleep pillows just seem to ping into my head at such a rate right now that I have to do a quick sketch to be sure to remember them all. Design 2 is much simpler that the sleeping lady but I did go up a couple of blind alleys .. and it's funny how the most brilliant idea you had  (eg handstitching the eyebrows) often turn out to be ... well a but rubbish to be frank - see above pic.

   Hmmmm... this one may 
need a revisit at some point...     

   I'll try stem stitch for the eyelashes next time and play around with the spacing of the features.
  I really love the padded eyelids though!


Now on to something really quite different.

                 

A week well spent

And so ends my first week of full-time crafting and blogging. I must admit I thought I would have made more stuff by now but unlimited time has meant I have become really bogged down in details .. which is no bad thing!
  The second dreaming lady sleep pillow is finished and just needs a quick wash to freshen it up and remove the fabric pen marks ... as you can see free machining has been the skill of the week. I'm glad I finished off the fabric ties on the back with this technique. Hmm and I think her hair is much better like this. Still a long way to go but you know what, that prospect is a complete joy - bring on dreaming lady number three tomorrow!
  Working on sleep pillows all week has been a bit ironic at the moment as it's not been the best few days for zzzzs! A big change of lifestyle and some family stuff going on is bound to have an effect....Last night was the worst - at 4am I realised I has left my sleep pillow in my workbasket downstairs as I had been copying the good bits and imporoving the not-so-good bits for prototype no 2! I didn't dare risk waking the household to creep downstairs for it.

  It's not just the smell, it's the scrunchy, rustly, touchiness of it I was missing. Tonight it wil be back in the bed and I'll be trying out hops as a filler. They arrived today and the earthy fustiness is getting out of the plastic bags and filling up my workspace.
  I have decided that every crafting week has to end with some research. Being a geeky sort, I'm going to put down the needles, tidy up a bit, unplug the sewing machine and take myself off somewhere cosy to research herbs and their properties ..provided I don't fall asleep first!

Latest treasures

I'm already having a bit of a week for charity shop/thrift store finds.
  I do not need hook and eyes right now but I found this packet when rummaging in a basket of buttons on the bottom shelf of the household section of the Sue Ryder shop in Hersham centre this morning.
  The joy I am deriving from this 95p would puzzle my long-suffering husband. It's the desig of the display card - the fonts, the colours, the no-nonsense style.

  So how old is it? When I shuffled it about a bit and the hooks and eyes moved to the top, I could see that Neweys were By Appointment to Their Majesties The Queen and Queen Mary! I have spent more time than I should figuring out that this dates the pack between 1936 (when George VI became king) and 1953 when Queen Mary (his mother) died.
  I have a mass of stuff to do so I have abandoned my dating quest right there...
  In the meantime I can't bring myself to store my pack of hook and eyes somewhere logical. I need to look at it.. maybe that's why my workspace is such a mess?

And so to bed

Having fun designing the covers for sleep pillows is one whole lot of fun, I'm finding, but sorting out the fillings takes me to another interest of mine - the herbs to fill them with........
  The obvious one is lavender but personally I find chamomile to be fantastic. When I'm wallowing on a chamomile-filled pillow I'm suddenly snoozing away in a beautiful garden with my head cushioned by a cushion of chamomile.
  I have tried growing this pretty daisy-like herb but it really is a wimp and gives way to any challenge so I'm going to have to source my supplies elsewhere.
  Another great sleep-promoting herb to use is hops. James Wong in his very fabulous BBC tv series Grow Your Own Drugs a few years ago raved about its benefits. I'm ashamed to say I did manage to get my hands on some dried hops at the time and made my lovely Mum a hoppy pillow but did not try it out for myself.... I believe there were mutterings about the bed smelling like a brewery which many would think is no bad thing but not my (almost) teetotal Mum!
  All that is about to change as I have ordered some packs from Essentially Hops and I'm pondering the idea of growing my own. Can you imagine the house festooned with harvested garlands drying out to stuff into pillows?
   I'm also wondering about stitching the herby sleep recipe onto the muslin sacks or should I leave them plain (see above)? Yesterday I acquired a Free motion embroidery darning foot so maybe you can see that I'm just looking for another excuse to play?

Welcome to cwsg

 The meaning of Cwsg:  Welsh word for sleep

 A period of rest for the body and mind, during which volition and consciousness are in abeyance and

 bodily functions are partially suspended; also described as a behavioral state, with characteristic immobile posture and diminished but readily reversible sensitivity to external stimuli.

 "Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!" 

Edward Young, 1683-1765, Night Thoughts (1742-5)

Welcome to Cwsg -a crafty place where I'm getting stuck in with my project to create hand made sleep/dream pillows and other useful things using upcycled and natural materials.

A great aunt's birthday

So what do you give a cat loving 91 year old who has everything she needs?
   I have never made her anything in all these 30 odd years but as this is my New Adventure, this has to be the year I just blinkin' well go for it and make stuff for every occasion I can think of.

   Inspired by a kitten door stop in Chloe Owen's lovely new book All Sewn Up, I created a cat cushion for Auntie D using denim-style fabric from an old skirt and pretty flowery print fabric from an old sun dress. The embroidery threads I keep picking up in local charity shops, so my only great expense ended up being the stuffing...hmmm...

  I have used ill-chosen old wool in the past for small cuddly toys but found some wool stuffing material from The Woolly Shepherd. When I opened up the huge sackful I had bought online for £7.99, there was a distinct countryside smell which was pretty unexpected in my suburban workspace but somehow quite charming and reminiscent of jolly country walks in Wales!
  In small quantities, such as inside the cushion, there's no discernible nasty stink, as far as I can tell, although I bet her two cats are going to be quite intrigued.