tissue paper flowers - floofing tutorial

i am a (rather sporadic) letter writer. when sending letters i like to include a cute flat thing to make up for the potential lack of content in the actual letter. in my most recent bout of correspondence i sent many people a tissue paper flower, ready to be floofed up to full glory. yes, ok, when i say that i sent them tissue paper flowers, i do in fact mean that i sent them some coloured tissue paper which i had loving concertinaed, trimmed, and stapled in the middle. what they got looked much like this:

the very technical floofing process seems to have stumped some people though, so here's what you do.

1. expand the concertina like a fan:

2. pull up individual layers of tissue paper, it should start off looking like this:

2 continued. and go on to look like this:

3. now do the same thing to the other side, and, wait for it.....you've made a flower! well done!:

 

now to make this particular flower i used 4 sheets of pale orange, two sheets of dark orange and two sheets of red. layer squares of the same size in that order, concertina, staple, floof. 

pompom edged pillow with a little butterfly embroidery

still on theme of trying to make my blank room a bit more homey - i got it into my head that pillows were the way forward. lots and lots of pillows. this is mostly because i hate the headboard on my bed, and it's not mine so i can't just paint it or upholster it or something proper like that. anyways, i only got around to making one of these pillows in the end which has turned out to be a good thing as i'll be moving house YET AGAIN next month...as always, i find i own too much stuff.

here's a pillow:

now, making pillow covers is really easy - it's two rectangles of fabric sewn together with some sort of overlap and fastening thing going on so that you can put a pillow inside...usually. i however, cheated. this one doesn't have a pillow on the inside - it is literally two squares of fabric, sew together and stuffed like a really boring square teddy bear. this does of course mean that when i eventually do spill red wine on it i'll have to throw the whole thing into a washing machine and prey, but that's ok. The underside which you can't see started out life as an electric blue silk scarf, there's purple pompom edging along two sides and the top is from a tim holtz fat quarter with moths on. to make it slightly less beige i picked out one of the butterflies in embroidery:  

 i honestly defy anyone to try and tell me that i don't know how to have fun in my spare time.

speed sewing - wine bag

i have a tendency to leave things to the very last minute so that there's a mad dash to get everything sorted. this can be a little stressful but also very good fun! recently we lost one of our part timers at work as he went and got himself a proper job, i had said i would make him a wine bag with the canvas fabric he gave me at some point...so naturally i waited until there was 20 minutes before i had to head to out to work my last shift with him before starting the little sewing project. here's what he ended up with:

 

all things considered, it did turn out rather well. i mean, despite my little cheapo sewing machine having real problems with the thickness of the canvas, and the fact that i was sort of making it up as i went along, and that at the last minute i realised i didn't have thread which matched the fabric.... other than all that, it went pretty well. it's basically a long rectangle with french seams up the inside sides, hemmed at the top, and with two handles sewn to that. 

help! i'm a grown up making loom band chokers

my best friend got me into these - i swear it's not my fault! although...her work mate got her into them...so i guess it's not her fault either. blame the workmate of my friend who i've never met before! that way, the blame is kind of dissipated, and we're left with these fab 90's-esque chokers:

the purple one is of the standard use-the-mini-plastic-faux-crochet-hook variety, the yellow and orange one is much the same but with a second layer of bands, and the pink and blue number is of the fish tail variety. now, i have just enough dignity left to not have actually purchased a loom, so i used a fork:

 

and then i had a hunt around pinterest and saw that people are making cool things like daisy chain bracelets and wanted one! but those are pretty complicated so actually need a loom....or do they...?

FORK DAISY!!!!! basically i followed the instructions on this youtube tutorial while substituting a loom for two forks held back to back : ) oh yeah- fork win.