Salaric

I’ve been making some felt muse monsters to go with my writing game – I started by cutting up sheet felt – they come in packs where the sheets are about a4 paper size – I cut these into quarters for the monster bodies. Then I cut black squares for the mouths, white egg shapes for the eyes and I had some little black discs or circles of felt. I cut zig zag strips for the teeth.

I laid it all out to see that it all fitted and worked well – the felt for the eyes I cut into regular same sized rectangles first so the eggs would be more uniform. I then stuck it all together with some fabric glue starting with the teeth on the black mouth squares and the pupils on the eye eggs. Then once those where dry I stuck them to the monsters bodies 🙂

These monsters are great for late felt play but could also be used to create halloween bunting 🙂

We are all huge Terry Pratchett fans and I decided I was going to make some disc world toys for the kids – this is the Great Star Turtle A’Tuin who carries the Discworld on it’s back. The elephants and disc are still being made 🙂

I cut out the shapes – this was all free form with the top of the shell being bigger than the tummy shell so that it could be pleated and stand up in a three dimensional shape – I will try and make an actual template to share at some point 🙂

I laid them all out to check it was going to work and then began to sew – I used embroidery silks and the felt for the upper shell has sparkly silver bits in it to represent the stars reflected on the interstellar ice on the star turtles back.

I sewed the fins, head and tail together first, making sure I left the parts that would attack to the body open so that stuffing could be added. I then turned them inside out so that the stitching was hidden, stuffed them and sewed them onto the lower part of the body/shell.

pinched the fabric in on the larger top bit of shell/body so that I could sew a pleat and give it it’s 3D shape, I then stitched it to the main body leaving a small whole for stuffing. Once it was secure I stuffed and and sewed up the remain whole.

I sewed two black-brown buttons on for the eyes 🙂

These photos are of the finished turtle with and without the flash on the camera.

My eldest loves the computer game MineCraft so for her birthday I set about making a MinceCraft Banner using felt – both sheets of felt from which I cut her name – it was a pack of animal skin patterned sheet felt. And needle felt – this is a dry felt technique where you stab the felt fibre to tangle them all up together. I used a brush to sit the fibres on to stab them and got a tool that contains more than one needle so that the process goes quicker.

The creatures are a creeper and the head of an Enderman and they were created free form so there is no pattern I am afraid.

We then sewed them onto a medium width piece of green ribbon, folding the ribbon back on itself at the ends and sewing hanging loops into the banner.

I love this piece of graffiti or street art or what ever we are calling it these days 🙂 I found it at Weston Super Mare.

Tuesday we went to Weston Super Mare were they have a Sand Sculpture Festival – these are basically giant sand castles – but… oh my! They are amazing! It’s still on and is an annual events 🙂

This guy was working on a giant gamers birthday cake with lots of vintage computer game graphics on it!

The skill and craft were amazing as were some of the ideas and geometry behind the sculptures! Here are some of my pictures but really if you get a chance to go… then go! It was a couple of quid and careers go free and there were lots of student and elderly concessions etc… plus sand pits to play.

Faces in Sand

Fairy Tales

Because we saw the sculptures just after the Dismaland exhibition I looked at the little sand world and all I could think was “I See No Borders”.

There was loads of character work – I could of taken a lot more pictures but time and weather were running against me!

Jungle – complete with the liberian 😉

The Sea – I am obsessed with seascapes so I spent alot of time looking at this lengthy sand sculpture, complete with whale and boat.

Don’t lick the sculptures! (He never listens)

The Dragon! (I took this one with the 3D camera as well and am most pleased with the result!)

Seriously love this dragon!

I made this for my friends little girl – it is Red Monster who is one of my story telling monsters 🙂

I cut the shapes out of felt – two red rectangles, a small black rectangle, two sections of jagged triangle cut white, two white ovals and two dark grey buttons for the eyes. I then sewed it all together with embroidery silk and stuffed it with hypo-allergenic stuffing.

I’ve decided to give embroidery a bit of a go, we bought a plan purple lining set which I am working on. The theme is space though I am not sure that is really coming across in the patterns I’ve chosen.

Pretty much my mum bought me a large embroidery hoop which I stretch the fabric in one corner of the duvet in and then using the pack of 100 embroidery silks I am just following stitching ideas I’ve found in an old how to do needle craft book.

It is going to take me a while and I am doing one week of embroidery and one week of it being on the bed and of course I am having tones of embroidery ideas whilst making it!

I really like these ones 🙂 And I thought this tutorial I found on Youtube could be helpful for others 🙂

This is my first attempt at crochet – I think it is double with single around the edge. It is a start – I have a long way to go and I find crochet really hard 🙁

It also took like a whole month to make this :/

Found this lovely vid tutorial for crotchet flowers on Youtube.