Setting myself challenges

As I am a top procrastinator and seem to read more about crafts than doing them, I am going to set myself soem challenges for the next year. My hope is that if they are on here then I will feel more inclined to do them!

1) Finish city and guilds and get qualification.
2) Open Etsy shop, have at least 5 items on there and look into selling on www.notonthehighstreet.com
3) Finish my Iceland embroidery
4) Finish my patchwork quilt
5) Make a meditation cushion for Mr Jones
6) Produce an embroidery from my own pattern
7) Make myself a new bag- I love my current one but it is starting to get holes so I would like to copy the pattern but make a new version of it.
8) Make a linen top for Mr Jones and a cotton bodice top for me
9) Go on a course to learn something new
10) Finish bean bag chair which has been in the planning stage for a while now

I shall keep you updated on my progress and hope to have made progress on all ten my 1st August 2013: I know, I am already cheating and giving myself a bit more than a year, but, you might as well round to the nearest start of the month ;-)

Love,
Mrs Jones
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My workspace

Mr Jones bought me a subscription to Mollie Makes for my birthday last year and one of my favourite pages is the back page where they show people's work areas. I am always very jealous of the lovely things that they have around their desks. So, because we don't have any children and rarely have overnight visitors, I decided to turn a corner of our spare bedroom into my craft space and am now sharing it for everyone else to see.

The quilt was made by my mum

Neat and tidy!

Cherry box from the local farm shop

My new lamp

It was enhanced recently by a trip to Ikea where I found an anglepoise lamp for £8 and a metre of wipe-clean fabric for £2. I was a very happy girl!

I do find it a bit small at times, so I pull the boxes out from underneath and it becomes a corner desk, but generally I absolutely love it and spend hours up here!

I hope you like it too.

Love 
Mrs Jones
x

My craftster challenge

I was searching away for something completely random the other week when I came across the craftster website, which, I have never been on before:

http://www.craftster.org

While procrastinating, I then found the challenge pages and a challenge to craft something outside and decided that I would love to enter!

 I painted a canvas with a skin coloured paint:

 Then added a shape, I cut out all of the lines so that the paint would show through them

Then (on a slightly wetter day) I flicked paint all over the canvas:

 Until it was covered, at which point I removed the paper (which also looked pretty):

To reveal my finished painting, I will varnish it and then hopefully put it up on the bathroom wall:

 I hope you like it, it hasn't had as much interest on craftster as some of the other entries but there is stiff competition and I am just glad that it pushed me into doing it rather than just thinking about it. Next month's challenge is to do a recipe that is purely your own, I don't think I will be entering that one!

Love,
Mrs Jones
x

C&G Pattern cutting

This week has been all about my pattern cutting course.

I had worked out that my 120 hours of teaching would come to an end at the end of July and I thought that I would then have a few weeks before it was examined so I had been aiming for the middle of August and already thought that it would be tight. Turns out that I am being examined on the 21st July- arhhh!

Just to make it even more impossible I had an interview Wednesday and Thursday, worked Friday and was out all day Saturday and Sunday :-s so the past two days I have worked on getting my core 6 pieces completed, and, except for two waistbands which will be this afternoons work, I am there!

My tight-fitting bodice:

Basic bodice- Front

  

Basic bodice- Back

Redesigned bodice- Front

Redesigned bodice- Back

My shirt:

Basic Shirt- Front

Basic shirt- Back

My one-piece dress:

Basic dress- Front

Basic dress- Side

Basic dress- Back

My two-piece dress:

Basic dress- Front

Basic dress- Back

My skirt:

Basic skirt

My trousers (shorts, to save fabric!):

Basic trousers

I needed to get these finished today so that I can overlock all of the edges tonight at college but then I am hoping to be able to work on my folder a bit more as it is looking a bit bare still.

Hopefully I will get some of the folder work uploaded at some point soon.

By the way, I got the job that I wanted and start on Monday :-)

Love,

Mrs Jones
x

Getting into embroidery

Well after the success of my machine embroidered poppy, I decided to have a go at a hand embroidered one. I found this book at a car boot:

And started out with some chain stitch. It was relatively easy and I followed it with some cross stitch, basic running stitch and leaf stitch. I was relatively pleased with the results.

I enjoyed doing it so much that I decided to follow it up with some more little embroideries:

I particularly like her hair

Obviously this is a work in progress!

which will hopefully be framed and added to my etsy shop.

In between doing this I have been working on a larger embroidery that I picked up while on holiday in Iceland- a great project that is easy to pick up and put down!

As it is shown on the packaging

The flowers on one side

The flowers on the other side

So far!

But, these have meant that I have been neglecting my life-long cross stitch project!

How it will eventually look

So far!

I started this project when I was 15 and it was intended to be finished for the birth of my cousin. She is now 12, wouldn't really appreciate it any more, but I still pick it up from time to time and would love for it to be finished by the time Mr Jones and I have our own children (date unknown!!). I just find cross stitch a pain though because there is so much counting involved (you wouldn't believe that I am a Maths graduate!) and embroidery is so much more free even if you are following a pattern of sorts.

Lots of love,


Mrs Jones
x

Style Africa

As we have just had a four day weekend, Mr Jones and I thought that we should go on a day out. Mr Jones has been wanting to go to the museum in Birmingham and hasn't had the opportunity so we made a day of it on Monday. The weather had perked up from Sunday's horrible rain and we even managed a picnic outside while watching a live band in the square. There were a lot of events on for the Diamond Jubilee but it didn't seem excessively busy.

The museum had a Style Africa exhibition on which showed different fabrics from around Africa. The patterns were amazing and I have put some photos below:

Patchwork style

Lovely pattern

Embroidered

Printed banners

Dyed

4 different patterns

Some black and white patterns

Hexagon resists

With resists

Love,
Mrs Jones
x

Lost in Lace

I wanted to write a quick blog about the exhibition that I went to see in Birmingham just before the wedding. It was a week after my contract at work had finished, I had two weeks until the wedding, the dress still wasn't finished, but, I knew that it was the last day of the exhibition so I treated myself to a day off and didn't regret it, the work was brilliant and so inspiring.

Below are a few of the highlights:

Swarkozski crystal chandelier

War and lace

Lace imprinted in silicone

Black thread and dresses

Layers of vinyl with holes all hanging

Black paper with lace pattern

Rope lacework with floating feather bed

Love,

Mrs Jones
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