WOYWW - Woolfest!

Hello all! Welcome to my blog, where I share a sneak peek of my desk to mark 'Whats on your Workdesk Wednesday'.

So here's my workdesk this morning...

It's a busy old desk this week as I'm trying to fulfil a growing order book while also trying to fit in a dabble with the fabulous new fibres I picked up at Woolfest this weekend.

"What's Woolfest?" I hear you say. Well, it's the nickname for Wonderwool Wales, a festival of Welsh wool and fibres held annually in Builth Wells. Mum and I took Ben along on Sunday and a brilliant day was had indeed. Three halls full of wool, silk, felt and fuzz provided a great opportunity to spend my birthday pennies and was a feast for a textile artist's eyes! Benjamin enjoyed his first encounter with rare breed sheep - Black Wensleydale and Blue Leicester I'm reliably informed - and some lovely angora rabbits.

Here are all the goodies I brought back...

I'm very pleased with my haul and am looking forward to being able to find time to try out some new designs to incorporate some of it.

Also this week I squeezed in another photography session, this time to turn some of my latest work into prints. Here are the ones I chose...

Well that's all for today folks, hope you've enjoyed hearing all about my week.

Happy crafting,

Max x

WOYWW - Needle-felted sheep

Hello all! Thanks for dropping in to read about what I've got going on at my workdesk today.

Today my desk is covered in my needle-felting stuff...

Everything's gone a bit sheep-crazy this week. After posting my needle-felted sheep sunset picture on Twitter and Facebook, I've had several orders so I've been busy making these up. Who knew sheep were so popular?!

This week my friend turned thirty so I rustled up a little 30th birthday card...

(forgive me for the attempted 'arty' photo - I'm trying out a new camera but I'm totally hopeless with it! You'd never think I was the daughter of a photographer!!)

Regular readers may know I've had difficulty sourcing suitable frames for my needle-felted pictures, which are slightly 3D and look squashed in an ordinary frame. Hurrah, at last I've found a great supply of shallow box frames that suit my pictures perfectly so I've been busy mounting my work this week.

Finally, I've been preparing for my forthcoming workshop on 5th March in Shrewsbury, an opportunity to needle-felt little garden scenes like mine. I have a couple of places left, so if you fancy joining me, click here.

Well that's all for today as I hear the distant growl of a toddler waking from his afternoon nap! Thanks for visiting. Hop on over to Julia's Stamping Ground to meet lots of other crafters like me on What's on your Workdesk Wednesday.

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - Chubby and plump, a right old elf!

Yes, dear reader, a line from my favourite poem 'T'was the Night Before Christmas'. I thought it an appropriate verse to accompany my workdesk photo this week...

You'll see up front my latest make. Last year I made Ben a sack for his first Christmas and added to it a little felt Rudolph decoration with 'Ben's first Christmas 2014' on the back. This Christmas I have stitched a Father Christmas and so the fun will continue year on year (or at least until he twigs that Mrs Claus's stitching is uncannily similar to his mummy's!)

Now that Twiglet's sewing room is finally tidied, we managed to share half an hour of sewing time this week while the boy was asleep...

What fun! Good job I'm better at sewing than I am at taking selfies!

Also this week our tree went up. I had feared all sorts of mishaps would occur when toddler met tree, but we've been lucky and Ben hasn't been nearly as curious/destructive as I'd feared.

He has taken a shine to all the handmade goodies that mum (twiglet) has made for my tree over the years so I thought I'd share them here so you can enjoy them too...

My final share of the week is a collection of fab photos that my dad has taken of my work. I've been grumbling about how I need to have better photos of my work to improve my Etsy listings and so dad, a professional photographer, set up the studio for me and took these fab pics! He even got round the problem of reflections on the glass in my box frames!

That's all for today folks! Hope you've enjoyed visiting and reading my blog. I'm off to visit some other fab bloggers' workdesks on What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday so why don't you join me too!

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - new home celebrations

Hello all, welcome to my 'What's on your workdesk Wednesday' post. Bit late in the day as I've been for a long overdue hair cut!

I've had a busy week with several different textile projects on the go.

I've produced more needle-felted pictures (dumflings) as I have the exciting prospect of supplying a few shops in the coming months! These are all ready to bead and mount...

I've also taken time to dabble with some new ideas this week. A number of my friends have moved house recently, or are due to soon, so I have made a few embroidered 'new home' cards. These have been both free-machine embroidered and hand embroidered.

Finally, I've enjoyed watching my little man find his feed as he gets ever closer to walking by himself...

(Note: the vase is on the table, not balanced on Ben's head!)

Hope you've all had a good week too. I'll hopefully catch up on your news when I swing by a few desks after the little man has gone to bed.

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - Needle-felting fun and a peacock

Morning all! With the bank holiday I feel like I've lost a day and WOYWW has come round mighty quick this week.

I'm delighted to say I've been able to make time this week for a little light dumfing (a.k.a needle-felting). With all the busy book and sensory toy making it's been a few months since my last felting session. I guess it's like riding a bike...you never forget, but I have to say I felt a bit rusty as I prodded away with my dumfing tool.

So here's my workdesk. . .

I've managed to do a bit of everything but not managed to finish anything!

There are some hand-felted mini gardens which I got as far as hand embroidering and beading....

I'll be running workshops on these later this year and early next year so I'm keen to make a range of different flowers to demonstrate.

There's a selection of wet felted background pieces which I have worked on with the dumfing machine (the most satisfying crafting activity I know) ready to add foreground flowers. I've used three different colours to try and steer myself away from just doing poppies, which I love.

Finally there is a long strip of poppies which I have free machine embroidered but not yet beaded. The poppy picture in the foreground is a felters's answer to a crib sheet - one I made earlier!

My last little show and tell is not my work at all but a snap shot of Benjamin's work desk following a little (mess-free) painting activity we did this week.

He seemed somewhat puzzled as to why I was encouraging him to squelch and prod a plastic pouch selotaped to the floor but he stuck with it. Here's his finished piece. Though the poster paint has cracked on the canvas, I think you will all agree it is clearly a peacock in motion!!

Thanks for dropping by. I look forward to visiting a few workdesks today via Julia's Stamping Ground

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - busy books encore!

Well I can't quite believe a week has passed since I blogged to share all the little creatures sat on my work desk waiting to get together in Ben's busy book. Thanks so much to everyone who dropped by to look at my work and leave lovely comments.

I've been spurred on to keep the project going at a pace and this week my desk has once again been invaded by jungle animals as the busy book pages near completion.

With the main creatures complete, this week I've been focussing on all the tiny creatures which are hiding behind flaps for Ben to discover. Here is a sneaky peak at some of them (just don't tell Ben what you've seen!)

Hiding in the bushes on Zebra's page are a pair of toucans and a snake...

Behind Monkey's ear hides a little ladybird...

Pottering through the long grass away from Lion's view is a little snail...

This little unsuspecting fly will sit on the water lily, where hungry Froggy is waiting for his lunch...

Hope you've enjoyed seeing my latest busy book characters. Stop by soon to see more! I'll try and visit some of your desks today too!

Happy crafting x x x 

WOYWW - busy busy busy

It's been a busy few weeks at Tilly Tea Dance Towers. Now my little man is nine months old I have been planning lots of sewing projects that will help to keep him occupied.

In September we've got our annual holiday and Ben's first trip on an aeroplane.  So I'm busy making a busy book to keep him... well... busy!

Among Ben's favourite toys are a set of jungle animals at his Nanny Twiglet's house. This gave me my inspiration for a busy book (sometimes called 'quiet' books, but I'd rather think of my boy being busy rather than being quiet).

I swiped a lovely piece of jungle fabric from my mum for the bag I'll make to contain the busy book. This gave me lots of ideas for colour scheme and creatures...

So I thought up lots of ways to use fabric animals to keep Ben busy including textures to stroke, buttons and beads, ribbons to pull, zipped pockets to open and puzzles using velcro.

These parrots have velcro bottoms to stick them to their nests!

  

 

These ribbon snakes can be pulled through the button holes... 



  

 

Here is my zebra finger puppet in the making...



 

 

While playing with another busy book made by Nanny Twiglet, we discovered Ben loves looking under flaps. I've incorporated this idea in the book and each page has a little creature hiding under a flap.

 

Behind Elephant's ear hides a little bird...

 

 

Behind the bushes on Froggy's page hide some of his little friends...

  

 

Up in the tree high above the parrots' nests is a hungry caterpillar...

 

 

Lots of happy faces to play with in the busy book...





 

 

Ben has been very good sitting in his high chair and watching me sew. It looks like Lion and Zebra are already a hit with my No. 1 customer! (and those of you keen-eyed followers of Nanny Twiglet's blog will see that Ben is playing with the completed Hungry Caterpillar high chair tray cover that appeared on Twiglet's WOYWW post back in June)

  



 

It's quite an ambitious project which has grown in complexity as I've been working on it. I've been juggling the job with other demands...baby yoga, baby singing classes, play dates, ironing (urgh) so I'm anticipating this is a long haul project but I'll hope to have completed it by our holiday!

Hope you've enjoyed my preview of the busy book! Come back soon to see the finished one.

I'll try and visit a few desks this week on WOYWW :-)

Happy crafting x x x

1. 

WOYWW

I've cleared the kitchen table to make room for a dumfing session. I've had several ideas on the go so I've dedicated the day just to dumfing bits and bobs that can be free-machine embroidered or hand-stitched at a later date.

My first dumfing task is to work on a piece of countryside-ish felt.

Eventually this piece will be cut up to make one large picture and three or four smaller dumflings. They will be free-machine embroidered and beaded by hand to create the poppies and foliage.

Next I've produced a piece of cream/ivory dumfing. This is wedding season so I'm producing enough bits to make cards for all my friends and family who are getting married in the next few months. Any surplus will get made into wedding congratulations/thank you/invitation cards to go into my etsy shop or saved for christmas when I'll pimp them up with twinkly bits, star sequins etc for the festive season.

I use snippets of silk, chiffon and vintage lace

 Each snippet is needle-felted to a piece of felt.

I try to create an all-over textured surface with a few more detailed areas using the lace. These can be further embellished with free-machine embroidery at a later stage.

Finally I've made a start on a new batch of pink dumfling babies. I was really cheered on by everyone who liked these miniature whisps of felt, chiffon and silk so I thought I'd get a few more pieces ready to hand-stitch on an evening when the TV is not so good.

Hope you've enjoyed visiting my work desk today. Looks like it's mealtime so best pack away the work desk for now! I really need to get a permanent crafting space sorted don't I?!