Etsy Shop

So big announcement!

I have an addictive personality. I get addicted to something for weeks at a time, and then won't go back to it for months, or even years. It ranges from everything, hobbies, fitness, even food. (I have a 2 musli bars in my cupboard that are 2 years old. Back from when I was bulk buying them and eating 3 every day.)

My latest addiction has been crafty things. And it started with cross stitch. Over christmas, I had more free time on my hands then I was used to. And I rediscovered how much I enjoy cross stitching. I also discovered how much I dislike heaps of the patterns that I found in Michaels. 

My foray into designing patterns was with a family tree for my grandparents. I knew what I wanted it to look like, there wasn't anything that I could buy that would look like it (obviously, what mass produced cross stitch pattern would have my family's names on it). Plus I didn't (and still don't) have the money to buy enough patterns to satisfy my addiction. So I designed my own.

Once I had done this, I got a touch addicted. I had all these idea going around my head. And I wanted to design them! But the logical side of me said that there is no point in designing and sewing a whole lot of designs, with nothing to use them for. 

From that I came up with the idea to make an Etsy store to sell my patterns. At this point its just cross stitch. But in the future (if I get addicted to anything else) it can expand! 

The hope is that it will give me enough money to sustain my craft addictions! 

So without further ado!  I introduce you to my Etsy Store! you can find it here! 

Use the discount code NEWSHOPDISCOUNT to get 50% off! 

And stay tuned here and on my instagram for more discount codes! 

Clasps/ Rookie mistakes - laptop sleeve

So originally, I wasn't going to do this as its own post. I was going to edit the sewing laptop sleeve (here) and just be all happy that I had finished.

That was until I realised what a rookie mistake I had made.

So picking off from where I left at the end of the last one. I had my "finished" sleeve and I headed off to my friendly- locally owned craft store. (I could've gone to my kinda friendly craft mega store, but those employees aren't quite as invested as the ones in friendly local owned. And given I didn't know what I wanted, I needed someone invested in craft.)


It was suggested that I use a magnetic clasp. Like this!

It ended up being $2.50. Taking my total spent on this sleeve $12.50. Not bad given the ones I was looking at in the shops were $30.


This is where the rookie mistake came in. I went to attach my clasp (my friendly craft supplier said that I just pushed it through the fabric and put the securer on the other side. Easy.) I went to do it. And realised I had sewed up the other side. So I couldn't get into attach it. (Major rookie) 

So I had to cut the side of my hard sewn seam, (I didn't need to go all the way, just enough to get my hand in).

I attached my magnetic clasp (which was surprisingly easy) and then I sewed back up the hole that I cut up.

Next I had to put the clasp on the other side, which was easier because I didn't have to cut up what I had already done. I just had to line it up.

And voila! A (finally) finished laptop sleeve!

Some tips:

• When you start a project, make sure you know how you're going to finish it. Redoing things is annoying, time consuming, and any other adjective you can think of.
• Start with the flap. When you are attaching the magnetic clasp, start with the flap bit, then you can line up the bottom with the top. If you start with the bottom, then you end up with a clasp that does nothing. Its a rooking mistake (another one, from experience)
• Dont be afraid to get advice. Whether its from a store owner, a friend, your mother, or even me! Someone elses opinion helps

Easter Egg Stress Ball

So as part of Keas, I spend my life looking for cool activities to do. Ones that link into something that they can learn and that we can talk about.

This week, it was Easter. Because it was coming up. And they knew about it. Plus chocolate is exciting. We try to avoid religion, not because we have too (scouts is a Christian organisation, I am of the belief that if you send your kids to a Christian thing then expect Christian stuff). But it's definitely easier not to risk getting complaints. Plus (from a students point of view) parents are quite a bit more protective over 6-8 year olds than the 14 year olds I make do prayers on camp.

Anyway! The activity we did was to create Easter eggs that doubled as stress balls!

You need:

• Flour
• Balloons
• Sharpies/ permanent markers 
• Funnel (for the flour) 
• the size doesn't really matter, balloons stretch! 

So it's actually really easy. The idea is to full the balloon with the flour. Tie it up at the top (a same as you would if it was full of air) and then decorate it with the sharpies.

Things we learnt:

• Blow up the balloon first. They were quite hard to fill up if you didn't blow them up first. But make sure you fully deflate it first 
• Don't squeeze the bottom! Sounds obvious, but there were at least 3 kids that went home white from getting flour in the face
• Have enough funnels. We had 8 Keas working on it, and only 4 funnels. I didn't expect it to take nearly as long to fill as it did, so there were a few impatient kids 
• Don't start playing immediately. We did. Cause we are 6 and they are fun. Mine ended up having none of my drawings on it by the time I got home. And I had a black hand. 

Another way to do it (which we didn't, cause we have no money) is use different colours of balloons. You put the first balloon inside another one of a different colour. Then you cut out holes in the outer balloon.

Sewing - Laptop Sleeve

So the other day I wrote about my first experience designing a pattern from scratch (you can find it here!) 

So next step is to share my experiences with the sewing of the laptop sleeve!

So the first step is to cut out my pieces of the pattern. My pattern is made up of 2 pieces, the lid and the sleeve part.

So first up a cut the lid out. I decided that I wanted to line the inside of it, as it would be seen, and the under side of the white fabric isn't very pretty. 

I sewed these together by pinning them with the insides facing together and sewing round 3 of the sides. Turning it inside out (right way round) and sewing the final side.

Then I cut out the  sleeve parts. My original plan was to have a two pocket sleeve, one for my laptop and one for the papers which I need for the meeting(s). So I cut out 3 of my sleeve pattern, with the plan to attach them together at the bottom.  

Unfortunately for me, my sewing machine isn't quite good enough to sew together the three layers of my fabric. So I forgoed the extra pocket, and just went for the plain sleeve. I sewed round 3 of the sides, and made the sleeve. I put my laptop inside it at this point, just to make sure it fitted before I added the lid. 

Next I, really slowly because my sewing machine is not a fan of this fabric, attached the lid to the sleeve to finish it off!

When I went to put my laptop into the sleeve, it was miles to big. So I had to do some alterations. 

I turned it inside out, put my laptop into the sleeve and marked where my seam should go.

Next I sewed it up, and trimmed the excess of the sides. 

When I started the project I hadn't quite figured out what type of connector/ opener that I wanted to use. So my next step is to head off to my friendly neighbourhood craft person to see what they have and what they think. I'll edit this post when I have the chance/money to be able to buy whatever connector and sew it on. 

I know that I want  something that emphasises the angular irregular part and looks pretty. But I don't want something that means the other part flaps around heaps. 

Some tips:

• Use the remnants bin! My fabric (again) I found in the remnants bin. I spent max $10 NZ on my fabrics. And I have a heap more black fabric to use on other projects (stay tuned!)  
• Use heavier duty fabrics. The white flower one is an upholstery fabric. The black one I didn't find in the upholstery section (I found it in the remnants bin) but its thicker than all of the fabrics that I used. Because I wasn't adding any padding to my sleeve, it was important that I had a thicker fabric. 
• Experiment with the pattern. Because I knew what I had in my head, I just played with the pattern and the fabric until I got what I wanted. Point and case, a too big laptop isn't going to help anybody. (especially not my poor laptop and papers). 
• Foam/padding isn't needed.  I didn't use any padding or foam in my sleeve for a few reasons. 1) I have a case on my laptop, which will protect it from the banging around that life with me entails. 2) I didn't need a sleeve to protect my laptop (I bought a hard cover case)  I needed a sleeve to keep all my papers/life together when I went to meetings. And 3) I am cheap, so I didn't think that I needed to spurge on the foam.
• BUT add it if you want too. I decided for no padding. But if you want a sleeve that is going to protect your laptop and not just act as a funky accessory to get stuff from A to B. Then add padding.

If you love this sleeve and want to make it yourself, or if you have any questions. Feel free to give me a holla!

Till next time! 

Dat Girl

Pattern Making - Laptop Sleeve

So because I'm cheap and crafty (in some cases they are the same thing!) I decided to sew myself up a laptop sleeve. 

I knew that I wanted to have a cool angular part to it, and I wanted it to be big enough to be able to fit papers in with it. Which meant that it had to act as more of a folder/bad type thing then a typical sleeve.

So because I kinda had in my head what I wanted, I figured that I would give pattern making a crack! 

First thing that I did was grab some handy dandy newspaper, and a permanent maker. Good thing with newspaper is it is cheap, and I can cut it up and fold it to make sure that it was going to work!

Next I put my laptop on top of the newspaper and figured out how big sleeve I wanted. Now I am untrusting of my cutting ability and my sewing with small seams ability (both of which come from a relatively new sewer) so I gave myself quite a bit of allowance just to make sure that I didn't screw it up royally. 

Then I cut straight up the line. I knew that my case was going to be that wide, so all that I had to do next was figure out how long it needed to be, and what I wanted the lid to look like. So I folded it up to make it in to what I wanted.

My pretty newspaper sleeve

Next I cut out my "pattern". I decided to cut out 2 of them (just in case I decided I wanted to do a lining.

And now I was ready to use my patterns! This is when I got the biggest learning curve about pattern making. I did way more work than I needed too. 

I only needed to do one pattern ( I definitely didn't need 2). And because I was doing the lid in a different fabric from the rest of the sleeve, it was seriously unhelpful to have it attached to the rest of the pattern. 

So I cut it off. 

I then realised that I didn't need to have a pattern that was for the entire "sleeve" part of it. Especially if I wanted to add a pocket on the outside for more papers or other things, then I really couldn't do it as one continuous piece. 

So I cut it in half. 

So, to summarise the steps for pattern making (something as easy as a laptop sleeve)

Steps:

1. grab your pattern making material (i.e. newspaper)
2. figure out the width 
3. figure out the length/ lid/ any other fancy fabric details 
4. figure out if you have done too much work, and what you actually want (this step is optional!) 

Till next time, and my completed sleeve! 

Dat girl

Cross Stitch Thread Organisation

Let me tell you. I am one of those people who manage to make organisation seem like a mess. Or make a mess seem like organisation...
Either way, its a gift.

So I figure as part of this blog, I shall give everybody I sneak peak into my organisation systems. As they are organised. No holds back, I'll show you the ones that work for me, the ones that don't, and why.

So first up is cross stitch thread.
This stuff is hellish. It gets knotted, I have quite a bit of it (especially given I have only just started to grow my own collection, instead of stealing my mothers.) One of my best friends gave me her collection of threads, some of which have been organised. Some that hadn't been.

The beginning of my organisation process

So first things first, I gave pinterest a solid browse. I found some really good posts about how other people had organised their collections (you can see some of them on my board here).

I decided on using the wooden peg method. It means that I can wrap my thread around them, and put a note on them with their number. Because I inherited a lot of thread, it wasn't all the same brand. There is a combination of DMC, Anchor and other brands (some that I don't even know, they just had a number written on the card). So I have colour coded my numbers, pink for DMC, blue for Anchor, and green for everything else.

I then put them into a plastic box. the ones in the long panels on either side are Anchor and other brands. While the middle sections are DMC, divided into numbers by the 100.

Every time I start a new cross stitch project, I pick out the threads that I need from my box and put them into my cross stitch project bag, along with my needles, cloth and thread scissors.

Once I've finished the project, the threads go back into the box (DMC 360, black thread, normally just stays in my project bag, as I use it in some form in all of my cross stitches).

Next step is to buy another container for all my duplicate threads!

Pros and cons:

• The wooden pegs are a lot cheaper than the fancy cross stitch thread organisation thingys. I picked up 100 for $3 NZ. Because of how cheap they are, I don't feel bad writing all over them 
• I can see the thread a lot easier, I'm not entirely sure why that is, probably because they are  wound closer together than you can do on the fancy ones 
• I find them easier to get the thread off then on the fancy ones. That might just be because I am useless, but I just have the end pinched so I know exactly where I am starting from 
• But I can't fit as many of the pegs into my container as I could if I used the fancy cross stitch thread 
• A few times my thread has got caught on the wood. Probably because I bought cheap pegs, so there are a few splinters and things in them. Its still annoying to have to be that careful.

I hope this helps you make decisions on your mess techniques!

Till next time!

Dat girl

For Fox Sake

So recently I have rediscovered cross stitch. By rediscovered when I originally discovered it, it was not really very good. Everything was a mess, I don't think I finished, and they weren't actually very cool patterns. They were cool for 10 year olds. But I'm sure there is a reason that I lost them, never finished them, and they have yet to be seen again.

I'm starting to really enjoy cross stitch, the stuff that you can make is amazing! It truly is incredible what a bunch of little squares in different colours put together can make.

So my first project was a little christmas ornament for myself (which I'll show you another day, it is currently stored with my other christmas decorations, and there are a ton of them).

But my second project was a funny one that I stumbled across on pinterest. It was hilarious, every time I think of it it makes me snigger.

I couldn't find a pattern for the one that I found on pinterest, so based on the picture of the cross stitch I found, I made my own pattern!

And I think that it turned out pretty good! My Aunt, who I gave it to, is pretty pleased with it. Which is always great.

Now, because I am a truly generous person, I have decided to give away my pattern! So if you think that this is as fab as I do feel free to download the pattern below!

For Fox Sake - Cross Stitch Pattern

Some tips!

• Be creative!  there are lots of ones like these online all over the place. If you decide that you want your fox to be in the trees, then add trees! If you want them to be in the grass, then add grass! the sky is the limit! (well, I'm sure you could do a space fox if you wanted too...)
• Don't get to stuck in the colours. There are thousands of different DMC threads to chose from, if you have orange, brown and white on hand that you like together, than use those! Or use any other colours that you think look good together. Its up to you! 
• Don't freak out if you lose count. Its not the end of the world. Worst case scenario is you fox is slightly skinner or fatter! 

Till next time! 

Dat Girl