My fantastic student!

My friends daughter is being home schooled and I'm her sewing teacher. She'd never touched a sewing machine when we started this fall and I just had to brag a little about her because she's such a fantastic student! We have so much fun during our lessons and she's quick to learn and to my big delight equally picky about stuff as as I am.

Our latest assignment was embroidery (her initials) and then preferably incorporating the embroidery in something sewn. So we made a fabric case for her pencils and pens for school. We wanted to shine a little so she made it sort of triangular with lining, zipper and everything, really impressive work!

Embroidering for her first time ever, cross stitches in the shape of her initials, her stitches are so neat!

Since she's attending my "classes", we're cutting the fabric when possible, not clipping with scissors =) Also, since she like me is a night owl, this particular class was taking place about two at night, hence the dark pictures.

Adding the embroidery to the front of the case, I just love how she choose a green text on the grey main fabric and coordinated the lining fabric with the embroidery.

And the result, one super luxurious pencil case!

 
She's just the best student!  Next up in our classes are knitting and soft toy from stretch fabric, we'll be making a sock monkey, stay tuned =)

My poor baby! My Horizon!

So what is it with me and killing sewing machines? :(

 
3 months into having my beautiful, fantastic Janome Horizon it goes and breaks on me! I was going to sew with some invisible thread, I thread the machine, tested it on a test quilt sandwich - no problems with anything, move over to the real quilt, sew 10-11 stitches and then a loud "bang" and the thread digs in. I cut loose the quilt and there I have the reason, the bobbin case holder (the plastic thing you can remove when you clean) has hopped out of place (which should really be impossible). 

I quickly unscrew the screws holding the metal plate over it and it pops up like a jack in a box from the pressure from the case. And no, the needle hadn't broken, it hadn't bent or anything, the darn thing popped out on it's own! Andreas just says he'd been waiting for something to break considering how it sounded since I got it - I thought it sounded normal if a bit louder then I thought it would?

Anyhow, now the case won't lie still (something must have gotten bent in the pop), it makes bad noises from time to time and I can only sew very, very slowly and for short amounts of time, then I have to restart. :( Which really sucks and sewing slowly and FMQ doesn't really match.

Anyhow as no one on Malta can fix these types of machines I'm hoping that someone out there reading this will have experienced the same thing and can give me a tip on what I dare to do myself adjustment wise to get the case to stay in place so I can sew somewhat for real again until the wonderful person on Janome Sweden who will be helping me with servicing on his vacations in Malta (seriously, how sweet isn't that?) can come and rescue me?


*big blue puppy eyes* Any and all help is SO appreciated! <3


"You can quilt that out"
On a happier notice, I've been listening to this hilarious quilting music video called "You can quilt that out"  that I just had to share with you all, makes everything seem a little better thinking about all these poor long arm quilters has to go through ^^

Finally! A Finish! Poppy Log Cabin Table Topper

Remember this post: I said I wasn't going to play around ?

Well it's finally finished! Since I didn't have any orange thread at the time it remained unbound, and for some reason I'd decided to sew the binding down by hand (maybe because it's a table topper and will be closely looked at?) so once I got the thread I didn't really do the binding anytime soon XD But as of yesterday it's finished!

It's quilted on my old machine (the one that constantly changed thread tension on it's own and skipped stitches) with a walking foot so I'm really quite happy with it. =) The more I look at it the more I love this little quilt and the fabric in  it, it's really bright and happy and I LOVE poppies so it's right up my alley really.

The pattern comes from: http://miasquiltbod.se/ if you want to make your own, it's really quick to make and much fun!

Kitty update: Apparently she doesn't have any stones or any atypic cells in the urine and it appears to be "just" a really nasty infection. So she's on antibiotics, painkillers and some kind of cramp solver to relax the urine bladder so hopefully this will take care of it.

Many WIPs but not much work done

I have a big number of Works In Progress right now but work and Diana being sick has left me with very little time for crafts lately. Diana has some kind of infection in her bladder and it's most likely reached her kidneys and we're going in to do a urin sample directly from the bladder today to see what we're dealing with here. Hopefully nothing a big dose of antibiotics can't handle.

However, yesterday I actually got some sewing done which resulted in this pretty pile on my table.

Sunkissed by Sweetwater is such a fantastic line! I'm loving working with this fabric so much that I don't really want to finish this project =)

Silver on Silver

For the first time ever I tried out my silver colored lambskin. I've seen others use it online and it always looks so pretty but I haven't really been able to make myself use it until now as silver on silver always looks so boring in person to me. But after this first attempt I'm a lot more confident, it actually looks quite good! I have no idea what the braid is called, it's just something I played up while trying to learn a completely different braid *lol* If it has an official name and you know it, I'd be really happy if anyone enlightened me =)

Again, the skinn of the bracelet looks a little bumpy because it's never been worn, it'll get all nice and even with use =) I have to show you later how great the silver bracelet looks when mixed with others. You see, I nearly never wear just one bracelet, I almost always wear at least 3 or more on the same arm, looks great I think!

Black Jenny braid bracelet

I had some leftover braid from making my Three Tier Bracelet so I decided to utilize it by making a somewhat thicker but still simple bracelet of it. It's a Jenny braid with two skin inlays. Made with black lambskin and it has a reindeer antler button.

I'm currently teaching myself some new braiding techniques so hopefully I'll be able to share some brand new stuff with you all soon =)

Fantastic Flurry!

Look what I've got: My very first Fat Quarter bundle! It's Flurry by Kate Spain and it's very bit as magnificent as I'd dreamed it to be ^^ Now the question is how in heavens name I'll ever bring myself to open it...

Since I don't have much to share with you other wise due to work, playing Portal 2 (which is every bit as fun as I hoped and super cozy to play wrapped under our Companion Cube quilt) and some secrets, I thought I'd break my own rule of "never ever upload a picture of what I eat on my blog" XD
I didn't want to be that kind of blogger you know? But I found this amazing blog written by what appears to be an equally fantastic person who's recipes I'm really enjoying so I really wanted to share.

So this is what we ate yesterday, it's Thai Summer Spring Rolls and I found the recipe over at fANNEtastic Food . They where so much fun to make, the Peanut dip was nothing short of amazing and it was so much fun to make and eat!

And we turned the ingredients into these adorable little wraps that we dipped in chili soy sauce, yum!

New Style: "Raw Edge" Sami bracelets

So I've been wanting to do some experimenting with new styles of sami bracelets for a while and the Handmade Jewelery Club feature was exactly the kick in the bum I needed. It's a perfect design to whip up quickly and makes great use of those leftover bits of braid I always get since I tend to do add a bit extra length whenever a make a bracelet to ensure my final bit of braid is as even as possible.

The glue is not dry in the image which is why it's still visible and the seams aren't completely closed up, I just wanted to snap a picture before the light disappeared hence it looks a little haphazard ^^

This bracelet isn't sewn together but two pieces of glued together raw edged leather.  It gives it a nice, edgy look and the closure is just a piece of leather instead of my normal twirled leather thong. 

I have been featured! =)

I just found out I've been featured over at the Handmade Jewelry Club!

They have lots of jewellery tutorials and so much inspiration and I'm honored they choose to include one of mine, the Macramé for Sami Bracelets one: 

They have lot's of great tutorials over there, be sure the check them out =)

*beams with pride*

Happy Easter!

The Easter and birthday bunny (my mother^^) sent us a package of Swedish candy, lovely feathers and Easter chickens, summer quilting gloves and more and here's some of the decoration that came out of it =)

I've been sewing a lot but there's not much I can show I'm afraid... So in the mean time, please enjoy Easter in whichever way you prefer, my time will be spent in front of the swing machine when work permits, if I can get my hand on Portal 2 we'll likely be playing that too. Eating some (read a LOT) "bilar", and some good food.

 ========================================
On a less happy notice, Spring hunting is on in Malta.
An activity I really detest, tons of endangered birds of prey are illegally shot and/or trapped. The EU are against this and lot's of people are trying to get it to stop without much luck. So now some fantastic people are arranging "Spring Watch", which basically is volunteers walking the island, trying to ensure hunting laws are followed with risk to their own life.  And this has really improved the situation I believe, if I only could be off work that way I'd be out there in a second. The "risk to their own life" part is not exaggerated, having been on the wrong end of these hunters wraith before and being shot in the chest with a hail gun a few years ago I know what I'm talking about and that these people are not to be taken lightly.

I was working at a dog sanctuary back then and we'd been told by the hunters that for the time of the spring hunting (which was a much longer affair a few year back) the dogs where not to be let of leash, only to be walked on the road etc. Rules we gladly followed to ensure non of our dogs where hurt. However, one morning when me and another volunteer where taking out the first batch of dogs for a walk, a coward was hiding down the road behind a huge pickup truck. He fired two shots (we think, quite a lot of panic here) at us which luckily non of them hit any of the dogs and me got some of the spray in my chest, luckily it was really cold and I was wearing heavy clothing so I wasn't badly hurt, but it stung like a bitch. The other girl got some pieces of hail in the forehead which caused some damage and quite a lot of bleeding, she was only thanking her lucky star she got to keep her eyes...
The bastard took of driving like a mad man and we where to chocked to think of taking his license plate number. The neighbor farms (who where quite positive to the sanctuary and the work we did despite the fact that the dogs sometimes tended to end up in their crops  while learning to be walked off leash ^^) told us though that they'd never seen the man or car before and the speculation was that he had come from another part of the island to avoid recognition. The police couldn't care less when the issue was reported...

Me and Beauty at Noah's Ark: 

The reason I'm telling the story is because I truly believe that if more people got their eyes open for this issue, hopefully something can be done and the Maltese authorities would be forced to take action.