Holiday Crafting and Felt Ornaments

Holiday crafting is in full swing. My friend and I were invited to participate in a local holiday craft fair with a European theme. We were thrilled to have the opportunity but we needed to come up with some new items along those lines. I decided to try my hand at felt ornaments as I had a stash of the fabric and I've been wanting to dabble in it for a while now.

Can I say that I'm in love?

I know, dramatic. But seriously - stitching in felt is so awesome! It's smooth, easy to work with and manipulate, and it got my creative juices flowing. Once I got started, I couldn't stop! I made over 40 ornaments over the course of two weeks. Intense, yes, but it felt so nice to be crafting like that again.



I think our display ended up looking beautiful, and the craft fair was a lot of fun. There was tons of foot traffic and we met a lot of great people.



I'm really proud of all of the stuff that I made up for the fair, but I do need to get my Etsy shop updated with some of my newer baby items. I did get a chance to put some of my holiday ornaments and decorations in though, and readers of this blog get a holiday discount! Just use the code '10PERCENT' for 10% off of your purchase. I can ship pretty much immediately, so there's still time to get things for the holidays.  Here's the link: What's Up, Cupcake? Etsy Shop



Isabel made up some adorable onesies in fun holiday designs. She also had these new onesies with a crochet flower. The flower detatches to make for easy washing. How clever is that?? I need her to help me clean up my crochet skills. Her work is so delicate and intricate, and to be honest, I feel like mine can be a little sloppy.

Aside from ornament crafting, I have a few new baby lovie designs to stitch up. I'd love to get that done in the next few days so I can ship them out as well. I've already had some mommas asking for them in my online groups. And then, I'm hoping for some R&R. Spending time cuddling with my little guy and enjoying the winter weather with my family.



I hope you, lovely readers, are doing well, and enjoying this holiday season! I have some more yummy treats to share with you and I'm going to be cutting out my Zinnia skirt soon. It feels good to be at the sewing machine again!

New Craft Space

I've had so many blog entries in my head for the last couple of weeks but haven't found the time to put them to 'paper.'  I had the pictures all ready and everything though - I just needed a few minutes to myself.

I finally feel like my craft room is in the proper state for me to... well... craft! This also serves as my home office.  Luckily, I can work from home a fair amount of the time. The sad part is I often end up looking longingly at my craft table.  I do find that it keeps me in a crafty state of mind.

This space is definitely more craft centric than my last one.  You may remember, but my craft room served as a practice space for my Irish dancing, and then later as a guest bedroom.  This new space has my trust craft table (Ikea). I downsized on my fabric stash before the move. I felt like I was hoarding a lot of scraps and pieces that I just wouldn't use.  So I donated a lot of them. Now I just have two cubbies of fabric, and one shelf on my bookcase... though it's slowly creeping up to the filled state as I get back into sewing.  I have one full cubby of embroidery magazine. I love my cross-stitch, but just have so many projects that I want to get to! One day I'll get to them all! (Right??)

The rest of the space is sewing gadets and notions... ribbons, various cutting tools, threads, etc.

My bookshelves hold an assortment of craft books, work books, and a good two shelves each of sewing patterns and yarns. The important stuff.

And with all of this, I've finally started sewing again! Little things - mainly baby crafts. But I've been getting caught up on all of my favorite blogs, finding out who the new, independent sewing pattern designers are, drooling over patterns that I couldn't possibly make in the next two months but want to start hoarding already... ya know, the usual.



So I'll share a few that I've found, but do you have any exciting sewing/blogging finds that you want to share?

Deer & Doe
Saltspring from Sewaholic
Zinnia and Hawthorne from Colette (yup, I bit the bullet and ordered them)
Papercut Watson Jacket... I WANT this so bad
Sew Charleston... new blog find

Covered in Stitches (and Yarn)

I took last week off from my sewing room as things were crazy busy.  We had an out-of-town friend staying with us, and free time was spent bonding over needlecraft activities.  She's a fellow knitter, and I refreshed her memory on how to crochet.  I ended up spending the rest of the week working on my pending needlecraft projects, including a crochet wrap, and my submission for the Covered in Stitches embroidery contest.

Here's a peek at my crochet wrap...

The yarn is by Three Irish Girls, and I picked it up at my LYS, Bobbin's Nest.

I think the green and grey hues of the yarn may actually serve as my main color palette for my winter garments.  I've been pinning a few items and have been leaning towards that color scheme.

I'm over halfway done, having gone through a full skein of the yarn, and am well into the second.

And now, onto my entry for the Covered in Stitches embroidery contest.

He's so flippin' cute!

A few months ago, Feeling Stitchy posted pictures of Jillian Tamaki's needlework book covers for a few Penguin classics.  The covers were gorgeous and had me wanted to snatch up each one of them (Black Beauty, Emma, and the Secret Garden).  I was so inspired by the images that I instantly jumped on Feeling Stitchy's book cover contest.  The challenge? To design your own needlework book cover based off of an existing design.  I instantly knew that I wanted to do the Little Prince.  I love the book and have a mini collection (ok, figurines, postcards, lunch box, a couple of copies of the book in French and English, etc) that I've been hoarding for years.  It's such a beautiful story and I love the illustrations throughout.

I set to work on making a transfer of the design.  With this project, I wanted to try all new things.  In the past, I've mainly done basic cross stitch on heavy Aida fabric.  This time I knew I wanted to use linen, and do crewel embroidery... primarily satin stitch, chain stitch, split stitch, etc.  I used tutorials from all over the web, but primarily from Sublime Stitching who also had the materials I needed for the transfer.

Made the transfer of a tracing of the cover. Colors selected and all ready to be stitched up!

I started stitching my entry, in the meantime seeing that another Little Prince was made. I was bummed but I'm glad to know it's such an inspiring book for so many people.  At the same time, I was enjoying seeing how mine was turning out, and loving the new techniques that I was getting to try. It was also great to see another interpretation of the book.  So on with the stitching I went!

I finally finished my submission this weekend, with it taking just over a month to put together.  I love how it turned out and instantly had ideas in my head for a series of book covers.  These would be so perfect for a library, a child's room, etc.  I've already framed this one... but now I just need to figure out what's next!

If you have a chance, check out the Feeling Stitchy Flickr group.  You can see all of the beautiful submissions so far and even submit your own!

Something old, something new... and a trip to Disneyland

No, this is not a wedding post, but I did pick up a few things during my vacation weekend in Southern California.  First, my friend gifted me a book of her grandmothers'.  I never would have known to pick this book up on my own, but it turned out to be an amazing gift!  It's the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework.  It's a crafter's dream!  It has every type of needlework that I've ever wondered about, including some great information about the few that I do.  I can't wait to try out some of the techniques on lacework and needlepoint, but along the same lines, it taught me some new techniques for the crochet project that I was working on this weekend.  I was gushing about the book all weekend and can't wait to spend more time pouring through it.

In addition, while shopping in downtown Orange, California, I found a cute store called the Heavenly Hostess.  They had some great items, and while I was there I stumbled upon the book Blogging for Bliss: Crafting Your Own Online Journal.  I've been reading a lot of blog and blogging articles recently to continuously improve What's Up Cupcake, so I was really excited to find this book.  Even more so when I found some of the blogs I already frequent in there such as Posie Gets Cosie and Angry Chicken.  I've learned some fun things already and am looking forward to applying them to the blog.

In addition to reading, I cranked out a new scarf based off of the previous Tea Scarf pattern that I made back in December.  I had some great yarn from Three Irish Girls that had been waiting to be used, and I knew this pattern would be perfect.  I'll detail my adjustments to the pattern below, but definitely check out the original pattern here.  I'm calling my variation the Sherbert scarf.  The colors alone make me want a scoop of rainbow sherbert, but I thought this tweaked version needed it's own name.

Sherbert Scarf
Chunky, worsted weight yarn.  I also used size 8mm crochet hook because I didn't have a 7mm on hand

Row 1: CO (ch) 140
Row 2: Ch 3 for turning chain, then DC into each base chain
Row 3&4: Ch 3 for turning chain, SC, DC into turning chain, then *DC, ch 1, DC; repeat from *in each chain around the scarf, ending where you began
Row 5: Ch 3 for turning chain, then DC into each base chain
Row 6&7: Repeat pattern from rows 3&4
Row 8: Ch 3 for turning chain, then DC into each base chain
Row 9: Ch 2 for turning chain, then Ch into each base chain

Weave in the ends.

And finally, what trip to Southern California is complete without a stop by Disneyland? During my craft shopping, I picked up a new copy of Cross-Stitch & Needlework as it featured some lovely St. Patrick's Day items. While hanging out at Disneyland, I spotted a small green display in honor of my favorite holiday, so I had to pick up one of their St. Patrick's Day Mickey's.  Isn't he cute?

So now you tell me - what are you favorite craft books or magazines? Anything you couldn't live without or can't wait to own?

This post will be participating in the following Linky parties:

Making the World Cuter * Just Something I Whipped Up * Made by You Mondays * Sew Cute Tuesday * Talent Tuesday * I Made This * We Did It Wednesday * Hoo’s Got Talent * The Trendy Treehouse * Tatertots & Jello * Thrilling Thursday * It’s a Hodgepodge Friday