We have our local Makers Market coming up on the 6th of December – and I am going to have a stall there! My lovely friend Lisa & I are going and we will be selling lots of handmade softies & other handmade goodies too. I am really looking forward to this and looking forward to talking to lots of people that enjoy handmade things. If you are anywhere near Bairnsdale please come by and have a look. There are some wonderful stalls there and I love seeing all this creative talent in one place. It’s a great time to pickup a special handmade gift for someone for Christmas too.
It has been quite a while since we have had a stall at the market – and so I have lots of samples to sell from my designs plus ones I have made up especially for market too. You’ll find samples of my Don’t Worry Dolls, Easy Softie Designs, Pocket Penny Dolls, Christmas Birds, iPod & iPad Covers, Kitty Cat Heat Bags and a few other things too.
I’d love to see you if you can drop by. It’s on Saturday the 6th of December 8am – 2pm at Boucher Hall, Bairnsdale Secondary Collage, Bairnsdale Vic.
It has been a week of celebrations around here! Both my husband and son are lucky enough to have their birthdays on the same day – and so it seems like be have been celebrating all week! It was Melbourne Cup public holiday Tuesday and the kids also had an extra day off school Monday too – so we had a great long weekend together too.
We had a family birthday celebration all day Tuesday together, then my son had some friends over for a party after school Friday. So we’ve had streamers and party decorations and party food around all week! We also had 3 birthday cakes to eat too!
My daughter made this lego cake for her brother which as you can see he just loved!
I finished my Mike the Monster in time for my son’s birthday too – and he really loves it. I enjoyed crocheting this and actually liked the challenge of the tricker parts like the fingers and toes. It’s not perfect but my son was happy with it which was the main thing! This is a free pattern by Stacey Trock from FreshStitches which you can find HERE.
Now I need to recover from all the birthday celebrations and over indulgence of party food!
My Awesome Designer for this feature is Lisa Press from Phoebe & Egg.
Lisa designs and make the most AMAZING dolls (photo of Lisa’s dolls above) and dolls clothes which you can find in her Etsy Shop.
Lisa has recently released a series of tutorials on her blog showing you how to make dolls dresses.
This is a wonderful series of blog posts where she starts off talking about the basic tools and then provides you with a base doll dress pattern (for 5 different size dolls). Lisa then takes you through fitting and altering the pattern to suit your particular doll and then talks about facings, shows you how to make a reversible dress, a dress with a bodice & gathered skirt, peter pan collars and bias trims.
Here are the links to her series of blog posts she has called Doll Dress-Making Series (photos above from Lisa’s blog posts):
If you have ever thought about making dolls dresses or if you already do but would like to learn some more techniques then these tutorials are for you. If you have a doll you would like to sew for but don’t have a pattern – then these tutorials are for you too. The tutorials show you how to make the dresses step by step and have great photos to go with them too.
I made up this dress (left) using these tutorials. This one was the bodice & gathered skirt and I found the tutorial easy to follow and the dress was easy to make too. My daughter now wants to make up some of these dresses too – so we are going to make some together. This is a great way to get kids sewing and making something that they want!
Thanks Lisa for these wonderful tutorials.
Make sure you pop over and check out Lisa’s website: Phoebe & Egg. She takes the most beautiful photos of the dolls she makes and so it is definitely worth a look.
Her dolls are all handmade using high quality materials and they are just amazing. Lisa can also make dolls to order too – so you can select the hair style and colours, skin tones, eye colours and clothing you want on them too.
Another wonderful fact I found while reading Lisa’s blog is she has recently set up her ‘Doll Friend Project’. For every doll purchased from Phoebe & Egg, a doll will be given to a child in the Foster Care Program. You can read more about these amazingly generous gifts on her blog post HERE.
My latest pattern – the Pocket Penny Dolls – is finally ready for release. These are cute little 9″ dolls that are quick and easy to make and only use small amounts of fabric (so great for using up those fabric scraps!). They make great little gifts – and are something small that you could pop into a Christmas stocking too! I love these little dolls and I hope you do too! They are available right now on my Etsy & Craftsy stores. So pop a Penny in your Pocket and you’ll always have a friend – or two – to play with!
A BIG Thankyou to those that voted for my entry into the One Thimble Fat Quarter Competition. There were some fantastic entries into this competition and not everyone can win of course! So I will be releasing my Pocket Penny Dolls VERY SOON in my Etsy and Craftsy stores!
The pattern is currently being finalized - so as that’s done and my pattern testers have given it their tick of approval – it will be available for you to buy. These are very quick and easy dolls to make and only use very small amounts of fabric too! Great stash busters! They are approx. 9″ high and a nice size to hold or pop in your pocket! I love them and I’m making quite a few to have for sale at our local Makers Market in December.
Once again – a BIG thankyou to everyone who voted for my entry and make sure you pop over and check out the Winners!
A few weeks ago One Thimble announced a Fat Quarter Competition where you had to design & sew an original project using One Fat Quarter of fabric. You could use small pieces of fabric that together make up one fat quarter of fabric plus whatever buttons, zips, ribbon, lace and other trims you needed, but no more than one fat quarter of fabric. So this is what I came up with. I call them my ‘Pocket Penny Dolls’.
You can make two of these dolls using small pieces of fabric that in total make up a One Fat Quarter. I have used white linen for the head and arms, felt and a little wool for the hair, and cotton fabrics for the body and legs. Their faces are embroidered and they also have a flower embroidered in their hair. They are 9″ high dolls that are quick and easy to make, and their arms and legs are sewn into the seams so they can put up with lots of playing too. I loosely based the design on my ‘Don’t Worry Doll’ pattern. I reduced the pattern templates and then modified them to make these cute little dolls. I love how cute they turned out! So now you can put a Penny in your Pocket and you’ll always have a little friend to play with!
One Thimble are having a People’s Choice Award over on their blog with all the competition entries. There are some great entries for this competition – so make sure you pop over and vote for your favourite.
One the weekend I was lucky enough to go to another stitching day down in Melbourne with my friend Jenelle. This one was ‘Stitched In Time for Christmas’ with Gail Pan from Gail Pan Designs and Ramona Hermann from Flutterby Designs. It was another great day out for us with lots and lots of talking, stitching and eating too!
Ramona and Gail both showed us their needle turn techniques and Gail also showed us how she does her hand quilting too. We got to admire all the lovely quilts made by Gail and also buy some of Gail’s lovely fabric range and patterns too. I also got to meet the lovely Sheryl from Enjoying life - who’s blog I have been following for a few years too. It was great to finally meet you in person Sheryl!
Thank Jenelle for a great day out and thanks to Gail and Ramona for putting on a lovely stitching day for us.
I thought I would share some photos of some of the Christmas Birds made by my pattern testers and customers. I love them made up in all different fabrics and colours!
Don’t they look great!
The pattern for these Christmas Birds is available for a Special Low Price of only $2.00 (AUD)! You can find it on my Craftsy or Etsy store now!
Here is a new pattern for you! My Christmas Bird Decorations – and in plenty of time for you to make before Christmas too!
I love these little birds. I originally designed them back in 2010 (Wow – was it that long ago!) and released them back on my personal blog as a free pattern. I have now completely updated and re-written this pattern and the pattern templates have been digitized too, so I am now releasing them for a special low price of only $2.00 (AUD)! This small price you pay for the pattern will help pay for costs I now have hosting this website, digitizing my pattern templates and basically to help keep me designing.
These Christmas Bird decorations are VERY quick and easy to make. They make great gifts for family, friends or as teachers gifts at the end of the year too. I have made many of these Christmas birds over the last few years and have also made them up to sell at our local Makers Market too – and they do sell really well. You are more than welcome when you purchase this pattern to use it to make birds to sell at your local markets or to sell online too. I only ask that you please credit the design back to me by mentioning pattern design by Jody’s Crafty Creations.
These birds also look great made up in other fabrics too and you can string a few together or make them up as a mobile to hang up in a child’s bedroom or wherever you like!
I hope you love them as much as I do. Just go to my Crafsty or Etsy store to purchase the pattern.
Today we made Zokling sock creatures with the Grade 3/4 kids at school. It was great fun and they all did a wonderful job making up their Zoklings too! Here’s a photo of two of the Zoklings we made.
This is a great project to do with kids (a good idea for a school holiday project too!). These Zoklings are a creation by Wendi Gratz of Shiny Happy World. So simple but so cute too! I love them. There was about 18 kids that all managed to make and finish their Zoklings in class and we had the afternoon session (of around 1.5 hours) to make them. All you need for this project is a sock, 2 safety eyes, a little felt (for behind the eyes), wool for the hair and then rice to fill them up. These ones took around 2 cups of rice. You can find the instructions plus videos on how to make these over at Shiny Happy World. Thanks Wendi for giving me permission to use your design to teach this class. It was great fun!
