fabric contest

WOW! I just got an email from the wonderful people at Spoonflower giving me the heads-up that they are running my fabric design for this week's contest, along with other wonderful designs. I have been waiting for this e-mail for so long! (a little bit of exaggeration here :) Just too excited). OK, here are some images of my fabric design already printed. Many of you ordered a little piece from my shop already and I got nice feedback, thanks! The designs are not up yet but sometime this Friday they will, so go and vote for your favorite fabric at www.spoonflower.com (Hope is mine though, just kidding :)

tutorial - baby food jar pincushion

Finally! After so many months of procrastination I managed to finish this tutorial and share it. A few of you were begging to hurry up and post this tutorial already, sorry about the delay ladies.

OK, let's go directly to work. For this pincushion your will need...

Any size baby food jar (empty and clean of course. I like the tiny ones), glue gun, thread and needle, poly fill (that is how is called, right?) or fluffy pillow stuff, a piece of fabric cut in a 5" diameter circle and some ribbon (enough to cover around the jar lid).


Make a knot at the end of your thread and needle so it does not come off the fabric. Take needle and tread and sew around your fabric circle over the edge, DO NOT finish off. Use a simple stitch because you will be pulling the thread to close the circle. While you do this your glue gun should be getting hot and ready to use.


Place the handful of fluffy pillow stuffing in the middle of your fabric and gather by pulling your thread with the needle.



Use you hand to squish the fabric and stuffing to give it some shape and to continue sewing around.


Secure with a knot, and finish off. Cut your thread and the top of your pincushion should look like this.


This is how you will place the pincushion over the jar lid (please ignore that pink thread coming out from under the lid).


With your glue gun ready, pour enough glue on top of the lid. Be careful because the lid gets hot (I know, my poor glue gun looks disgusting. I will get a new one, I promise)


Immediately after you put some glue on your lid, place the pincushion on top (stitched part down)and press firmly to glue it to the lid. Keep pressing until the hot glue has cooled down and the pincushion stays on there neatly.


This is how the jar and lid should look after gluing the pincushion part.


To conceal the messy part of the pincushion and lid, we are going to glue some ribbon around the lid. Use a wide enough ribbon so it covers part of the lid and part of the pincushion edge too. Work this part little by little to make a neat finish and be careful with the hot glue.



Glue all the way around the lid, secure and cut the excess ribbon.


Voilà! Our pincushion is finished :)


I hope you enjoy this tutorial. If you have any questions or there are some typing mistakes, please let me know.
Thanks for stopping by!

new stuff!

I know I have been promoting my shop a lot lately (no shame here). But the reason is because I want to stock it of items that I have been working on to then post some crafty stuff here on my blog. I am talking about new projects and some free tutorials.

For this I need the help of my wonderful readers and people who visit and comment on my blog. I have received emails from some visitors asking questions about many of my projects but thanks to my shop and busy schedule I have been unable to answer all of them. So, I would love some input from readers that are interested to know how to make, craft, or sew something (that is why this blog is called craft pudding, isn't it?). Now, start posting some comments!

Now, I know I spend most of my spare time crafting and all of that but I am not expert and obviously I don't know everything. I will limit to my current knowledge to answer your questions as well as make them as illustrated as possible (wow! I just used the check spelling thingy and there were not misspellings! I always post with lots of them, sorry).

OK, back to what I came for..oh yes! Shameless promotion. Here are some new items that I worked on last week and finally added to the shoppe.





Some buttons I made




Some linen tape

patchwork sewing basket tutorial

OK, so here is the promised tutorial I have been working on for long time. I started this project a while ago and finally I made some time to finish it and take pictures.

I will show step by step how to make a pretty patchwork lid for a basket. You can use it to put your sewing supplies inside, crochet, crafts or whatever you are working on. My Child uses one just like this as a pretend picnic basket.

I got inspired by one of those Japanese zakka style crafty websites that have very weird signs and fonts. I saw a basket similar to this one while surfing those sites and I liked it, so I decided to make one for myself and share the process with you. I hope you enjoy it.

First you will need...
a basket, any type but small. There are different types, with handles or without them . The one I chose has one handle and it works pretty good. I could not decided if I wanted the square one so I thought I will make that for later.

Materials and tools: sewing machine, scraps of fabric, light weight batting, leather cord (or ribbon or jute), trim like rick-rack or lace, one wooden button (plastic or metal if you like too), a piece of heavy cardboard (big enough to make the top of the basket), white poster board, glue gun and glue sticks, scissors, a card box cutter, one upholstery needle or big embroidery needle, pencil, pen and tool pliers.

First place the chosen basket up side down and trace the opening of it on the cardboard. Cut it and use the cardboard shape to trace onto the poster board like in the picture, cut it too.

Place the batting on a flat surface and cut a piece that is slightly larger than the cardboard top.

Now take your fabric scraps and trim and make a pretty patchwork piece. Iron it and place it under your cardboard top. Cut your patchwork around and about 1" (inch) larger than the cardboard piece. You are going to "glue gun upholster" :)

Place the patchwork piece under (wrong side up), the batting and then the cardboard. Glue the fabric around the edges pulling slightly towards the center of the cardboard so it gives it a nice stretch to the fabric (almost like upholstering). Don't worry if it looks messy, we are covering the center in a bit. Just make sure the exposed edge looks neat.

This is how your glue gun upholstered cardboard should look, cute uh?

Now cut a piece of fabric that is larger around the piece of poster board and follow the same process as with the cardboard but just don't use batting here. This is the piece that will conceal the back side of the cardboard top for the basket. Now both pieces are covered and neat looking.

Take both covered pieced and hot glue one with another with the wrong sides together. Now your basket lid is finished.

Here is how it looks. Next, determine where you want to open it from and hand sew a button close to the edge on the patchwork side of the lid.

Cut a piece of leather cord, ribbon or jute and slide the two ends through some of the open spaces of your basket. Just make sure the cord is long enough because this will be the loop to fasten the button. Place the lid on your basket and adjust the cord so it is easy to wrap around the button.

Take the lid off and knot the ends of the cord from the inside of the basket, cut off the ends if is too long.

Place the lid on top of the basket again and with a pencil mark two points, those marks are for the "hinges" of the lid. Use the upholstery or big embroidery needle to pierce a whole throught out the lid and use the same needle to pass a long piece of cord too, use the pliers to pull the needle if it gets difficult. Do the same with the second mark.


The first picture shows how the lid should look with the two long pieces of cord.
Next pass one end of each piece of leather cord through some spaces of the basket like the second picture shows.

Line up the edge of the lid and the edge of the basket and make knots the cord to secure the lid, don't pull the cord too tight, just enough to keep the lid lined with the basket and easy to open and close; cut off any excess.

Close the lid and this is the way the hinges should look.

NOW...

Your basket is done! Now you can put that WIP inside your pretty basket and take it anywhere! My daughter love it and thought that it will make a pretty pretend picnic basket for herself; that is actually a great idea for a little girl too!

I hope you all enjoy this project and show yours if you make one please :)

finally! :)

Hello to all my blog visitors! I missed very much to post something for you on my blog, I have been really busy lately but I could not wait anymore to show you a preview of my next tutorial. I got all the pictures edited and it is just a matter of adding the directions to the final project. Here are some pictures so you start gathering some scraps of fabric from your stash.


This was a fun project and very fast one too, no complicated at all.


I saw a basket like this one long time ago while sneaking into one of those cozy Japanese craft websites. I liked it so much that the image got well recorded in my brain like a picture :). I think I bookmarked the site but after two computer crashes I lost it, pictures and everything (my hubby is really good recovering data when crashes happen, but that time it was out of his hands) :(

Anyway, I will be posting tonight all the photos and steps that take to make this pretty zakka style sewing basket. Be tuned!

more new stuff at my shop

Here is another picture mosaic with new little things that I added to my etsy shop. I finally added some hand carved stamps that some people were asking for. Take a look! :)

old memories

I wanted to share this mosaic with my blog visitors just to show you how much I love fabric (and sewing, of course). These pictures are old, of when I got my first digital camera. You will notice that it was not a very good one or maybe I was not very good at taking pictures then, not that I am a pro photographer right now but I think I have improved.

Well, these are some bags that I made long time ago when I found that making handbags was actually a lot of fun. My father in law who was an interior decorator, gave me a lot (I mean A LOT)of fabric samples for crafts. Since I am a stay at home mom and my child was a baby then, I had a lot of time to think about what to do with those samples. They were small and I could not think of anything, besides I was not into craft shows and had no friends to give cute little handmade gifts away. So I had not idea how to employ these small pieces of material.

Then I thought: "I can make coasters for the house!!" :) and I made several sets, after that I start making little pouches, cards, you name it. As you can figure my brain started to get more creative and then I thought that I would try to make a bag, but how? The pieces were to small, and the idea came to me; I could make one out of combining pieces of different fabrics! And that is how everything started.
I continued sewing bag after bag until I had not room where to put them and then I decided to venture into craft shows, and I have to say that I was actually very successful from the beginning and I had a blast!

Anyway, I have not stopped making bags and other accessories ever since and here is this picture mosaic of my first handmade bags.