Sew tired of waiting.....

So as you might know by now, on a bad night, I'm an insomniac and on a good night, I'm a very light sleeper who wakes at any sound or light. I quite often use a sleep mask to stop myself waking at dawn in the summer, or when I'm camping. This is one I made for myself last year, inspired by Phizzychicks Owl Eye Mask. The BF jokes that he feels likes he's waking up next to a muppet. *lol*

Anyway, the Summer holidays have given me plenty of time to play around and I decided I needed a new eye mask, so just for fun, I made myself a cat mask. I thought the BF might prefer waking up next to cat woman than a muppet!

It's a bit bigger than my other one so hopefully will eliminate those annoying chinks of light that manage to get in. It's also made from a lovely soft black velvet lined with satin, so it feels really nice to wear and is a little cooler than the owl corduroy one.

Here's how it's made.

You will need:

A piece of paper to make your template with, a pencil, a piece of velvet outer material, a piece of smooth lining material that will feel nice next to your sensitive eye skin, a small length of medium width elastic, some pink and gold felt, scissors, pins, a needle and some sewing thread.

I sketched a rough shape onto some paper, then cut it out and adjusted the shape by holding it up to my face and cutting accordingly. When I was happy with the template, I laid it out onto some velvet and satin and cut one piece out of each fabric.

Then I cut the eye shapes I wanted from gold felt, and the ear pieces from pink felt.

Make sure you cut out two of each shape.

I sewed the felt onto the face and added some thread whiskers and a little chain stitch daisy highlight in each pupil.



I attached the elastic where I wanted it to be (making sure that the wrong side of the front is on the inside, then the elastic, then the lining) and using a running stitch, sewed all around the outside of the mask MAKING SURE TO STOP BEFORE THE TOP OF THE LAST EAR! If you don't stop here, you won't be able to turn the mask the right way out again. Turn it right side out again. You should now have the velvet on the front, the lining next to that, and the elastic running round the back. You will still have a gap of unsewn material along the top, which you can now sew up. I used a whip stitch to sew up that last little bit and carried it on all around the edge of the mask to neaten it up.

Your mask is now ready to wear!

The last Harry Potter book is due out tomorrow. I'm much more excited than I probably should be and have set aside the whole weekend to read the book. I received this lovely handmade journal in a personal swap last year but wasn't sure what to use it for. Last night I decided to start a book journal and this journal was the perfect thing for it. It came to me with the word JOURNEY on the front which seemed a perfect description for the literary journey I wanted to record.

So in anticipation for the Harry Potter book I made a start.

In it I plan to record the books that I read with an account of my thoughts on it, drawings and illustrations and stuff like that. A kind of literary art journal if you like! I do love to read.