The Happy Happy Hippy Swap…

Each year I organise the Hippy Swap over on Craftster. It’s become like a tradition; I finish school, I have more time for crafting and sitting for hours staring at a computer screen trawling through crafty sites…you know how it is! The weather has been quite nice here, so I’ve spent alot of time in my garden, digging and planting, and moving stuff around. Look here, this is the first ever water lily to grow in my tiny water garden (big water filled bowl) and it’s soo pretty! It’s a dwarf water lily.

I’ve also done a little bit of crafting for me. This was an old t-shirt that’d been sitting around waiting for me to finish. I’d done a little bit of re-fashioning on it, cutting on the crew neck (which I’m really not find of) and creating a v-neck, trimmed with pink and gold gauzy ribbon. And then I ran out of inspiration….it sat there for quite a while waiting for the right idea. Anyway, after doing a couple of refashioning workshops, I decided that what this t-shirt needed was a bit of appliqué. And so the butterfly t-shirt was born. Or rather, sewn.

 

 

I freehand drew a butterfly outline on some paper, transferred it onto Bondaweb, ironed it to some pretty pink fabric and cut out the butterfly shape. Then I ironed it onto some purple fabric and cut round it so that you could see the purple round the pink. I made a body and some spots out of the purple fabric too and ironed them on.

Then I embroidered round them using a blanket stitch and some pink and gold threads. I also added some gold sequins for a bit of sparkle. Much better!

 

So then I concentrated on my hippy swap package. I can now post photos because my partner’s received the package and I’ve received hers! Because my partner was in the UK, I knitted a nice warm hat for the cold weather which is very practical for this country. This is the Meret by Woolly Wormhead, it’s one of my favourite patterns. I made it a slouchy hat…  

 

with a combination rolled/ribbed edge.

 

I used a lovely warm brown…

I also needle felted and embellished this felt brooch, made from an old fulled jumper. It has green sequins and beads along the edge. I love needle felting, it’s so therapeutic stabbing away!!

 

Since my partner is a beginner belly dancer and wanted a coin belt, I decided to make her one. Her favourite colours were very autumnal, greens and browns and golds. It’s wonderfully jingly!

 

I also used some decorative ribbon and sequin strands for some sparkle.

I made sure that even the ends looked good!

And because you just have to wear flowers in your hair when you’re dancing, I made this lily hair clip. I used a flower from a cheap ‘pound shop’ artificial ‘bouquet’ and coated the edges in glitter glue…

 

Then I glued a spring clip underneath, making sure to hide alot of the clip in the leaves. I like to tuck flowers in my hair by my ear and I find the flowers on clips stay better than on bands.

My partner likes to write notes and lists in a notebook, so I also made her a felt notebook cover which she can take off when the notebook is full and change to another notebook. I covered it using the ‘paper fabric’ technique I learnt at a workshop a couple of months ago, and then embellished it using embroidery threads, flowers and sequins.

 

Hopefully using felt will make it quite durable…

 

I also used Angelina Fibres on it which are such fun to work with!

The notebook is just a cheap and cheerful A5 hardback notebook.

 

I sent along one of the rainbow light bulbs from my shop, because they are just so damned hippy-ish!

And in the spirit of eco-friendly hippy crafts, I upcycled an old Ferrero Rocher plastic box, and decorated it using glass paints.

 

It looks lovely in the sunshine.

I’m kind of an overachiever and I do tend to spoil my swap partners, and well, hippy crafting is such good fun, that I had to make some extras for the package, but I’d agreed with my partner that we’d do extras, so that was fine and dandy. I made a green and brown beaded necklace with a Celtic pendant, since my partner loves all things Celtic, and greens and browns….

 

I had planned to do a bit of hippy-like appliqué, but I just couldn’t find the right image, then I noticed that I had some green fabric left from my belly dance costume that would go really well with this top, and some green organza that complimented it really well, and the top sort of morphed and became a sort of woodland fairy type of top instead.

I made some ruffles by tearing two strips of fabric which were much much longer than the bit that I wanted to embellish. I sewed a running stitch along the middle of each strip and pulled so that it gathered it up. Then I sewed it into place. I did the organza one first, then the satin ruffle, the I sewed a faceted bead every cm or so. The fabrics  should fray and look pretty…. 

 

I also painted an ash catcher green, then decoupaged it with a sunflower and sparkly Modge Podge. I varnished it to make sure it was durable. This didn’t photograph so well, so you’ll have to take my word for it that there’s a sunflower on it!

To see what I received in return, click here. We were both very happy hippies!

Happy Hafla and Bellydance Superstars!

So I finished my costume just in time! The Hafla was on Thursday night and I finished my outfit at lunchtime on Thursday. My bra was covered and embellished with ribbon, lace, sequins, part of an old earring and some coins. I took the straps off the bra and replaced them with ribbon, covered the back straps with ribbon and replaced the hooks with D rings and voila!

I made a coin belt using the same fabric I used to cover the bra with. I sewed ribbon, bells, sequins and coins on it. I also made an overskirt from embroidered organza, I cut two panels and sewed them onto two pieces of ribbon, which I tied, one back and one front, over a plain black skirt.

Here’s the finished outfit!

The shoulder straps crossed over and the back and fastened through the D rings!

And another shot just for fun!

The Hafla was so much fun! This was Demi’s first ever solo performance…

The Cairo Cats performed this beautiful dance that kept everyone entranced…

Cairo Cats

Louisa did a cheeky little Egyptian dance…

 

Fulya was fabulous as always!

There were so many fabulous dancers

Truely inspirational

and all shapes and sizes..

A couple of nights later, we went to see Bellydance Superstars at the Raqs Britannia in Sheffield. Sadly we weren’t allowed to take pictures (boo!) but again, it was a great night, although a bit too polished and choreographed. I did feel like it had been choreographed to a format, even the tribal sections. It was all very slick, and dancing to die for, with immaculate performances, but I felt it was just that, a performance. There was no soul in it, no heart…maybe I’m being over critical, but the dancers were all very young, very slim, and very similar. Their personalities didn’t shine through. And to me, that’s what dance is all about!

Funky Clothes and Festival!

Unless you’re a hermit, or you happen to live in the USA, you can’t have failed to notice that the World Cup has started. The Football (soccer) World Cup. If you’re a footie fan, it’s kinda a big deal. Me, I don’t give a damn. I used to be indifferent about it, but since I live with a footie fan, I have grown to hate the ‘beautiful game’. I hate the way it turns sound, sensible men into drunken argumentative idiots. M is a football fan. He loves it. L-O-V-E..LOVES it. *Sigh* He even invested in a 42” tv just so that he could see each special moment. So, I have planned an alternative itinerary for the four long weeks that the Cup is taking place. Friday afternoon there was a Crafternoon workshop in embellishing t-shirts. We had to take a tee to work on; mine was a deep purple skinny-fit job from Primark. Cheap and cheerful and a terrible fit. I hated the way the sleeves bit into my arms.  

I drew out a dragonfly design onto paper, traced it onto Bondaweb, then onto fabric, cut it, ironed it onto my tee, then embroidered and embellished it. I used a different fabric for the wing and a sparkly thread to sew it onto the shirt with a blanket stitch.

 

 

I cut and frilled the sleeves using a lettuce stitch. Much more comfy.

 

I love the fabric I chose for the body of the dragonfly, especially the placement of this skull on the head, giving it a deaths head moth appearance. Then I sewed little bead antennae and sequins onto the wings to give it a little sparkle. 

It’s already a much loved garment! Now, sometimes I maybe trawling the internet and I’ll spy something which I just have to have, like these yarn and needles charms. How cool are they? Immediately I thought ‘stitch markers’ and lo and behold, they became stitch markers. I also bought some 8mm jump rings because I know from past experience that I don’t have any stitch markers in that size, so now I’ll be prepared :)

 

I teamed them up with these scrummy pink sparkly beads which have been sitting in my stash for ages!

 

And remember I told you about my stitching workshop (customising charity shop finds), well I went online and ordered myself one of those freehand embroidery feet for my Brother sewing machine and as you can see, it’s already been put to good use! This is just playing, stitching turquoise organza onto dark blue felt with a swirly freehand stitch in yellow.

Then I had a small piece of calico tie-dyed with yellow, blue and pink which I embroidered onto yellow felt, embellished using embroidery thread in a dark blue spial running stitch, then freehand stitches a sunburst design on using gold thread. More when it’s finished! 

I also spent one happy evening during a football game embroidering embellishments onto this plain purple dress and watching Terry Pratchett’s ‘Going Postal. 

I’d bought this pink shisha and embroidered ribbon at the Birmingham Rag Market and decided to use it on my dress.

Then pinking out the green and yellow from the ribbon, decided to make them my accent colours. I embroidered a yellow flower onto the centre bodice using a shisha mirror and chain stitch, and used a running stitch to create accents round the edges of the bodice and neckline..

and round the pockets…

and along the double hem…

It’s such a pretty dress, I’m going to be wearing it alot this summer I think!

I also went to the Leamington Peace Festival with friends.

The weather was scorching hot, so we all burnt to a crisp!

And just to prove the nice weather we’ve been having, just look at Midsummer Day’s Sunset! Happy Solstice to you :)

Parties and workshops!

Well, the last couple of weeks have gone flying by, yes, literally flying!!! All my students are getting to the end of their courses, which is good, but very very bad for my bank balance! I shudder to think of the upcoming financial drought…my credit is about to be severely crunched! Still I’m hoping that I will be able to get enough summer school work to tide me over; after all, I still have a mortgage to pay, and there are soo many things I want to, no need to do over the summer, especially now I have no lesson prep or marking to be doing!

Myself and some friends took advantage of the £10 train ticket offer to travel for a day out to Hereford, supposedly quite a bohemian place, but the train broke down and we ended up in Birmingham for the day, where we made the most of it and had a nice lunch out and then spent the rest of the day fabric and embellishment shopping in their huge, crazy fabric market.

The social side of summer has started to kick in – we’ve had one birthday barbeque already, in beautiful glorious sunshine which is damn rare for England. We had the usual foodfest, complete with birthday cake, pass the parcel and goodie bags! After all, why should kids have all the fun! If you’re not familiar with ‘pass the parcel’, you start off with a gift, wrapped up, then you wrap another layer of paper round with a tiny gift in the wrapping, then another and another until you have a giant parcel of many layers and tiny gifts. Then you pass it round the circle to music, which is randomly stopped. If you happen to have the parcel in your sticky little mitts when the music stops, then you get to take a layer off! We like to put lovely little chocolates or pretty nail files, nail varnish, make-up, pens, stuff like that between. It’s such good fun and everyone goes home with a gift. I got the centre gift in one of the parcels, a lovely scented candle. I made a really nice glass necklace and pendant for Lorraine, whose birthday it was, but stupidly forgot to take a photo before I gave it to her – doohh!

I also spent nearly two weeks making the goodie bag gifts, little bottle cap pincushions in a rainbow of colour. They have an embroidered and sequined flower on the botton, and chain stitch border round the edge, and a lovely ‘iced’ top so that they looked like little birthday cakes, or cupcakes.

The day after that, myself and a couple of friends went to a Make and Sew workshop ‘Customising Charity Shop Finds’ – you know I’m well into that! We learnt lots of wonderful techniques using Bondaweb and Transfoil. The first thing we did was use strips of bright fabric, stitched together and embellished. These can be used for embellishing all sorts of things.

Then we tried an appliqué and free hand stitching technique using stabiliser,

then a patchwork-y type effect.

We also made little fabric roses! It was such good fun and I came away with loads of ideas and a burning desire to spend lots of money on more fabric, bondaweb, threads, transfoil, etc. I did come home and order a freehand foot for my Brother sewing machine.

The very next day, M and I went to London for the day; we’d got free tickets to see Rage Against the Machine in Finsbury Park! What a great day that was, only it took us four hours to get home! Four hours! We probably could have walked it in that time! There were quite a few bands playing, The Gallows (a punk band), Roots Manuva a London Rap artist,  Gogol Bordello (I love their sort of gypsy anarchist sound, and I love their track ‘start wearing purple’) and a DJ to play between bands.

The weather was lovely, despite dour predictions, we had a very light shower about halfway through the day, but we’d brought light jackets with us.

There are days when I feel up to the mosh pit, but today I was happy a bit further back with space to dance! Luckily they had big screens so that you could see exactly what was going on on the stage.

The finale was amazing – I swear that Zack de la Rocha, the lead singer of RATM looks exactly the same as he did years ago when ‘Killing in the Name of’ was Number One the first time round (and yes I saw them live on that tour too!  

The day was amazing and all the better because it was free! Proceeds went to Shelter which was excellent. Getting home was a nightmare though, the Tubes on Sunday end a lot earlier than in the rest of the week, and the police were being typically over cautious and closed off all the Underground entrances except one. Then they had mounted police filtering 40,000 tired and drunk party-goers onto one Underground platform! What a recipe for disaster! The Tube station is literally 2 minutes walk from Finsbury Park and yet it took us over an hour to get onto a train! We managed to get the very last Tube of the night and barely made it back to Euston for our last train home! Then that train terminated at Milton Keynes because of ‘engineering work’ at Northampton, and we had to get a coach back. A journey which would take us an hour by car took us over four hours! We got in at two o’clock in the morning and then I had to be up at six thirty, for an eight thirty lesson. I was knackered!  God knows what London will do when we get the Olympics!