Sarah Jane on Parade or the Little Reusable Lunch Napkins

Have you ever fell in love with a fabric line and just had to make something from it? 

When I came across some Sarah Jane at my local fabric store I decided to ignore all the projects on my table and whip out a few little reusable napkins for my daughter's lunch bag.

I find inspiration here and there, but it's not often that I find an artist's entire body of work so delightful. Sarah is an illustrator and textile designer, and her blog lets you glimpse into her world at Sarah Jane Studios.

My Juki is a Tease

Yesterday morning I woke up to finish a "quick little project." I was making my daughter another Ottobre Polka Dot blouse before starting work on spring top for Made by Rae's Spring Top Sewalong. You might remember my first rendition here. All my pieces were cut, pressed, and pinned to go and my sewing machine was talking to me:

Zip, zip, zip, zip four shoulder seams were done just like that . . . duh, duh, dum -  my machine turned to the dark side:

The first seam I tried to overcast (that's what us lowly crafters without sergers do to finish our raw edges) I broke the pin on my overcasting foot.

Time to pull out my fancy degrees (which clearly have nothing to do with engineering or fabrication) for a professional fix.

Can you believe it worked? I only had to replace the tape every 20" of sewing, what a bargain! Tomorrow this lovely should appear in my mailbox to 'Take my cares away' better than Calgon.

Hedgehog’s Wear Perfume or the Hedgehog Pin Cushion Experiment

Lilly, David. sonic31.jpg. 22-Aug-99. Pics4Learning. 16 Apr 2012

Okay, not exactly. Scientists don’t know why, but when a hedgehog finds a new and interesting scent, they lick and bite into the object then lick their “scented” saliva into their fur.

My four-year-old son is obsessed with animals and mysteries, so somewhere in between checking out every known animal book at the library and the kid’s series Mysteries of Alfred the Hedgehog I decided that a hedgehog would make a lovely pin cushion.

A quick internet search told me that my idea was far from original, so instead of starting from scratch. I found two nice inspiration pieces to work from.

Braddlebury Crafts' Felt Hedgehog Pin Cushion

The first little cushion I fell in love with was an image from a project by Sarah at Braddlebury Crafts, a crafter in Milton Keynes, UK who sells on Misi. I loved how the pinked edges gave the little guy a spiky faux hawk.

Fiona Marie's Free Hedgehog Pin Cushion

The next discovery was this little guy from Fiona Marie’s Thread: a piece of my mind. Perfect! It came with a free pattern.

I decided to use Fiona Marie’s pattern, but attempted to execute it more like Braddlebury Craft’s pincushion.  The pattern looked smaller than I wanted, so I enlarged it on my printer as large as it would while still fitting on a single sheet of paper. I used recycled synthetic felt for the exterior and stuffed it with wool scraps. I did a little needle felting to give it the shape I wanted.