Very Berry Handmade

by veryberryhandmade | May 30, 2012

Nearly-Jubilee celebrations & giveaway

I was really delighted to spot a lovely new shop selling wool felt the other week.

And I was even more delighted when the owner got in touch to offer me some free felt sheets to try out… I’ve been having a little play with the felt today, and can vouch for its excellent quality and the wonderful fuzziness that you always get with proper wool felt (I am a felt snob, I admit it).

In my continuing obsession with all things miniature, I made a tiny little pincushion using a bottle top for a base. Here it is:

In spite of being utterly uninterested in the doings of the Windsor family (am a grumpy old curmudgeon), I seem to have caught Jubilee-itis, and this pincushion started out a bit red, white and blue…so I threw lots of colours at it in an attempt to save the situation..!

You can get a better idea of how small this one is from this pic:

I even put little magnets in the bottom thinking that it would be useful to be able to stick a pincushion to your sewing machine – then I realised that my sewing machine is plastic! But they are very useful if you have dropped a pin/needle and can’t find it…

Anyway, back to the subject…

Some more about the Wool Felt Company

Although it’s a brand new shop, the Wool Felt Company is the brainchild of the owners of one of my favourite online fabric shops, Fabric Inspirations, so, as far as I am concerned, they have a proven track record. Currently they are stocking 100% wool felt sheets in a lovely wide variety of shades, but the intention is to stock a good quality 30% wool felt blend too. Definitely a shop to add to your list when you are looking for wool felt.

I wanted to share my luck with you lovely readers, so I have cut all the felt sheets in half and I’m giving away this lovely bundle:

And I will throw in the Nearly-Jubilee Pincushion I made today, and a felt craft book too.

To be in with a chance of winning, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post telling me about your jubilee party / holiday weekend plans, or you can just shout ‘I hate enforced national celebration/I don’t live in the UK (delete as appropriate) just send me the gorgeous felt’.

You have until midnight on Sunday 3 June to leave your comment.

Good luck!

66 Comments

Filed under fabric, giveaway, handmade, sewing

Tagged as felt, pincushions, wool felt

by veryberryhandmade | May 28, 2012

Odds and ends…

It’s been a very odd day here.. this morning, at 8.30am sharp, work on installing our brand new bathroom began. Here it is this evening – looking good eh?

I’m hoping that they come back tomorrow…! It has been incredibly noisy and, although the blokes doing the work have been brilliant, it’s always so odd having 2 or 3 strangers hanging around the house, eating your chocolate biscuits… Can’t wait for it to be over, in more ways than one!

In amongst all the upheaval I managed to do a bit of work on a few things. I am taking part in the House of Pinheiro pincushion swap (never can resist a pincushion), and have almost finished what I wanted to make. I just hope my partner likes it. Here’s a little sneak peak:

Of course I am using Liberty fabrics and linen. Speaking of Liberty fabrics, I also set up a Facebook page for the fabric selling side of my life (which I hope is going to grow!) – if you’d like to follow Very Berry Fabrics on Facebook, that would be wonderful…

I’ve also done a few rows of a crochet project that I have underway. I was lucky enough to be approached by Abakahn to do a regular monthly slot on my blog using their products. I decided to use some of their lovely Sirdar Simply Recycled cotton yarn to make a market/produce tote bag. I am hoping to share the pattern with you by the end of the month (fingers crossed!).

What I can say already is that the yarn is an absolute pleasure to work with – highly recommended.

And finally, I did the draw for the interfacing giveaway. Here’s the winning number, provided by the Random Man:

And the winner is Kathie, who chose Joey Potter from Dawson’s Creek as her fictional heroine. Congrats to Kathie – I will be in touch. And a huge thanks again to Julia at Gone to Earth for providing the prize.

16 Comments

Filed under craft, crochet, fabric, giveaway, handmade, patchwork, sewing, swap

Tagged as Abakahn, crochet tote, Gone to Earth, House of Pinheiro pincushion swap, interfacing giveaway

by veryberryhandmade | May 27, 2012

Sunday Fabric news

Photo © Stitch Me Lane

Jennifer has been in touch to tell me about her new shop Stitch Me Lane Fabrics. It’s looking pretty good so far, with a good selection of fabrics and haberdashery. I’m planning to do a proper review at a later date, but, in the mean time, it’s a good place to check out, so do take a look.

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Another new shop that will be coming to the Big List of UK Fabric Shops very soon I am sure, is owned by Jo, who writes one of my favourite blogs, Bear Paw. Jo already has a bricks and mortar shop in Edinburgh called Avery Homestore where she runs craft courses and sells supplies. The good news for those of us who don’t live in Edinburgh is that she is now selling fabrics and yarn online too. You can read more about it in this post on Jo’s blog, where you can also enter her AMAZING celebratory giveaway. The other good news is that there is a 15% discount on any craft supplies ordered through the website until the end of May with the voucher code LAUNCH. If you are making summer bunting, a good choice might be one of these cute bunting packs:

Photo © Avery Homestore

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If this gorgeous weather is inspiring you to think about making some summer dresses, then you might want to pop round to Sewbox and invest in this really interesting new booklet from Serendipity Studio – Fashion Formula Dresses. Apparently it will help you to draft your own personalised dress patterns with lots of lovely maths!

Photo © Serendipity Studios

Sewbox also have lots of lovely bargain summer fabrics in their sale too, as well as a vast array of other sewing patterns. There’s plenty of inspiration here.

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This week’s M is for Make limited edition bundle has a gorgeous refreshing sea-green feel to it:

Photo © M is for Make

As ever with these gorgeous bundles there’s 10% off until 8am on Wednesday 30th May – you can find it here.

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This week at the Village Haberdashery there is 10% off Curious Nature from Parson Gray until (I think) the 31 May.

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And I’m going to give my own shops a bit of a plug… There’s 15% off EVERYTHING in my Very Berry Etsy shop until the end of May with the code MAY15. There are also new 6″, 5″, 4″ and 3″ Liberty squares in my little fabric shop.

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Enjoy the rest of your weekend… I’m about to scrub our wooden floors, which really need doing (children and bare feet!), and it’s been too hot until now… What a thrilling way to spend a Sunday evening – hope you have better plans!

Mmmm – summer’s here!

We are making the most of the wonderful sunny weather that we have just now – it’s such a contrast to this time last week I can hardly believe it. I did some washing yesterday and it seemed bizarre to be hanging out last week’s fleeces and thick tops on the line, whilst the boys were running around in trunks and splashing each other in the paddling pool!

So today’s Saturday Recipe is all about creating refreshing treat for a lovely warm day. It’s so simple, and so delicious, although it does need a bit of planning ahead and you’ll need an ice cream maker.

Iced yogurt

Note: If you are using ordinary yogurt you need to strain it first – this takes around 6 hours, so remember to leave enough time! This recipe makes 6-8 servings.

Ingredients

500g Greek yogurt or 1kg (or close enough, I used 2 pots of 450g) natural whole milk yogurt
1/2 cup caster sugar (ordinary granulated is ok but caster is better)
a few drops of vanilla essence (optional)

Method

To strain the yogurt, line a large sieve with 3-4 layers of muslin or paper kitchen towels and place the sieve over a large bowl. Pour in the yogurt, cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. Once the 6 hours are up you will find that you have a lovely soft cheese-like yogurt in the sieve – you can discard the liquid that’s collected in the bowl.
Put Greek yogurt or strained yogurt in a bowl and stir in the sugar and the vanilla. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Use your ice cream maker to freeze, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

And that’s it! If you don’t eat it all straight away, store it in a plastic box in the freezer. It does freeze pretty hard, so remember to remove it from the freezer around 30 minutes before you want to eat it.

We’ve been eating it with a compote of fresh rhubarb from the garden, orange juice and chopped crystallized ginger, but I keep imagining how delicious it would taste with a warm chocolate brownie, or with sticky toffee pudding. Which shows that even when it’s warm outside, I still crave a rib-sticking dessert!!

I hope you have lots of lovely plans for a summery Sunday… I might make some chocolate brownies…

5 Comments

Filed under food, recipe

Tagged as iced yogurt, yoghurt, yogurt

by veryberryhandmade | May 25, 2012

Petite pineapples

Perhaps it was the weather, but I had a sudden urge for pineapple…

Sadly, just the patchwork kind… This is my first ever pineapple block.

But because I am slightly obsessed with all things miniature at the moment, I decided that it would have to be a teeny pineapple.

Doing tiny complicated piecing with Liberty cotton should be right up there on the list of things not to do when it’s hot outside…!

So my plan is to make a load of these to use as a border on my first ever mini quilt. Is that bonkers? I shall no doubt have several 1000 more grey hairs by the time I finish them all.

But I did come up with a clever idea. I had a sheet of this fabric you can use in your printer left over from another project, and thought I would try printing out my templates to save having to draw all those fiddly little quarter inch grids. Here’s how it came out:

It worked really well, I think that’s one of the reasons why my block is so very accurate! But it’s an expensive method because the printable fabric is pretty pricey. I have a feeling that there are cheaper ways to avoid drawing template after template. Tell all quilting friends…

16 Comments

Filed under patchwork, sewing

Tagged as Liberty of London, miniature, pineapple, pineapple block

by veryberryhandmade | May 23, 2012

The numbers you need to know – and a giveaway!

Recently a few people have asked me how I get the nice ‘firm but squidgy’ effect for the pouches, wallets and bags that I make, and as I think getting a handle on using interfacing has been one of the things that has made a huge difference to my products over the last couple of years, I thought I’d blog about my personal preferences. There’s also a chance to win some to try out, so – read on!

If I’m making anything with an inner and and outer – bags, wallets, crochet hook wraps etc. – I always use 2 kinds of interfacing. On the outer I generally use a low loft fusible fleece, and my preferred buy is Vilene H630 (available here at Gone to Earth), because it provides structure without bulk. I generally prefer use an iron-on interfacing because you don’t get fabric ‘creep’ as you sew in zips and sew seams, and as I don’t have a walking foot for my sewing machine, this is essential. This fusible fleece is soft but doesn’t give a huge amount of bulky padding – which of course you don’t want when you are sewing small stuff like this wallet:

Hopefully you can see that this wallet has just firm but soft effect I’m looking for – otherwise, just look at the pretty fabric!

H630 is really easy to use, you just cut a piece the same size as the piece of fabric you want to fuse it to, minus the seam allowance. Place the fabrics together, cover with a damp pressing cloth and press firmly with a hot iron for 15 seconds. Here’s a brilliant video at the Vilene website, showing how to use H630.

H630, along with its fatter cousin H640, are brilliant, but the totally indispensable interfacing in my sewing is a different Vilene product – the truly wonderful G700. This is a medium weight iron-on interfacing, but what makes it so brilliant is that it is woven. When ironed to a piece of quilting weight cotton it gives weight without that awful cardboardy stiffness that is so common with other iron-on medium weight interfacings. I found out about it from Julia, who runs Gone to Earth, and now buy it regularly from her – here it is. It’s pricier that the ordinary non-woven interfacing but worth every penny. I always use it to give weight to fabrics I’m using inside my products. For example, in the inside of my Red Riding Hood wallet I used it to interface all the pockets, and the inner fabric itself, and both sides of the tab closure, to give added strength around the magnetic snap.

Again, the trick is to cut a piece of interfacing the same size as your fabric piece but without the seam allowance – this stops your seams getting incredibly bulky. Around the edges of this wallet there are up to 6 layers of fabric, the last thing I want is layers of interfacing too! Here’s another excellent (and strangely relaxing) video about how to use G700.

So, do you want to get your hands of some of this alchemical sewing essential? Well the good news is that I told Julia I was going to write this post, and she offered to put together a lovely pack of these crafting essentials together as a prize for a lucky Very Berry reader.

Interfacing Giveaway

The winner will receive a half metre each of H630, H640 and G700.
The giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Just leave a comment before midnight on Sunday 27 May to be in with a chance of winning.
As Little Red Riding Hood seems to have a starring role in this post, why not tell me your favourite fictional heroine (or as usual, you can always just say, ‘Pick me!’).

A huge thank you to Julia for her generous offer. Good luck everyone!

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107 Comments

Filed under fabric, giveaway, sewing

Tagged as fusible fleece, g700, h630, h640, interfacing, vilene

by veryberryhandmade | May 21, 2012

This year / last year in the garden

The sun came out! What a gorgeous day it’s been here today – I wish I had had my camera with me so that I could share photographs of the beautiful leaves on the beech trees I saw this afternoon, I love that bright lime-green zing of spring colour. But the sunshine did inspire me to take a few pics of the garden this evening.

We are very slowly re-landscaping our sloping garden into terraces. It *is* slow progress, but I am proud of all that we have done so far. Here’s the first gabion wall we built last year:

And here it is now:

Still a bit of bare earth, but I am loving the way that the thymes, alpines and sedums are making themselves at home on the gabions.

The alliums are about to flower:

Looking at last year’s garden pics made me realise that these are coming out a whole 3 weeks later than last year – it has been so cold and grey here, I can quite understand why it didn’t feel like coming out until now. It’s good to see them spring into life.

The Camasssia is just coming into flower too. I love this beautiful plant – I am really hoping that it naturalises in our garden, it’s so pretty. I’m rather proud of this photo:

Something that has been flowering, for weeks now, is this white saxifrage that I planted on the gabions. It’s still going strong too:

I’d like to get some more of saxifrage to grow on the gabions, I have been enjoying it so much during this miserable May – we can see it directly from our kitchen window.

The cultivated Veronica I bought earlier this year is also looking so pretty:

And here’s the wild version (bottom right corner), commonly known as speedwell, which, along with the daisies, is invading our uncut lawn. The best reason I know for not mowing the lawn…!