a late Christmas present for my sister-in-law

Fortunately, we're both of the age where late Christmas presents are exciting!  A late treat after the fuss of Christmas is over :)  Not that I intended this gift to be late, it was just that 24 hours was not enough hours in the day leading up to Christmas!

I bought some mugs with cupcakes on for my SiL and wanted to make a fabric picture of a cupcake to accompany them.

Starting with a cheap tablecloth I followed the damask pattern on my sewing machine, backing my piece with felt.  I used some William Morris print fabric for the cupcake case and added snippets of lace and fabric.  

Then for the cupcake topping I used a spotty cotton fabric as the base and added lace flowers, and sections for a tray cloth I purchased in a charity shop.

Layers of lace, both old and new, embellished with buttons, edge the picture.  I really didn't want to give it away I have to say!!!  It needs framing but Laura is very happy with it :)

tagging along in the Play Date Cafe

This fabric tag came about because I knew I had a piece of wool felt in the exact beige I needed for this week's challenge and I'm still loving making tags :)

I'm afraid I don't know where I found this wonderful vintage Christmas image, but I just LoVe it!  I'm not sure, but I'm assuming it's from a Christmas card from the fifties, a time in design I just adore.

I was intrigued by the use of the bright blue.  The bit of something that was hanging around my craft room in this particular shade of blue was a piece of sequin waste.  I wasn't sure my sewing machine would like it but it was fine, and it's certainly something I'd never normally have thought to include.  That's what I love about this colour challenge, it makes me put colours and materials together that I wouldn't use normally.

With my tag display in mind, I went for a buttons theme, cos I just LoVe buttons :)  

I free machined the word button repeatedly along one of the long edges on my tag, felted and sewed scraps of fabric to it and added the buttons last - and very relaxing it was too, just what I needed!

I'm afraid I didn't make it round you all with comments this week, really sorry!  I'd like to wish all of our play date cafe visitors a wonderful Christmas. If you haven't made it over to the cafe, there's a treat in store as Julie introduced our new design team members each day this week.  Whilst you're there, check out our design team's projects with this week's colours, there are some great ideas!  

last corset ... well, kindof!

Well, I've worked on all eleven corsets and just passed the final one, Monet, on to the next person. My original idea was to fill in with altered flowers as, if you've ever been lucky enough to visit it, Monet's garden is full to bursting with flowers. However, I've been really loving doing the fabric snippet collages so right after working on 'field of dreams' I carried on collaging on this one. I picked a space between another person's work using kunin felt.

A couple of altered daisies snuck in there, and some lace flowers I'd painted with Stewart Gill paints.

One of the corsets is looking in need of a bit of pizzazz so I've brought it home to add some bits to it. I truly am trying to resist the collage, and think I should do some kunin felt work on it as the person who owns this latest corset has done a lot of work with this material on other people's so I'm guessing she likes it! It's called 'Gwendoline Grace' after her Grandmother and I'm going to be able to indulge my button ..hmm, was going to say fetish but not sure that's the right word!!! ;)

Oh, and Becca's got details up on her website re the corset display in September '09.

i love buttons

I'd been eyeing up the blue button with the diamante in the middle for a while in John Lewis, especially since it was in the sale! It was the very last one and eventually I succumbed and added it to corset. She called hers 'Viva la Diva', the inspiration being Las Vegas and show girls - so think feathers and shiny bits :) The second button on there was so shiny it just had to be slipped into my basket too!!

A friend of mine recently introduced me to 'gemagic' so I've been merrily adding gems to this corset. As well as adding the shiny braids and 'fluffy' bit, I did the collage on the right with snippets of fabric, feathers, gems, and some dice earrings I found in Claire's accessories. I dyed the lace on the left using alcohol inks - they were fab as they dry soooo quickly :)

This corset is going in the post today to the next participant - I'm going to miss working on them, I'm onto my last one!!