Coiling.. How to..

My own picture tutorial on how to coil.

Silk Painting. What silk to use.

Shibori with chemial dyes.

Rug Tufting. Hand or machine?

I'll start with a rug I made by hand 2 years ago. I love this rug so much, mainly because I put so so so much work into it. Every piece of fabric is hooked through by hand. I'm going to take some tutorial pictures of how to do this, but as I'm home for christmas and all my stuff is back in Huddersfield I unfortunatley can't at the moment. The basic technique is that you get a rug tufting hook, you can buy them online for a few pound each. You then need to buy a piece of wide weft hessian and cut long strips of fabric, the width of the fabric can be whatever you desire! I've created smaller pieces with fabric about 3mm wide, however for a larger piece I'd reccomend using pieces about 2-3cm. You hold it under the hessian and push the hook through, grab the fabric, and pull through leaving a loop on top. It's best to draw your design onto the hessian first so you don't get confused! Anyway, I'll upload a photo tutorial soon.

Machine rug tufting.

Make time for tea!

Homemade teacosy. Me and my boyfriend developed a thing for Bettys loose leaf tea, I advise all you tea lovers to try it! We use to keep the teapot warm by wrapping a tea towel round it, so I decided it was time to take action. Being a craft student I have loads of bits of fabric all over the place, which is perfect for a piece like this. They're so simple to make and can make great presents! 

I started by roughly drawing a half moon round the teapot we use, leaving room for sewing, around 1 or 2cm is fine. I then turned up the bottom around 1cm, and stitched along the line on a sewing machine, if you want you can do things like this by hand and iron it over, you could even use bondaweb if you want! I then added my decoration to the front, I cut shapes out of various fabrics and used applique to add them onto my teacosy, you can do whatever you desire! and use whatever means to attach them, I've used a combination of machine and hand embroidery. I then created the tab at the top by just cutting a rectangle of fabric, facing the outsides together and stitched along the edge and turned it inside out. I then faced the front and back together, remembering the tab at the top and stitched about 1cm away from the edge around the outside, turn it inside out and there you have it! You can also add a lining if you wish or some insulation.

Edinburgh, I love you.

I apologise for the poor quality of these images as they were taken on an iPhone, but I just LOVE Edinburgh. What a beautiful city. Me and my boyfriend went for a few days just before Christmas and had such a lovely time. I think it may be the place for me. We visited the Dovecot studios where there is an exhibition, "All tied up", a selection of weave artists work. We also visited the National museum, and went to a double bill of Elf and Santa Claus the movie at the Cameo cinema, a beautiful old cinema just outside the centre. If anyone is planning a trip there soon, I reccomend you go watch a film there! Student discount is also available which makes it that little bit better!

Cotton reels.

Some vintage cotton reels of mine, they have such beautiful colours in them. I'm just too scared to use most of them incase I run out as I won't be able to buy the same one! I will have to overcome my fear soon as some of them are stunning.