Merry Christmas Everyone!

Dalek loves toaster

I whipped this up this afternoon for a secret Santa for the Sci-fi meetup group I go to (don't judge me for going to a meetup group!) it was partly inspired by this pattern I'd seen on Mr X stitch's blog recently lookee here:

only cross stitch is rubbish, and I think Daleks would like toasters better.

x G

"Well Loved" Bear

 

I can let you in on this Christmas secret because it's for my mother in law, and the likelihood of her getting on the Internet and checking my blog is VERY remote! She doesn't do the interwebs!

To really get the full picture you need a bit of background story.

My mother in law is crazy about bears... they cover her house... REALLY... to the extent where we can't just 'pop' round, they need a couple of hours notice to tidy the bears off the couch :-)

I mean it's worse than this:

worse than this:

and worse than this:

infact put the three of those together, that's her front room, FACT!

How does she acquire these bears? well, like me she has a deep appreciation for charity shops, which means that the majority of bears she brings home look something like this:

 

So, I decided that the only nice thing to do was to give her a piece of embroidered art this Christmas to commemorate her love affair with all things stuffed and tattered. 

It's applique and embroidery, using blanket stitch, a smidge of satin stitch and chain stitch (I <3 Chain stitch) at some points using 3 stands and at others 2 strands of embroidery floss. The buttons came off one of Alex's old shirts that I cannibalised in payment for making some cloaks for his star wars action figures, the frame was 50p from a charity shop! All of the fabric I used I actually got for free form my beautiful sister in law XD

not very geeky, but definitely sweet :-)

x G

GEEKCRAFTS is GOOOO!!

CHECK ME OUT!

OH YEA!! getting all wordpressy with it at geekcrafts.com with my introduction post. Here's my bio from the 'about' section:

Samantha was born and raised in the North East of England, now “on tour” in Buckinghamshire. By day “Geeky Sweety” teaches Philosophy and Religious Studies to children between the ages of 11-18. By night she sews, embroiders, and upcycles. Her favourite things are 80s girl cartoons, anything Tim Burton touches, Doctor Who, Star Trek/Wars/Gate, Disney films (but only the ones based on fairy tales),cheesy Japanese kawaii culture and horrifically scary Japanese horror films. She also has a passion for Karaoke and occasionally sings in a rock covers band. Her husband custom builds star wars action figures, they havn’t counted them because they don’t want to get depressed, but good estimates place the total number at around 400. She believes only boring people get bored.

how exciting!

x G

So you think you can't upcycle.....

With this super sweet shirt to pillow transformer from Thinkgeek we can all live our thrifty dreams by recycling old, unwanted and damaged T-shirts (or just plain cool ones) into useful household furniture! I've thought about turning T-shirts into pillowcases before, but thought that the jersey material would soon get stretched out of shape if used for upholstery, this nifty item completely solves that problem and removes all requirement to sew...

... pure genius!

Kudos the the Thinkgeek guys yet again

x G

SECRETS!!

Secrets, I have them:

It's Christmas soon, and that means I have crafty secrets! I'm going to have to hold back on the crafty posts for a while and share some of some other people's crafty wonderfulness instead. After Christmas it will be a crafty jackpot, til then, I give you... THE INTERNET!!! :-)

x G

EMBROIDERY STAND FTW!!

OMGOSH!

Me and Alex went down Aylesbury town this afternoon to do the charity shop run and I got these beauties:

What you're seeing is a 12" embroidery hoop mounted on an embroidery stand, for 2 handed stitching.
What? there seems to be a big balack blob on my work? well that's because what I'm embroidering is a SECRET sillyface! I'm crafting for the craftster Doctor Who swap at the moment and I don't want to spoil my partner's surprise!

lookee more!

ok, a couple of sneek peeks:

x G

K9/TARDIS reversible bag!!

oh companions!!


here are very purple person's pattern and tutorial
Here's my tardis/k9 templates, and my pocket pattern

I'm such a geek!

so... all warmed up for the Dr Who Swap on craftster :)

ALL the fabric used here is actually upcycled, the white floral stuff was a duvet cover I got for free from a carboot sale and the funky 70's brown stuff also came from a carboot sale, and it's a curtain :-) I'm MAD paying £1 for a single curtain but I loved the pattern... I thought I might make a skirt out of it but there wasn't really enough....

Anyhow the video explains everything I did differently to Very Purple Person ...please let me know if you use my applique templates, I'd love to see what you make!!

x G

Pixelicious!!

the internet is FULL of pixel art these days, and of course no embroidery technique lends itself more to this style than cross stitch. Check out this offering from OneChordWonder's craftster

It's clear that the juxtaposition between technology and ancient crafts is pleasing, and rendering your favourite sprite in cross-stich is a great way to impress fellow like-minded geeks!

Unfortunately OneChordWonder's etsy shop is out of commission at the moment, but I've collected together a bunch of other ways for you to get your blocky fix.

First off OneChordWonder themselves did a tutorial on how to create excellent pixel-cross stitch patterns. They use the program PcStitch, however if you're interested in trying out pixel cross-stitch without the $40 outlay for software, you should have a look at the free patterns available on the spritestitch forums. There's some awesome stuff on there including the mammoth epic pokemon pattern and some super cute sailor moon sprites (you will need to download the free KG-Chart cross stitch program to open the .sth patterns)

Cant cross stitch? DON'T PANIC! why not display your pixel love on your chest? go oldshcool with an I (BLOCK) pixels T

or be totally awesome with this brick construction shirt from thinkgeek

Got a massive wall to spare? why not paint it in metallic paint and enter the world of pixels XL.

 I completely want this stuff... it's basically just magnets... magnets of pixelly goodness...plaster your sitting room with geek-joy OH-YEAH!

if you've got this far and decided that creating your own pixel art is too much hard work, you can always leave the pixels in their natural habitat, allow them to fulfill their purpose in life and grab the Metroid game on NES or the new 'Other M' on Wii

remember, we're like-minded geeks, and we want to be impressed! so make sure you let us know about any geek crafting you've been doing recently, is pixel art old news? or timeless? let us know!

x Geeky Sweetheart.

**This post has been submitted to geekcrafts.com for possible future publication. **

KAWAII chubby bow bag

Wanna see something really cute?

I made this cute little shoulder bag out of a turtleneck jumper!! The lining is a pillowcase, and guess how much I paid for them?? NOTHING!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I picked up both free from a car-boot seller who wanted to go home, the jumper was ruined because someone had tumble dried it, it was supposed to be size 10 but looked like it would only fit a 3 year old.

I used 3 different tutorials:

• Not Dabbling In Normal did a great tutorial on turning a sweater/jumper into a bag, ages and AGES ago my artsy friend Catie suggested the link to me on facebook.
• To line the bag I consulted Very Purple Person's reversible bag tutorial... clearly I didn't use the pattern... and it's a bit wasted because it's not a reversible bag... but it's a good way to line a bag.
• And oh-so-cute bow was crafted out of the turtle neck collar from the original jumper using the Parisienne bow technique which I fist discovered on Burdastyle, but now have etched into the back of my sewing brain.

This bag also includes a little embroidered tag so when I get famous whoever owns it will be able to sell it for lots of money :-)

but enough talk, more pictures!!!

x G

I don't know how I feel about this....

I'm in the middle of re purposing an old jumper and I unpicked the seam so I could use this tag in the final piece... then I noticed the 'cut here' dotted line, usually obscured in the seam allowance.

This just reminded me that it is a person who cut this, not a machine, not in the lovely relaxed atmosphere in which I sew, probably in rubbish conditions, probably all they do all day is snip labels to the right length. Would they give this job to the least skilled? a child? an illiterate woman? because of how simple it is...

... I should stop over thinking things....

... but you know, it gives more importance to what I do, upcycling clothing. How disrespectful would it be to throw these people's hard work in the bin just because of our whims of fashion..... The only thing that is worse than the conditions people work in to bring us inexpensive clothing is how it has distanced us from the work. So many of us consume fashion but most of us have no idea what goes into crafting a garment. It's such a shame.

x G

My Ass Rocks! (Pt 2 making a patch)

Really REALLY easy  REALLY Didn't need another post... but I don't post enough so deal with it!

so you're at this point:

(1) measure your design.
(2) cut the design (make a pattern out of paper to keep the angles right)
(3) cut the same size backing fabric x1 and interfacing x2
(4) interface the design and the backing fabric
(5) pin and sew all together along the edges with zigzag stitch

 Bob's your uncle

Fanny's your aunt.

bish bash bosh - job DONE!

x G

My Ass Rocks! (Pt 1 embroidery)

Check it out!!

  ICK! I don't like it that close up it's a bit unforgiving!

There we go:

It started out life here:

 Guys, it's the 21st century! we don't have to spend loads of money on embroidery patterns! google images has a feature now where can specify exactly what kind of picture you want:

and there you go - line drawing = embroidery pattern, job done. Save it, pop it in word, add a text box, add some cheeky text, Bob's your uncle and Fanny's your aunt!

On the Internet there's loads of different ways to transfer embroidery patterns. I chose to use carbon paper because I happened to have some lying around after I failed to use it to transfer sewing patterns in the early days. (Just goes to show NEVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY!!)

As you can see, nice and light, but sharp enough to see what you're doing, awesome!
In case you care I'm just using muslin as a base and when I'm stitching I'll be using backstitch because I don't know ANYTHING about embroidery at all!

Ok so that's the hard part, it took me about 3 nights (3 school nights) to sew this, it's about 3.5x6 inches... something like that.... not big....

In the next installment: how to make you kickass embroidery into a patch for your jeans or jacket... but you still wont be as cool as this guy:

 see you soon!!

x G