Heehee, I’ve designed a new crocheted teddy bear! Isn’t he cute? He’s loosely based on my 2005 blue fuzzy bear (I made up the design as I crocheted), but with a little more structure and better proportions. I love his almost antique look.

Here goes nothing… I’ve written up the pattern for this guy and will be submitting it to the 2008 Crochet Pattern-a-Day Calendar. I don’t know how much chance I have of getting in to the calendar, but please keep your metaphorical fingers crossed for me.

UPDATE: Looking for the pattern? You can find the Fuzzy Bear crochet pattern in my shop.

I have been coveting Japanese craft books for months, and trying to decide which of the books at Crafting Japanese. I like best. There’s something about the Japanese designs that really appeals to me. I finally saw the one craft book that I couldn’t resist – those ducks on the front cover are so cute! I bought it from a Japanese seller on eBay but found out later when I had the book and the ISBN that it’s also available (more cheaply) from amazon.co.jp.

The book seems to be called “chirimen shugei” which I believe means “chirimen handicrafts”. Chirimen is the type of textured fabric that the patterns use – anyone know where I can find some? In Canada especially?

The patterns are a mix of lovely bags, Japanese dolls, and cute animals and fruit with little pouches inside. The book comes with a pullout of full-size paper patterns.

ISBN 4140311002

Front cover

Back cover

Sample page

It all looks so lovely! I can’t wait to get started making something from the book. I just need to find some suitable fabric.

Can you tell what it is yet? 😉

It’s work-in-progress Friday, so here’s a sneak peek at my latest FIMO sculpture. I should have included something for scale in the photo but, just so you know, it’s just over 3cm in diameter.

I’ve only finished the top part but I’m really pleased with it so far. As a lifetime fan of this movie I’ve always wanted one of these, and hey, why buy when you can make?!

I’m going to set this one aside for a while as I have some January-specific projects to work on (crochet calendar submission and my OneHourCraft bag). Any idea where I can find an extra couple of hours each day so I can actually make all the things I want to?

Oh, and don’t worry – I’ve baked what I’ve done already, so I don’t need to worry about all my hard work getting dusty or squashed (I learned this lesson the hard way). 

I do love a bargain – I just picked up the 2007 Crochet Pattern-a-Day calendar at 50% off! I only just resisted buying Origami-a-day and Sudoku-a-day as well…

Lots of inspiration in here, and it’s kind of making me want to submit a pattern for next year’s calendar, although that may be a bit ambitious with only 3 weeks until the submission deadline… I’ll think about it, and if I don’t make the deadline, I’ll have plenty of time to design something for the 2009 calendar!

…than a good cup of tea. We even import our tea from England because it’s just not the *same* in Canada. Our teapot is round and comforting, but our precious tea gets cold before hubby can have his third mug.

As a (slightly belated) Christmas gift, I’ve made him a quilted tea cosy. I’ve seen knitted tea cosies that have holes at the front and back for the spout and handle, but the only quilted tea cosies I’ve seen are like giant hats, and you have to remove them to pour the tea. Maybe it’s just easier that way, because the knitted fabric will stretch to fit over the teapot appendages, but quilted cotton obviously can’t do that. But why should that stop me – there has to be a way to make a quilted tea cosy that you don’t have to remove to pour the tea…

I played around with folding a piece of paper until I found something that looked about right:

Starting with a rectangle for each side (dimensions depend on the size of your teapot), sew line A to line B and line C to line D. Then sew the two sides together along lines E and F. These lines are dotted because the easiest way to get the angles right is to NOT measure these lines initially, but draw them in after sewing A-B and C-D so E and F form one straight line along the top of the cosy.

I started by quilting this cat and mouse fabric together with extra thick batting and some scrap cotton on the back (using curved lines to avoid cutting any cats in half with the quilting!) and then cutting it in half to make my two rectangles:
 

Left: front after quilting; right: back after quilting

I sewed my A-B, C-D, E-E and F-F lines. The double layer of extra thick batting proved too much for my sewing machine, so I had to finish them by hand. I then trimmed the resulting triangles of batting that I had created inside the cosy. I repeated the process using black cotton (unquilted) to form the lining, and tacked it wrong sides together with the cosy.

I handmade bias tape from the same fabric using the Dread Pirate Rodgers’ Continuous Bias Tape instructions. I have never made bias tape before, and this method worked really well for me – the best part was cutting the tube I had created into a long spiral and it magically turned into a perfect bias tape strip.

I applied one long strip of bias tape around all the edges using Heather Bailey’s wonderful Continuous Quilt-Binding instructions. I sewed the two sides together under the spout and then sewed a black hook and eye under the handle at the back, so the cosy can be removed.

Ooh, a nicely mitred corner (thanks Heather!)

Finally, I finished the top of the cosy with a fabric covered button with a mouse nicely centred on it!

Et voila!

Hubby is pleased – in our preliminary testing, it kept the tea nice and warm for 2 hours! I am entering this in the GIFT category in this month’s Whiplash contest.

I made a polymer clay egg out of leftover clay of various colours marbled together, and needed a way to sand it smooth after baking. Previously, I hand-sanded the ballon in my pig ornament but it took sooo long and I didn’t really want to repeat the process for my scrap clay egg. I heard that you can make an electric sander from an electric toothbrush, so I thought I’d give it a go. Here are the instructions:

1. I started with a cheap battery-powered toothbrush (reduced to $1 at WalMart).
   
2. Use pliers to remove all the bristles from the brush head. Grab a section of bristles firmly with the pliers and wiggle them from side to side until they pull out.
   
3. Repeat until the brush head is bristle-free.
   
4. Cut a small square of sandpaper just large enough to cover the face of the brush head.Tips for cutting the sandpaper to size:
• I wasn’t sure what sandpaper would do to my scissors, so I folded the sandpaper back and forward along the line I wanted to cut, and then it tore easily along that line.
• Make sure you label the back of every little piece of sandpaper you cut, or you will get into a muddle!



5. Stick a square of double sided tape to the back of the sandpaper square and attach it to the brush head.
   
6. Turn on the toothbrush and get sanding!
7. If your brush comes with extra heads (mine came with 2 heads), you can attach a different grade of sandpaper to each head. If you do this, remember to mark up each head differently, so you know which is which! Otherwise, you can just pull off each square when you’ve finished with it, and tape a finer grit in its place. I’ve been doing this and it works very well. I have sandpaper in 220, 320, 400 and 600 grits.
   
8. When your piece is sanded nicely, you can also make buffing heads by attaching a square of sturdy fabric to the brush head in the same way. I used a piece of thick corduroy.
   

Here’s my finished egg. It’s really smooth and softly shiny, although I couldn’t capture that well in my photo.

Now it’s Christmas, I can show you the present I made for my Mum. It’s a zippered pouch (based on the twelve22 tutorial) with a tsumami fabric flower in the same fabric as the lining of the pouch.

Happy Christmas Mum – hope you like it!

Looks like this is the only kind of white Christmas I’m going to see this year! I crocheted these snowflakes a couple of weeks ago (loosely based on these patterns) but I’ve been sick since then so I never got around to doing anything with them.

Happy Christmas!