A craft-astic weekend

Well I've been very lapse in the blog posts recently but that is definitely because Trouble HQ has been super busy the past few weeks. As you may have noticed I've been posting up about different fairs that I've been at so thought I should give you a bit of a run down on last weekend's fairs.

I was at Tootopia Festival down in Tooting this weekend. It was a two day event although there were slightly different vendors on the different days. It was lovely to see Emma from Emma Barrett Designs there - she is a lovely crafter who I enjoy chatting with and it's always great to see her. Emma works wonders with beads and also makes the most beautiful bunting possible.

Click on the picture to go to Emma's website

I also saw the lovely Mic from Dagaz Designs who was selling her vintage jewellery and designs. We've bumped into each other a few times and there was a lot of laughter for the time that we were sat opposite each other... mostly due to my clumsiness I think but I'd like to think it was more to do with bubbly personalities...

Click on the picture to go to Dagaz Design's Etsy store 

And I met Nikki of Nikki Stark Jewellery who was absolutely lovely and makes some gorgeous silver and gold items. I was really impressed with her work and also the fact that she's just been featured in Vogue! Wow!!!

It was an interesting (and tiring!) weekend. The weather was beautiful which kept lots of potential customers outside in the sun instead of in the Tooting Tram and Social with us, but even so it was quite a productive weekend, and it's always great meeting new people, chatting with people about your work and seeing what people are interested in. I got a lot of enquiries about my quilts although I didn't actually have any orders. I'm going to be listing some of them this week though so keep your eyes peeled for them!

I sold a number of pendants including the lovely Daisy Daisy pendant to a lady who actually put it on there and then and wore it around the garden for the rest of the afternoon.

And another lovely customer pointed out that some of my cufflinks match some of my pendants and bought a pendant and pair of cufflinks as a wedding gift for her friends - subtle enough for both to wear at the same time but matching so that they are a complete gift set. I hadn't actually thought of doing that before so quite excited about the prospect of doing some more matching designs.

Lots of little penguins are flying off to new homes (have fun little guys!) and some cards and cufflinks have gone as well so all in all I would say I've had a fairly successful weekend. Hooray! I'm back at A Glamourous Affair this weekend in Islington if anyone fancies coming along to say hello...!

How to...Make Bunting

I haven't done a How To post for ... nearly a year maybe? It's one of the things that fell behind and didn't get picked up again. Partly because I was busy, partly because I had a great idea for a how to and it didn't ever get made, partly because... oh I don't know these are all excuses!

But anyway, enough of that. On to this month's tutorial: How to make bunting. I used this at my craft fair last week (and sadly only managed to get the one photo so sorry for repeating a picture so soon!) and I got a few comments on how good it looked. I have grand plans to add lettering to my bunting at some point in the near future but here is a basic tutorial for you to get started on!

I couldn't find two of my triangles so they have been left off - but now I've found them, they're being added! 

You will need:
material
scissors
fabric scissors
some card for a template
pins
matching thread
preferably a sewing machine (or it'll take a while!)

What to do:

1) Cut a triangle out of card as a template - it needs to be the size that you want your bunting triangles to be.


2) Spread out your material and draw around the triangle on the wrong side of the material. Leave plenty of room around it for seam allowances and draw more triangles. You will need 2 triangles for each bunting triangle so 18 is probably a good number (will make 9 triangles which should be enough).

3) Cut around the triangles leaving plenty of room for seam allowance. Once you have cut out the triangles, cut the corners off close to the point of the corners


4) Place 2 triangles together - right sides facing in. Pin them together along the two longer sides leaving the top edge open. My top tip is: if you pin at 90 degrees to the line, then you can sew straight over the pins with your sewing machine. I usually get a bit scared just before sewing over so I take the pin out just as I come up to it.


5) Sew along the two edges that you have pinned. Snip off the excess material in the seams and tie the ends.

6) Turn the triangles the right way around. Use a pencil/ the end of a paintbrush to push the end corner out as far as you can so that it makes a point.

7) Iron your triangles so that the seams are exactly at the edges. Make sure you iron both sides though.

8) So far so good - that wasn't hard, was it? Now for the slightly more tricky bit (but still pretty easy!)
Cut a long strip of material (the length you want your bunting to be) about 8 - 9 cm wide. For my bunting I recycled an old sheet so I just used the length of the sheet for mine.





9) Fold and iron the edges of the material into the middle so that the width is now half of what it was.

10) Fold the material in half and iron again so that now you have the actual width of your bunting line and you have some easily ironed lines that you can sew down.








11) Find the half-way point in your long strip and stick a pin in it to mark where you are. Now take one of your bunting triangles and slip the open edge of your triangle between the two halves of your bunting strip. Line up your halfway mark pin with the end corner of your triangle and then pin the triangle in place.







12) Decide how much space you want between your bunting triangles and pin the next triangle into your strip. Measure the distance between the two triangles as you will need to have all your triangles evenly spaced. On the other side of your middle triangle, measure the distance and pin the next triangle in place. Continue until you have all 9 triangles pinned: one in the middle and four on each side.

13) Fold the ends of your strip in so that you have no raw edges and pin them.



14) Starting at one end of your bunting strip, sew along the edge from one end to the other. Make sure you are fairly close to the open edge as you don't want open edges.

15) Tie up the ends, snip close to the tie so that it's nearly invisible and ... wow that was quick!