I have recently got to know his owner a lot better and felt more comfortable offering to make him a coat!

So I couldn’t just make him any old coat, it had to be a custom coat and that meant designing a bespoke fabric. Alfie’s favorite toy is a giraffe called Gerry with rope arms and legs and that is what I used for inspiration

I ended up designing two patterns.

One for the outside of the coat that featured Gerry the giraffe and a simpler one for the coat lining with bones. Both designs are available in my Spoonflower shop. The outer fabric featuring Gerry I had printed on a lightweight cotton twill which is a good robust fabric without the weight of denim. For the coat lining with bones I picked minky, which is a nice plush warm choice for snuggly comfort.

Then I created a sewing pattern by cloning one of his current coats. The pattern is FREE to DOWNLOAD and print out so you can make your own little dog coat!

How to sew a little dog coat

You will need.

• A fat quarter (27″ x 18″) of fabric for coat. A good thick cotton will work
• A fat quarter (27″ x 18″) of fabric for lining in something soft like fleece or minky
• A fat quarter (27″ x 18″) of iron on fusible fleece
• Printed Pattern- DOWNLOAD THE FREE DOG COAT SEWING PATTERN HERE
• 8″ Velcro cut into 4″ pieces
• Sewing thread
• Sewing machine
• Scissors

Start by cutting out your fabric and fusible fleece. You will need to cut out each pattern piece on the both the main fabric and lining but only the main body of the coat for the fusible fleece.

Iron the fusible fleece in place on the main coat fabric. I chose to do a bit of quilting to embellish the design but you can totally skip that.

Now to the main sewing, the seam allowance is 1/2″!

Start with the collar. Put right sides together and sew as shown. Snip the seam allowance down to reduce the bulk and turn right sides out and top stitch. Do the same process with each of the side straps.

Take your main coat piece and pin the collar and straps in place, right sides (or main coat fabric) together as shown.

Then line up and pin the lining, right sides together.

Sew as shown being sure to leave a small gap at the bottom. Turn the garment right sides out. Pin gap shut and top stich around the main body of the coat catching gap to sew it shut.

Sew Velcro in place and voila, you doggy coat is complete!

And now here is Mr Alfie himself modelling his new coat, isn’t he just the sweetest pup!

So I came across the video where this guy makes a super cool structure which can be used for garden climbing plants.

I just had to have a go!

The structure uses willow, which a soft bendy wood which grows incredibly quickly. Luckily for me I was able to source and harvest exactly the right stuff at the local forest preserve where I volunteer. We generally remove it so I was doing nothing untoward! However in my quest to get it, I did pick up a substantial number of ticks. There is noting like driving home an feeling them crawling on your face while doing 60 miles an hour down a highway! Fortunately none of them embedded.

What you will need

• An odd number of straight sticks. Willow works best but really any straight sticks will work and even those bamboo canes you can purchase. My sticks were about 6ft
• A zip tie
• Soft bendy boughs. For me, I used to top sections of the willow sticks I collected and I didn’t bother removing any leaves!

I built my willow obelisk straight into a large garden planter which worked just fine and used a zip tie to gather the sticks together. The bendy boughs were woven through the upright sticks and spiraled up the structure. The video explains how to do this perfectly!

My structure was not quite as neat as the one in the video but the end result is such a beautiful rustic sculpture. Here it is completed. The leafy parts of the boughs I used for the weaving part, died off nicely.

I planted my container up with a clematis and sowed some sweet peas and here it is today – the middle of June.

Now as you can see the willow itself it sprouting quite dramatically from the top sticks and I could pinch that all out, but I like it. I have been removing the sprouts that appear along the lengths of the sticks though.

I decided to repurpose all my incy wincy fabric scraps into a larger piece of fabric!

How to Make Fabric from Scrap Fabric

You will need

• A horde of scrapy fabric- offcuts and “waste” from past projects
• Fusible fleece batting- I actually had scraps of this too buth the project is a little easier if you have one big piece. The size of you batting should be the size you want your end fabric to be
• Iron
• Sewing machine.

Working on an ironing board (saves moving stuff around later) lay out your piece of fusible fleece. Then take your little scraps and start laying them on. I decided to have some sort of color scheme but really there are no rules here, follow your heart. I picked out pinks, blues and greens from my stash. The aim of the game here is to completely cover all of your fleece while making sure each piece of fabric has some sort of contact with it.

Plug in your iron and cover your creation with a lightweight cotton cloth ( a pillowcase will work). Then gently iron which will melt the glue on the fusible fleece and stick your scraps in place. The cloth stops everything moving around too much but once you have made a few passes with the iron you can remove it and press directly.

Here are my pieces all ironed in place.

Then time to get sewing!

Simply sew rows of straight stitch vertically

then horizontally

And voila, a piece of quilted fabric ready for a sewing adventure! I plan on making a zippered pouch with this but haven’t quite got around to that yet.

I was so pleased with my first pass at this I went on to make two other pieces.

For this one I selected fabrics with warmer tones, reds, yellows and touches of green.

and for my final one it really was a mish mash of all sorts!

Aren’t they just lovely!

Looking for more sewing projects?

I found an amazing free pattern that came with an online tutorial. It’s skill level was rated as beginner which was perfect for me.

Here is the shirt pattern

and here is the sewing tutorial

The shirt pattern can be instantly downloaded and printed out on a desktop printer and pieced together. It takes a bit of time but is not difficult.

I ordered 2 yards of one of my design on Cotton Lawn from my shop on Spoonflower. It is real thrill working with my own creations and one of the reasons I thought it was high time that I got to grips with my sewing machine and really learnt how to sew! Click on the reel below to see the final design on Procreate on my ipad to the printed fabric! Cotton Lawn has a lovely drape and was the perfect choice for a summer shirt.

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Now I could have done step by step photographs of each stage of the sewing but that was never going to happen. I was in the moment and stopping to take pics every stage of the process would have meant the project took forever.

So instead lets fast forward to the final result!

And a little video to really show her off!

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I am so happy with the result and have already ordered some more fabric to make some more!

I have been itching to get out into my garden but Chicago being Chicago, it is still too cold to really get going with outdoor seeds and with the rain we have had this week they would have been washed away anyway. So I like to start my seeds indoors and today was the day. I had my seed packets ready a bag of good compost but no seed trays.

I could have gone out and bought some of those plastic ones but I couldn’t face battling with the traffic just to buy some plastic junk so I turned to good old you tube to see if anyone had a video of making a suitable pot out of paper. I struck gold with this video.

The guy used regular letter paper to make his pots but I used bits of newspaper the same size and junk flyers. I even made one from a large envelope. They just take a few folds and you have a perfect little container to start your seeds. The best thing is when they are ready to plant out you just put the whole thing in the soil. No need to disturb those delicate roots. The paper will just rot away.

I used a old baking tray to hold my pots and really squashed them together so if there is any paper degradation they will support each other. I even wrote on each container what I had planted in them. Result!

Now fingers crossed I actually get some seeds to germinate and eventually get to the point, weather wise, that they might survive in the outdoors!

Looking for more garden tips?

I cut out the template on various substrates, including watercolor paper and I have just got around to cracking open my watercolor paints and letting rip with my paint brush.

My painting wasn’t particularly neat but I really don’t think that matters too much as the result is stunning!

Before constructing I like to do a pre-fold of the score lines so they will pop right into place once I get going but I flatten everything out again to get started. For a complete guide to construction visit the original paper orb page

and here she is in all her glory!

I am itching to cut some more of these of watercolor pages and have plans to make a giant one!

One of more popular posts on this blog is my crafty tutorial on how to make a Paper Orb. It involves quite a bit of cutting and scoring cardstock and some fun decorating but the end result are these gorgeous orbs.

Now if cutting a scoring card is not your idea of fun I have come up with a paper Orb tutorial 2.0! It involves using a Cricut cutting machine to do all that cutting and scoring for you! I am lucky enough to have a local library that has an amazing Makers Space where I have access to one of these for free. These maker places are becoming more and more popular in libraries and some of them even have this type of equipment to check out too. You have to love that!

How to make a Paper Orb

You will need

• Cricut cutting machine with a cutting and scoring tool
• My FREE paper orb template
• Cardstock
• Tape

Download my FREE Paper orb Template. It is a .svg file

Open up the Cricut Design space software and upload the .svg file. Scale to your desired size. I set mine so I could use letter size substrate. By default all the lines will be set as cut lines. Select all the red lines and set them as score. Select all the lines and then “attach” them then click the Make button. The software will lead you through the making process through the choice of substrate ( I picked light card stock) and the selection of the cutting scoring tools. I know some Cricut machines can load both the scoring and the cutting tool at the same time but the machine I was using prompted me to load the scoring tool first and then I have to switch it out to the cutting tool.

The machine will score and cut your card with precision!

To construct the paper orb take your two strips of scored and cut cardstock and tape them to form loops. Set one inside the other at 90 degrees and then thread the remaining strip through as shown and then tape. Make sure all the scored areas are clearly visible – these are the photos from my original tutorial but the process is identical no matter how you create your pieces.

Then work the scored areas gentle in and hey presto you have your Paper Orb

Once you have your Cricut fie set up is is super easy to really start cranking these out. I started with some simple plain white cardstock. Here they are ready for decorating.

I then had a go with some scrapbook paper which was an ultra quick way of having a finished orb!

Next I tried on some thick watercolor paper- the Cricut machine made easy work of that – just remember to adjust the substrate you are working on during the software prompts. I am going to take this weekend to paint that so what this space for an update next week!

Check out my project on Cricut Design Space

One of my latest endeavors was to master their embroidery machine ( Brother N2750D) and what fun that was!

I always like to have a project in mind when trying out a new piece of kit and decided to make some stitch on badges for the crew I volunteer with in habitat restoration. We are know as the Crazy Team ( because we work all year long in any weather!) I had knocked up a little logo for us ages ago and thought it would translate well into an embroidered patch.

How to make and Embroidery patch

The Design

First thing first, create your design. There are lots you can find online or create your own in a vector program such as Adobe illustrator. Keep things simple and a minimum number of colors. Save your file in an .eps format.
Here is the file I created for the Crazy Team

Conversion

The next stage is to convert your design into a format that can be understood by the embroidery machine. There is some handy dandy software from Hatch Embroidery where you can download a free 30 day trial. My Makerplace also had it available for free. The process is trial and error but you import your .eps file into the software and let it do it’s thing. Below you can see what the software spits out! Save your file to a jump drive.

Get Embroidering!

First of all prepare the fabric you wish to embroider. I selected a thick piece of cotton. Secure your fabric in an embroidery hoop, these come with the machine. It is also useful although not always necessary to use a fabric stabilizer which is placed underneath your hoop

Pug your jump drive into the sewing machine and follow the prompts.

I did the orange first

Followed by the black

and here is the completed embroidery

To finish the patch I trimmed around the edge and used an iron on adhesive strip to stick everything to the rear of the patch.

And here it is being modeled by one of the volunteers who is a little camera shy and wanted to hide his face!

Am in seriously into designing fabrics these days and sell mostly on Spoonflower under the user name Creativeinchi. Up until now I was required to buy a small sample of every design I uploaded in order to make it for sale. That has now changed but it has left me with a load of small samples of my fabric.

They have sat fold neatly in a box for ages but I recently came up with an idea of what to make with them. This easy sewing tutorial for beginners will have you sewing along in no time!

Easy Sewing Project: How to make a Draw String Bag

You will need

• Sewing machine
• Scissors
• 5 squares of fabric, Mine measured 5″ by 5″ but really any size will work
• Macrame cord.

Getting Started

Start by cutting out your fabric. In the fabric below the two darker ones are for the outside of the bag, the two lighter are for the inside of the bag and the purple square is for the tab top. You can use a mix of designs like me or the same design throughout!

Prepare the tab

Cut the tab square in half so you are left with two rectangles. Finger press the short ends of each rectangle so each has a 1/4″ hem and sew into place. Fold the hemmed tabs in half.

Adding the Tabs

Take one of your outer squares right side up, center the tab and pin into place. Then take a lining square, wrong side up line up and pin in place so you have essentially sandwiched the tab. Sew in place leaving a 1/4 gap either side. Repeat with you other squares.

Sewing together

Open up and press each side of the bag making sure the tab top lies towards the outer designs. Pin the two pieces right sides together ensuring the outer designs are facing one another. Sew around leaving a 1.5″ gap on the lining part.

Snip each corner as show and turn inside out! Poke out the corners.

Close the gap in the lining by sewing a short line.

Push the lining into the bag and give the whole thing a good press.

Add a line of top stitching just underneath the tab and create a channel in the tabs by sewing a line of stiches half way up each tab.

Adding the Cord

Cut two 12″ lengths of macramé cord and. Thread the first one through the channel so both raw ends are on the second length so bot raw ends are on the left. Knot the raw ends together.

such a fun sewing tutorial for beginners!

Interested in more Sewing tutorials and all things fabric?

Flowery

Flowery features folk art style garden florals etched into a gorgeous piece of raw edge juniper wood. The wood has bark, knots and natural imperfections. A one of a kind piece of art!

Busy Dam Beavers

Sweet whimsical busy beavers gathering sticks to make their dams on a beautiful piece of raw edge cottonwood. Cracks and bark are embraced

Make one or both of these your own!