How quickly time passes, one minute your little ones are learning to walk and the next thing you know they are going through puberty! Well not quite that quickly, a lot happens along the way.

For me things started to change when my son’s interests shifted from wanted to do crafts with mummy to sports. And when I say sports, I mean full on training at a young age. His passion for tennis took us all the way to Barcelona 4 years ago. Training everyday, weekend competitions and online school with Oxford Open Learning take care of his day, while mine, after the initial struggle of making sense of how everything worked here in Catalunya, was limited to driver stroke schoolwork coordinator. All that creativity which was awaken in me during my son’s early childhood started taking a different direction, not so much a learning through play but more home crafts and drawings.

I started to draw and design patterns. Slowly I began to make a few things with my fabrics. Easy items, blankets,cushions and linen. I enjoy to see my designs on items around me and I realised the part I really liked is to design the fabrics and the products. I taught myself how to design repeating patterns with Illustrator and Photoshop and I started uploading my designs on Spoonflower. Initially just to see what they would look like but with time I got my confidence up and I made them available for sale. I also use print on demand portals like Society6 and RedBubble to upload the designs to products that go from T-shirts and bed linen to clocks, mugs and notebooks.

I have also started another blog where I feature new fabric design and product, come and have look at my new blog MaReDesigns.

The post Fabric design is my new passion first appeared on Fab Mums.

A few months ago I discovered an amazing American company that prints fabrics and paper on demand, you can upload your designs and have it printed on your favourite fabric. Spoonflower offers a great selection of textiles and they host competitions for designers to upload their work. For this project I chose fleece. I wanted to make a cosy blanket to use when we cuddle up on the sofa and I am very pleased with the result.

My designs are very simple, I normally draw my motif first with sharpies, then I scan it and manipulate it with Photoshop and Illustrator, I turn the drawing into a vector file so I can enlarge it without losing quality. I can also choose all the colour combination I want. This blanket was very simple to make, I rounded the corners of my fabric and I applied a simple white edge with my sewing machine. to do this I first hand stitched the ribbon all around and then I machine stitched it, but just as I was finished I found there is a much easier way to do this by using machine foot that feeds the ribbon as you sew and does all the hard work for you!

The post Personalised blanket first appeared on Fab Mums.

I meant to have a go at making magazine yarn ever since I saw it on Pinterest a few months back, but I kept putting it off. Now that I have started I just can’t stop. This is my version of the yarn, not quite as fine as the one I originally saw but still very manageable. I made a couple of bundles to take some nice photos, but then what? What could I make out of it that was useful and pretty?

In the end I thought it would be kind of cool if I could use it for crochet, only the basic crochet knowledge acquired during my early teens when my mum insisted I’d learn (oh I wish I listened!) is rusty to say the least. However I put into motion the little I remembered and I ended up with the first round coaster.

I soon ran out of yarn, so back to making some more for the next coaster. So far I have three coasters and a little basket, which could hold a few sweets, I put a little decorative bottle in it to complete my set on the small coffee table. Once I finished the coasters I coated them with vinyl glue to protect them from any spillage.

The post Crocheting with magazine paper yarn first appeared on Fab Mums.

This is my latest upcycle project, a bedroom rug for my son’s bedroom made of old jeans.

It took a little working out, as many of new know I am still new at sewing, but in the end it came out fine with a little roughness around the edges for added character.

The post Upcyle project: denim rug first appeared on Fab Mums.

After my recycling projects using old denim I was left with a lot of denim scraps. True to my philosophy not to waste anything I have been thinking of ways to use the left overs and so I tried to create something  artistic to go on my bedroom wall. Not so long ago I made a board resembling a canvas with a cardboard lid, newspaper and glue. It was just sitting there waiting to be decorated, when one day I thought it would look nice to create some abstract pictures using various textures. In the end I decorated it with denim scraps. I cut a lot of different size petals and attached them to the bottom left corner of the board. Not quite the abstract picture I had in mind originally, but I am very happy with my collage flower so much so that it indeed made the wall in the end. My favourite part of the flower is the central part, which I made by rolling a zip.

The post How to use denim scraps first appeared on Fab Mums.

This is the map of Italy divided into regions and decorated with Zentangle Inspired Art. I originally drew the map for an education project, but I couldn’t resist to see what it would look like as a ZIA.

I always keep a template version for other projects (free download map).

The post Zentangle inspired maps first appeared on Fab Mums.

A denim Cushion.

Three chicken door stoppers, they were very welcome Christmas presents for family and friends.

A door draft stopper, another thrifty Christmas gift.

An apron, also to be given to someone as a gift.

A heart lavender sachet, this one I kept for myself.

A holder for all my pegs.

The post Fabric upcycle: what you can make from an old dress first appeared on Fab Mums.

This portrait with hair in Zentangle Inspired Art style started off as an experiment, but I quite like the end result enough to share it here.

I started by tracing a photo in Photoshop, which in itself came out quite nice with a cartoon like effect rather than a detailed portrait, which was exactly what I had in mind. I printed the portrait and then I decorated the hair part with Zentangle patterns.

The post Portrait with ZIA hair first appeared on Fab Mums.