I have a problem with my magazine collection where I have wasted hours looking for a project that I have seen in one of my magazines. I have almost all of the Inspirations magazines as well as a small collection of Enbroidery and Cross Stitch and Quilting magazines. I have started a catalogue of projects which I thought may help other people as well, whether you have your own collection of these magazines or are searching for a particular issue and would like to see what projects are within it.

It is The Bookshelf, which will start by housing only the Inspirations magazines projects to start with and will perhaps move on to other magazines and books. Leave a comment on articles that you have completed! Or let me know what you think.

Again my computer and sewing room gets moved around and reorganised as I will be geting some new flat mates within the next month and need the other rooms free for them. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time moving furniture than I do sewing. I have had to consolodate the computer and the sewing stuff into one room so I enlisted help to move my wardrobe that houses my costumes and my computer desk.

Surprisingly I somehow have ended up with more room than I originally had in my sewing room despite now having my computer desk in there as well. I think that it is working a lot better this way and I have a lot of my materials organised properly. I also now have all my magazines in the sewing/computer room instead of them being in the computer room as well. Twice as many things in the room and somehow twice as much room too.

Well I was going to swap these, but for now I have changed my mind and want to hold on to them a little longer. I put quite a few hours into these. The red one took about 4 hours total as the stitching, while easy, took longer than I expected. The star looks like a pin wheel which I quite like.

Blue/Yellow - Blue flannel base, yellow felt star applied with blanket stitch and filled with a small amount of toy stuffing. Eyes are detached chain in black and cheecks are pink bullion knots. Small star buttons are sewn around it.

Red/Pink: Cotton base in red with star design hand embroidered in light pink DMC cotton (as I didn't have any white). Embellished with clear beads.

These are my first attempts at embroidered ATCs and I think the theme ideas helped a lot. It was nice having some very small quick projects. Should I do more and create quick step by step patterns for them?

These little guys are simple projects that are 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size. They are designed to be swapped and traded with other crafty people. For the most part you will find these among the scrap booking and paper art communities, however they have been growing in popularity amongst most crafts. I have been trying out small projects and different techniques with these little guys and liking their appearance to much I am tempted to keep them for myself and not trade them.

I have completed three so far and I will put some photos up soon.

Just a quick progress update as I have had a chance to do a lot more sewing in the last day or two while getting over a virus. It is nice to see it start to come together and to get a lot of progress done in a short time. The leaves are complete and I am on to the flower.

So far I have used Portugese stem stitch, brick stich, lazy daisy, blanket stitch, stem stitch, couching and I am starting on long and short stitch to fill in the flower petals.