Stitch and cut appliqué tute

 

When your adding shaped (odd or otherwise) fabric pieces to a quilt, garment or bag. The stitch and cut appliqué technique is your best friend! It does 3 things for you; neatens the shapes edge, attaches it to the garment and reduces the likelihood of the fabric piece fraying. In the past I've blanket stitched (shakes head), not only is this a massive effort, it's putting the efforts of the industrial revolution go to waste by not letting the sewing machine do all the hard work! Click 'read more' to view the how-to. 

Sophie Blackall - Missed Connections

 

Sophie Blackall, an Australian (but Brooklyn based) illustrator has put together a book of the sweetest drawings inspired by notes written to newspapers (like the Here's Looking At You section in MX) and missed connection websites. 

I love the randomness of the bear suit one, I wonder if any of the original ads worked?!

You can buy a copy of the book (Missed Connections) from here or flick through Sophies' prints at her etsy store.

Stockist Profile: Jodie from the Haby Goddess

I met Jodie from the Haby Goddess at my very first craft show under the Dabbles banner, she visited my stall and we got talking about general crafty things as you do. It wasn’t until she signed up for out e-newsletter that I noticed the @thehabygoddess.com ending and realised I’d been chatting to a craft rockstar!

Jodie has been online with the Haby Goddess for over 3 years and sells a range of unique sewing accessories and patterns predominantly by independent crafters & suppliers. Amongst keeping her blog updated with neat craft tutorials, she’s been working on an online sewing school (exciting) due to start up this year, but I won’t spoil the profile write up – you can find out more after the jump!

Dabbles Pattern Revisited: 

3 from 1 Gift Box (set 1)

Welcome to a new series! The great thing about patterns (compared to kits) is that you can create a million things from the one set of instructions, you can just take on the information you need to create something pretty neat thats suits your purpose! So in the 'revisited' series I will be revisiting and rejigging some of the Dabbles patterns to show you what else can be done.

So it’s nearly Valentines day, and although I’m a V-day scrooge, I can recognise that it’s nice to give something special to that someone special. So I thought it would be suitable for me to re-visit and re-jig the ‘Petalled Sleeve’ gift box from the 3 from 1 gift box (set 1) pattern, for those who wanted to add a pinch of love to their gifts packaging.

The finished size of the petalled sleeve gift box in the original pattern is 7.9cm (w) x 5cm(d) x 3.8cm(h) (3.1”(w) x 2”(d) x 1.4”(h)), great for jewellery or a handful of lollies, but I want something a little bigger and more dramatic!

See how I did it after the jump.