Tag: tutorial

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You Were Born Under These Stars: How to embroider a star map for your baby

This tutorial will help you make a sweet project that looks great and sparks many memories for Mummies and Daddies of the day they became a family or an even bigger family! Easy to make, the embroidery project is simple in both the set-up and execution. I found that I could silently stitch away whilst my baby slept. I also love the fact that I have made something unique to him as the stars are in the correct positions down not just to the day, but the hour, minute and location of his birth.

What will I need?

You can buy a kit for this project from my Etsy shop which includes all the materials needed plus a personalised star map.

Alternatively you will need to purchase these items:

  • Navy cloth
  • Metallic silver thread
  • Grey thread
  • Silver star sequins
  • 9in Embroidery hoop

Star Chart Materials Pic

Step by step instructions

The first step is to obtain a star map for the date and time of your babies birth. I managed to draw up my own and you can purchase a personalised star map from my Etsy shop,

The Guardian website does produce monthly star maps which you could work with.

Guardian Star Charts
Star Chart Step One

Once you have your star map, resize it so it will fit in your embroidery hoop (9in circle) and print it out onto A4 paper.

Star Chart Step 2

Separate the inner and outer embroidery hoops. Then cut a rough square of fabric out of your navy cloth and lay it over the inner embroidery hoop, there should be enough fabric overhanging the hoop to allow you to pull on it to stretch it. Place the outer hoop over the top of the inner hoop which will catch the fabric between the two hoops.

Slightly tighten the screw at the top of the embroidery hoop and beginning to pull the fabric at the back of the hoops. You should now slowly work your way around the hoop pulling the fabric tight and tightening the screw at the top. Take care not to over tighten the screw was this can place stress on the hoops, especially wooden ones.

Once you have done this you should have a nice tight piece of fabric to work on. The aim to to produce a taut surface to stitch on to which doesn’t pucker or twist as this can result in uneven stitches.

Star Chart Step Three

Pin the paper star map onto your embroidery hoop, ensuring that north lines up with the top hook. Then you simply need to just poke a needle through the paper and the cloth beneath, wiggle the needle around a bit to make an obvious hole in the material, then use the metallic thread to create the lines between the stars.

Depending on how you work you can either stitch an entire constellation and then stitch on the stars, or you can use the metallic thread to stitch all of the lines first then go back over and add in the stars. Either way work your way across the print out adding the lines and the stars. To attach the star sequins I simply took my thread up through the centre of the star, down each side of the star, using just two stitches. You should be able to see the stitching in the picture above which illustrates this step.

Once you have completed your design you can trim off the excess material leaving about 2cm of material around the hoop. You can either glue the material to the hoop if you are happy with your design and want to make it permanent or you can tuck the material behind the hoop and just hang onto your wall.

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Starry Night Owls: How to make your own felt owl baby mobile

This is a fun, simple woodland themed project for crafty inclined people to make for that special baby in their lives. A few pieces of felt, some thread and a simple bit of stitching can help you put together a beautiful unique mobile. By using the templates and instructions below you can create a quirky woodland scene complete with owls, stars and the moon, you can even customise it yourself by using different coloured felt.

Starry Night Owl Mobile Overview

What will I need?

Materials

  • Felt in your chosen colours and complimentary coloured thread. (Be as creative as you like, but if you would like to follow my design I used the following colours from seamstar.co.uk; Chestnut/Cream/White/Dahlia/Fawn/Sable)
  • Toy Stuffing
  • A wooden dowel rod (I used 2 x 46cm lengths)
  • A screw type metal hook
  • (Optional) A battery-powered mirror ball motor (I got a white one from Maplin)

Starry Night Owl Mobile Materials

You will also need;

  • A drill to make holes in the dowel rod.
  • White paint to paint the dowel rods.
  • Glue to stick the two rods together.

Step by step instructions

Starry Night Owl Step One

Print out the below cutting guide (.pdf file) onto thickish card and cut out the shapes.

Click here for the cut out guide

Cut out individual shapes from the appropriate colour felt as per the instructions on the cutting guide. I cheated a little by folding over the felt and cutting through more than one layer to speed up the process. This actually helped to produce identical wing shapes and body shapes which made the owls look neater.

Starry Night Owl Step Two

(n.b) You can either cut out all the pieces for one owl and then sew it up if you like to see a quick result from all your hard work, or cut out all the pieces needed for all five owls and stars/moon shapes and then approach the project like a mass production machine. However you chose to work, just follow these steps for each owl shape.

Place two pieces of felt together for the wing and stitch them together using backstitch to form one wing, repeat for the other wing. Then sew on the friendly features of your owls, the eyes and the beak. I used satin stitch for the eyes and beak.

Sew on your orange coloured little owl legs to the main darker coloured body piece.

Attach the light coloured body and face section onto your main darker coloured body section again using back stitch, you don’t have to worry so much at this stage about keeping the back of the stitching neat as this won’t be seen when you build your owl.

Attach the wings and the tail pieces on to the back of the main body section, do this loosely as you will be stitching over this part again.

Now you can attach the back section to the owl using back stitch, leaving a finger-width hole at the bottom to allow you to stuff the owl. Try to keep your back stitch as neat as possible on both sides of the owl as you will see them in the finished piece.

Stuff that bird! Once your bird is pleasantly plump you can stitch the hole you left closed.

Now finally you need to stick your two dowel rods together by cutting a notch out of both of them and gluing them together. Paint the entire rods white (or your colour of choice) and make small holes at the ends of the dowel rods. This is where you will be hanging the birds from. You should be able to simply screw your hook into a small hole that you make in the centre of the rods with your drill.

Starry Night Owl Step Three

Once you have worked out the arrangement of your owls and stars/moon you can simply attach them to the dowel rods by sewing through the centre of each stuffed piece. I tried to tilt the owls slightly for a perfect baby-eyed view.

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Scrumdiddlyumptious Wonka Bar Invites: How to make your own Willy Wonka golden ticket invitations

If you are a Roald Dahl fan as well as a lover of all things chocolate then this easy to make invitation may be just the ticket you need. Whilst making this project you may begin to resent giving away luscious chocolate; in which case you may need to buy a few more bars just in case some get ‘broken’.

All you require for this project is a bit of printing, some bars of chocolate, good old double sided tape and some paper. All this talk of chocolate is making me hungry.

Wonka Bar Invitations What will you need?

Chocolate bars: I used at least one bar per household, but allowed children to have a whole bar each so each child got their own special invitation. The chocolate bars I used specifically were Galaxy as they still use the old fashioned foil wrappers and the colours of the foils were complimentary to the designs I had created.

  • The Wonka Scrumdiddlyumptious Cookie-licious Milky Chocolate Bar was actually Galaxy Cookie Crumble which has a purple foil wrapper.
  • The Wonka Triple Dazzle Caramel Milky Chocolate Bar was actually Galaxy Caramel which has a gold foil wrapper.
  • The Wonka Nutty Crunch Surprise Milky Chocolate Bar was actually Galaxy Smooth Milk which has a bronze foil wrapper.

Wonka Bar Invitations

You will also need;

  • Double sided sticky tape.
  • Good quality A4 matte printer paper.
  • Double sided A4 gold card.
  • A guillotine.

Step by step instructions

Wonka Bar Invitations

Firstly you will need to design and print the new Wonka wrappers. I found that you can fit two chocolate wraps on one piece of A4 printer paper. So if you are inviting forty households you will only need twenty sheets of paper, again remember that children may not want to share the chocolate!

Below are the measurements I used for my wrapper designs which are based on the original Galaxy bar wrapper dimensions.

Wonka Bar Measurements

If you are feeling lazy or lacking in creativity or time and would like to use my design then you can visit my Etsy shop below and you can purchase the original design as a PDF which you can print out yourself. I can also alter the design to suit you, just get in contact.

For added authenticity make sure you look at the original galaxy wrappers for inspiration and think about adding things like a barcode and calorie information. Feel free to copy my colour scheme and chocolate bar names, or you could be as creative as you like and design something unique to you. You could even think about re-reading Charlie and the chocolate factory for some ideas.

Step Two

Now you need to design and print out the Golden tickets. In my design I managed to place four tickets on A4 gold card. Above is a photo of the actual wording that I used on the tickets which is based on the original text in the book.

I found it quite difficult printing on the gold card as the ink from my printer seemed to sink into the card but I consulted my local tech guy (my husband) and we managed to tinker with the settings to get something usable.

Wonka Bar Invitations

Now you need to cut out all of the wrappers and invitations using the guillotine. This step is quite laborious if you have a few invitations to prepare so stick on some tunes and get into your cutting groove!

If you are sending more than one invitation to a household try and send different bars so that they get a selection, I also tried to think about sending different bars to each family group so that when they got together they had the whole creative collection!

Once all the bits are cut out you now need to take the original wrappers of the chocolate bars off carefully, insert the golden ticket and attach the new wrapper with some of the double sided tape. Remember to try and keep track of who the golden ticket is addressed to so that you can hand out or post the correct invites to the correct people.

Step Four

Hand out or post your invitations to your lucky guests! I posted most of my invites so that people got a surprise through the post as well as that special Golden Ticket Winner feeling. I even created the above stamp and printed them out onto standard sticky labels to add to the front of the parcels.