Saturday, 11 October 2025

Cheating on my hobbies

 I went down another enjoyable papercrafting rabbithole this week to create a Writing Folder - following a video tutorial by VectoriaDesigns.  Quite fun to do.  This time I re-covered some lined notebooks I got cheap at The Works, rather than print out beautifully decorated pages, so perhaps I will even write in the notebooks one day.








 I feel like I am cheating on my 'real hobbies', by having fun with a new craft.  Because I am a beginner, it is quite time consuming to do a project like this one, so it took a lot of time away from my usual pastimes.

So no sewing this week apart from hand embroidery, and a bit of long-arming on the Teapot china panel.  I did receive the additional yard of background fabric for the Dresden plate quilt so I will be able to go ahead with that.  I had a play around with different block layouts but because the plates are so big, there wasn't a good way to do anything other than a grid.  I could omit some blocks and do an alternate block grid, but it seems a waste of blocks plus I won't be doing fancy quilting so don't need a lot of negative space.


I finished the Art of Mini Lithographed Trunk kit. The instructions weren't great and some of the wood pieces for the exterior raised boards were cut a bit short, but overall it looks very striking.



Now I am building two 144th laser-cut building kits from M&E Miniatures.  The pink house has an open back and I've added some wallpaper inside.  The blue house will be a closed structure.  The laser-cut fretwork is incredibly fragile and I've already broken one piece of trim just by painting it, but I can fix it.


I finished my four woven placemats using the Aldi macrame cord and a variegated wool warp.  They've turned out pretty well and I'm pleased with them as  a technical accomplishment.  They came off the loom at the intended size and the same size as each other, and have shrunk up in a hot water wash to be fairly sturdy and functional. It is quite satisfying to take what is essentially string and turn it into an actual usable item.


My next weaving project will be two christmas towels using a pattern from Little Looms magazine.

2 comments:

MeMeM said...

I always thought weaving would take too long to get anything completed. You have definitely proven that theory incorrect! Love your placemats - they came out great.

Janice said...

You may be adding a new craft, but you have still achieved heaps this week. All lovely.