Grumpy?

Hello there

I certainly was grumpy at 4.15 this morning when Chris's phone made a noise which woke me up! Why was his phone in the bedroom and why was it on? No reason whatsoever!! Which didn't make the situation any less irritating!

It's 20.21 on me typing this and I'm rather tired as I couldn't sleep after that and decided to get up at 4.30 and get ready for work, as I have to get up at 5 on Mondays and Tuesdays anyway for work. I was at work by 5.30 and did a very busy eight hours.

Despite this story of woe of mine, I'm now rather happy. One of the very first UK Cricut Iron-on purchases was made by me on 19th July from cuttingedgecrafts (free postage on all orders!) and it arrived today! The Americans have had it since April but it was only available in this country from last week.

In a nutshell it's vinyl which is usable on fabric - visit their site if you want more info than that, as I'm too tired for indepth details and they can do it so much better than I.

Imagine the possibilities to personalise all fabric projects! I foresee me using this to sell items. Which items and for how much and how I'll market them etc etc are questions for another day. 

Progress not perfection.

This is how the image started off on Cricut Craft Room.
Since the vinyl sits on a clear transfer layer, you
need to flip words, so that they appear the
correct way round after being transferred to your fabric

This is a real close up of the finished practice piece.
As you can see my iron was rather too hot.
On my next practice piece I will start the iron
alot cooler and then get it hotter if required.

There are full instructions in the packaging and there are videos and tutorials available, which makes it a good thing to have not had the product until after America; as now we have all the resources to help us out :-)

The settings for each Cricut machine are clearly shown in a chart on the packaging but I had to use blade depth 3, pressure 3 and speed 2 to get my Expression machine to kiss-cut as required (you don't want the clear carrier layer to be cut as well as the vinyl). The suggested settings said blade depth 2.


The instructions state to use the highest heat on your iron but like I have said, I definitely recommend that you use just a small practice piece of the vinyl first and also use a lower temperature setting on your iron, so that the vinyl doesn't shrivel up on impact like mine did :-) Also use a scrap piece of fabric, so that you're not worried about that either.

My transfer might not be perfect but it is definitely secure to the fabric and has helped me to see how easy it was to peel the vinyl off the carrier layer, with a bit of 'weeding'. It's also opened up yet another world of possibilities for creating projects to sell or just for me!

I'm off to bed at 20.48 as I'm well and truly finished for today but I'll go to sleep alot happier than I woke up :-)

Take care out there

Tawk tawk I tawk to you

Hello there

Now you'll need to be of a certain generation i.e mine, to have a vague chance of understanding my title of this post. It's some lyrics out of an 90's song that was playing when I nipped out in the car this morning in the SUN! I really wanted to drive fast in a flashy car but a) my car is everything but not flashy in any way shape or form and b) the roads round here aren't suited to driving fast. The words are really 'talk talk' of course but it sounds like he's saying 'tawk' :-) Real McCoy were the band.

Anyway enough of my mutterings about something and nothing; although the SUNshine is definitely something to shout about when you live in the UK. Chris reckons that in the paper it said that it was the driest July in 300 years and yes, you guessed it; the hosepipe bans will start soon. I'm a SUN and warmth worshiper. I've sat in my craft room alot lately with the window open, overlooking a SUNny garden with a slight breeze occasionally = pretty darned good!

Oops, I muttered more! :-)

Down to the nitty gritty now. I'm making some coasters for a craft fair I'm sharing a stand at. I'm making very slow progress because of being distracted constantly, which is something which depresses me sometimes but today, I'm not bothered. I've had a stressful week worrying about my daughter in Vienna without a visa she needs, as the school lost it outside the school gates for crying out loud! This crafting is my relaxation/let go and breathe time. She gets back into Gatwick tonight at 5ish, so once immigration is over there, then I'll really be able to relax.

..... oh boy, I'm doing some serious muttering in this post!

I know you can hardly see the coasters but hey, it's sunshine!!

These still need some stars sewn on them; so wish I'd
thought of that before sewing them together!
Oh well, the next batch will be done properly!

I used my Cricut to cut out some 1in stars and then
used them as templates to cut out the felt.
I use a water erasable pen to draw around the template,
so all you have to do is drop them in water and the marks
disappear. It's fab! They're drying here in the SUN!!

Ok, I'm stopping there before I waffle any more. Thanks for persevering with this post!

Take care out there and smile in the sun.



20/7/13- P.S Maggie got through immigration successfully thankfully.

I'll miss my baby

Hello there

My real baby; Maggie (i.e not my sewing machine which is my second baby :-) ) is going to Vienna for five nights at 3a.m tomorrow morning. I'm chuffed to bits that she's able to go but I'm also going to miss her and worry about whether she's enjoying herself or not. I've got a busy week ahead though, so I'll be too preoccupied to worry too much hopefully.

I have made her a strap for her case, so that it's easy to pick out on the conveyor belt. 

I had a few adventures sewing this as the first time I did it, the design was too small and the needle broke twice. All I had to do was call the Husqvarna Viking helpline and Hayley suggested that I use one of the two nets supplied with the machine, to help stop the upper thread getting tangled on the spool. It worked a treat!

Thankfully I had also been shopping on Thursday and bought more needles. It made me smile as the smallest pack you can buy has 5 needles in it and then the next size up has 100! 

Working through it, I got practise as how to make the design stitch out for me. It's all about manipulating the design on the screen to make it be stitched in the hoop where you want it. I really need practise on using multi-hoops, as I did one word at a time with one section but I didn't line them up correctly as you can probably tell.

The slight puckering you can see in the above photo was caused when I ironed the interfacing on; I think I had the iron on too hot when applying it to the back of the fabric before sewing. It really is essential to have it on the back every time you embroider.

Anyway, I have to dash as I'm expecting my friend and her husband for dinner any minute now. The sun is still beating down, so hopefully we'll have a good night and then a 2.30a.m alarm call to take Maggie.

Maggie's all ready for a fun time

Take care out there and have fun in the sun if you can

Prep work

Hello there

Just a quickie to let you know of some of the things I'm up to in the crafty part of my life.

The not so exciting bit looks like this:

I'm preparing boxes ready to hold some things I'm making
for my very first craft fair in September.

The sneaky peek looks like this:

Some of the boxes will be decorated like this

and the plain bizarre looks like this at the minute:

A project for the first birthday of
my workplace

You should also have noticed that I've been redecorating other than the utility room! Come on, look around properly at what you're looking at! That's right; I've revamped my blog theme. Hope that you like it, as I do, although I'd prefer it if the header section was wider but I'll survive :-)

Take care out there