Handmade Monday 101

Welcome to Handmade Monday!

It's been a busy week on this blog!  If you missed all the giveaways to celebrate 100 Handmade Mondays, you can find them by scrolling down while you're on the home page.  There's a giveaway a day for five days - and it's not too late to enter them all!

The lucky winners will be picked on Thursday and Friday, so look out for an announcement.  I'll try to email each winner, but do pop back here in case I can't contact you.  I'd like to say a very big thank you to all the entrants - I wish I had enough prizes for all of you!

the strawberry fabric gets the chop

Apart from giveaways this week, I've been busy turning my lovely strawberry fabric from Abakhan into a picnic blanket carrier for Craftseller magazine - the kind of thing that wraps around a rolled blanket and has a handle to go over your shoulder. I told you I was thinking summer picnics!  Picnic weather would make a lovely change from snow, slush, sleet and hailstones right now.  To be fair, the sun has made a very welcome appearance this afternoon in Cheshire, but it's quite a long way from picnic weather ... the snow has melted and the garden is flooded, yet again!  I'm just amazed we still have grass.

If you want to make your own picnic blanket holder, you'll find the instructions in Craftseller issue 23 if all goes to plan.  Meanwhile, I'll be writing up the pattern and instructions this week!

I couldn't resist adding a felt strawberry on the pocket!
It doubles up as a fastener, with Velcro on the back.

What have you been up to?  Leave your blog link below, then put your feet up to enjoy some blog surfing from the cosiness of your own home - the best place to be on a winter evening!

Hello, New Fabric!

It's always exciting when a parcel arrives in the post isn't it?

This one got lost along the way and spent a day or two hanging out with the people who live next-door-but-one.  Ironically, they were out when it arrived and it was left in a plantpot in their back garden (I was probably in at the time).

Still, it got here in one piece . . .

and this is what I chose for my next £15 budget challenge from Abakhan: a metre each of contrasting fabric, buttons, webbing and a magnetic fastener.  I'll be making a beach bag/shopping bag - with beach huts on the front (that's what inspired the red and white stripe!).  OK, so there's way too many buttons for this project but they'll certainly not go unused for long!  I'm adding a little bit of fabric from my stash, but probably not much.

The real purpose of this bag will be as my post office bag.  The post office run is a daily one here and most of my shopping bags are a bit too small to be useful so I'm usually to be seen carrying an outsize Tesco bag.

I'd think I'd rather have one with beach huts on!