Craft group goodness

For the last week I've been busy doing a lot of hand sewing, both at my usual Mum's craft group and also at a new craft group that I've just joined. Crafting in the evening with a group of other like minded women is really good fun - especially when there is tea and yummy cake to be had!

Though I'm a little shy with starting out meeting new people I think I'm going to fit in well at this new group - we're starting the year with a 6 week hand sewing course and I've already made this very sweet little felt elephant (the free pattern is available from here) as well a very lovable little felt scotty dog (from another free pattern which is available here).

Working with felt is always so soothing (at least once you've finished cutting out all the piece and can figure out how on earth you start blanket stitching) and I love how pretty a contrasting thread colour looks on felt.

I'm so tempted after all this felt goodness to go and spend a large amount of money at paper and string for even more felt... Before I do that though I should probably make a bit of headway through a few of the lovely felt kits that I won late last year - hopefully I'll have something to show you from them soon!

My other weekly craft group is also going well, with more hand sewing to show off from there. We've all been making sewing mice which double as a pin cushion and a thread reel holder. However, in my enthusiasm to finish my mouse I took him home and sewed his ears on flat, completely forgetting that I was supposed to sew the ears on with a kink that would make them stand up. So while I'm pretty happy with how he turned out I'm going to be doing some remedial ear surgery on him soon in an attempt to make him even cuter.

We are now moving on making to felt fairy cakes in a variety of pastel colours, they are pretty quick to make, you need two circles of felt (one slightly larger for the cake case, the other will be the main cake piece) and a smaller piece to add on top for the icing. You sew the icing to the top of the cake with any extra beads that you want to add as sprinkles, then you sew the two circles together with a running stitch that you pull tight to get a puckered edge, remembering to add some stuffing before you close it off completely.