Hello, all!

Just another intro post from a newbie.  My name is Lisa and I live in Nebraska.  I am 29 years old, wife, mom, cat owner, etc.  I have a lot of hobbies…I think my main fault (if you can call it that) is bouncing all over the place, trying different things.  Which of course makes this type of blog just right, because there seems to be a little bit of everything to do here!!  I also have my own blog at http://musings.willis-illustration.com, where I post a lot of illustrations, paintings, scrapbooking, jewelry, and other stuff.  Plus I enjoy stamping, crocheting, knitting (or trying to, anyway), some sewing (still learning, but I’m really good at ripping out crooked seams!), embroidery, and anything that involves a glue gun!

It’s a Sunny Day!

When one of my favorite blogs, House on Hill Road, posted a picture of the adorable Sunny Day Dress and wanted to know if we wanted a tutorial, the answer was a resounding yes! I wanted to learn the technique for something for me, but then it dawned on me that I have two adorable nieces whom I have never made a thing for, and this would be perfect. Bad Crafty Aunt! So I ran to the fabric store and hoped to find time to try out the Sunny Day Dress tutorial.

First let me say that I’m a beginning sewer at best. I’ve been sewing for about 15 years, but never anything very complicated. I’m not a perfectionist about the art either — good enough was always, well, good enough!

I’ve been trying to do better lately; to make quality things that might actually last. So the best thing this tutorial taught me? Ironing makes all the difference in the world. I’m sure many of you are chuckling right now, but seriously. I always knew you were supposed to iron, I just never did. I have officially moved my (previously rarely used) iron to my craft room because it is now my new best friend. I also officially need some real fabric scissors and those pinking shears.

Now, onto the tutorial itself! I loved how well everything was laid out. I had no problems getting myself organized. I chose to do an 80cm size (which is not specified), because I know my nieces are only just barely into size 80 clothes. I deduced what size to cut out the fabric by the differences between higher sizes. Unfortunately for me, my nieces live on an entirely different continent (I’m in the US, they’re in the UK), so I didn’t have any measurements to go by.

Everything was going smoothly until it came time to wind the elastic thread on the bobbin. This is tricky. In retrospect, I think I pulled mine too tight. In the end I had such a hard time getting it on there at all, I eventually didn’t care that it wasn’t spaced evenly or was too tight or too loose. It was on there! Next! (For what it’s worth, one spool on my Bernina did the one dress.)

My first real problem came on the 7th slide — sewing up the side seams. I didn’t know which side was the side seam. Should the tube be taller than wide, or wider than tall? Because the wider than tall scenario doesn’t look like it could possibly become a dress, even though the slide before that does call them wide and tall correctly. My brain didn’t want to believe it. I did it the incorrect way the first time, decided that couldn’t possibly be right, and sent an email to the author. Fortunately she was very nice and answered my questions pronto! Wider than tall it is.

Next problem came on slide 009. Pinking shears.. don’t have any of those. Zig zag I could do.. but I couldn’t fathom how to do it once the side seams were sewn. So on version two, I zigzagged around both dress pieces before doing the side seams. This worked a charm!

Everything else was incredibly straight forward, with excellent pictures. The one thing I learned about working with elastic thread is that if it is wound in your bobbin too tightly, pulling it out even more than 2 or 3 inches before you cut is an excellent idea. I had to go fishing a few times to get all of the elastic where it needed to be upon finishing.

I also had some problems distributing the gathers around the tube, but that’s not a problem with the tutorial. It’s a problem for me because I don’t have anyone to try it out on! I feel like they might be too tight, but then it does stretch. I really don’t know. I have a son so I’ve never even felt these types of dresses before. I have no idea what I’m aiming for! In any case my shirring does resemble the pictures in the tutorial, so I can only hope it will be okay.

On page 025, I ended up sewing down the ends three times because I was not consistent about where I stopped and started each new line of shirring. Good thing my nieces are twins and I get to try it all over again so the next one will be even better 🙂

One last note: I think the ties are too wide for this size dress, so I’m going to redo those. Otherwise, I’m very pleased! This dress is adorable, it stretches nicely, and I hope it will fit! I learned a lot, and was very pleased with this tutorial.

Carrie 

Another Introduction

Well, I am afraid that most of you are a bit antsy to read some real content posts instead of more introductory ones so I’ll be brief. My name is Miki and I am another of the new writers who will be making a home around here. 

I am a 21 year old Communication major living in between the states of North Carolina and Virginia, USA. I knit, fold origami, crochet, and dabble in some amateur jewelry making.I also run a blog at Two Needles.

I hope to introduce you guys to some neat tutorial links next time I post (I’ve been saving them up for a long time :). But for now I’d like to leave you with an awesome knitting technical site called Tech Knitting.

 It is run by a very clever woman who illustrates her own designs and obviously has a handy grip on solving problems. If you ever run  a sticky knitting problem and it’s too late to call up anyone, then this is the place to go.  Solutions range from how to join yarn, to picking up a missed increase or decrease that you should have done a couple of rows down, to reading knitting charts, or even how to how to get the stink out of wooly clothes :).  

Knittinghelp also has handy video guides for you to watch in case you are unsure if you are purling or knitting correctly.She has a great tutorial on the different techniques of knitting, i.e. English, Continental and even Norwegian Purling!  Also be sure to check our her extensive collection of increases and decreases, she really does us knitters a favor by matching them up so you can be sure that your chosen increase and decrease match on each side for perfect design symmetry.

I learned how to knit using this site and it worked for me. Remember, I’m not only an advocate of Knitting Help, but I’m also a customer :).

From Honduras

I guess I should do as Lynsey and introduce myself since I (too! 😀 ) will be adding stuff here…

My name is Alejandra, I’m 25 and live in Honduras…

I’ve been quite curious and that brougth me here… I always want to try new things and see how they turn out… I could say that I’ve tried everything I have been able, keeping in mind that I can’t find many crafty resources in my country… I learned to work with wire on my own, using quite awful hardware store pliers and using alpaca wire… And now have a pretty decent jewelry business… (using sterling silver!)  I also knit, play with felt and sew once in a while…

I hope I can be of help to all of you!

Alejandra

P.S. I speak spanish (obviously! or not so obviously… :-p) so if you need translating patterns or tutorials, I’d love to help.

P.S.2 My quite random blog is here.

Just thought that I would let everyone know that Craft Tutorials has moved to crafttutorials.net

Hello from rainy England

Hi everyone,

I just thought I’d better introduce myself – I’m going to be adding lots (hopefully) of craft tutorials on to here. I’m Lynsey, 29, with two daughters and I am a work from home mum. My crafting career started off with making the birth announcements for my elder daughters birth and it has kind of spiralled from there! I now really enjoy just playing with things and I love using found objects in my work – oh and I love recycling things too. And the recycling side is just a good excuse to go rummaging in charity chops for fabric!

My personal blog is here if you fancy reading what other things I get up to and hopefully I will be back soon with my first tutorial!

Bye!

Lynsey

Just thought that I would let everyone know that Craft Tutorials has moved to crafttutorials.net

Craft Tutorials blog needs your help!

We are looking for more writers for this blog. If you like to craft and write about it I would really like to hear from you. Please send me an e-mail or leave a message in the comments section and I will tell you a little bit more about it.

Thanks!

Gocco crazy!

It’s the must-have crafting accessory of the moment. Well it is if you want to make your own screen prints quickly, easily and (fairly) cheaply. I’m talking about the magic Japanese device they call Print Gocco. However this isn’t some new fangled machine, in fact it’s makers, Riso, first introduced it in 1977. It has had a lot of attention of late though and I (like many of you I’m sure) have been reading about Print Goccos all over the Crafty Internet world. I have been lusting after the beautiful cards on etsy.com and the like printed with them, so I drained my PayPal account and treated myself to the PG-5 model. I’m not going to go in to the different models here as I’m no expert, but see the links at the end of the article to find out more.

After about a week of waiting the moment arrived, I excitedly opened the box and took out the very bright red and yellow Gocco. Where to start? Well I’d been doodling in my sketchbook all week and had an idea of what image I wanted to use. As I don’t have a photocopier or a laser printer at home I decided to re-draw my favourite image on a piece of plain white paper with the carbon pen included in the kit.

I’m not going to go in to details of how to put the Gocco together, I used this tutorial by felt café (who I bought the machine from) so I highly recommend following that. One thing I will add- look away when the bulbs flash. I did, but my boyfriend didn’t and apparently it’s very bright! I was so excited when the bulbs went off, it meant I’d put it together properly (which was very easy). This is what the bulbs look like after they’ve flashed (you can only use them once and don’t touch them until they’re cool).

So we have our exposed screen, next step is to ink it up. Again, follow the tutorial for more information. I kept it simple with just black ink but you can use multiple colours on one screen.

The picture above shows the inked up screen back in the gocco. Then we just had to put the cardstock in place and get printing. It was really that easy! I made 12 cards and easily could have made a lot more, there was plenty of ink left on the screen.

Now, apparently you can clean the screens and store them for future use. Hmmmm. Well I didn’t have much luck with that so please, if you have any advice on this, add a comment below! I’ve heard baby oil is good so I’ll have to try that to clean the screens next time.

I left the cards to dry and then added watercolours. Here’s a finished card.

I still have lots to learn about Print Gocco, I want to buy more colours and try multi-colour and multi-screen prints, however it’s great how easy it is to get started with this little machine. Give it a try!

Links:

The small object- gocco tutorial
A flickr photo tutorial by kev/null
Tutorial by clsr-stamp
Felt café gocco tutorial
http://www.savegocco.com/

Christine

Just thought that I would let everyone know that Craft Tutorials has moved to crafttutorials.net

W.W.K.I.P. day

I was just reading Craftzine and saw this announcement that the 9th of June is World Wide Knit in Public Day have a look on their site to check out the locations here .

Looks like it will be an awesome event so everybody spread the word!

Just thought that I would let everyone know that Craft Tutorials has moved to crafttutorials.net

Inspirational links 5

In preperation for my next tutorial try-out I was surfing the internet for inspiration. So I will leave you with these amazing links and will be back later this week with a brand new tutorial try-out. (You can probably already guess what it is about.)

Yarn and Coffee wrote a very interesting step-by-step walk through the process of designing a stuffie that might help me.

Mochimochi Blog knitted this extremely cute raincloud with raindrops. See picture below.

Absolutely amazing monsters by The Cotton Monster all unique and made from recycled pre-loved materials.

Just thought that I would let everyone know that Craft Tutorials has moved to crafttutorials.net

Introducing Carrie

Hello all!

I am a stay at home mom to a very active 2 year old. I do try to spend my spare moments making things. Usually knitting, although I also want to learn how to sew better. I also enjoy stamping and scrapbooking.

I seem to be constantly running across awesome tutorials so I thought writing for this blog would help me prioritize and actually do some of them! Looking forward to making some cool stuff.

 Carrie

Introducing Christine…

Hi everyone, I’m another one of the new co-writers. I’m Christine and live with my boyfriend in a little village in the UK. I work full time in IT, study for a degree part time and craft in every other spare moment! I like to dabble in paper crafts, jewellery making and sewing so I’m looking forward to trying out lots of tutorials for you on those subjects. I’m always looking to try out new ideas and I’d love to learn to knit and crochet one day.

I also have my own blog which you can visit to find out a little more about me. I look forward to being back soon with my first tutorial try-out.