A week of making

Having a week of making some time in spring seems to have become a bit of a tradition for me: you can read about 2013's week here and 2014's here. This year, I decided to make it a bit easier for myself and have the week during the school holidays, so my second week of the Easter break was spent beavering away on a variety of projects...

Monday
I'm really into making these cute mini-zines at the moment, after seeing the idea on Design Sponge (although I think it was Laura who originally provided the link). I've already made a couple of Thomas, and this one - as you can see - is for a good friend. I'm a pretty terrible artist so the pages of my zines tend to be text-heavy, but they're really fun and quick to make and greatly appreciated by the recipients.

Tuesday

I wish I'd taken a 'before' photograph of our extremely shabby and sad patio furniture, but a quick trip to Wilkos for some outdoor paint and a few hours in the sunshine gave them a whole new look.  So perhaps not strictly a make, but certainly a makeover, and I am thrilled with how lovely the table and chairs now look (just don't look too closely at the white primer showing through on the feet).

Wednesday

I finally finished sewing seemingly endless bunting shapes onto my quilt-in-progress. I have a feeling this piece will feature a lot this week!

Thursday

My friend Charlotte hosted a crafternoon - four of us, all working in schools and hence on holiday, gathered at her house for tea, homemade biscuits, and a spot of making. I'd been nominated to provide the craft, so took along some embroidery hoops, thread and scraps of fabric to teach them the slip-stitch technique of slogan embroidery (which I blogged about here). We all wrote our words/phrases out freehand, and as a total perfectionist I'm not entirely happy with my result, but as a teaching tool it worked really well and by the end of the afternoon we had four completed hoops.

Friday
Another makeover, but I reckon they still count. One black maxi skirt from the charity shop, one checked midi skirt from a vintage store, and half an hour on the sewing machine makes two summer skirts that are now the perfect length for short-arse me.

Saturday
A nice easy make before heading into town to go to the cinema. Two sample pots of paint, three wooden beads and one leather thong = a funky necklace to jazz up my spring uniform of skinny jeans and t-shirt.

Sunday
After yesterday's afternoon cinema date turned into a long pub session, I was feeling rather tender of head today. Not up to anything more taxing than cutting the backing fabric and batting for the quilt, then tacking it together on the machine ready for bias binding. I'm dreading binding it: it's not something I excel at at the best of times, so with a monumental hangover it definitely wasn't going to be a task I tackled today.

I love how having a semi-regular Week of Making gives me a kick up the bum to get crafting. Lots of these are projects I'd had in mind for ages but just never got round to. It's also a good reminder of how little time crafting can take: both the mini zine and the necklace were 30 minute makes, so there's really no excuse not to get crafting more regularly.