Vacation crafts Chi's sweet home purse

I little while ago I received this fantastic and super cute sewing kit which I purchased at a really good price from ShineKidsCrafts on Etsy. This shop has a lot of cute crafts for both kids of most ages and also for childish adults (like me) :). Most of the cute sewing kits there have instructions translated to English but this one had Chinese instructions. (I had no problems translating them however). It was a real pleasure making this cute purse, everything needed was included, even the needle and threads. Here are some pics from making the purse:

Here I have opened the kit and started piecing together the cat.

Little cute Chi before being sewn on the front of the purse.

Almost finished! This has been a perfect quick little vacation craft project.

Finished! Now I will use it to store my nail decorations.^__^

Pink buddy amigurumi

I got a lot of crochet yarns from my fiances mother (Thank you!). And this is the first little creature that I have made out of them. It's loosely base on a bear pattern in a crochet book but I made some changes and It became my pink buddy instead. I added a piece of red shoelace as a long scarf. My next crochet will be a dog I think. But I'm not sure there are so many fun things to make :).

Homemade herb salt

Now is the prime season for harvesting herbs from the garden. My herbs have grown like weeds in the sunny weather and I already have dried herbs from last summer left. I still wanted to not let all the fragrant herbs go to waste so after a little bit of googeling for ideas I decided to try making my own herb salt. I'm very happy with the results, and the were soo easy to make!
Now I have  tasty garlic, carrot and parsley salt, perfect for the garlic lovers and a green aromatic blend of oregano, thymes and chives that goes well with french and mediterranean cooking.
This is how I've done it:
1. Get a bunch of fresh herb of your taste and some coarse salt. I chose Sicilian sea salt.
2. Mix the herbs and salt together in a food processor. I took 50/50 of herbs and salt.
3. When it's totally blended and mushy, spread it on a baking dish and put in the oven in 50 C until totally dry. Stir a few times while drying.
4. When it's totally dry, crush it with a mortar and pestle until it's as fine as you desire.
5. Finished, store in airtight packaging.

Freshly picked herbs

Blended mix of herbs and salt ready for the oven.

Rhubarb pie and continued crafting

Summer is here at last! Recently I brought home this years first rhubarb harvest. They have such a sour fresh taste. I think the sour mixes well with sweet and crispy, like a crumbly rhubarb pie. This is how it turned out. We ate at the summer cabin together with creamy vegan vanilla sauce made from oats. It's like the taste of summer!

Crumbly rhubarb pie

Also I have been pretty busy lately with end of term exams and cat-sitting in my parents home while they are away on holiday. But I have managed to start hand quilting the flowery cat pillow from the seventies. I added some fusible fleece on the back-side and now I'm back stitching the contours.

In the middle of stitching

Flower power cat project

I found this funny 70's project in my stash. It's a cat pillow kit with typical 70's flower motifs. Right now I have been coloring the flowers with fabric markers. Soon I will quilt it and sew the pillow. Here is how far I have come now. I'll post more pictures later when I have worked on in some more.

A little poor quality on this pic as I took it with my phone.

Now the coloring is finished. I like the funky bright colors ^_^.

Felt bookmark bunny

My latest felt project is a cute bunny bookmark. I have just finished making it and this time I remembered to take a picture while making it. Felt animal bookmarks are fun to make, I use the same basic pattern but make changes according to what kind of animal it is. And what kind of expression I like it to have. This one turned out quite funny looking ^_^.

Brown amigurumi kitty

I just finished making this cute little brown kitty cat. Small things like crocheting amigurumi animals or sewing various projects keeps my hands occupied and calms my brain after hard studying. There are so many things in my stash so as soon as I look at it I get inspired to create something. In this project I used up a small ball of brown yarn. The eyes are made from a piece of white fabric that I painted and the scarf is from fleece scraps. The kitty's nose is made from polymer clay, handpainted and finished with a layer of matte sealant.
My next crochet project will be a pink little bear :)

My new sewing table

My old sewing gave up yesterday. It was in such a bad shape that while carrying it to the recycling room it fell apart. I was in dire need of a new one. It didn't need to be anything fancy, but it needed to be big enough to fit my sewing machine and serger and still have some space to work on. Also it needed to be stable enough to hold the weight of my machines and the occasional cats that jumps up and down testing the durability of all new pieces of furniture that comes inside my door.

I took a drive down to the biggest secon hand shop around here and there it was, the old school table that was going to be my new sewing table. It was sturdy and and big enough and it didn't cost almost anything, just around 20$.

Now the new table has been installed and here on the picture it has just gotten tested and proved durable enough according to the cat testing panel.

DIY thread storage

I really love to sew and with that comes the love of buying fabrics, thread and other sewing items. My thread collection was already big but after I inherited my late aunts sewing stash it completely boomed.  With this came the issue of how to store all these thread spools without having a lot of clutter or cats playing around with them. First I tried to house them in a big box, but It got really messy with unraveling spools and tangled threads. I had to find another idea.

A couple of days later I was about to go out with the trash as I saw a piece of board in the pile of discarded items left after a renovation in our home. I decided to keep that board and turn it into a thread storage board. I armed myself with wooden barbeque skewers, glue and a small electric drill. A couple of hours later it was finished. And here is the result! No more tangled threads and I hung it high enough up the wall so that the cats can't reach it. This works well for me and was really easy and cheap to make :)

You can probably make much fancier looking ones than mine :)

Retro Cat Cushions

I was going through my stash for some new funny project to begin and happened to stumble over four printed patterns for cat cushions. I remember that a few years ago I bought these funny retro patterns through an online auction. Somehow I never got onto making them straight away and they ended up in my stash for some years. But now when I was looking at them again I couldn't keep myself from dashing to my sewing corner and getting started. :)
I took a couple of pictures during the process of making them:

One of the small ones during embroidery.

This is the finished result!

Now I have three happy cat cushions perched on a shelf over my fiances desk at home, soon there will be four when the last one is finished. As a true cat loves he adores the new cushions :)

Orchid flowers

The days already starting to get lighter and longer. It's a really wonderful feeling :)
I guess my orchids like it too, many of them are sprouting flowerbuds and a couple already have started to bloom. Soon I will start repotting my plants in fresh soil after the long winter. Here are a couple of pictures of my orchids, enjoy! ^^