Miniature hand knitted scarf on Christmas card

Hello again! 

Today is the day! It's Christmas day! When people are busy celebrating Christmas and enjoying their holidays, here I am writing about my second Christmas card design for 2017. This is a card made for a dear friend of mine. I planned to post it before Christmas just like the other card I made, but unfortunately, it had to be postponed. Boohooohooo!! So sad!

I made something for my friend and I plan to post it along with this card. Until that gift is ready, I can't post it yet. So I'm pretty stressed out here trying my level best to get it done before the year is over. It could be a new year's gift as well, so I'm working as fast as I could to get it all done on time. 

I really enjoyed making this miniature scarf for the card. It's just so cute. I think I made so many of them in the beginning when I was experimenting with the measurements. I had to make sure they would fit nicely on the card. In the end, I think I made it  a bit too long for the card. To be honest, it took me longer to make the scarf compared to making the miniature sweater. Next time I'll make the scarf shorter. Lesson learned! LOL! Since it's for a Christmas card, I used a dark green and red yarn for the scarf. It's a lot harder to knit with such a small yarn but with lots of practice, it gets easier.

One thing for sure.....knitting takes such a LONG time to finish. It takes FOREVER!! hahahah!! So although the design is simple, it sure is time consuming. Since I myself am just a beginner, it takes much longer to get the job done compared to experts hahaha.

As always, every time I want to write the sentiment on the card, I will use my Speedball calligraphy pen and my favourite ink from Dr Ph Martin. I just love how smooth the ink is. Although my writing is not that great, somehow the pen makes it look good...LOL!! Believe me, the pen sure do wonders! Come to think of it, I need to get more colours for the ink. I keep using the same gold colour for my cards, over and over again. 

I really love the knitting needles that I made for knitting the scarf. Especially because of the heart shape beads that I used for them. I don't have a lot of them in my collection. Just a few left! I bought them years ago when I was staying in Kuala Lumpur. I see a lot of people who makes miniature knitted scarf for cards would use round beads like the ones I used for the miniature hand knitted sweaters. But for this one I just had to use the heart shape ones, for a couple of reasons. One because they match the colour of the scarf and second because the person who is receiving it loves hearts so much. ❤❤❤

Miniature hand knitted sweaters on Christmas cards

Hello everyone!

I'm sure a lot of you are in a holiday mood and can't wait to celebrate Christmas that is just around the corner. I've just finished making these cute pop up Christmas cards for my friends. Looks like I'm late again and the cards would probably arrive to them after Christmas.

I had it all planned out so well but God knows best. I thought this year I could get my Christmas cards done early and have them arrive to my friends a few days before Christmas. But unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned. Something horrible happened to my Mom and all my work had to be put to a stop! My Mom fell in her bathroom and hit her head on the floor a couple of weeks ago. She had to be warded for about a week and is on the road to recovery now, alhamdulillah.

It was really a difficult time for me and my Mom. None of us has ever experienced something like that before so it was an eye opener and we learned a lot from the experience. I hope to never have to go through all that again. We are indeed very very careful now. 

Actually I started making the knitted sweaters before the accident. I also made the Christmas cards as at the same time as well. But I didn't get the chance to blog about it earlier or completed the whole card because of the accident. So today I finally get to complete them all. There are actually 2 different designs of knitted cards that I managed to do for Christmas this year. The other one I will share with you here in another post soon.

I made the simplest pop up Christmas tree ever! In fact I think this is the simplest pop up I've ever made for any card. When you are in a hurry and do not have enough time, you just gotta do with what you can. I like it, and that is what is important. No point doing something you don't like right??

I can't believe that I made those tiny sweaters! They are so cute! I'm still a beginner so the pattern is very basic and very easy to do. I couldn't find any tutorial on how to make them so I just wing it! Can't believe I manage to pull it off! Hope to learn more on how to make a more realistic looking miniature sweaters in future. 

Combining French knitting and quilling on a card #2

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Hello again everyone! Looks like I've been making this knitted quilling heart card again this month. In fact I made quite a few of them for some old friends on their birthday and some extra for stock. I really enjoyed making this design because I get to play with vortex coils again and of course not forgetting the knitting!! Obsessed with knitting nowadays haha!

The reason why I'm blogging about this one is because, I've made some changes to the design especially the colours of the knitted quilling heart and also the pop up hearts. I decided to make it look more bright and cheerful to match the colours of the pop up hearts.

The knitted heart now has flourescent pink and red Lily yarn combined together. The previous one has soft pink and red Lily yarn. 

I remembered having this really cute bling bling heart stickers and I couldn't resist not sticking them on the pop up hearts. I also added those punch out hearts to add more different sizes of hearts and crowd it up a bit. The more the merrier they say. :D

I didn't put those dialogue boxes anymore with wordings in them, instead I added a Happy Birthday sticker on the knitted quilling heart. It really matches and I really love this one a lot compared to the one I made previously. It's just so cheerful to look at. Have a look at the video of the card below and you'll see what I mean. Thanks! :)

Combining French knitting and quilling on a card

HB140

When I first started learning how to do French knitting last month, I always had a thought at the back of my mind about how to use it as part of the decoration on my handmade cards. If I could combine it with quilling that would be even better. So the thought never left my mind. I knew I had to combine them somehow, one day. 

So I did some research on what people would use the French Knitting (i-cords) for. I was really surprised at the things that people can make with it. However I didn't find any examples of the i-cords used for cards, but I did find that there are people who made hearts, ribbons, stars and many other shapes with it. So, it's all up to your imagination to design whatever you fancy and make it your own.

This month I have a birthday card to make for a dear friend of mine and she's really crazy about hearts!! She loves hearts so much I tell ya! Haha! So I thought the ideas I had for this birthday card couldn't have come at the right time for her. In my previous blog post, I've already shown in it some photos of the i-cords that I used to make heart shapes with. See the photo below :

As you can see, I used Lily yarns to make the i-cord. Two different colours knitted together, to show contrast. I have lots of Lily yarns left from my previous projects, so I love the fact that I can use them up for making knitted hearts. There was lots of trials and errors before I could get that particular size. Since Lily yarns are not that thick, I had to double it to get that size.

After that I kept thinking of what shapes of quilling that would be suitable to arrange in the middle of the heart. I thought of using the quilling vortex coils because ever since I made a video of how to make them, I myself have never actually used them as decorations for any of my handmade cards. So it was great that I could use them now for this one. I made lots of them, just small sized ones in different shades of red and rose to match the colours of the knitted heart.

Usually for all my handmade quilling cards, I would use shredded quilling papers, but this time around I decided to use 5 mm standard quilling papers that I bought some time ago. The vortex coils look really neat when quilled with this paper compared to the shredded papers because the shredded papers don't have that smooth finish on the edges. So I really love the look of those vortex coils! 

As for the background decorations, I wanted to use the embroidery threads and create a pattern by sewing on the card. It's a quick, easy and simple way to beautify and fill up the empty spaces. It was a lot of fun sewing it.

I'm really excited about the pop up hearts that I used for the card! I bought it from the diy shop and it's really wonderful. So easy to use and saves me a lot of time. All that is needed to do is just paste it inside the card and then I could randomly add on more punch out hearts and sentiments on it to make it my own. There's just so many ways to make it different, again it's all up to our imagination whether we want it simple or elaborate.

I hope to make more of this card soon. It's fun to make and it can be used for more than just one occasion. That's what I love about it. Hope my friend loves it as much as I do!! Need to post it as soon as possible! :D :D

By the way, do check out the video below and see how the card pops up lots of hearts inside it! Thank you!! :)

French knitting

A lot has happened this month....I've been quilling a lot in the beginning of it but later found a new love. And that new love is French knitting! Who knew that I would be knitting one day! I never knew I could! But I can now, haha! It's all about learning new things guys!! 

Well, I've never heard of French knitting before, but it just so happens that a good friend of mine, Kak Sharifah was doing it on Facebook one day and I couldn't help but feel so curious and intrigued at the same time about it. Once I Googled and saw tutorials about it on YouTube, I was addicted like mad! I just couldn't stop doing it everyday. 

I didn't have the knitting loom at hand to do it but luckily a few kind people on YouTube made tutorials on how to make your own knitting loom using tissue rolls with Popsicle sticks and also using mineral bottles and chopsticks as well. So, seeing all that was a great relief for me since I'm very much into recycling and DIY, so it was perfect!! I immediately made a few of them, experimented on which type suits me best. It was like a great adventure! I had lots of fun experimenting on it everyday.

I first started experimenting making the loom using the tissue rolls and Popsicle sticks. That seems like the easiest one for me to do. I had lots of tissue rolls at home and also some Popsicle sticks (I bought long ago to make bookmarks with quilling flowers). When it comes to yarns, I didn't have a lot to choose from. Since it's my first time doing this, I decided to use the free yarn that I got from China long ago. After trying out knitting with it for a few inches, I realised that this type of yarn is not suitable for what I was aiming for. It didn't give me the shape I wanted. It couldn't because the yarn is too small and fragile. So I had to change the yarn! The loom itself had about 8 broad sticks, thus making the knit quite big. 

This time around, I decided to search for a thicker yarn for my experiment. Unfortunately when I was searching for yarns in my craft room, I was only able to find some Lily yarns. Lots of them!! The worst part is that, a lot of them are all tangled up from previous projects. Actually I bought the Lily yarns for my hand-bound books project years ago. I have them in a variety of colours. Too bad they are still not that thick enough and they only come in single colours. I knew I might get bored knitting a single colour at a time, so I combined two colours, and this made the knit very thick especially since the loom has 8 broad sticks on it. I planned to use this blue black cord as a handle for a knitted bag. I haven't made the bag yet, but at least I have the handle already done! hahaha!

This is my third try at making a loom. I wanted to make cords that are smaller in size and at this time I really wanted to try knitting with wool yarns. This purple wool yarn is the only wool yarn I have at hand. If I am not mistaken, my aunt gave it to me years ago when I was learning how to crochet from her. That didn't work out that well since my crochet skills were pretty bad hahaha. 

So I figured, in order to get smaller cords, I needed to have the sticks smaller in size. Immediately I thought of the bamboo chopsticks I have at home. I cut off the top part of the chopsticks and use them as pegs for knitting. I glued them on the tissue roll that I had cut as well to make the size smaller. This method worked and I finally achieved getting the shape and size of knit that I wanted. Success! The only problem was, although it got me the results, the handling of the loom was not that comfortable. So off I went to do another experiment! Haha!

This is my forth loom! My favourite so far!! This is when I thought of using the mineral bottle instead. The only reason why I used the mineral bottle is because, the opening of the bottle is pretty small which is great for making small cords and the bottle itself is transparent, which makes it easy for me to view the cord inside the bottle as I am knitting it. If you are a beginner or and advance knitter, you would understand why I want to be able to view the knit inside before it's long enough to come out of the bottle. The excitement to see how it looks can be so thrilling. I just couldn't wait to see how it looks!! You won't get that if you use the tissue roll as the body of the loom. 

Anyways....I'm so glad I finally get to make the looms myself. To buy all the looms for different types of knitting can be very expensive nowadays, so if it's not that hard, then I'll try my best to make them on myself. It sure does feel good to be able to recycle and produce some pretty things with them. 

I am not supposed to buy any new yarns until I've finished using up all the Lily yarns that I have now.....well at least finish 90% of them so that I will have some space for new supplies. I'm aiming to buy those multi-coloured cotton wool yarns. Those are so much fun to play with! :) There's just so many things that I can make with those Lily yarns. Like those heart shapes which I can use for embellishments, I can also make chains for necklaces, bracelets and many more! Hope to blog more about it when they're done. :)

Three layers tiny loops quilling flower tutorial

I'm so excited today that I finally got this quilling flower tutorial done! Wooohooo!!! The last time I did a quilling tutorial was last January, which means it was about 8 months ago. No wonder I feel so at lost when I did the video today, it's because it's been too long since I last did a tutorial. I know there are so many other tutorials that I need to do. So hopefully I will get to do more after this. Been working on this quilling flower a little over a couple of weeks now. Those who follows me on Instagram @azlinaabdul would know about it since I posted some photos of the flower there before.

In the beginning I only made the flower using just a single colour for the whole flower. Then I realized that it would look a lot better with 2 different colours, until one day I realized that using 3  different colours for each layer of the loop would be better.

It took me so long to get the video done because I needed to get the right measurements for the flowers and of course to make some samples of them as well. Also, I needed to plan out how to do the tutorial itself so that it's easy for viewers to understand what I'm teaching them. 

As always I would be using the shredded papers for my quilling tutorials. Because my main mission for making them is to help those who aren't fortunate enough to buy standard/high quality quilling supplies to not feel they need to use expensive quilling papers to make pretty crafts. They just need to be creative that's all. But of course, you could use any type of quilling paper for this quilling flower. It doesn't matter. 

My shredded papers are 3mm wide by 297mm in length. To make one flower, takes about 45 pieces of quilling strips! That's a lot of paper! I was hesitant to do the quilling tutorial because of this. When I realized how long it's going to take to make just one flower, I freaked out! I knew uploading the video on YouTube would take me hours. So I tried my best to make it as quickly as I could! Had to do some shortcuts to make it happen. But I'm glad I did it anyways. At least now I have a video of it in case I forget one day how to make the flower hahahahaha.

Hope you will check out the video tutorial below, HAPPY QUILLING!!!

DIY Jeans bag

Hi guys!! Today's post is all about recycling my old pair of jeans. Actually I have two pairs that needs recycling. Can't give them away to the needy because they are not in good condition. Who would want to wear them anyways right? They are not wearable anymore. But even though they are unwearable, I am really reluctant to throw them away because I love the material so much. Besides, there are dozens of ideas on the net that I can Google to find about what I can do with old worn out jeans.

I've seen images on Google and also on Pinterest before of old jeans turned into simple jeans bag many years ago. Back then I never thought that they were something that sewing beginners like me can do. So recently I decided to give it a go after watching a few tutorials on YouTube on how to make simple jeans bag. I dusted my old Singer sewing machine and started the jeans bag project.

For the first try, I decided to use the oldest pair between the two that I owned because I might make mistakes the first time. So if I use the worst one for my first try, which is the one that is light blue in colour then I won't feel so bad if I ruined it HAHAHA!!! Actually to be honest I would still feel bad if it didn't work out because I love both of them.

To make the jeans bag, I don't actually need to use the whole jeans. As you can see from my photos here, you'll get the idea how it's done. To make the bag, you can hand sew it if you don't have a sewing machine. But I decided to use both hand sewing and the sewing machine, depending on which part of the bag I need to sew. Because there are parts of the bag that is impossible for me to use the machine. Especially when trying to sew the handles to the bag and also the zipper.

The photos above shows how I sew the parts of the pants to make it even on both sides.

Then I would measure the length of the bag, make a line and sew from one end to the other and cut off the extra. Now the jeans looks like a bag but not quite yet because I need to sew both ends at the bottom so that it will give the bag some space inside. Otherwise it will look flat. Now all that is left is to sew the lining and later make the handles.

I searched for old fabrics in the store and I found this old square scarf that I owned many years ago.....to be exact, I wore it when I was 17 years old!!! It's a very old scarf!! LOL! Surprisingly it's still in good condition!! Maybe because I rarely wore it back then. So I decided to use it for the lining of the bag.

No fancy lining for the bag.....I just cut the enough of it for the bag and sew. I didn't make any pockets for the bag on the inside either because the material of the scarf is a bit thin. If it was cotton, it would be more suitable. I totally forgot to take photos of how I sew the handles!! Yikes!! But I did take photo of the early part where I show which part of the jeans that I used to make the handles.

This is the part! I used the whole length of the leg for the handles. I tried to make it as long as possible. If it's too short I won't be able to hang the bag on my shoulders. For the handles, I sew them using the sewing machine as it is faster and neater. It didn't take that long to sew them. It's very easy.

As you can see from the photo above, that's what the handles look like and I sew the handles and the lining at the same time inside the bag. I had to hand sew them because the top part of the jeans had some metal studs that were in the way. If I used the machine, it might break the needle. So to be safe, I decided to hand sew them instead. I did the best I can to make sure the sewing is neat and strong enough, especially for the handles, because it's a big bag. The sewing needs to be done properly or not the handle may not withstand the weight of the bag if I put a lot of stuff in it.

After I finished sewing the lining of the bag and the handles, I proceeded sewing the zipper. It took me some time to find the right zipper for the bag in Alor Setar. There's not a lot of options here for zippers. But fortunately I found one that I really love and it's suitable for a jeans bag. It's actually not meant for bags, but it's for a jacket!! But I really love it because it's so smooth when I open and close the zipper. And the best part is that it has the length that I was looking for!! Yay!! It's so difficult to find a zipper that I wanted. Sometimes I like the design but it didn't have the right length or visa versa. So this jacket zipper was perfect!!!

The first part of sewing the zip was done using the sewing machine and the final part was hand sewn. I also had to sew the end part of the zipper because as you all know, zippers for jackets don't have a stopper. So if I didn't sew the end part of it, the zipper will come off if you accidentally open it all the way to the end. Luckily that is not a difficult thing for me to solve. Just sewing it at the end solved the problem. So that's the end of the sewing project!!

In the beginning, I thought of decorating the bag with laces or some beads and buttons. Funny how in the end I prefer the bag to be left plain as it is....simple. Maybe because I myself am a very simple and practical person. I always look for function and practicality in anything. The beauty always comes second. Hope to make more handmade bags in future. It's so much fun to wear something that I make myself. :)