Allison Kreft Abad

Fabric & Stitching Wall Art

It's been a while since I sat down and took my time crafting anything. My baby girl is due in about 2.5 months - so I think this has something to do with it. Yesterday I decided to make some wall art to hang in her nursery.

I used embroidery floss, and printed out the word Love for a template. I used the printed template to poke holes through the paper & canvas using a pin. This way I had a guide for the letters.After I finished the word love- I used a piece of fabric (with my owl design from Spoonflower) to make a heart balloon. I stitched around the heart, left a small opening and filled it a little pillow stuffing little to add dimension. Once I put the stuffing in- I just finished stitching around the heart.I love how it turned out, and it was fun playing with my own fabric design. Let the nesting begin....

UPDATE: Owl fabric available in my spoonflower shop. 

Fabric anyone?

I've been having some fun lately playing with my designs on fabric. What do you guys think? Any favorite designs you would like to see on fabric?

Rolled Fabric Flower Headband

When Adelle was baptized I wanted to make her a special headband for the day. I had some extra peices of material leftover from my wedding dress, and thought it was the perfect fabric for the headband.

For this project you'll need a piece of fabric about 1" x 18".  If you have a long enough piece of fabric then this could be a no-sew project. I did however use my sewing machine to make a long enough piece to use.

Start by folding your fabric in half and rolling the center together. Use a hot glue gun to keep it together.  (your fabric will probably not be as stiff/thick as my wedding dress fabric shown here) Keep rolling the fabric around the edges and add glue as needed.

Glue the last part of fabric to the side of the flower.
I repeated the steps above for a 2nd flower, and added them to a vintage piece of elastic I found.

Paper Wallets

Some of you might remember this post from last year about these wallets. Well, I made them again (using my paper designs) for some local holiday art shows and I've had some requests to put them on etsy. Everytime I make these, I want my designs to be printed on fabric as well.

There's only a few wallets for sale right now. I have some more I will list over the next few days. Visit my etsy store here.

*I also have an art show this weekend in Cupertino, CA (Dec.10th) Please e-mail me if you would like details. I will be selling mostly my hand-blown glass (lots of ornaments and pumpkins), plus a few wallets.

Easy wall decorations

My sister lives in an old building (which used to be a mansion) that's converted into different apartments. She wanted to decorate one of the walls but since it's very old she could only hang light-weight decorations. I was excited when she told me her idea for wall decor. I gave her a bunch of embroidery hoops that I had been collecting at garage sales for cheap. Then she went through my stash of scrap fabric (and a friends) to find colors that looked good together. She decided to hang a variety of embroidery hoops with different pieces of fabric inside. Super easy and it turned out cute! (I just need a different camera lens to get a pic of the whole room to share...) 

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DIY Owl Costume

For Halloween this year I decided to dress up as an Owl. I saw this tutorial on Elise Larson's blog (abeautifulmess.typepad.com) last year by Chelsea from Seablanket.com.
She created a DIY lady bird costume that looked like a lot of fun to make. I made mine a little different so it looked more like an owl. I started by pinning all the yellow feathers to my dress, and followed her directions to work from the bottom of the dress up when added the remaining feathers. I quickly switched to gluing the feathers and used Aleene's Fabric Fusion glue. (This glue saved me!) I also cut the feathers with a point instead of rounded ones like hers. The mask was made from felt and scrap fabric and put it on a headband. I thought the look would be complete once I crimped my hair to look like feathers. (one of my favorite purchases from college) The costume did take me a long time, more like 3+ hours. Since I've had my baby Adelle everything takes longer now:)

...and of course I have to show what Adelle was dressed up as. Yoda! My husband bought the costume because she is "yoda's size"!

The baby's room

As some of you know, we live in a 1 bedroom condo. Once I got pregnant we thought about possibly moving, but because of the economy (and the idea of moving while pregnant didn't sound like fun) we decided to stay in our place. One of the biggest challenges was turning our walk-in closet into the baby's room. It was a lot of work- but I'm so excited with the way it turned out!! 

Here's the before/after pic of what our closet looked like.  We bought an ikea wardrobe for the bedroom which is where our clothes and everything else is now. 

For the baby's room I wanted it to be a nice mix of modern and vintage. Zach painted the wall with a stencil I found on etsy. He used a non-toxic silver paint to get it a clean modern look. We also repainted the dresser white and grey (which I found for $5 at a garage sale) to use as our changing table. My mom and I have been collecting fun vintage baby items at estate sales. This old metal scale is one of my favorite finds.  We also found this metal circus tray in Chicago over the summer when I was about 8 weeks pregnant. I knew right away I wanted to hang it in the nursery.  
The other pieces hanging above the crib are also vintage, maybe from the 60's. The middle one is paper dolls you can cut out and change the outfits. The one of the right is titled "What is a Girl" - you can tell it's dated from the text, but it's so precious. The fabric wreath and pennent banner were giving to me at my baby shower! They are both handmade and the colors are just perfect!

Now we are just waiting for the baby to get here...

Onesie Iron-Ons

When I was at a garage sale, I found a bunch of brand new onesies for 25 cents - $2.00 each. They were plain white or had a nike logo on them. Since they were new, I figured this would be a fun challenge to find a way to make them cuter! I knew right away that the Sukie Iron-Ons from Chronicle books would be a perfect to use on the white ones, plus I could use the iron-ons to cover the logo. (at least most of it) I still have a few more to iron on, I want to use the tree and buildings you see on the cover- but this is what I have so far. 

Vinyl Wallets

I've bought these wallets from Dear Sukie in the past and absolutely love them. When I found out Kristy was on Martha Stewart and shared a tutorial I decided to give it a "try" using some of my favorite papers. Here's how mine turned out.

It was fun adding the rub-ons, and the little custom tags like she does on the back.

The best part was picking out an assortment of papers for each wallet. It's fun to see my designs used like fabric for the wallets.

The rest of the project didn't go as well as I planned. It took way longer than I thought it would, there are a lot of pieces to keep track of. Sewing through the all the layers of vinyl was a little tricky. Next time I think I'll contact Kristy at Dear Sukie and have her custom make a few more for me. Her prices are really reasonable, and they would be great gifts for the holidays!

This did inspire me to create a new project using vinyl for purses. I'll be posting that project/tutorial closer to Christmas.

VOUGE Patterns

We don't normally post some of the press we get,  but we thought this was really fun! VOGUE Patterns, a sewing magazine featured our rub-ons & sewing stickers as editors choice. It's a great to see our Hambly products shown in a new magazine!  Plus it's cool they have a picture of the rub-ons on the DIY Bangles. This is an easy & popular project if you haven't tried it yet.  (You can see a video half-way down in this previous post from CHA)

Pin Cushion Swap

I recently participated in Leigh-Ann's pin cushion swap :)

Here's the one i made. I've been in the mood to sew lately so this was the perfect project! For a little extra touch i used bird rub-ons on some old buttons. (I put a thin layer of diamond glaze over to protect them.)

And of course i added a few rub-ons to the padded envelope package. I figured the dressform & sewing machine were perfect to use. I also received mine in the mail from my partner! It's so cute- Thanks Jenny :)

Easy makeover

Kerry Lynn just posted this fun little makeover of her sewing machine on her blog. I'm totally going to steal this idea- what a fun way to make a plain white machine more exciting- just add rub-ons!!

a little sewing

I've been working on a sewing project for a friend. I can't share the whole thing until later- but here's a little peak. This was my first time using appliques- it worked great except for the extra glue that got stuck on my ironing board..ugh. Anyone know how to remove it? I also used metallic blue tread for the clouds. So much fun!

back from CHA

*updated- I'll try and get a tutorial up on the pillows by the end of the feb...but then you guys might see that i really don't know how to sew *

**i also wanted to say that our rub-ons are really made for papers, & overlays, but they can work really great on other surfaces. Make sure you do a little test first- so you don't ruin your project. The pillows i made were pretty tricky- i had to temporarily stick down the fabric using a removable tape. This way i was rub-ing them on a hard flat surface...just wanted to give you a heads up if you decide to try it on fabric. Also keeping your rub-ons fresh and in the resealable bag will also make them easier to use.**

What a great show! It was so nice to see so many of you stop by our booth at CHA. I feel like i have so many friends that i look forward to seeing at these shows. It was also great to see the response to all the new designs! It seems like everyone has a different favorite.
 
One of the cool things also about CHA is that it's a lot more than just scrapbooking - it's cool to see all the art companies there as well. Traci is an awesome mixed media artist with a very unique style, it was cool to hear about her product Collage Pauge - i can't wait to try it out.

I decided it would be fun to sew more pillows for the booth using our rub-ons on the fabric. I love the way they turned out. I used the fabric modpodge on part of the rub-ons to help protect them, they have a distressed look to them after being handled by so many people. They still look great, i'm now enjoying them on my couch at home. **i also wanted to say that our rub-ons are really made for papers, & overlays, but they can work really great on other surfaces. Make sure you do a little test first- so you don't ruin your project. The pillows i made were pretty tricky- i had to temporarily stick down the fabric using a removable tape. This way i was rub-ing them on a hard flat surface...just wanted to give you a heads up if you decide to try it on fabric. Also keeping your rub-ons fresh and in the resealable bag will also make them easier to use.**

Celine from our DT stopped by with her friend Karine. She dropped off a new issue of her magazine and Karine also gave us her book that is filled with lots of great mini books using a ton of Hambly! Cute Amy from Amy Tangerine was also at the show-  here i'm wearing one of her fun shirts!
Our storage also got a little damaged/cracked in shipping - so we decided to cover the doors with some of the new overlay designs. I think it turned out pretty good for a quick fix. It looks way better than before.

Welcome 2009!

Wow i can't believe it's already well into the first week of 2009! I think this is going to be a great year! CHA is just around the corner and we are busy here with new products. The sneak peaks will start in a few weeks!

For our Christmas this year - we gave all handmade, recycled, reused (including thrift stores/garage sales)  or green gifts! It was so much fun to see what everyone came up with. I gave everyone my favorite resuable shopping bags. The small one i keep in my purse at all times. Plus i made pillows with my new sewing machine!! We just got it as a wedding gift. The last time i used a sewing machine was in my jr. high home-ec class, and it all came back to me. I used bunch of random fabrics, plus I thought it would be neat to use the Out on a Limb rub-ons for my sisters pillow! 

To put the rub-ons on the material i first used a temporary adhesive to lightly adhere the back of the fabric to a piece of wood to make sure it laid flat. I used the brown owl rub-ons, then seemed to go on the fabric the easiest. (i've noticed the rub-ons don't work on all fabric - so it's best to do a little test first) I also used a thin layer for fabric modge over the rub-ons. I loved the way they all looked on my couch- i may have to make more for myself! When we were shopping in downtown Chicago during the holidays we went into Urban Outfitters and look what we found!!!  They were just shipped, so this was the first time we saw them in their stores- it was pretty cool to see our designs hanging there!