More inspiration from Martha of Weekend Doings

Today's guest post is from Martha who blogs at Weekend Doings.

Hi everyone, I hope you are finding lots of inspiration for this month's challenge. 

I think the theme is super fun. I love nature and it is definitely a great influence on my creations. I love taking photographs of my surroundings and sometimes the smallest details captured by the lens of my camera serve as inspiration for my projects. 

The greatest influence that I get from nature is color palettes. I don't know about you, but many times I find it difficult to choose fabrics. So when in doubt or when searching for a spark in creativity I always turn to nature. 

I want to share with you a couple of my projects and the pieces of nature that inspired them.

The colors of my Feathers and Patchwork quilt were inspired by the colors of fall. I created this quilt for Christmas of 2013. So when I decided to start this quilt fall colors were all around. Bare branches and brown leaves were abundant and the mossy surfaces were starting to pop up everywhere. So I couldn't help myself but grab inspiration from those lovely autumn colors and translate them into the color palette for this quilt (one of my favorites). 

Another project that I borrowed inspiration from nature was this Half Square Triangle Quilt. I took the photo of a beautiful rose in my garden that caught my attention. The bright pink and the different shades of green seemed the perfect color combo for a summer quilt.  

There are so many ways to use nature as inspiration or to incorporate it into our projects. Nature offers us infinite sources of inspiration and I'm really looking forward to seeing your projects inspired by it. 

Isn't she talented, and those pictures are so beautiful! Thanks ever so much Martha for sharing with us how you are inspired by nature... 

Hope you are all getting on well with your own interpretation of NATURE! 

Order {More Inspiration}

It is hard to write another inspiration post after Lucy's - even I had not thought about all these potential interpretations of order, I set the themes!

Going back to my own project for order, I started by thinking 'order' - as in someone giving me an order, which should always be along these lines... 

I really wished someone gave me that order for life - especially for Monday mornings (oh, I hate Monday mornings, definitely not awesome). 

or maybe something like this.. 

 

Totally doable craft projects, right... 

Or put some order, as in organisation, in your house - if you can take that many portraits of yourself of course...

 And you could add a splash of colour order of course

 

 Or follow the order of a beautiful colour scheme

Or, like I am doing, try to have some order amongst the disorder...

So hopefully that has made you want to participate to le Challengethis month. All you need to do is come back on 15th with your 'order' entry (small, big, it does not matter as long as it is finished)! Cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Kessa's inspiration

Hello fellow crafters! I am Kessa from Kessa In Stitches, a (mostly) knitting blog. I've been invited by Nat of Made In Home to talk about this month's theme: Toffee. 

I believe that most of us (including myself) were pretty stumped by the theme when we first heard the theme. Possibly distracted by the idea of chucking down boxes of the yummy candy, rather than crafting something inspired by it.... Or perhaps that was just me. ;) But once I got started brainstorming, the ideas just kept flowing! One of the most obvious way to analyse this month's theme is by the colour. Because toffee has such a wide range of tone (from reddish, to yellowish, to brownish) around a neutral colour that pairs beautifully with many other trending colours (white, black, turquoise, coral, navy, red, etc) it makes things so much easier. 

The next thing I considered was the medium. There is a surprising variety of fabrics that looks wonderful in toffee colour:

 

Tulle.

Have you heard? Tulle is back on the scene. As a rather girly-girl personally, I'm delighted! And as this fashion blogger have shown, there are ways to wear tulle skirts without flouncing around. Personally, I think it will make a perfect combination with a slouchy handknit sweater! Interested in trying your hands at sewing a tulle skirt? Try this tutorial here.

If you feel out of place wearing tulle, how about a little flower brooch? Perhaps something along the line of these precious looking ones here:

 

Source

 

Source Or a sweet little dress for a little girl in your life?

 

Source + Tutorial Or some tulle pom poms (wedding not required)?

Not a fan of tulle? Toffee looks great in other fabrics as well:

 

Source. 

A toffee coloured garment will make a wonderful addition to the wardrobe with Autumn just around the corner.

Which brings us to the second medium: Leather/suede.

 

Not exactly made with suede but the fabric has a suede-like finish. I have made a tutorial for some easy flowy skirt and this dress/long skirt was sewn based on that tutorial.

For some reason, toffee and leather brings to mind a well-loved, well-used leather-bound book. Well, how about making one to love and use?

 

Source + comprehensive Tutorial

Another medium that looks great in toffee: Burlap.

 

I have glued some burlap fabric to old glass jars and tied some twine around it. These are made for a friend's wedding. On the night of the wedding, they will be filled with little bunches of Baby's Breath flowers for romantic but inexpensive table centerpieces.

If you're not a fan of fabric crafts, perhaps decoupage?

Here I have decoupaged a thrifted wooden box, covering it with pages from a thrifted Finnish storybook and dabbed toffee-coloured wood stain over to give it a nice vintage/aged look. A thin layer of varnish keeps it clean and fresh-looking. This was a money box for another friend's wedding, hence the slot. But after making and gifting it to my friend, I have decided there is going to be at least another one (without a slot) in the near future!

Or some beading?

 

This bracelet features pink-metallic brown donut-beads that reminds me of crunchy toffee.

 

All this research and brainstorming about toffee is not without its repercussions. ;) I whipped up some caramel (which I like to think of as liquid toffee), some for a friend and some for myself.

As a knitter, I have also been working on some toffee-inspired knitting projects this month...

These are actually designs I'm working on at the moment. They are yet to be finished, but I have 4 more days!.. Though it is highly unlikely I will finish these in time.

But all is not lost. The main craft I had chosen, and completed, is actually..... *drumroll*...

Dyeing.

 

Some cashmere taking a nice long hot bath.

 

These are what I ended up with.

 

The  toffee-inspired colours, clockwise from top left: Light Tan, 50g of Angora/Merino/Cashmere blend lace-weight yarn, Pinkish brown, 50g of Angora/Merino/Cashmere blend lace-weight yarn, Toffee Apple, 50g of 100% Silk lace-weight yarn, Toffee, 40g of 100% Mongolian cashmere lace-weight yarn.

And this is the end of my post. I hope you are inspired/have enjoyed this post and look forward to seeing everyone else's toffee-inspired projects!