Crafts for the Home Industries

I like that the crafts section of the Lunesdale Agricultural show is called home industries; it makes crafts sound so much more diligent (as it should be). I dropped all 14 of my entries off at the local primary school this morning ahead of the judging today and ready for the show tomorrow.

I must admit the last few weeks have been rather busy, even without family & friends visiting to help celebrate my birthday, every spare minute I have had has been dedicated to completing my entries into the home industries. See my previous post a creative jump start for the first of my completed entries.

I entered a few greetings cards. I’m not great at making cards for the sake of make cards – they seem a bit too faffy. I much prefer to make a card when I have a specific purpose in mind and know who I’ll be giving it to. I have several occasions that I’d be making cards for coming up soon, including a few birthdays and a house warming. So I thought why not kill 2 birds with one stone, make the cards early & enter them into the show first.

I am also entering a few items that I have recently finished knitting, my clover lace wrap cardigan I finished to wear for my friend’s wedding in May and a sweet little knitted cardigan that is soon to be gifted to an old university friend who’s recently had her first child.

I have entered a handmade bag, this is something that I’ve thought about doing for a while to sell at craft fairs. I made the bag out 3 fat quarter (ish) sized pieces of fabric – which is a good way to use up those slightly too small bits of fabric. Pinks are not my usual cup of tea but I treated the bag as bit of a test run to potential future bags and I wanted to use something that’d be eye catching for the show. I like the design, I have a few ideas in mind for some pattern tweaking, I reason it needs to be a bit wider (or shorter) not 100% decided yet. I did enjoy exercising some techniques I’ve not used for a while, like flat seems and pleats.

Facebook followers will have seen a sneak peek at my embroidery entry last week. I have wanted to have a go at an embroidery for a while & have been brewing an idea for months, but there hasn’t been the right opportunity to give it ago until I saw the home industries schedule that said an embroidery – perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed stitching this and I’d happily put in up in my house once its part in the show is over. I have no illusions that this will do well, it is small & rather amateur looking but I like that about it.

Another entry is a pincushion, something I had part made and sat in a draw (for I don’t know how long), a perfect excuse to finish it off.

A slightly frivolous experiment of an entry was my items for the something new from something old class. I’ve had coke bottle caps lurking around for a while with the intension of turning them into fridge magnets and never got around to. I developed the idea a little and came up with these butterfly designs, adding in coke cans too. I thought they were fairly original and were quite easy to put together (using resin & a sticky back magnetic strip) so we’ll see what happens – there were some rather interesting entries in this class.

The last of my jewellery entries is a flower necklace; a relatively simple yet effective wirework piece, assembled with strung beads and chain to form a necklace.
The last item I spent perhaps more time than I anticipated on, but again I enjoyed making it, a cushion. I do really love paper pieced patchwork, but it’s not always practical to make large items mainly down to the time it takes. Creating a smaller piece to then embellish on a cushion I felt worked really well. I will dedicate a whole post to this cushion later.