A Short Update

The World Cup is too much of a distraction, so we've got nothing to show in terms of new creations.  But do you know what World Cup is good for?  Crocheting ripples!  Remember the colorful yarn we showed you in our last post? 

Well, thanks to endless nights of 7.00pm, 10.30pm and sometimes 2.30am  football-watching, they've been transformed to this!

Rows upon rows of ripples!  I've still got about...oh, maybe a hundred rows to go... if this is to be transformed into a snuggly blankie.  But never mind, one mustn't be discouraged.  Just looking at the colours is inspiration to persevere.

Still on the topic of yarn, guess what I saw at Spotlight today?

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Jean Greenhowe's pattern books!  The much-coveted books have finally hit Singapore shores!  To think that we've trawled ebay to get our hands on these books and now, they're all here - newly-arrived.  The books are not cheap - about $16-$18.  But they provide many a moment of inspiration, fun and friendly rivalry as my friends and colleagues compete to knit up the dolls.  

So, do you think you'll be seeing a return of the dolls on this blog?  Let's hope so.  Here's a hint - I have something on the needle now.

We Are Still Alive! But barely so...

For those of you who thought that we have disappeared from blogosphere altogether, sorry to disappoint you.  We at HSH, are still alive but barely so. Life (or rather, work) has a nasty way of sweeping one along, and sweeping aside dreams.  Sigh...

Anyhoo, we still try to cling to what we have started and whenever we can, we try to make something, if nothing else, but to keep our sanity in this crazy, crazy world.  Here's a quick flash of what we made - some for orders, others for friends and most importantly, mostly for ourselves :) 

Cute monochrome owl bag for my dear sister.

 Colourful owl pillow case for same sister (front & back).

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Patchwork bag for myself which was one year in the making.

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Knitted bag for Tinkerbelle which also took one year to complete.

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Amy Butler bag for a London order (UK lei, international order, don't play, play).

 Flower bag (Jap Muji style) for an order.

 But we're not always about bags (although we sure love them!).  Tinkerbelle made a Laura-Ashley-like placemat and coaster set for an order.

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And the cushion set?  Tinkerbelle made the red one for me!

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Don't you love the vintage cowboy print?

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I made a red lap quilt to go with the red cushion.  

So, guess what we are up to now?  We've decided to give our sewing machines a rest (actually, they need to be sent for servicing.  Mine is making alarmingly loud cranky noises).  Instead, we have jumped onto the ripple wagon.

The what?  Ripples, colourful ripples in crochet.  Let me show you a work-in-progress. 

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Don't you think they are just so cheerful?  This one is being made into a cushion cover.  I plan to make a bigger piece into a vintage tube dress.  Here's the full set of colours (the yarn are made of Egyptian cotton and costs $8.20 each).

Tinkerbelle and I are also going to crochet a big ripple blankie (probably will be a 10-year project for me, so don't expect to me hearing from me very soon).  Anyway, here are the colours for me.  I'll just revel in the lovelies in the meantime.  These yarm are 80% made of bamboo and costs $7.90 each - how's that for being eco-friendly too?

Well, that's all folks.  I can't promise as to when we'll be back.  But you can bet that we will not give up our craft and will keep those fingers flying!
 

Invasion of the Russian Dolls

Aiya!  We feel so bad about flaunting other people's commissioned pieces in your face and leaving you craving with nothing on offer.  So, just as a little teaser, we have decided to at least make some things for sale.

Remember these?

At $5 a piece, we have sold out all the bag tags.  In order not to disappoint those who have missed out on the opportunity to own these cuties, we have embarked on this:-

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We are mass producing some more bag tags.  Look out for more colours and combinations.  No two are the same and that had made it fun for us.

Besides the bag tags, we also made bags from Russian Doll fabric.

These also proved to be very popular, so we bravely decided to order more fabric.  All 5 metres more.  Hmmm...I hope we can make quite a few bags from this. 

We've also bought other types of Russian Doll fabric - really interesting designs and hope to feature them in time to come.  But the above bag?  This will always be a HSH classic - for its simplicity of design and striking dolls.  It is simply "People see, people like", if you don't mind me saying so (ahem).


Being bitten by the Russian Doll bug, I seem to be acquiring all Russian-Doll-like things, like this.

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Do you know what is this?

It's a container with a pin cushion inside.  Don't you think it's cool?  Do you think the Felt Team can be persuaded to make something like this? 

Hello? Hello?

Hello?  Is anyone still out there? Or have you all given up on us?  For that one of you still bothering to read this blog.  Thanks for sticking around and we promise not to disappoint you by going missing again.

So, what's been happening?  What with the Chinese New Year celebrations and overseas vacations (what?  we are humans too, you know.  we also need a break), the folks at HSH have been slowing easing back to work-mode by custom making bags for our loyal customers.  We didn't really want to show you, in case you get bag-envy and we can't make the same bag for you 'cos the fabric was provided by our customers.  But if you promise to be good and not to covet, here's a peek at some of the things we have made.

Don't the baby blue and roses remind you of something?  

You're right - it's the theme of my house decor!

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This quilted patchwork bag is all "poofy" and soft.

Almost huggable, if you can call a bag that.

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This bag was painstakingly put together by the Felt Team.

One button, by one button.

Eh... what are these?

Very different from our usual sweet/pretty things, right?

Let's have a closer look.

It's Mario.  We hope to make two little Mario-crazy boys very happy.

Well, that's all folks.  Once we get our orders out of the way, we hope to go back to creating new things for your viewing and buying pleasure.

Other knick-knacks

HSH has been busy making commissioned pieces, so we haven't had time to design and make new bags, or to go fabric-shopping (how will the economy cope without our spending?).  But since chinese new year is around the corner, we decided to join in the fray and make something for the season.

What's this, you ask,  Let me show you what we did with it.

Don't you think that it's useful in holding new year goodies?  I don't know about you but I don't like the typical new year candies.  Nothing beats my all-time favourite "belly-button biscuits".  I like to eat the colourful icing candy on top 1st and my favorite is the pink coloured ones.

Don't worry if you don't have the same dish as me.  We've padded the fabric container sufficiently that you can still use it without a dish and you can even mould it to whatever depth you desire, like so...

And like all things we make, this dish is of course, reversible.

The dish can also be used to hold your other knick-knacks.  I think it will be useful to hold all those paper clips in the office.  I do so hate to find paper clips scattered on my desk.


Not to be left out, the Felt Team has also been making some commissioned pieces of their own.

These personalised handphone pouches made wonderful gifts.  Don't you think the colours are so sweet?  I love the hand-embroidery of the names - you can't get that outside.

We Love Russian Dolls!

A couple of posts ago, we featured some of the commissioned bags we made.  Remember this?

 

Well, the response to these bags was most enthusiastic and people started asking for the bags.  Now, you must remember that the bags were commissioned pieces, which meant that the fabric was supplied by the customer.  But this kind customer was kind enough to share with us the supplier of the fabric.  And so, HSH climbed mountains and crossed seas to import these rather expensive fabric for you.

  

So, now we can show you these...

And we didn't just stop at making the bags.  We also made these...

Don't you think these bag tags are the cutest?  We're going to make more from each and every doll on the fabric.  And wait, we've got more of such fabric in different colours.  Let's see what else we can make with them.  Oooh!  This is so exciting and fun!

Another customer also passed us Russian Doll fabric.  But this time it is very different.  We made a Petit Bucket bag with her fabric.  We certainly hope she likes it!

Ya, I agree, it looks entirely different from the Petit Bucket bags you've seen so far.  This is certainly more hip and therefore suited for the young at heart.  I think it would look great with jeans.  Anyway, let's have a look at the Russian dolls on this fabric.

Ain't they cute?  Do you think they will start yet another fabric trend?

Anyway, since there's so much interest in the Russian dolls, I decided to do a little research (by that, I mean I just googled lah) and was disappointed that there was no romantic story behind these dolls.  Found out that they were just some dolls which the Russians copied from the Japanese, and the dolla won some toy contest.  An interesting fact is that the dolls can be of either gender and the smallest one is usually a baby. 

The Russian doll bags (which fits a laptop nicely) retail at S$32 and the bag tags at S$5.

Commissioned Bags (Part 2)

Last week I shared about how fun it was for us to make our bags out of fabric provided by customers.  We kept being surprised by how different a bag can look just with a change of fabric. 

 Do you remember this?

Yup!  It's Petit Bucket, a very dainty bag, well-suited for CNY visitation.  Really!  I managed to put 4 oranges, a stack of ang-pows and my personal effects in it.  All in this petit-looking (key word being "looking") bag.   Don't you think the print is reminscent of the coming of spring?

Anyway, we got commissioned to make Petit Bucket with another fabric and this is the result.

 

Very different look, right?  Although the main motif are still flowers, this bag has a rather antique look.  It's more suited to a woman of sophistication.  See?  even the fabric inside is more muted.

Same bag pattern, different fabric, different look but same fine workmanship, courtesy of Tinkerbelle.  Next week, we'll show you yet another Petit Bucket, with an entirely different fabric. You'll be surprised!

Doing commissioned bags isn't always about using different fabric.  Sometimes, our classic bag patterns get a whole revamp.  Remember our reversible totes (the very 1st bag made for sale here)?  This was recently re-made with a special girl in mind.

Remember her?

 She's Anne of Green Gables.  HSH made a lap quilt based on her motif last year (link).  This quirky and optimistic orphan had inspired many with her adventures.  So, we got an order to make a Anne of Green Gables tote.  It was a tall order as I wanted to do justice to such a charming girl.  It would not be an ordinary tote.  It would have to be one-of-a-kind, as unique as the girl who's featured on it and the girl who'll be carrying it.

We managed to find complementary print fabric to match it.  The boy on the top right corner is Gilbert (Anne's childhood nemisis-turned-teenage-good-friend).  I wish he and Anne will just get together - I'm reading the 3rd Anne book now and she's still fighting shy.  I heard that they eventually do end up together.

Hey, did you notice the lace I've added?  I think it's detail like this that gives a nice touch.  See?  even the floral trimming at the top gives this bag a rather boho look.  I decided to use denim as the main material so that this bag doesn't end up too girly. 

I know the picture is a bit crooked and the trimming is not even in width, but that adds to the charm of this handmade bag.  If you want a perfect bag, go buy it from the many pushcarts selling cheap bags factory-made en masse in China.

Besides making bags based on our classic designs, a customer challenged us to make a bag based on a famous design.  This, is the Sanibel bag, a design by the famous Amy Butler (I love her fabric designs too!).

 

It's a huge tote, with many, many pockets.  The last we counted, there were 16 pockets in this bag, 3 on the outside front, 3 on the outside back, 2 on each side of the bag, 3 on the inside front and 3 on the inside back.  While we always relished a challenge, we were rather intimidated by this bag.

Luckily, this customer referred us to several crafters who managed to make this bag.

 

Armed with their instructions, we attempted to make a prototype of the Sanibel bag.  And this is the result...

Hmm, I think we did quite a good job, if I may say so myself.

You've got the pockets on the inside.  Besides this one pocket featured, we've got 3 more pockets on the other inside. Then, there were all the pockets on the outside and the sides.  Really, we were quite overwhlemed with pockets by the time we were done.  I would be losing all my stuff in so many pockets!

Pockets are not the only distinguishing feature of this bag.  It is also expandable.

All in all, we think it's a very cool bag.  Something I'll be proud to carry around.

Hey, maybe it'll become HSH's nex "IT" (as in "popular/trendy" and not "information technology", duh) bag!  You say?