The Cake is a lie... but my companion cube foot stool is.... er not?

Halleluiah IT'S FINALLY FREAKING FINISHED!!!!

 I've been working on this foot stool for jebus only knows how long.... but yesterday I finally finished it. You all have Lewy to thank for it, he came and plopped it down on my lap while I was watching How Clean Is Your House (rather than actually cleaning it like I should but shhhhh!), told me he was sick of looking at it half finished and that I had better finish it off before the end of the day.

Now lucky for my I only had a small bit left to go, otherwise I might have just broken down and cried right there on the lounge with images of lounge room rubbish tips blaring in the background....

And the best thing of all? You can make this thing yourself.... and no it doesnt have to be footstool size!

 To the left here we have the basic pattern you need... I did forget to mention that the whole big square needs to be in dark grey felt or material... but this is pretty much all you need to know. You can re-size this pattern any way you like... make a teeny tiny one... make a gigantic one... make whatever you want out of it!










Steps:

All my pretty pieces, and sewn the hearts and "legs"on

1. Cut out all your pieces. If you're using the pattern I have given you I suggest cutting out the whole big square first, then cutting out the other pieces from inside, will save you having to print the pattern out multiple times. I made my squares about 1.5 feet because after all I did make a foot rest and it would be hard to rest your achy feet on a pillbox.
2. First of all you need to sew the heart shape into the center of the circle shape. Do this until you run out of hearts and circles.
3. You need to attach the purple "legs" (for lack of a better word to call them at the moment" to the top, bottom, and each side of the circle. It should look like you have sewn the circle with the heart on it into the middle of a big plus sign, and do this until you run out of purple pieces and hearts, you should have 6 at the end one for eac
h face of the cube.

Sewing those corners together!

4. Now you can save time by doing this step now, or you can save it for later. If you have a sewing machine handy I suggest you do it now because it really will save some time! Take three pieces of the Corner shape and sew the long sides together, you will get a pyramid shape. Do this until you run out of corner shapes, you should end up with 8 sewn together pieces. Take the light grey rectang
le pieces and sew one end of the short edges together. Now set these pieces aside, because you wont need them until the very end.
5. Take your heart on a plus sign pieces, and you are going to sew them on to each face of the cube. I found that pinning them in place helped me center them better while I was stitching them on. (Let me tell you a sewing machine would have come in soooooo handy at this point, and this is why this darn thing took soooo long to finish!)
6. After you have stitched all the faces on you are ready to make them into a cube. I found that stitching them all together in a big cross shape was more effective than trying to sew them into shape one by one... so you do four long in a row, it doesnt matter which way the row goes, just make sure that your purple "legs" line up and touch each other. Then on the second square of the row you will sew one on the top and one on the bottom of the row so it looks like a cross shape. (not an "X" cross but more of a "t" cross)

My "cross" shape

7. Now stitch all the edges together around the two prongs of the cross to make the cube, this can be a bit tricky if you're using a machine, but its alright if you round the corners a little bit on the cube because they will be covere
d up at the end. Make sure you leave a spot open so you can flip the whole thing inside out (so the seams dont show) and so you can stuff it!
8. Stuff that thing until your hearts content... but please dont over stuff it, just remember it's a COMPANION CUBE not a COMPANION BALL. Then after you're finished stuffing it stitch closed the opening. I found it best to leave one of the corners open to do this step since they are going to be covered up at the end it doesnt really matter if you have a noticeable seam after you close it up.
9. Time to put those corners on! This bit was also a bit tricky, you dont
want to put them on too tight because they are supposed to protrude from the cube a little bit, stitch around 2.5 of the sides then take a small amount of stuffing and cram it into the corner just to make it a bit more "corner-ey". and continue to stitch around the last side, tie off the thread and viola you have just done a corner!

10. Last step! The rectangle pieces you have laying around will go over the purple "legs" and in between the two corner pieces you have done. Stitch around all of the edges you can put a little bit of stuffing in this bit as well if you like but thats up to you. Tie off all your edges and you're finished!

 Now you may have noticed in my "finished" picture up there my rectangles in the middle dont look as though they have seams in the middle. Don't worry I'm not that adapt at sewing by hand... me in all my smartness didnt cut enough of them in the first place, and therefore had to make do with one to cover the whole distance instead of two thats why it looks a little bit stretched... but still I'd rather have one that I made myself than one that I bought from the shops and paid a ridiculous amount of money for.... seriously it couldnt cost them any more to make than it did you right? So why can they charge $50 for it when it barely costs $15 to make? HUGE PRICE MARK UP!!!! and mine looks just as good anyways!

Now so no one sues, all rights to the companion cube are for whoever made the portal game... i dont take credit for coming up with the design or the name or any of that stuff... I do however take credit for the pattern.... because lets face it you would have to be a freaking rocket scientist to come up with that on your own!

Now if you will all excuse me, I'm gonna go and put my feet up, have a nice cup of tea and watch some more bad youtube videos that make me feel guilty for not cleaning or eating the right foods.... and then I'm going to go to work and deal with some screaming children while I can barely breath out my nose due to my allergies not being able to make up their minds if they want to act up or not....

Yes I am in my pajamas.... but it is not even 9am and I will probably stay in them until I have to change clothes for work..... Don't Judge ME!!!! By the way I freaking love my socks, they have pandas on the toes, and the colors are so bright they almost glow in the dark! I just wish they were a little bit warmer, because it was 2 degrees outside this morning.... 2! I'm bloody freezing here!!!

Now that I think about it actually I'm gonna have to hide my pretty and comphy new foot stool.... because lets face it, it's pretty and comphy and the mario mushroom foot stool that I made for Lewy ages ago has gone a bit... er, flat.

 

Which is pretty funny when you think about it because when I first made it it looked like 

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and Lewy squished it with his big man feet!

The Teddies!

First of all, let me state that there has been a problem... I am not sure if it has to do with the loss of my laptop or what has happened, but all of my blog photos and videos have seemed to disappear...

I was able to replace 98% of the blog photos, luckily because I have them all saved to my pc (which Lewy fixed for me) but the videos are pretty much gone... they were all done using the webcam attached to the laptop and not saved anywhere but here *sad face*

One of the ones affected was the blog about the little teddy bears I made, so I decided to do a proper blog about them... I did leave the other post up because it has the link to the ravelry website so you all can get the pattern... but here is is one more time.

The pattern is pretty straight forward, all knitted on straight needles and sewn together, it's overall a very cute little teddy bear and they are pretty addictive to make.

These pictures are just a few that I made, the brown one on the right went to little Bella, and a twin one went to Daniella for her first Easter, the black one with the white face goes to my mom, the stripy one went to my cousin Ashley's little boy Dylan, and the two little ones are what I like to call my Mr & Mrs bears. They take about 3 days for me to make, the larger ones take the least amount of time, but because my fingers tend to cramp up a bit when knitting for long periods of time I have to put it down and rest a little before starting up again, if you are able to do the whole amount in one sitting it should only take you a day or two at the most to finish one off. I thought it would be pretty fun to play around with them a little bit, hence the stripes and the accessories. The brown bears both had sewn on felt eyes, but you can use fabric paint (like I have done for the rest of them) or even buttons, but I wouldn't suggest that if you plan on giving the finished product to a small child.

 Now the only thing I do differently from the pattern is that I don't stitch closed the neck, I attach the head and the body together using the cast on edges as a guide, I find it makes the whole thing a little bit stronger which is good if you want to have little kiddies dragging it around. The Mr & Mrs Bears were by far my favorite to do, because they have accessories!

 The Mr bear is sporting a nifty little felt top hat, a stunning little mustache, a powder blue tie to match Mrs bear, and not pictured is his little Ball and chain... While Mrs bear is sporting a lovely white veil with a jeweled tiara in blue and silver, as well as a nice little bouquet of silver roses! The had their eyes put on using fabric paint, Mrs bear had a nice little pre-wedding nose job because I made the mistake of painting on some horrid red lips that made her look like a clown, but luckily enough I had enough yarn left over to make her a new nose.

The Little Envy Doll!

That's right we have a doll!!!! Look at her there in all her glory, hand made by my using a pattern I made entirely by myself all HAND SEWN including her hair.

Yes I have a pattern for her, but no I cannot upload it. Not because I dont want to, but because I do not have a working scanner at the moment, and it was not previously scanned to my computer (sad face) it is sitting here in front of me in an envelope however...

This little girly I have decided to keep for my own daughter whenever she decides to grace us with her presence. But I have made two others, one is a blank state sitting in the bottom of my craft drawers just waiting for a face and some hair and clothes, the other was made into a ninja baby. This is a long story and no I wont go into it, but this one ended up going to one of my very bestest friends ever.
 They all start out blank, bald heads, no eyes. The face is just a sort of round ball with ears attached and a small bead or button sewn in the front for the nose. I do that bit before I start to stuff them. The head and body are all attached and stuffed, the arms and legs are attached separately using buttons so they move up and down like real arms and legs.
After everything is attached and secured I can start to add the details, like ankles and elbows, even a belly button. Because they are all babies (and I really suck at making mouths) I cut the tip off some old dummies or "passifiers"  and used some super glue to attach them to where the mouth would be, just under the nose. Next I drew a line with a pen for where the hair should go, and using a hair colored yarn, I doubled the length I wanted the hair to be, and started to sew around the line, by folding the yarn in half and stitching through the fold to attach the strand to the head. This takes a lot of time though and I don't recommend that you try and do it if you have no patience. I tied the hair up into either pony tails or pig tails just so I didnt have to do as much sewing. Next we put the eyes on the face, you can do any type of eyes you want, felt eyes, glass eyes, googly eyes, or even paint them on! You can make some doll clothes to fit if you like or buy some, or even use some old baby doll clothes.