Dala Horse Craftalong - join in!

Soooo.... I can finally.. reveal a little sneaky Craftalong I've been planning with a few lovely ladies! Hanna (iHanna), Kathryn (The Pickled Herring) and Pam (Gingerbread Snowflakes).

I love that Swedish icon, the Dala Horse so much and these ladies do too! You know how some little thing can turn into something a lot bigger? Well, that's what happened here: Pam asked me for suggestions decorations for a Dala horse she wanted to sew and then I said "I'm working on a Dala embroidery pattern!" and then we somehow ended up deciding that we should do a Dala Craftalong and Pam suggested we get Hanna and Kathryn involved too and then I think I kinda suggested that we should get the whole internet to craft along too! Or.. well. Maybe not that many, but perhaps YOU would like to join us?

It starts today, like right now! It "officially" finishes on August 21st, but you can keep going afterwards too! There's a Flickr group you can join!  Every week one of us will do a round up of what people have been making, so do join the group and share what you make. We've got buttons too! See below.

Perhaps you're asking yourself what you could make?

Of course you should check the blogs of my co-hosts, they will have lots of inspiration for you too!
Here are their posts from today (July 25)
Hanna posted about where the Dala Horse is made
Kathryn is showing a few Dala crafts she's previously done
Pam has lots of Dala inspired links and later on she'll show you how she made a Dala softie

I've got lots of suggestions - get inspired by those or make up your own projects. There's the Dala embroidery pattern I mentioned.

Red Dala with Branches - Blue Dala on Blue - Red Dala on White

And goodness  gracious me, I couldn't help myself, I had to use my embroidery pattern for no less than three fabric designs! So if you want a Dala that's kinda just waiting to be stitched, maybe decorating a pillow with an embroidered Dala is your thing. Or get a fat quarter of fabric and embellish that!

My pal June has an alpaca (lama) crochet pattern which you can adapt to crochet a Dala horse - and she's very happy to help you figure out how to adapt it, just shoot her an email. :-)

I am going to do appliqué with the Dala horse - I was going to sew a 3D softie Dala, but none of my attempts at making a pattern were successful! If you do know of a softie horse pattern, please let us know! Anyway, the appliqué - if you want to give that a go too, here's a template you can download, with three handy sizes.

Phew - that's a lot of information!

Here are those buttons I mentioned - if you want to add one to your blog, please download the images to your computer and then host it online somewhere. Please link the button to the Dala Horse Craftalong Flickr group. :-) Please spread the word! On your blog, on Twitter, Facebook etc!

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