Letters to Santa

Have you written your letter to Santa yet?
I have been on an ornament making kick lately.  Just the thing to get me in the mood for Christmas decorating.  I saw some cute little knitted letter ornaments here and was inspired to make some fabric ones.   I decided to make mine letters to Santa.  I have plans to make one for each of my children to hang on the tree so they can put little letters into them.  I have a feeling the elves might come along at night and take them off to Santa ;)

I've been having a lot of fun choosing fabric to fussy cut for the stamps and the envelope lining.

What have you been making for Christmas?

Sewing in Secret

This past week I've been sewing in secret.
A birthday present for my soon-to-be-17-year-old daughter (man, that makes me feel old!!).

She's a Girl Guide and has been working towards the Queen's Guide Award.
She needed to learn a new skill as part of the award, and to my delight she chose patchwork!
Ok, so it was partly an easy option because she knew I could help, but it's so nice to have her showing some interest.  She's been making a very cute doll's quilt for her little cousin as her first project.  And she's often raiding my sewing stuff for needles and thread to sew on Guide badges.

So, with her birthday coming up I decided to make her a sewing kit of her own, with all her own supplies, to help feed the crafty interest!

I've had this travel sewing kit by Amy on my list to make ever since I first saw it.  I adore her patchwork version, so went with that one for mine too.  I'm a little embarrassed looking back at hers, how similar mine is.  I mean, I even put that little deer print in the same spot!!  We obviously have many of the same prints in our stashes :)

The deer placement was completely unintentional.  I wanted to avoid my usual agonizing over layouts so heaped my squares on the table and shut my eyes as I rummaged around and picked up each one.  I have to say, it turned out great and I can't imagine liking it more had I carefully placed each one.  I'm undecided about the red binding, but it's Mia's favourite colour, so it seemed the right choice.

I filled it up with pins and needles, needle threaders and a seam ripper, cute purple scissors and a matching tape measure and a rainbow of thread-filled bobbins for sewing on those colourful Guide badges :)

Now it's wrapped and ready.  I hope she loves it!  Now, just have to make one for myself :)

A blanket for bunny

My four year old daughter has been home sick (and extremely bored!) this week. So yesterday I put her to work making a little quilt for her bunny. It's something she's been begging me to make for ages. We cut out a piece of background fabric and then I handed over my tub of little scraps that I've been saving since I saw this tickertape mini by the amazing Amy of nanaCompany.

Little miss had a lovely time arranging and rearranging the scraps to make pictures.

She finally settled on this.

There's a very elaborate story behind it all. There's a princess on the left there with a purple triangle crown and her very tall Rapunzel-like tower on the right. BUT the ladder is broken so the tower conveniently has monkey bars coming out the window (white with red flowers) and a fireman's pole (green polka dot and the rolling pin) to slide down!

I used a fabric glue stick to lightly attach all the scraps so I could stitch them down.

A little bit of quilting and it was done. Miss E chose the pink backing fabric and I folded it over from the back to bind the edges.

I think it's super cute and I'm quite proud of myself for handing over so much creative license. It goes a bit against my nature!

Of course now teddy wants one too!

Fun at the Fair

So today I can reveal the rest of my fairy floss block for Megan in the Cocorico Bee. Her theme was County Fair and I chose to make her a fairy floss cart.

I pieced most of the cart and then added the fairy floss and wheel using raw edge applique. I also appliqued the dome for the sugar spinner and then did a little thread sketching to add more details.

I'd also picked up some cute carnival fabric while I was deciding what to make. I tried a few ways of incorporating it into my block, most of which made the whole thing super busy! So in the end I just pieced my cart and then added strips of the novelty print down either side. It's still pretty busy and I'm half in the mind to take them off and switch the border to a solid. Think I'll run it past Megan first.

To keep me in the right frame of mind our local country show was on last weekend. I was a little under the weather with a cold but the rest of the family went and came home with showbags and stories of wood chopping and pink chickens and rides.

AND some fairy floss for ME!

And so, it's done! I actually managed to finish my March bee blocks and the carseat quilt before my carpal tunnel surgery. With 3 days to go. So relieved!

Now I have to brace myself for the frustration of having to put all the things I want to make on hold for a while. Can anyone recommend a good book?!!

A Finish!

The first quilt I ever made took me (can't believe I'm admitting this...) 6years!!! I started it not knowing anything about patchwork or quilting and in my defence I also had 2 babies and moved continents twice in that time. The funny thing about it is I used a pattern from a book titled "Kid's Quilts in a Weekend"!!!! Took me slightly longer than that :)

This is the second quilt I've ever made. It's not even a cot siz

ed quilt, just big enough to cover my baby niece for trips out in the pram or car seat. No fancy quilting, just some straight lines in the ditch. But I must admit I'm quite proud of getting it done start to finish!

After all my designing quilt blocks lately, it felt a bit like cheating to use a pattern and only one collection of fabrics, but maybe my third quilt can be a more creative one.

I used this pattern from ModaBakeShop and a charm pack and yardage of Domestic Bliss.

It's a lot brighter than the fabrics I usually go for, but my sister likes bright and I quite love the aqua and eggplant coloured prints. The backing is definitely

my fave print from this range.

This will be off in the post next week just in time before the weather turns cooler.

And yes, I will show you that other quilt sometime!

flossy peek

This month seems to be just flying by. Or is that just me? I'm having carpal tunnel surgery on my hand next week so I've been madly trying to finish up my March bee blocks before the surgery puts me out of action! I think I'm going to make it, but I'm still scrambling a bit!

My Cocorico block for this month is for Megan. Her theme is County Fair. My block is almost done. I thought I'd have it done today until I realised I don't own even one tiny scrap of black fabric which is what I need to finish it! Here's a little peek:

And this little blue block is my do.Good Stitches block for this month. It's an extra large block (about 23"square) which will become a mini quilt for the charity Blankets of Love for a sick or premature baby. I loved making that one. I had a pink one in my head but found I had much more blue fabric! I love how it turned out and I hope that it will bring some comfort to one little baby (and his Mum and Dad).

I've also been madly finishing off a little car seat quilt for my brand new baby niece. I used this pattern from Moda Bake Shop and Domestic Bliss fabrics. I'll post some pics once it's done hopefully before next Friday (surgery day!).
So sorry about that linky text again!! Still haven't worked that one out :(

Tea in a Tree

Do you remember that teapot block I showed you before? I've been slowly adding little teacups this month, then branches, and finally some leaves to make my Pippi Longstocking block for Muriel in the Cocorico Bee.

In one of the Pippi books, Pippi has tea in a tree with her friends Tommy and Annika so I made them each a cup. She tosses the cups and teapot up and some of them break. When they're finished, she throws the teapot back down and the spout falls off! I felt like I should have added some cracks here and there! Annika says that the tea tastes better than any she's had before. I think tea would taste better in a tree too :)

I was inspired by these gorgeous illustrations of Pippi and her friends by Lauren Child, her teaparty in the tree is so quirky and perfect!

I'm feeling a little annoyed with myself for finishing this late as I don't want to start being behind every month, but I hope the extra time it took was worth it!

So satisfying to finish a block like this and see my vision appear in fabric :)

Now onto my March block! The theme is County Fair - I'm thinking maybe fairy floss (cotton candy) .

What do you think?