And sew this is Christmas....

Terrible pun I'm afraid but it explains the 'radio silence' perfectly. I've been busily sewing Christmas treats for friends and family and just haven't had time to blog, oh, and my laptop died last week :( I can't show you most of what I made for fear of the recipients seeing them on here so you'll have to wait until after Christmas but I can show you some goodies.

Some cathedral window tree decorations for friends and family. I used a mixture of patterned cotton prints, velvet and silk to make these but stupidly forgot to make one for me. Ah well, maybe next year. The sewing machine has been retired for the holiday period :(

A cathedral window Christmas pillow for me....I've been a good girl this year, so I'm allowed! Do you spy the fabulous Aneela Hoey fabric? Roll on April!

I backed this cutie with Michael Miller Christmas tree fabric.

I was lucky enough to win a prize in a giveaway that Gill held over on her blog and this was my haul. A beautiful notebook and some choccies, yum! A cute Christmas tree card too...lots of sequins..magpie heaven! In the back of this shot you can just about see the Christmas bunting I made to put on the mantel-piece.

So now all that's left to do is wish you all a Happy Christmas and a Healthy New Year. Thanks for reading along this year, hope you'll join us again in the new year :)

Pillow Talk Swap Too

Yvonne has been busily creating her masterpiece for her first ever swap, the Pillow Talk Swap over on flickr and this is the finished article:

Serious amounts of handstitching have gone into this beauty! Fussy cut flowers in a vase and hexie action! Yvonne used Fandango fabric by Kate Spain and it works just beautifully with the solid background. Lucky partner!

You may remember I mentioned that my little brother and his fiancee have moved house, well this is the New Home wall-hanging that Yvonne made for them! I'm almost contemplating moving house so I can have one too :)

One down...

I've finally managed to cross one present off the to do list :) The mini-quilt that I mentioned in my last post is now ready to wing it's way to the USA. I'm so pleased with how it looks and hope that Serafina will enjoy it. Happy first Christmas Serafina :)

Pastures new

My brother and his lovely fiancee moved house a week or so ago which has sparked a myriad of soft furnishing projects for Yvonne and myself. We do love a good interior design project but it has meant that things have been slightly quiet around here so apologies to those of you who wait for an update from us :) I'm hoping to visit them this weekend so will snap some pictures of the curtains and blinds Yvonne and I have made.

After being a good girl and completing all my swap commitments for the year I have been able to turn my attention to other things. I thought a house warming gift would be appropriate so I dug out my Tufted Tweets by Laurie Wisbrun and made some placemats.

I think this fabric is just gorgeous so I'm hoping that my brother and his fiancee will too. I backed and bound the placemats with one of the Gunilla range of fabrics from Ikea.

I had been coveting this fabric for a while so was delighted when Yvonne managed to get me some from the Ikea near my brother's new house. I felt very generous as I cut into it for "someone else"! I wrapped the finished goodies up in a ribbon and now they're all ready for their new home.

Earlier this week I received an exciting package from Heather of {House} of A La Mode. Heather had been having a destash sale and I was lucky enough to get my hands on these goodies. I'm very much looking forward to playing with these. I have a feeling they may be finding their way into Christmas goodies.

I've also thought of a use for the pickledish block I made a while ago. Earlier this year my cousin and his wife had a beautiful baby girl. To mark the occasion I made her a quilt featuring "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". The fabrics were such fun and luckily I had some left-overs which I think will look cute in a small quilt/wall-hanging. The pickledish block will be a perfect accompaniment and will give the opportunity for the quilt/wall-hanging to be reversible.

Pillow talk {swap} goodies

Last night I received a fabulous parcel from the very talented Karen of Blueberry Park. I was lucky enough to have been partnered with Karen for the Pillow talk {swap} over on flickr. My goodies were beautifully packaged in tissue paper but being me I ripped that off before photographing them in my haste to see what lay beneath.

This beauty made in linen and intricately embellished is what lay beneath!! How lucky am I again?! And as if this wasn't enough Karen also included a matching linen needlecase and pincushion!!! Seriously! Christmas has well and truly arrived early in this house. See how cute my sofa is starting to look.

I've also cracked on and finished my own Pillow talk {swap} offerings for my partner. I do hope that he/she will like them.

Side by side I think they work quite well together. I've really enjoyed working with this Laurie Wisbrun fabric, I may even have to cut into my Tufted Tweets fabric very soon.

Here's a close-up of the finished Mr Ele. He is the first project I have ever stippled and I'm really pleased with how he turned out.

It would appear now that I have run out of swaps for the year so I haven't got any excuse not to get on with Christmas presents now.

Still churning them out

I'm still being rather productive at the moment which means my to do list is shrinking! I've finished the woodland scene for My favourite little quilt swap on flickr. My fingers are still crossed in the hope that someone will like it.

The babette blanket is growing steadily. I've completed 5 out of 10 blocks, although obviously the blocks get bigger the further into the blanket I get so I'm a long way off being finished.

The Pillow Talk {Swap} on flickr has just started again so I've wasted no time in launching into my offering for my partner. I'm using Urban Circus by Laurie Wisbrun and some Snippets by American Jane, I think they were made for each other. I couldn't decide which half square triangle design I wanted to use so listed various permutations on flickr and took the advice of the other participants. The zig-zag won the day by a narrow margin over the pin-wheel.

After completing this one I did have a bit of a wobble. What if my partner preferred the pin-wheel design?! Easily remedied! I've made a second pillow top which contains the pin-wheel but with a bit of a twist ;-) It's on Mr Ele's blanket! Tomorrow's task will be to quilt these 2 ready for turning into finished covers.

Having received my fab Scrappy hoop last week I was inspired to make a wreath of my own. This little chap in red and aqua ribbons is just waiting for some adornment as yet undecided.

Giveaway on Simply Solids blog

Mandy at Simply Solids is having an Accuquilt Go! cutter giveaway. Head on over there for 3 chances to win!

Busy, busy, busy

I've been ever so busy again the last few days with my black thread. I've finished the woodland scene for My favourite little quilt swap on flickr and have only got to bind it now! Hopefully it will be to somebody's taste as people have to vote for their favourite and I'd hate to think of it being the billy-no-mates at the bottom of the pile :(

Hopefully you can get the general idea of how this looks in real life. The light is still totally duff here. I'm thinking I may need to get up earlier in the day to catch some of the rays for photographs....nah, stupid idea!

I have also been very honoured to test out 2 embroidery patterns for Michele (Delightful Disarray on flickr). True to form I was in a hurry to get them done so I did them on the sewing machine in my current favourite black thread. The first one I did was a tricycle. I stitched it on a scrap of Nicey Jane fabric and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

The second pattern is a cute little girl in the rain. I decided to add a spot of colour to this one so hand stitched the rain, puddles and detailing on her coat. I thought she would look cute on Bliss and I'm now deciding how best to incorporate her into something larger.

I'd like to thank Michele for allowing me to experiment with her patterns and if you'd like to have a go yourself you can find them in Michele's Etsy Shop.

Look what I got...

In the post this morning I received a fabulous pressie in the form of my Scrappy Hoop swap item. I am so lucky to have been partnered with the fantastic Jamie (maricopafabrics) who clearly read my mind when preparing her hoop for me!!

The light is so poor at the moment for photo taking so you can't really see the beauty of the colours but take it from me they are gorgeous! I'm already mulling over where to hang it this Christmas. Have you ever seen such a stylish wreath? Seriously lucky me!

Progress...

I've been glad of the distraction of sewing this week and it's only Tuesday! I've totally over-committed myself to loads of stuff on flickr and I'm loving it :)

I thought I'd let you see how I've been getting on with the Babette blanket and the woodland scene I started last week. I've been really surprised how quickly the Babette blanket has been coming together in my inexperienced crochet hands (if there is such a thing). I'm afraid you'll have to excuse the rather unimaginative photography...it's too blooming cold to go faffing around outside looking for interesting vistas!

I'm really pleased with how it is looking and I'm hoping I don't run out of wool. True to form I didn't check pattern requirements before purchasing the wool so I'll be crossing my fingers.

The woodland scene is also taking shape nicely. I'm totally loving free-hand machine embroidering things at the moment and love the new dimension it adds to the applique. It also fits in with my need to complete projects quickly before I get bored :)

So this is how it's looking. What do you think? I love to hear your comments so don't be shy :)

This may take some time

I've definitely confirmed that I am not of sound mind :) I saw this amazing quilt on flickr and thought "Wow". On closer inspection this fabulous quilt is crocheted! I completely love it so in my 'wisdom' I've decided to make one. I searched the internet for a pattern and came upon this one, called the Babette blanket, which is fairly similar. Now, I am relatively new to crochet and this is a mammoth task so I've decided to let my online friends know that I'm going to tackle this project so that I have proper motivation to keep going and not assign this project to a dusty corner. I've done one very large square and 2 little ones so far, only 123 squares to go :)

I've also joined another swap on flickr called My favourite little quilt swap hosted by Kendra. I've made a start on a little woodland scene for my offering. Not sure how it will look when it's finished yet but hopefully someone will like it. Here's a rather dodgy taster pic.

Scrappy hoop ready to go :)

I've finally cracked on with the Scrappy hoop that I started a little while ago. I decided to embellish the background with a hat on a stand. I'm rubbish at drawing so I traced a card-topper that I 'borrowed' from Yvonne (you'll have it back soon, I promise!), then machine embroidered round the tracing with a really short stitch length to aid in removal of paper after I'd finished. I'm really pleased with the end result so I just hope my partner likes it now.

I backed the hoop with the paisley Amy Butler fabric and added a hand written label. To finish the hoop I just machined a blanket stitch round the edge. It looks rather rustic but that will add to it's charm....or at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it :)

21 again!

I've turned 21 again today and my very lovely Mum, Yvonne, created me a fabulous wall-hanging. It's beautiful and will soon be gracing my landing wall.

You'll probably recognise the pickledish design from Aneela's quilt-along . It's amazing how different this design looks when different colours are used in its' makeup. I love the way these Amy Butler fabrics look next to the Kona solid and just check out the hand-quilting!

So much fabric-y goodness! I'm a lucky girl! Thank you Mum.

A little something for me.

This week I decided it was about time I used some Amy Butler 'Love' fabric to make something for me before I run out. In the spirit of stretching myself I thought I'd use a pattern I haven't tried before, the spiderweb. I used this tutorial by Heather of {House} of A la mode for the basic principles then just fiddled with fabric until I was happy with it.

I'm such an impatient soul that the end result is not as crisp as it could be. I really don't like having to faff around with precise piecing even though I know the finished product is so much more pleasing. Anyway, for a first attempt I'm quite impressed with myself :)

I straight line quilted for a bit of detail and backed with my favourite pattern from the Love range. I don't know what it's called but it is beautiful and I didn't want to cut it into little pieces so this was a perfect project for it.

The cushion has now taken up residence next to my now ugly looking cushions in our front room. I'll have to make some more pretty cushions to go with it, or in fact wait for my Pillow Talk Swap partner over on flickr to produce me a fantastic companion :)

Prepare to be jealous!

I am beside myself with excitement today as I received an absolutely fabulous package this morning from the US of A!! My SavVy Seasons swap package from the amazingly talented Caroline of Trilliumdesign! You have been warned.....prepare to be jealous!

I am totally blown away by Caroline's attention to detail. Each one of those tiny stockings are lined and attached by ricrac to the cute buttons! The quilting is exquisite!! The fruit ornaments are just so neat and will look fabulous in my basket by the fire at Christmas. I am so lucky! Flickr swaps are amazing, I'm so glad I happened across them!

Even though I don't normally allow talk of Christmas before my birthday in November I couldn't resist the seasonal photo opportunity and am now thinking Christmas in this household will be rather fabulous!

My first ever flickr swap item received!!

I've been anticipating the arrival of my Scrappy pincushion for weeks and it arrived this morning!! So exciting. It travelled all the way from Buenos Aires and thanks to the post person was delivered to the wrong address. I received a mysterious message from a stranger on Facebook yesterday informing me that she had a package in my name and could she have the correct address to deliver it to. Thankfully there was no ransom note :) The stranger (a kind neighbour several doors away) popped it through my door this morning. So this rather well travelled package is now safely at it's new home.I've captured the front and back for you below.

Sandy has done a fabulous job on this pincushion. I love it!!! Sandy also included the green fabric that the pinnie is photographed on, three teeny-tiny hexies, an orange trim, a yellow trim and a recipe for Crunchy chocolate chip cookies! I am so lucky. This has been a very successful first swap through Flickr and I can't wait to see what the other swaps bring me now that I've had such a fab package from Sandy :)

Pickledish and a collaboration.

I really must learn to be more clever in the development of my titles, until then I'm at least factual. I've been busy finishing the pickledish block today. I'm amazed at how quickly and easily it went together! Thank you Aneela for such a fab tutorial! I expected hours of cussing and in fact found that the hardest part was piecing the arches, which I had finished yesterday. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with this block but for now it can stay on the ironing board looking pretty.


A while ago my Aunt bought a cross-stitch kit of Jane Austen's house for Yvonne as she loves that era. Unfortunately Yvonne and cross-stitch equals me and knitting, i.e. a disaster waiting to happen! So, I stitched up the cross-stitch in record time and Yvonne has mounted it beautifully on a cushion. There are more details of the construction of this beauty on flickr. This was a proper family collaboration :)

At least I was quicker doing this project for her than the tapestry of 'The Last Supper' which has been knocking around for about 15 years awaiting about an hour's worth of sewing....I just can't seem to motivate myself to finish it. It's a standing family joke now. Maybe one day.....