A great giveaway!

Of course you need more fabric! Go on over to Rachel's blog and enter the giveaway. Go on you know you want to .

The Frock Quilt!

Just finished this quilt top tonight. Really pleased with how it's turned out. Love the colours and fabrics. It was a great stash buster too. All the fabrics came from my stash. I set myself a challenge to finish 3 quilt tops while my husband is away so have two to go and he's only been gone a week! He will hopefully bring me back some yummy fabrics so I had to make room in my sewing attic for them. The second quilt is the zigzag quilt and the 3rd will be made with leftovers from that quilt.

Not sure how I'm going to quilt it yet! Hand or machine? Guess I need to work on the backing first. Looking forward to a rainy day tomorrow which means more sewing time for me.

Zig Zag quilt along

This is the layout of my zig zag quilt so far. It's a bit hard to imagine the zig zags. I have omitted 3 or 4 fabrics because I just didn't need them and also they were too beautiful to cut. I will use them in another quilt that shows them off a bit more. I'm quite liking it so far though. I'm keen to go to the next step. Check out the other quilts using the Old Red barn quilt along button on the left side bar.

Trash to treasure.

My daughter 'Caitlin' fished these very thin fabric strips out of the rubbish bin the other night and decorated her virtual pet. She tied some together and plaited some others, very cool. And I thought they were too small to do anything with!

Playing with fabrics.

I decided to join the Old Red Barn Co second quilt a long. We are making a zig-zag quilt using half square triangles which sounds easy enough. Spent a good hour playing with my stash trying to get the right fabric combinations. I think I've got it right now give or take one or two. Have decided that this one is for Caitlin as it has a few butterflies, ladybirds and caterpillars on some of the fabrics and she is that kind of girl.

I also came up with this group of fabrics which could also make a lovely quilt using half square triangles. It includes some Amy Butler , Heather Bailey and Kaffe Fassett prints plus two beautiful butterfly prints. What a dilemma! Should I make 3 quilts. ( I'm already working on one quilt for Amelia). What do you think?

We've been creating!

Caitlin has a birthday sleepover coming up so we made her friend a bookmark and some lavender filled eye covers. She had a great time experimenting with my machine's many decorative stitch's on the bookmark. I've got to say our girls have been getting along much better these holidays and have been entertaining themselves and being creative. Yesterday and today they kept themselves busy with the paper fashions book from Klutz making pictures and birthday cards for their friends.

I started making another quilt in the weekend. I think this one will be for Amelia because the print on the left with the dress's on it speaks of Amelia to me. I have had this print for a couple of years and was not quite sure how to use it, but I think it deserves to be put in a quilt.

My husband was away Saturday night so I let the girls stay up late-ish to keep me company and watch the movie Garfield 2 (Hilarious) and I cut my fabric up and sketched a quilt layout.

This is all an experiment but I think it will work out. The feature fabric with the little dress's isn't the best quality so I bonded it to some white cotton with steam-a-seam to give it more body, then I sewed all around the edge with a blanket stitch to give it a bit of a "naive look". Please feel free to comment and tell me what you think.


While looking around blog land yesterday I found a great giveaway at "Tea Rose Home"
If you've never been to her blog go there now, she is one talented designer to watch. Her giveaway is a kit of her latest stitchery pattern due to be released soon. I have also been busy looking at the parade of first quilts and of course finding some great blogs at the same time. You can find the grand list here at Simplify or here at La Vie en rosie.

My First Quilt!

Just so you know I'm being very brave here in showing you my first quilt. Over in Camille Roskelley's blog "Simplify" and Carrie's blog "LaVieEnRosie" they are challenging everybody to show their first and last quilt you made. This quilt I made quite a few years ago before I was even married. It was made in a sampler class at a shop called "Patches of Ponsonby" . It was the best class I could have done as I learnt so many techniques that have helped in making other quilts. We had a wonderful patient teacher, "Juliet Taylor". She gave us a small lesson in hand quilting at the end. I made it for my Mother's spare bedroom and that is where it still lives so I had to get her to take a photo and send it over. (Thanks Mum) I think I even have very small amounts of some of the fabrics still in my scrap basket. It's not perfect but I don't think your first quilt should be because that's how you learn.

This quilt appears on my blog already here, and is the last quilt I made. It hangs out on an antique cane arm chair out of the sun so the colours stay nice and vibrant.

Kati Cupcakes Quilt Kit Giveaway

This lovely little quilt is being given away as a kit on Katy Cupcakes blog. I love the fabrics used, so pretty. She has a beautiful blog worth checking out itself.

Another stormy weekend here so that means lots of sewing being done soon , now that I'm all inspired looking at everybody else's blogs.

Cute fridge magnets

Managed to squeeze in some creativity today between housework, kids and cycling. Well actually the cycling didn't happen. I got all changed into my cycling clothes, got my bike out and HELLO not one but TWO flat tyres. Never mind, got to be creative instead. Have been wanting to make these little fridge magnets for a while now but couldn't find the clear resin pebbles until the other day when my daughter spotted them in a $2 store. Thank you Caitlin! They don't take long to make and take only a snippet of fabric plus they are a great activity to do with the kids. You can find the tutorial here. I'm going to make the push-pins next.

Completed Cushions

My Mother's cushions are all finished and ready to be delivered to her. I'm so pleased with how they came out, especially with all the decorative stitching I did. This did make the process longer but definitely worth it. I got reacquainted with my machine's stitches and now I'm all keen to do more. The log cabin block is machine quilted with no decorative stitching because I really wanted to prove to myself that my machine could still do free motion quilting without having a hissy fit. I realized while trying to quilt these cushions that my machine won't quilt with just any bobbins, it only likes the original bobbins. Caitlin my youngest daughter enjoyed helping me make the covered buttons for the enclosures on the back.



Blogs to visit


My friend Melissa has a new blog for her sewing projects. She is fairly new to patchwork/quilting but you wouldn't think so looking at her work so far. I think she is doing very well indeed. Please go check out her beautiful blog and all her quilts on her flickr site as well.

Also Sandy is having a lovely giveaway on her blog. You only have until Friday 10th to be in the draw so you need to go on over asap. She has made a beautiful cross stitch sissors fob as part of the giveaway.

More from Amelia

Because I haven't anything to show you yet of my sewing, I thought I would show another one of Amelia's sewing efforts. She made this little dolls quilt and pillow for her little sister Caitlin for her birthday. It took a few sewing sessions but we got it finished in time. She used the quilt as you go method with just a simple diagonal cross on each square then joined them up. She was proud of her efforts and Caitlin loved it.

Now back to my sewing. I have been doing some, working on my Mothers cushions still. They are now all quilted and ready to be made into cushions. The backing fabric is all cut out and ready to be sewn together. This week is looking promising with school holidays now on. My girls are generally pretty good at entertaining themselves while I sew so fingers crossed I will be able to show you the finished product soon.

Amelia's beanie

Amelia (my eldest daughter) has been doing sewing for the last couple of weeks at school. Today she came home with this cool beanie she had made all by herself. I am so proud of her! We have been having some very cold winter weather here and have more to come so this beanie will get lots of use.