Fit for a princess!

This post has been a long time coming but finally I can share some photos of  my daughter Amelia's newly decorated room. Her old room was upstairs on the top floor of our house but we decided to redecorate what  used to be our spare room and move her in there which pleased her greatly. We painted the window frames white and Amelia chose the turquoise blue wallpaper, the charcoal curtains. and the new light fittings herself. I'm really pleased with how this room turned out. It is nice and bright and perfectly stylish for a nearly 14 year old girl and she now has way more storage space than she used to.  

 She has a wardrobe with shelving which she never had in her old room and a door to slam shut if she feels the need :) In her old room she just had curtains across the entrance.

The dressing table used to be mine when I was her age and hanging next to it is the wall hanging I made her to match this quilt.

A garland of hearts made in a crazy patchwork style with scraps from the frock quilt.

She now has room and a place to display all those essential girl things.

Her cushions I made her here and here are now nicely displayed on her bed.

Above her bed is a new light fitting and her dream catcher plus you can see the pretty swirls at the ends of the new curtain rails which match the swirls in the curtains.

The wreath I made her here also hangs above her bed.

Some favourite things on her bedside table.

Her new desk with a pink Swiss ball as her chair and the memo board I made for her last Christmas. The turquoise blue in the Heather Bailey fabric used on the memo board was the inspiration for the bedrooms wall colour.

And finally this little bird house and bird has been hers since she was about 2 and now hangs above her desk. Moving into her new room also meant being able to have a good clean out and deciding what she did and didn't want to keep. A lot of stuff was thrown out or passed onto her sister but I'm so glad she wanted to keep this birdhouse which was the starting point to decorating her first room with a garden theme.

I hope you enjoyed seeing Amelia's newly decorated room. I'm still working away on my Bliss quilt top but hoping to finish it within the next 2 days!

Happy Monday!

Caitlin's quilt revisited......for the bloggers quilt festival

Since this is one of my favourite quilts I thought I'd bring it out again and re-introduce it. Before I go on I just want to welcome anyone who is a first time visitor and I hope you enjoy what you see here and are getting inspired by all the other wonderful quilts showcased in this bloggers quilt festival.

This quilt was made for my youngest daughter Caitlin when she was about 8 years I think and she is now 11. When I asked what she wanted on her quilt she wasn't totally sure but flowers and lots of hearts are 2 things she did want. So I put my thinking cap on and decided to make a sampler type quilt and sketched a few ideas and pulled out favourite patterns  that I'd always wanted to try. I had no idea how the final layout was going to look like but just kept making blocks as the ideas emerged. I included a few of Caitlin's favourite things and also some scraps of fabrics from dresses and skirts etc.. I had made her. It took me 6 months to complete including lots of freehand handquilting of mostly swirls and of course lots of hearts. I enjoyed every moment of designing and making this quilt even the recall of my maths skills when I had to figure out the final layout of the blocks.

Here are some close-up photos of some of my favourite parts of the quilt:

A mother and baby bird with covered button detail on their feathers.......

The house block with yo-yo flowers and beaded centres. This block is taken from a Piecemakers Calender and I had always wanted to make it.

Caitlin loved the Felicity Wishes books at the time so here is Felicity and her blue bird. I added beads to her wings to give them a little sparkle.

Caitlin's friends as she likes to have a lot of friends around her.

Another bird with little stuffed hearts. She's an animal lover so birds seemed appropriate and I had always wanted to do this block which is also from a Piecemakers calender.

I think I made this block when I was trying to work out the layout and needed something to fill in a space plus I had these little flowers leftover from the other garden blocks. The green gingham fabric has served me well as it started off as a pair of dungarees then when they got too small I made it into a pinafore dress and now bits of it are gracing her quilt.

Another block from a Piecemakers calender and one that stretched my skills as I had to hand applique it and I don't really enjoy hand applique but I love how this block turned out. Lots of echo handquilting which makes these pretty butterflies puff and stand out.

At one stage of making this quilt I raided my Mother's button tin and had fun making these precious old buttons into flowers with a little beading.  And I couldn't resist adding the little beaded spider.

And finished off with the perfect coloured striped bias binding. I hope you enjoyed seeing one of my favourite quilts and don't forget you can get more quilting inspiration over here at Amy's Creative side.

Spring giveaway and an Announcement!

So you may have noticed that I have finally opened up an "Etsy Shop"!! I'm very excited about this and thought I'd celebrate my shop opening with a  "Spring Giveaway " as it's also the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere today. First of all I want to tell you about my shop and what you will find in it so far. I have made a couple of  needlecases, as shown in the above photo. One is made with scraps of Wonderland by Momo fabrics and the other from scraps 'Sweet' by Urban Chiks .  These needlecases open like a book but from either side.

I have just added 2 of these hexagon sewing boxes. This box is what I've been working on this past week and I have been photographing each step so I can make up kits to sell for those that would like to make up their own sewing box.

 

This one is made up in Sandi Henderson's Farmers Market fabrics and I've got to say this box came together much quicker than the first one I put together.

There are some pretty flower brooches like this one ..............

........and this one

...............embroidered patchwork heart decoration

and a pretty fabric flower garland, perfect for adorning a girls room.

You can have a good look at all these things by clicking on my shop in the left hand side bar.

So to help celebrate spring and spread the word of my humble little shop I thought a giveaway was in order! The next items I'm planning on making to sell are some pretty pillows and I would like to give maybe one or two of these pillows away. What I will do is make one to order for the winner according to their tastes. I will snoop around their blogs and/or flickr pages to see what they like. And as with all my other giveaways I will add some extra sewing supplies to the package as well.

So if you would like to enter all you have to do is leave me some sweet comments about my shop maybe some hints about what you'd like to see in it. I'm all open to ideas so don't be shy!

You can gain extra entries by either:

1. 
   
   Spreading the word about my shop on your blog.
2. 
   
   "Heart" my etsy shop.

I will be leaving this giveaway open till next Wednesday when I will pick a winner or maybe two !

***Please make sure I can contact you by having your email attached to your profile :)***

Caitlin's baby quilt!

This is my entry in Amy's Bloggers Quilt festival for 2010. It was made for my 2nd daughter Caitlin. I designed the simple layout myself and chose the fabrics before she was born.  The fabrics have lots of animals and insects on them and Caitlin has grown up ( she is now 10 years) to love all animals and quite happily lets insects crawl all over her. It's a bright and happy quilt which suits Caitlin's personality as well.

The hearts are machine appliqued with a small blanket stitch then hand quilted with echo lines. I hand quilted uppercase letters down the sides of the border.

Along the top and bottom of the border are hand quilted numbers. The outer border is made up of leftover pieces from the nine patch blocks.

You can visit more Quilt Festival quilts over here. Thank you Amy for organising this festival and giving us the opportunity to showcase our special quilts.

In honour of Valentines Day....

This is what I've been working on every night for the last week while watching TV ( I hate to have idle hands!). I started off with a basic wooden heart purchased on a whim from Spotlight with no fixed idea how I was going to decorate it. I found some leftover red bias binding with tiny white hearts and wound it all the way around. Got out some red and white fabrics plus a little pink and started adding some yo yo flowers with buttons on one side. 

Then on the other side I made some felt beaded flowers and another with fabric, felt and a button centre.

To finish it off I made a felt heart ornament studded with beads to hang in the centre.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out and it was fun to make. We don't exchange Valentines gifts anymore but when my husband packed his bag to go away this week I snuck in a little surprise present for him. Sometimes its the little gestures that mean more. What did you do for Valentines this year??

Little Hearts!

Have been doing a little bit of hand sewing at night. These are little felt heart ornaments that a friend asked me to make and this is the third one I've made for her. I think I'll have to christen them the 'Jayne heart". Can you guess her favourite colour? I'm not good at doing nothing while watching TV so hand sewing keeps my hands busy and makes for a more productive evening. I have other ideas for these hearts but I'm not ready to reveal them yet plus I need more hours in the day to do all the ideas swimming in my head. I'm feeling a little frustrated with my lack of time lately.