Contented

Finished Christmas table runner

This morning I finished making the Rail Fence table runner from Sew Hip magazine.  It was really straightforward to put together - no unpicking required!

I'm so pleased with how it turned out.  It's a little smaller than I anticipated, but I can live with that.  And I just love the fabrics - they're such "happy" prints, pretty but not too girly.

Next on the to-do list is a set of 4 Christmas stockings that my friend has asked me to make for her kids.  Just waiting for some more fabric to arrive...
 

R x

The "C" word...

Don't worry, I know it's still only October so I'm not going to start talking about the "C" word just yet (not here, at least, although it will be coming up very soon over at TLBG...), but I just wanted to show off some lovely, festive fabric that arrived on my doormat this morning. 

The top three designs are all by Riley Blake, and I'm intending to turn them into a table runner.  (The bottom fabric, of course, isn't festive at all, it's another print from Amy Butler's Love collection that just happened to sneak into my shopping cart!)

They were all purchased from here.

R x
 

Love

Cushion cover no 2 - made using fabrics from Amy Butler's new Love range, and inspired by another cushion seen here.   

It's still a work in progress, this one.  I've yet to find a suitable shirt for the backing.  Once again, I pieced it directly onto a piece of fleece, and have quilted three lines around the central square.  Do you think I should do any more?  I can't decide.  I really, really like these fabrics.  Up till now I only had a couple of pieces of Amy Butler fabric in my stash - whilst I do like her other ranges, none of them really sang to me the way that this one does!  In fact, there's another print from this range winging it's way to me as we speak!

 R x
 

Swap news

Hopefully, everyone participating in the paper-bag swap has made contact with their partners now and are busy making friends!  The deadline for posting out your paper bag of supplies isn't until Monday (19th) but myself & my partner Claire, have already exchanged parcels - they both arrived today!  And rather spookily, we both sent rather similar fabrics!

Here's what I sent to Claire...

 

Some scrummy French Hatbox - a floral and a polka dot - and this is what Claire sent to me...

 

...a very pretty pink floral and a polka dot!!  What can I say, great minds obviously think alike!  Despite this being my swap, I found it really hard to choose what to send, at one point my dining room table was literally covered with fabric as I "auditioned" combinations! 

 

Claire and I didn't pick a theme for our makes, but we have agreed to make one thing useful and one thing "pointless but pretty"!  I've been busy today looking online and through all my craft books for some inspiration and ideas and, to be honest, I'm not sure I can pick just two things to make!  But I'm really looking forward to it and I know that my fabric is in safe hands too.

R x

 

Paper bag swap!

Thanks to those who left comments about the paper bag swap idea - I'm going to go ahead with it so sign-ups are now open!  Here's how it's going to work:

This swap is open to UK based bloggers only.

Sign up will be open from now until Sunday 4th October.

I will post the list of partners here on Monday 5th October.

You then have two weeks to get in touch with your partner, make friends and put together your bag of supplies.

Bags should be sent out no later than Monday 19th October.

When you receive the package from your partner, make them something lovely with the supplies they've sent you and send it back to them no later than Monday 16th November - that gives you 4 weeks making time which should be plenty I think.

Here are the rules regarding what you should send:

Please send 2 fat quarters of fabric plus one spool coordinating cotton thread.

Optional extras could include: a couple of skeins of embroidery thread, some ribbon or rickrack, or some buttons etc

Your supplies should be packaged in a nice bag - it doesn't have to be paper but I think we could really have a lot of fun making and/or decorating our own paper bags, but fabric would be nice too - just NO PLASTIC BAGS PLEASE!

When you come to make your items, you may add extra fabric or other supplies from your own stash but you must use the supplies that your partner has sent you.

If you want to send any little extra gifts then I would suggest you do that when you send back your finished items. 

I hope that all makes sense!  Any queries just let me know, and I'll go over it all again when I post the list of partners.

Jennyflower, A Bun Can Dance, Tiny White Daisies and DollyDollop - you're already on my list.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

R x

Wordplay

 

Regular readers of my blog might have noticed that, whilst I blogged about joining the wordplay project several months ago, I have yet to actually produce anything for it!  I've got to admit, after failing to come up with anything for the first two words (sugar & sunday) I was starting to worry that I just wasn't creative/imaginitive/good enough.  And I did feel this even more so when I first saw what the word for September was.  However, I gave myself a bit of a talking to - it's not a competition, there's no right or wrong, it's just meant to be a bit of fun, I should just chill out about it and enjoy it!  After that, when I thought about the word again, two images came immediately to mind - colour (as in, awash with..) and water.  And from there, it actually became rather obvious to me what I should do. 

 

 

 

I used Fossil Fern fabrics, by Benartex.  I absolutely love these.  The colours are so vibrant, but at the same time have a very watery quality about them.  I only had four fat quarters of it in my stash, so decided to use just those to put together a little mini quilt, pretty much just making it up as I went along.  I did the little bit of embroidery first, then quilted it by hand before finishing with dark navy binding.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out, it's very me, although the colours are much brighter in real life. 

Now, just have to wait another 3 weeks to find out what the next word will be!

R x

Two of my favourite things...

 

...freshly baked and decorated cake (complete with small child fingerprints in the icing!)...

 

... and a lovely pile of scrummy new fabrics.

Bliss!

R x

Fabric show and tell

Hello!  How are you all today?  Good, I hope!  Well, I promised to be back with some scrummy fabric to show off, so here we go!  I had two orders arrive over the last few days, the first to arrive was this little bunch from Fabric Rehab:

 

Some cute owls, sweet Alexander Henry birdies and, in the middle, some Saffron Craig pink dandelions, which I am super excited about, it's so lovely!  And also from Fabric Rehab came these two:

Fabulous Parisienne ladies! 

And then on Monday, another parcel arrived, this time from Pink Chalk Fabrics, who had a sale on.

 

Some really lovely blue Olive Rose and then a bit of Heather Bailey Freshcut - I've had this before (I think it was actually one of the first fabrics I bought when I started sewing!) and I also think this is the first time I've gone back to buy more of a design.  I'd used up all I had and didn't even have a scrap big enough for my coin collection, so when I saw this on sale I just had to get some!

 

I also snapped up these two - pink woodgrain effect, which is rather funky, and another very cute Alexander Henry print called Petite Granville.  All this lovely new fabric has, as usual, got me itching to start making something!  It feels like I haven't sewn anything for ages, in fact, I actually cleared away all the fabric lying all over the place and put away my sewing machine at the start of the hols, but I think it might have to come out of it's hiding place sooner, rather than later!

Today I also finished the scarf I started, I really enjoyed this stitch, it needed a much lower level of concentration which suited me perfectly!!

 

 

What else was I going to talk about?  Oh, yes,  a film review.  On Sunday William and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  It was ... well, okay.  I should point out that William really enjoyed it but I felt a bit lukewarm about it.  I will admit that, out of the seven books, this was probably my least favourite, and it probably didn't help that I re-read it just before we went to see it, so I was all too aware of all the stuff that was missed out - stuff that I personally thought was quite important to the plot - like the fact that the locket was supposed to be Slytherin's, what Dumbledore suspected the other horcruxes were, and the big battle at Hogwarts near the end - all missed out!  I thought it had quite a different feel to the other films too, the music was very different and it didn't seem to be quite as action-packed as some of them either.  (And ending on such a sad note kind of puts a downer on things too!)  

Also on the subject of films, I was quite excited to see a trailer for The Time Traveller's Wife, a book that I really, really loved - although, perhaps excited is the wrong word - just watching the trailer made me cry!  Imagine what I'd be like watching the whole film!!  I think I might have to wait until it's out on DVD and I can watch it on my own and boo my eyes out without getting embarrassed! 

Finally, I promised some news about my secret project!  Well, it's going to be a new blog, set up by myself and my lovely blog friend Emma, and it will be launching next Wednesday, the 5th August!  We are both really excited about it and hope that lots of you will want to join in too.  I can't spill any more beans just yet, but stay tuned, and don't forget to come back next week for the big launch!

R x

Where does the time go?

I can't believe there is only a week of school left.  I'm not ready!!  I feel like there is still so much I need to do and not enough time to do it in.  I also feel like I have loads to blog about, but my thoughts are all a bit jumbled up and over the place, so forgive me if this seems like a bit of a mish mash!

 

I received this lovely, seasidey piece of fabric and the card from Julia of Hand Knitted Things as a thank you for arranging the seaside swap!  Julia, that was so kind of you, thank you! 

I have also managed to get myself pretty much sorted with my own swap stuff, and am now ready to post!  Here are a couple of sneaky peaks:

 

 

I hope that doesn't give too much away!  Don't forget, the deadline is 31st July and the Flickr group is here.

On Friday evening we went with some friends to the Tonbridge music festival.  It's held every year on the lawn in front of Tonbridge Castle, but this is the first time we've been.  We took a picnic and had a fab time!

The main acts are usually tribute bands, and we saw the Bandit Beatles and Abba Magic.  The Abba band were definitely loads better than the Beatles (their fake voices were awful!) but there was a really good atmosphere, especially once it got dark.  At the end there was a fireworks display, so I got to try out the fireworks setting on my camera!

 

 

The deadline for the first Wordplay challenge is tomorrow - and I haven't done it.  I feel bad, falling at the first hurdle as it were, but the idea that I had just didn't pan out as I'd hoped, (the word was "sugar") and my mind was just a complete blank for any other ideas.  Plus with all the other end-of-term stuff going on, something had to give and this was it.  I'm definitely planning to try again with the next word though, so I'll keep you posted on that.

This morning I was helping in school with some of the other mums, preparing a load of Spanish food for Year 6 to have a little fiesta, to celebrate the end of their Spanish lessons.  We made 3 kinds of paella, Spanish omelette, bread & chorizo and some kind of potato dish that I forget the name of (fried potato with a spicy tomato sauce on it).  We dished it all up to the kids and they all seemed to really enjoy it (most of them that is, William, typically, found it all too spicy!).  When I left at about 11.20 they were all up and dancing with their Spanish teacher and having a wonderful time!

Right, must go, loads to do!  Have a great week, everyone!

R x

Coin collecting

 

Coins of the fabric variety, of course!  I don't know about you, but I do tend to buy fabrics just because I love them, rather than having a specific project in mind.  And then I often have trouble deciding exactly what to do with them, what wonderful project could possibly justify cutting into that beautiful material?  And so the fabric sits in my cupboard, patiently waiting.  I sometimes take it out to look at it, have a little think about what I could make with it, try it out against some other fabrics - and then put it back in again.  I know that I will use it eventually.  But the thought that I might use it up and not "have it" any more is always a little bit of a worry.  (How does this happen?  How does someone become so addicted to something so quickly? Is it just me?)

 

But then I kept seeing all these gorgeous coin quilts all over blogland, and had a bit of a lightbulb moment.  I could cut just a tiny piece of fabric and put it into a coin quilt, and that way would always have a little piece of it to remind me, whatever should happen to the rest of it.  So that is what I am doing, collecting coins from my most favourite fabrics.  They are quite small pieces, just 3.5 x 5.5 inches - small enough that I don't feel too bad cutting into the fabric but big enough to show the beautiful patterns and prints.

 

It's been quite an interesting exercise too.  You can REALLY tell what my favourite colours are, can't you?!  But I do like other colours too, like red and green, and darker blues & purples, as well as these sugared almond shades you see here.  So maybe I need to be a bit more mindful of that when buying fabric in the future.  In the meantime, I shall just keep adding to this little collection, until it is ready to be turned into a quilt. 

And I know it will be wonderful!

R x