It's in the bag...

I wanted to share with you a few things that I have been working on in the last few days.

Firstly, I made a little bag out of indigo fabrics using a pattern written by a fellow quilter from Lutterworth. It has a little pocket that closes with a button on the front, great for keep a small packet of paracetamol (Tylenol) and parking stubs. The main part of the bag has a snap closure. Only the front and back panels and the flap have wadding, so it's not too puffy. It is proving to be a very handy size and when my phone rings I can easily put my hand to it.

The second thing I've made was inspired by a free gift in my daughter's McDonald's happy meal!... Here's what she got...

Here's my version. I made it slightly wider to accommodate the credit cards and I added a see-through pocket for pictures and extra slots for my loyalty cards! I used my new binding foot on my machine to finish the edges on the pockets, but did the outer binding by hand.

Here it is all loaded and ready for use.

Some bunny loves me...

I just had to share this adorable picture of a rabbit my daughter and I have seen quite regularly on our way home from school. He looks wild to me, but doesn't run off when you stand and coo at him/her. My 4 year old thinks it great and hopes the "Easter Bunny" might visit us in our garden one day!

Last night was the Lutterworth Piecemakers meeting and guess who popped by to say hello..Fiona from Scraps in Progress...what a great gal! It was fun to finally meet a fellow blogger in person...a bit of strange experience, but a very positive one!

I also wanted to take this opportunity to say a great big THANK YOU to all of you that left a kind comment on my birthday..It really warmed my heart.

It's my Birthday!

Yep..I'm 36 today and I've made cupcakes! Someone (sorry I can't remember who) posted about these cupcakes and I just knew I wanted to make some for my birthday. The buttercream icing is a nice consistency for piping and because it's a mix between shortening and butter it is very light tasting.
BTW it's Linda's birthday too..a fellow Montrealer and quilter to boot. Go on over and wish her a good day.
TTFN

Neat mosaic trick

Sally over on Bird on a Wire posted about this...so I thought I'd try it too. Click on the After picture to see all the individual pictures it used to make up my picture.

Before

After

Have a go HERE

Top Tip for Thread

I was organising my thread this afternoon when I thought..."hmm, I wonder how many people don't know about the nifty feature on their sewing thread?" Either you're all like me, who took six years to discover it or I'm just a bit slow :o)

Did you know that many of the sewing threads available have a built in feature to keep the end of your thread tidy. I have some YLI select thread and some Robison-Anton thread and they both have a bottom that snaps open for you to wind the end around and then snap shut.

Go on... I'll wait here while you check! TTFN

Long awaited...the front :o)

Today was the last day of The Bramble Patch's Strawberries 'n Cream Exhibition...so now, after you have all waited so patiently, I can show you the front of the quilt that I made. The challenge fabric features in the inner border (turquoise) and I have to say I found it a very hard colour to use and a very hard colour to match. In the end I found the fabric in the main border which had a similar turquoise and I pulled all my colours from that.

Thimbleanna was asking about the quilting stitch, which you should see a bit better if you enlarge the picture. It came from Kim Diehl book, Simple Traditions on page 20.

Last one for now...RED!

Here are the links to the original pictures:
from top left: bobbin, pin cushion, red and white quilt, red and white quilt #2, thread, yarn, fabric, red and white quilt#3, pin cushion #2.
Have a good weekend!

Strawberries and Cream

This week The Bramble Patch in Weedon are having their Strawberries 'n Cream & 20th Birthday Fiesta. As part of that they gave away free fabric for you to make a small quilt to enter into their exhibition this week. You have already seen snippets of my entry over the last few months (here and here), but to not spoil the exhibition or sway any voters...I'll just show you the back. :o) I'm extremely pleased how well the quilting went on this project. I decided to do an all over cinnamon roll swirl. I got the idea from one of Kim Diehl's books and it will be a pattern I will use again. You start with a big circle and then spiral into the centre, then whoosh off to another area and repeat.

I also wanted to share with you my latest read. it's Kate Jacob's The Friday Night Knitting Club. I have only made it through a few pages, but so far it's managed to keep me interested. It's a great big fat book...so it should last me for the summer. I take ages to read anything! And to keep it quilting related...well I just substitute the knitting words for quilting words...knit shop becomes quilt shop etc... :o)

Look what my camera was hiding!

Have you ever done that? Taken pictures on your camera of blog worthy things and then completely forget to post about them?!

Last Saturday, several of us from Rocheberie Quilters got together to work on some Linus blocks, tops and quilts. It was the first time I got my Bernie out of the house since I bought him on Ebay and gave him the proper test of portability! I'm happy to say he passed with flying colours. I worked on some lovely gingerbread men blocks (they'll crop up in a later post I'm sure) while several of the ladies worked on quilting and piecing blue scrap quilts. Chris finished her puzzle quilt..doesn't it look fab!

Meanwhile, I've been working with some homespuns..a first for me. This is the very early stages of a block I'm doing for an exchange. There is quite a bit of appliqué to be done, which I'm looking forward to doing..It's been ages since I've done any appliqué by hand, recently it's always been done on the machine.

Well I hope you're enjoying the mosaics..I have a few more planned.

Chocolate!

Well brown sounded so dull.. :o)

From Top left: quilt, another quilt, buttons, ribbons, string quilt, antique quilt, needle holder, quilt #4 and spools.

How about pink?

It's really dull hear today, so I thought I'd try something cheery like pink.

Again the links to the original photos are below.

From top left: pink fabric, pink sewing machine, pink thread, pink quilt, pink book cover, pink postcard, second pink quilt, pink pennies, pink ribbon.

Orange Mosaic

Another mosaic from some of the pictures on flickr. BTW, these are not my pictures..just ones I've found.

See the links below to see the originals.

(Are you sensing a theme for this week?)

From top Left: Sewing machine, Orange thread, Eye of a needle, Orange Quilt, Another orange Quilt, Orange Flower, Fortune Cookie, Sewing Thread, Fabric

Green Mosaic

I thought it would be fun to create a mosaic from some of the pictures on flickr.

The orginal links are below.

From Top Left:
quilt back, binding and label, Green Thread, Green, Green thread, Green Leaf pin cushion, First border on the green quilt, Sewing nook; Pink-&-Green-quilt, blue green quilt pincushion

675 !!!!

"Good Grief, Charlie Brown!"..675, that's how many posts are waiting for me since I was last on broadband and could read your blogs. (10 days worth) I'm going to need to lock the children up, send the hubby to the pub and make a gigantic cup of tea to get caught up on all about the wonderful things you've been up to.

Many thanks to all of you that left comments of encouragement to hang in there on dial up..I could just about retrieve your kind messages, but wasn't always able to reply..so to all my well wishers..Thank you.

Now you would think that with days days away from the computer that I would have plenty of sewing to show you, but alas..I do not. It just so happens my mother was visiting from Canada during the outage...hmmm I smell conspiracy! but as a result the sewing machine was tucked away. I did spend some time perusing quilting magazines and finishing Jennifer Chiaverini's latest book..The Quilter's Homecoming. So I'm all inspired and raring to go!

Not a Happy Bunny!!!

I'm Broadbandless!!!! Just in case anyone has noticed I've been quiet this week...it's because our broadband died earlier this week and I haven't been able to read any blogs. I've managed to check email using dial up and it's SO SLOW!!! I'm not sure when I'll be back in full capacity as the DSL is showing no signs of being restored.
Hope all of you are well!