Doll quilt - TGIFF

I was asked by a work colleague to make a doll quilt for the tiny wooden doll pram she purchased for her granddaughter for Christmas.  We measured how 'large' the doll quilt needed to be and it was only about 10 inches square - a tiny mini quilt!!  The only criteria was that there was some red included because the wheels were red so I dug through my scraps but nothing screamed out at me.  Then the other night I was looking at my UFO/WiP/PhD/100 Day Hustle pile and I re-discovered my Amy Butler 'Happy Hour' quilt using the Love fabrics.  I quickly sewed up some of the off-cut strips from making the blocks for my quilt and presto - a mini quilt top was created.

I took it (unfinished) into work the next day to get 'approval' which was quickly given so I finished it that night.  I love the dark purple as the binding with a rose in one corner.  It was happily received and she was so pleased that I used these darker colours rather than the typical light pink and pale yellow that most girls get throughout their childhoods.

Job done.  Dimensions = 9.75" x 10.25".  Good practise for the doll quilt that I have to make for my [secret partner] in the Doll Quilt Swap 13 due in a month or so.  Can't wait to make that one!

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The joy of Christmas smells: clementines, satsumas and tangerines...  The taste and colour of orange!  What do you think of these gorgeous fat quarters!!???

Amazing right?  They were sent by the lovely Julie at Intrepid Thread (THANKS Julie) and I am happy to have them as my stash definitely lacked in orange.  The line is called Flutter.  Now - what should I make with them??

I also received some pretty fabrics by Kathy Davis from FreeSpirit Fabric blog and I'm thinking they would make a really sweet Siblings Together quilt for next year.  Just a thought!

Linking to TGIFF

Blog-Hop winner announced

THANK YOU to everyone for entering my Blog-Hop giveaway.  I now have a great list of books to read - thank you!  And thank you for checking out my [very empty] Etsy shop and for being fantastic followers (both old and new)!

The giveaway was for a couple of fat quarters to make into the cutest slippers, plus some thread, a pattern and a few zippers):

 Who won who won????  Well done to.......

 

Liz DandeliondD said...

I can only recommend children's books atm, as bedtime reading is all I can squeeze in! So I would say something by Roald Dahl.

10 December 2012 13:54

Yay for you Liz for entering and winning my giveaway!!  I hope you can make lots of slippers for yourself and the kids!!  I will email you now :)  And for the book suggestion -- Roald Dahl has some amazing books.  The Twits was one I read in school many many years ago and I still remember it now!  Too funny!!   Again, congrats to Liz!!

____________________________________________

THANK YOU:  I have a several people that I want to say THANK YOU to.  First is Ruth for the foundation-pieced pattern of a mouse that she gave me a couple of weeks ago from a giveaway on her blog.  A mouse - how cute!  I can't wait to try it [foundation piecing is new to me so it is a technique I want to learn in 2013].  Fingers crossed I can do it!!  Second is to Rumi for the paper-pieced pattern of a Balloon - I won this from her Blog-Hop giveaway and it looks great!  I will enjoy making it :)  And thirdly, a huge thank you Janet at Caribou Crossing Chronicles for her "Blogathon Canada" giveaway with Sew Sisters who sent me a table runner kit of fabric with maple leaves and mooses (not how you spell moose in plural I know but it is funnier this way!) on it.  Picture to follow - it is very 'Canadian' and it will be fun to put together!  Thanks everyone - have a great night!

PS>  Anyone else having difficulties with Blogger/Google?  Adding a photo crashes the computer, trying to become a GFC follower jams it and anything else just freezes the computer.  Not a fun way to go about blogging, is it!??

Vote for me?

I entered my Vintage Holiday quilt into the weekly competition over on Quilting Gallery and it is time for voting!!  Feel free to pop over there and vote for your favourite - which I hope you think is mine!!!

I called mine Amy's Vintage Holiday (snowflakes and plaid).  This is what it looks like:

There are some truly amazing Christmas themed projects listed and I have found some more Christmas inspiration and projects to add to my to-do list!  Lucky I purchased some more Christmas fabric today from Annie at The Village Haberdashery (who is having an open weekend to launch her bricks and mortar shop!) so I can get started on another project soon!  More about my purchases another time!

Happy voting!!!

Finish it up Friday - almost finished!

Ok - for me it is a finish.  Not a finished-finish but something DONE... 

I basted the Scrappy Wonky Star quilt.  Phew -- done!  To me this means I can stop procrastinating and can now get busy with the quilting, and I may even complete this small quilt this weekend!  Not sure how I will quilt it but if I leave it for a bit an idea will suddenly come to me - hopefully in the form of a suggestion from you guys ;)

Basting is the one bit of quilting that I don't especially like hate and it is probably because I live in a very small cottage so I don't have the space to do it.  All that bending over, stabbing myself with pins, the worry of thinking 'is it straight?'....  Luckily, this quilt is only about 45"x45" so I had the space in the living room to do it without too much hassle.  I bought the most amazing flannel (Cloud 9 Nursery flannel in white and sooooo soft) so I have used that on the back along with a small stripe of white on white as my quilt top was a tiny bit bigger than the width of the flannel, and can't wait to wash it and see how cosy it is. 

I did have a real finish this week - my hanging tea towels shown in my previous post.  I kept the red ruffle one and it hangs off the handle on the 'fake' drawer under the sink so it is easy to dry my hands on after I've done the dishes.  I love it :)  Especially the shiny red button I purchased specifically for this project!

This one is so Christmas-y and that is what I am going to do next - make the rest of the cottage a wee bit festive and put three up and somehow hang my Vintage holiday quilt.  I have a couple of these birds left so they will go on the tree.

I made seven of these little quirky birds - kept one, gifted two and sold two which means I only two left to use and/or sell.  Aren't they fun?  Pattern found on Sew Mama Sew.

Hope to see some of you at The Village Haberdashery Open Weekend tomorrow or Sunday - that's where you will probably find me drooling shopping :)

Linking to Finish it Friday.

PS - here are two giveaways to enter if you want to!!

• My Blog Hop giveaway and
• The LMQG giveaway

Deck the Halls

WiP UFO PhD...the list goes on!

Happy Wednesday!!  I finally got my hanging tea towels done - and sold two immediately!  The ones I made in July have been gifted so I have three remaining.  I have one person to give to and the last two will be listed in my Etsy shop soon (when I can take a better photo!!), if I decide not to keep one for myself!

I sewed different pleats and a ruffle at the top section and think that the pleat works best and hangs better but I love the fullness of the ruffle! 

Terrible photos - sorry!  Midnight + a dirty oven = not a pretty picture!

And YAY - I finally got working on my scrappy Wonky Stars lap quilt which I started a long time ago!  I even did a mostly plaid scrappy border (which I sort of dislike now that it is sewn on) but hey - I don't have the energy to change it so I will live with it.  It may grow on me?  I LOVE the wonky stars though - yum!  I really can't get enough of them.   

Crazy winter 'daylight' + cool winter breeze = another bad photo!

I have purchased soft white flannel for the backing and hope to finish this cosy quilt this weekend.  It would mean another item off my 100 Day Hustle list and 4th Quarter list.  Gee I love a deadline - sure makes me motivated!!

And guess what?  My 'Potato Bunting' has been featured over at Best Bunting on the Block blog!!  What a fun blogging world this is! 

Linking to WiP Wednesday - don't you just love her new button!?!

PS - if you would like to enter my giveaway, please click THIS LINK.  Closes 17th December. 

Another giveaway!!!

The London Modern Quilt Guild is having a *giveaway hosted by Annie from The Village Haberdashery!  This delicious and generous bundle of City Centre could be yours!! 

Entries close on December 17th 2012 at 5pm GMT time so be sure to ENTER HERE.  Good luck!




*Giveaway open to UK and Europe only

Quilter's Blog Hop GIVEAWAY!!

Welcome to my blog!  If you have popped across from the Quilter's Blog Hop - WELCOME!  We are all celebrating their 5th birthday and I am celebrating having 300 followers!  I am so glad you are here :)

Hi - I am Amy and I am a fabriholic!!  I love fabric.  I love quilting.  I love crafts.  And chocolate.  Especially chocolate!!  I also love the blogging community that we are all a part of.  I have made some amazing 'blogging friends' and even met a few of them in person!  

I love how generous people are - quilters and crafters freely share their ideas, their patterns and their 'schtuff'.  Squishy packages are sent to and fro all over the world to happy, squealing recipients!  I have been a happy, squealing recipient more than once and I have loved and appreciated every squishy package I have been sent. 

So, I am going to share my appreciation and send a squishy package to one lucky person:

Included is a Fig Tree & Co pattern called 'Slipper Cuties', two fat quarters to start your slippers off, some Gutermann recycled polyester thread in red and three zippers - one red, one green and one brown!!  I'm thinking a little bit of chocolate might make it into the parcel too.... and I promise it won't be an empty wrapper!! 

To enter, feel free to do one -or all three- of the following:

• One entry -- recommend a book for me to read this holiday season
• Second entry -- become a GFC follower and tell me so in the comments (if you are already a GFC follower, please say so in the comments)
• Third entry -- 'favourite' my Etsy shop (which is a little empty at the moment!!!) and tell me in a comment

This giveaway is open worldwide (yay!!).  Please be sure I have a way to contact you should you be the winner, otherwise I may have to pick someone else.  Entries close on December 17th 2012 and the winner will be chosen by RNG or similar on December 18th and announced on the blog soon after.

Be sure to visit the other participating blogs [list goes live December 10th of more than 150 blogs!] for more chances to win!  Have fun blog-hopping!  I know I will -- I'm off to make some new 'blogging friends'!

Enjoy!

PS - Thank you Michele for orgainsing another great Blog-Hop with Giveaways! 

Gift/wine bag

Ahhhh - that's more like it!  I finally sewed something after a whole week away from my sewing machine - who I affectionately call Mr Toyota.  

I made a festive bag to hold a gift (but it holds a bottle of champers nicely too so can be re-used by the recipient if they want to re-gift the bag!).  I used some of my precious green linen and some cute mitten and hot cocoa fabric.  This is not a lined bag - I zig zag stitched all the seams so the fabric won't fray and simply did a 'hem' for the top.  Where the feature fabric is sewn to the linen I stitched one line for decoration and to secure those seams.  Simple but looks nice.

I made the smallest of boxed corners just to give the bag a little bit of body instead of it just being a sewn rectangle.  Perhaps I didn't need to?

The ribbon was easy to do - I unstitched a tiny opening on one side near the top once the bag was done and took a folded piece of ribbon and stitched it into the seam so the ribbon ends were on the outside/good side of the bag and the fold was on the inside of the bag.  I'm sure there is a better way to do it but I was after a FAST way to add a tie to the bag which was securely attached, and it certainly does the trick :) 

This is another item off my 100 Day Hustle list!  Yay - that means I have accomplished 10 out of 25 things.  Woohoo!!  However, 9 of the remaining 15 items listed are quilts!  Can I finish 9 quilts in 22 days and work full time?  Hmmm... 



The ribbon is attached at the top along the side seam.



Holds a gift quite well too!!

Don't you just love sewing things for pressies?  I'd be happy if I got a pressie or bottle of something (Tia Maria or Archers) in a gift bag like this!   Just sayin'...

Out and about fabric shopping

One of my favourite things to do is to go fabric shopping!  I usually do this on-line but sometimes you just need to stroke it and love it and feel it and then buy a whole bunch of it, right!!?  So that is what I will be doing next weekend!!!

The Village Haberdashery is a fab on-line fabric, haberdashery and wool shop (and buttons, floss, patterns, hoops, thread, stuffing, wadding...) but is NOW a bricks and mortar studio space selling all the same things as the on-line shop!  Annie is holding her first OPEN WEEKEND next weekend and I will be there so I can fondle these:

and drool on this:

Hope to see you there too!

What: The Village Haberdashery's first Open Weekend!
Date and time: Saturday, 15th December 11-7 and Sunday, 16th December 11-5
Location: 47 Mill Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6 1NB
*The tube stop is West Hampstead and is about a 10 minute walk from there - the perfect amount of time to make your list of what you need to buy!!  I know I need fabric for binding and for wine gift bags... 

Oh and maybe I better buy another couple of these:

Giveaway Day winner announced

Thank you to everyone who entered my Dec 3rd Giveaway Day giveaway linked to Sew Mama Sew!  A special hello to all you Gemini's out there!  I forgot to tell you all what my star sign is - I am a Gemini on the cusp with Taurus (that explains so much, doesn't it!!). 

So - who was the winner of the fat quarters, buttons and pocket calendar?  Congratulations Silvana Pereira Coutinho!!  Looks like these little fairies are flying to Brazil!  I will get in touch with you for your postal address!  

 Silvana Pereira coutinho said...

I'm cancer! Thanks for allow international comments

hugs from Brazil!

Silvana (aka silort on flickr)

4 December 2012 19:51

I want to say thank you to everyone who follows my ramblings about my late night sewing shenanigans - all 300 of you!!  Yay - I have reached 300!  And a big hug to 'kat129' who appears to be my 300th follower.  Kat129 - please contact me as I would like to send you a little something as a thank you!

And one last thing - be sure to pop back on Monday for ANOTHER giveaway!

No sewing...

I'm sitting here wondering why I feel sort of strange and I suddenly realised that I haven't sat with Mr Toyota and sewn anything since last Saturday!  That is a record for me...  5 days with no sewing?  Weird.  Especially when I have a 100 Day Hustle list of 25 things to accomplish (14 left to do in the next 24 days), a 4th Quarter list with 9 things (6 remaining) and several partially completed Christmas items that NEED to get done so I can ship them to Canada!  Time is a-tickin' so I PROMISE [myself] that I will sew tomorrow night when I get in from work!

So, I will leave you with a few photos of my Wonky Log cabin blocks which are the effort of two Bee Groups that I am in {Bee Europa and FQR Kinky Bee} and are on both of my lists:

This quilt-to-be takes up the ENTIRE kitchen floor!!

I have 39 blocks (each 12.5" unfinished) and am just waiting on one person to return two more.  I will make one last block so I will have 42 blocks to sew together.  Fingers crossed that it is big enough for my king sized bed - if not then I will sew some more!!!!  I have already 'booked' it in to a long arm quilter for January so I MUST get this sewn together so I can give it to her at the next LMQG meeting at the beginning of the new year.  Nothing like a deadline to keep me motivated!

Green, grey, white and purple wonky log cabins

You still have time to enter my Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day giveaway here.  And remember - I'm having another giveaway on Monday the 10th - so please do come back!

Dec 3rd GIVEAWAY DAY!

Welcome to Giveaway Day and thank you for visiting!  I am celebrating having ALMOST 300 followers!!  I hope you take a minute to have a snoop around to see the quilts and fun[ny] crafts that I spend my spare time making!  And the best thing is that I have another giveaway on the 10th of December so do come back again to see what I have up for grabs!

Sew Mama Sew is hosting this amazing giveaway linky party so be sure to visit all the other giveaways too. 

There are several categories full of giveaways and I have decided to join the Sewing + Craft Supplies giveaway section.  One lucky winner will receive this parcel:


Pale blue fabric with fun floral paisley and white fabric with dancing fairies


My giveaway includes:
- Heart shaped buttons
- Two fat quarters (one has the selvage on which says 'JONE INC' by blend "Believe") 
- Pocket size 2013 calendar

How to enter:
In the comments, please tell me your Zodiac sign.  That's it!  No hoops!

Small print:
*Open to international entries - that's only fair, right!?
*One entry per person - second entries will not be counted and may be deleted
*Giveaway will close on Friday 7 December at 10pm GMT
*Winner will be chosen by Random Number Generator or similar and announced on the blog by Sunday 9th December 2012
*The winner will be contacted by email so please be sure I can contact you otherwise I will re-draw an alternate winner
*Prize will be shipped no later than 14th December 2012

GOOD LUCK and see you again on the 10th!!

LMQG Christmas ornament exchange

The London Modern Quilt Guild meet once a month.  We normally have a challenge and Show'n'Tell and sometimes a swap.  The group is a lot of fun and there is so much sewing talent it is incredible! 

Yesterday we met up and had our Christmas ornament/tree decoration swap.  We were given the name of another guild member to 'stalk' and make an ornament for, using their inspiration mosaic as guidance.  We then revealed ourselves today when we gave our ornament to our 'secret' partner.  I was given an awesome wonky house from Colette of Colette Moscrop:

Colette also gave me the hand-printed snowflake fabric you see in the above photo which was used as the wrapping for the package.  And some chocolate fell in too - yum (how did she know I like chocolate?)!

 She did a fantastic job of stalking me and I love all the detail she added to the house.  This back side has a heart pocket which held some chocolate coins!  I love the scallop detailing at the roof!  THANK YOU Colette - I love my new home (especially the purple front door with lime green dots and button door knob!). 

The person I gave to was Charlotte and she got a Quirky bird in a mini 'Fa la la la la' drawstring bag and I wrapped up a Peanut Butter Kit Kat for her too!!

The ornaments that were made were so much fun to see!  The only criteria was that it had to have some stitching (we are a sewing group after all!).  There was so much variety in what was made too.  I managed to get a snap of most of them, plus a couple of other things people had made:

I must say I had a lot of fun sewing for my partner and I am thrilled with what I was given!  Thank you to everyone who participated.  In January, we are making Pin Cushions for a random swap.  Can't wait to see the variety in what is created!

Happy Monday everyone - and be sure to enter my giveaway later today as well!

P.S. If you are feeling festive - please go vote for my quilt in the Christmas Quilt Show.  I am #19!  All you have to do is put my number in the comments section over at Quilting Tutorials blog.  Cheers!

Velocity Designer Challenge

Today you can find me over at Fat Quarterly where I have shared my two Velocity Designer Challenge projects.  Click here to see my post about what I made with this fun fabric!

P.S.  Please stop in again tomorrow for my "Giveaway" Day giveaway!

Priceless snowmen....

Ok.  So I like to go to the local convenience store and get a chocolate bar and while I was there looking for a Peanut Butter Kit Kat, I found the cutest sugary drinks in neat shaped bottles.  As soon as I saw them, an idea popped into my head.  I couldn't leave without them so I bought a few -- and turned them into SNOWMEN....

I LOVE snowmen!!!  These guys are too funny!  I took those naked drink bottles and made a very serious snowman, a semi-surprised snowman and a worried snowman!

Cost of drinks:  39 pence each
Cost of felt:  47 pence for an A4 size piece
Cost of one pipe cleaner:  7 pence
Cost of eyes:  6 pence per snowman
Cost of pompoms:  5 pence each

Looking into the eyes of my crazy 'drink' snowmen = PRICELESS

November - month in review

The 11th month of 2012 is over.  I love looking back over the month to see what I managed to accomplish.  I spent most of my time dreaming about Christmas and making lots of Christmas ornaments - seven quirky birds, two linen snowmen, four paper pieced Christmas tree decorations and a few more Christmas related things.

I have three favourites from November:
My ticker tape rainbow wall hanging [sent to Gina - Happy Go Lizzie for her Scrappy Swap gift]:

My first quirky bird:

And my cross-stitched ornament:

December will be another busy month with bee blocks and a few more Christmas things to sew.  I have my fingers crossed that I will finish a few more WiP's and UFO's from my 100 Day Hustle list and my 4th Quarter list.  I've just purchased flannel for one of the quilts so I have no excuse to not finish it!! 

Happy December everyone!  Remember to pop back on Monday for my giveaway! 

Linking to Fresh Sewing Day.