Another sunny weekend-day has come to an end and today I finally got stuck into some sewing!
As the early afternoon rolled over, I fired up the iron, got my machine in working order (new needle, full bobbin and full thread on top), pressed all of my fabrics and begun the task of making my Notting Hill House Mini!
Ooo, isn’t it just the loveliest thing!!
I found, just like the Pandamonium Mini Quilt, there was a lot of cutting before the sewing could begin. But being as I’m a total loser for cutting (it’s one of my favourite steps in quilt making!), I was in my element as I meticulously checked and re-checked the measurements, lined up the fabric on my mat and then cut, cut, cut!
Piecing it together was a piece of cake! At almost every step in the pattern, there is a little diagram showing you what, where and how to piece all of the little pieces together to create the door, the windows and the roof and then how to bring them all together to complete the quilt top! Fab!
I was saying in yesterdays post, I wasn’t too sure on the fabrics I had chosen to use for this mini. But you know, I looked at the choices this morning with fresh eyes and didn’t change a thing! I could see that all of the fabrics I had pulled out would work brilliantly with each other!
All in all, I’m really happy with how everything came together. The door and stair section is a little wonky, but hey, it adds character! Now, I think I’m going to add a little border sashing around the outside of the house (even though the pattern doesn’t suggest that), just so that it stands out a little bit. I’m not too sure when I’ll have the time to quilt it as the week ahead is a busy one along with the weekend! I may have to pull some late-nighters to see it finished! But what ever happens, I’ll keep you in the loop!
Happy Sunday friends and I hope you all have a lovely week ahead!
Oh man, the weather today was absolutely lush! The sun was shinning brilliantly, the flowers were in full bloom, a warm breeze rustled through my hair and it was the first day since the beginning of winter where I haven’t needed to put socks on by days end! Yay! Spring is here!
So for today I had planned to get started on what I like to call ‘personal sewing’. It’s those projects where I’m making it simply for me and my own enjoyment. For example, my Pandamonium Mini Quilt was a ‘personal sewing’ project, as was my Pineapple Mini and so will be the patterns I bought from Fat Quarter Shop the other day. And it’s one of those I was going to start this morning…
However, after sitting down in front of my machine I annoyingly remembered that I hardly had any thread to sew with and that I needed to buy some new needles for my machine! I’d been putting off and putting off and putting off going to buy some all week (which is REALLY terrible, I know!), which resulted in me cursing at myself as I sit down to sew and hear/feel that spine-tingly clunk-clunk-clunk of my dull needle piercing through the fabric! Oops! So because I treated myself to a lovely and much needed lie-in in the morning and had the afternoon booked with another event, I ended up at Spotlight buying what I needed 20 minutes before they closed for the day! And by then, my day had been busy enough that my up-and-go had up-and-went!
The pattern I was going to get stuck into was the Notting Hill House Mini by Nedra Ridgeway. I currently have the pattern pinned up on my cork board behind my desk and every now and then I can’t help but look over at it because it’s just so stinkin’ cute!!
A few moments a go, I had a good rummage through my stash for some lovely pastel florals and spots that I think would suit the pattern. I’m still not 100% sure on how the prints sit together and what exact fabrics will make the cut, but I’ll look at it again tomorrow with fresh eyes and see if anything needs changing!
That’s been the day! I hope yours is much more productive in the sewing room than mine was!
Since the day I first shared these darling little pincushions on Instagram last week, lots of requests have come in for me to do a tutorial!
And so here it is ladies! (Ahem…and gentlemen, if you’re reading along!)
Materials List:
A suitable amount of cotton fabric, depending on how big you want to make your pincushion. The fabric I use is DS Quilts, Daisy Mae collection.
x1 large button with two holes in a colour of your choice
80″ (estimate) of DMC Pearle Cotton thread in colour of choice
x1 Straws needle in size no.1 (or any other type of strong hand sewing needles)
Hand full of polyester stuffing
Scissors: Thread snips, Fabric scissors and Pinking Sheers
Lead pencil
x1 small hand sewing needle and matching thread
Chop stick
Sewing Machine
Dressmaking pins
Something round to trace around eg. Jam jar lid, tin lid, plate etc.
The beauty about this pattern is that you can make your pincushion as big or as small as you like depending on the size of the circular object you choose to trace around! Yeah!
If this looks like a great little project that you’re going to make, don’t forget to send me a photo of your finished little (or big!) petal pincushion! I would absolutely love to see how you go!
Happy Sewing, Friends!!
xx
PS. This petal pincushion has been inspired and adapted from a pattern in a booklet that came with issue 52 of Mollie Makes magazine.
Thursday has panned out to be a pretty typical work day for me.
The day started out with replying back to emails and checking all of my social media places and answering comments and seeing what all of you guys are up to.
Then my usual late morning procrastinating set in and I got sucked into watching too many YouTube videos. (We’ve all been there! Am I right?) Well to be honest, I was waiting for my camera battery to charge so that I could get filming my Petal Pincushion tutorial…I had to do something to pass the time! 😀
After lunch, my motivation came back with a punch (I find I work best from early afternoon and into the evening!) and I got the Pincushion tutorial filmed and ready for editing! Yeah! Over the next few hours, I’ll get the major part of that edit done, ready to add the finishing touches tomorrow morning so that I can upload it in the afternoon! So get ready for that!
Also this afternoon, when I was importing my tutorial files into iMovie, I got momentarily distracted by some of the downloadable PDF patterns on the Fat Quarter Shop website. (As one so casually does!) I ended buying two patterns that really stood out to me and that I could see myself easily making! The first is a paper piecing pattern by Zen Chic called Octo!
I’ve always been really keen on making a quilt with a circular type element/design to it. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me so much of this Anna Maria Horner pattern called Spinning Stars. I think they’re very similar!
Gahh! This house is so super-super cute and I can’t wait to plan what pretty pastel floral fabrics I can use to make it with!! Yip-yip!
One other thing that I’ve been up to today is researching and making the final decisions of what blocks will make the final cut for a new Quilt-Along I’ll be doing on my YouTube channel very, very soon! It’ll be a Sampler quilt of sorts and I’m quite sure all of the blocks will have a HST base to them. The only thing I’m really stuck with is what fabrics to use. Unlike my first QAWM series, I want to use a fabric (or fabrics) that are readily available to everyone all across the world. Hence why I’ve been stalking the Fat Quarter Shop of late as well as Kelani Fabrics and Hobby Sew. There are a few fabric ranges I’ve found that I think will work but I’m still on the lookout for that perfect collection that ticks all of the boxes!
So that’s been my day. Well so far, anyway. I still have this post to finalise and publish as well as a tutorial to edit for you guys to see tomorrow, along with half a dozen other important things on my to-do list that I’m casually procrastinating over! Eek!
I hope you’re all having a wonderful Thursday wherever you are in the world!
Today I get to share with you a very special quilt I made in collaboration with the Fat Quarter Shop using their exclusive 5″x10″ Jolly Bar pre-cuts!
The range I was given to play and create with was the beautiful Polka Dots & Paisleys by Minick & Simpson for Moda Fabrics. Full of gorgeous florals, paisleys, polka dots and rich Americana colours, it was such a lovely range to work with and discover all of the intricate patterns and shapes within the prints.
One of the things I found working with the Jolly Bars is just how versitile they are to work with! I found it so hard to narrow down the perfect block to show off how effortless they are to design and sew with! My thoughts were; ‘Do I cut them half and do a simple strip-piece quilt?’ ‘Should I cut the Jolly Bar into rectangles and make it into a tumbler block?’ ‘Do I stick with a simple HST?’ The list was endless! Also, one of the other great things I love about the Jolly Bars is that each range featured comes with an exclusive pattern to make with it! All of the hard parts of wondering what to make from them has all been taken care of! Yay! So all you need to do is pick the range you love the most, make the super-easy pattern inside and you’ve got a beautiful quilt that you’ll love forever!
The quilt I chose to design and make features a very simple variation of the Open Window block. To make it, I simply cut the 42 Jolly Bars in half, paired them with a white solid fabric, then stitched and trimmed the 5″ squares into 84 4.5″ half-square triangles. I then pieced together three matching HSTs of four different prints around an 8.5″ white centre square to complete the block. I made twelve blocks all together, with a few HSTs left over and then added a 4.5″ sashing around the edges to complete the quilt top.
I used a beautifully soft and luscious bamboo/cotton blend batting (a new favourite!) and a creamy blender fabric for the backing. I then quilted it by stitching two lines either side of all of the seam lines, creating an echo type pattern within the open spaces of the blocks. To finish it up, I used a matching red solid fabric to bind the edges.
The finished size of the quilt measures: 57″x73″ or 145cmx185cm.
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If you’re curious to know how to piece an Open Window block together, then feel free to check out the following tutorial I made for my YouTube channel!
Measurement & cutting info…
From the white solid fabric cut –
x1: 8.5″ square for the centre of the block
x8: 5″ squares to be made into HSTs
From four print fabrics cut –
x2: 5″ squares from each one to be made into HSTs
Follow the steps in the video to learn how to piece together this block! All seams are a 1/4″.
FINAL BLOCK SIZE: 16.5″x16.5″ (42cmx42cm)
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I would like to extend a big thank you to the team at the Fat Quarter Shop for inviting me to join this blog hop and to be given the opportunity to work with such a beautifully rich fabric range! It was an absolute pleasure!
Whew! What a day! This poor little quilter is ready to dive into bed and go to sleep!
Today was Market Day at my church, where my sister-in-law and I shared a handmade stall full of lovely little knick-knacks, accessories and every other good thing!
Amie and I ready to sell!
Although the day was quieter than expected (unfortunately for us there was a local fair happening at the same time!), we both made a tidy little profit with what we had to offer! Yay!
Things that Amie had on the table included custom made Headband Frames, super sweet headbands with adorable flowers and embellishments, hair clips with dainty little bows and frilly lace plus these really clever dummy (or pacifier) clips made with super cute printed ribbons, studs and fancy alligator-type clips. So clever!
On my side of the table I had a pile of my famous Little Wallets, all of those delightful little pincushions I’ve been showing you the past week (tutorial coming soon!!), fully lined tissue box fabric covers, a few mixed FQ bundles, handmade earrings, bags of buttons, a few craft kits, some old craft books and my Pineapple Mini Quilt. Safe to say the Pineapple came back home with me as did most of the things I made. So because of that, get ready for an influx of stock in my Esty shop! Yay!
I was really happy with the way we were able to set up our table. I used one of my mum’s embroidered linen table cloths as a base to set off the ‘handmade’ aesthetic of our stall. Then I used the Pink Wire ‘Falkhojden’ shelves I bought from IKEA last week to place stuff on and then an array of pretty glass bowls, silver trays and cake stands to displays our wares on. I think it all worked out pretty well!
So now that the busy chaos of getting everything ready for this market day is over, it’s time to finally get my head back into YouTube mode and produce some awesome videos and tutorials for you to enjoy and be inspired by!
And just as a warning: I’m diving-in head first with three tutorials to (hopefully) get out to you over the next week and a bit! Whoo!
One of the wonderful things that has come out of writing a blog, managing a YouTube channel and having an active Instagram account is that of creating some beautiful friendships with fellow, like-minded people all across the world! There are quite a number of you who regularly comment, chat, encourage and inspire me in everything that I publish and upload which makes my heart sing with gratefulness, humbleness and thankfulness! (Whew, so many ‘nesses’!) Words can never do justice to how kind you all are and how proud I am to call you friends, even though we’ve never met!
One act of insane kindness that I’m still blown away with is one made by a lovely lady in the UK whom I met on Instagram, Ayshia. Over the past year or so through sharing photos and having lots of great little chitta-chatta sessions, we’ve crazily discovered how many things we have in common even to a point where it’s borderline scary! I find it so fascinating that someone who literally lives on the other side of the world can be so alike to yourself that it feels as though you’ve known each other for ages, even though we’ve never met!
Anyway, with my birthday coming up soon Ayshia so kindly sent me a lovely package in the mail full of sweet gifts that made me so happy!
Everything she sent was just perfect! Lots of UK memorabilia (because I’m obsessed with the country, as you may know by now!): British flag keyring, a pack of socks (that’ll wear everyday with my Aussie Uggs!) and a half-metre cut of quilting fabric with MINI Coopers on it!!! OMG! Then the most adorable draw-string button bag (with buttons!) from Cath Kidston that I’ve ever seen! I love it so much!
But the one thing that I am so grateful to receive is this beautiful cross-the-body bag that she made herself out of such gorgeous fabric!
I mean it’s absolutely perfect! Literally! I’m completely blown away by how talented she is and how wonderfully constructed the bag is!
The bag itself features two deep zippered compartments, both fully lined and has a nice long adjustable strap to sling around the body! My favourite type of bag! I’ve decided I’ll be using it tomorrow at the Market Day so that I always have all of my valuables and change safe and close to hand!
To Ayshia, thank you so much!! Truly, your utter kindness has blown away and I’m so thankful for our little blossoming friendship! I’ll cherish everything you’ve taken the time to send me and continue to sing your praises whenever someone asks about that gorgeous little bag!
And to all of you who regularly read my blog, watch my YouTube videos, like/comment on my Instagram and Facebook page, thank you for your lovely friendship! Everyday you blow me away with your lovely comments and words of encouragement that it makes all of the hard work and late nights totally worth it!
Today, the 3rd of September is my beautiful mum’s birthday!
Words really can’t express just how wonderful this woman is in my life as well as my brothers, my dads and our extended family and friends. I’m so proud to say that my mum really is my best friend. (Something I’ve only really noticed these past few months or so!) She knows everything about me, supports and encourages me and is always, always there when I need her for anything, whether it be big or small. She also always knows the right time and the perfect way to snap me back into reality when I’ve been in ‘the clouds’ too long, which is quite a regular occurrence I must admit! Put simply, life is better when she’s around and I don’t want that to change. Ever.
So today, we spent a lovely day together by going out local for lunch, laughing, chatting and being our usual nutty selves. Our dining table has been taken over by glittery cards, pretty flowers, chocolate cupcakes, oodles of strawberries and handfuls of crunchy caramel popcorn! Ooo, yum!!
Tomorrow we’ll be extending the celebrations further when my brother and his family come by for an afternoon-tea-slash-early-dinner party! It’s there, when we’re all together, that the fun, laughter, chaos and big ‘happy birthdays’ are sung! It should be fun, I think!
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Also today I’ve been busily sewing away making some sweet little things for my stall at a Market Day the PWA are holding at my church this coming Saturday! (Actually, I should OUR stall as I’m sharing a table with my sister-in-law Amie, who makes the most adorable little baby accessories!) Ergo, the day has consisted of making the finishing touches to a few new little wallets as well as quickly stitching up some very cute petal pincushions and some tissue box fabric covers! Well, the tissue box covers have only been cut out at the moment. I hope to squeeze in some more sewing tonight and tomorrow morning!
I’m so unbelievably happy with how these little pincushions turned out! The pattern I used was one that came in issue no. 52 of Mollie Makes. Once I read through it and saw how simple they were to make, I knew I had to get into it and make some to sell at the stall! Also, while we’re talking about them, hands up those of you who want a tutorial on how to make one… I’d be more than happy to share with you how I make them!
One of my lovely blogger friends, Sharon from the blog Artistic Sharon Runs has nominated me and my blog for a Liebster Award! (Thanks Sharon!! That’s so kind of you!)
A Liebster Award is basically an award given from one blogger to the next, recognising the awesome work they put into their blogs as well as helping them be discovered by other bloggers and readers! How great is that!? Once you’ve been nominated you can either choose to accept it or ignore it! The choice is completely yours!
As a nominee, I now have the responsibility to nominate 5 other bloggers for the award! But I’ll chat more about at the end of the post!
So as a part my nomination, Sharon has forwarded these 11 questions for me to answer in an attempt for you to get to know me better!
Let’s begin!
Q1 // How, why & when did you start blogging?
Me in 2011!
I first started my blog in November 2011. At the time I’d been thinking about starting my own blog where I could chat and share all of the quilty and crafty things I was up to! I also needed a way to share the process of a quilt I was making for my cousin in the UK as thank you for looking after my parents when they were visiting that past summer! (Here’s the link to that post if you’re interested! It was like only the second one I had ever written and published!)
Q2 // What’s the nicest thing someone has done for you?
The first thing that springs to mind is the beautiful farewell scrapbook that my department manager Kerri made for me when I left my job at Spotlight.
It was full of good luck wishes from my fellow team mates, photos of me from demonstration days and special store celebrations along with special embellishments and decals that were me to a ‘T’! Everything about it was so special and lovely. I’ve never had anyone give me anything like that where they’ve put so much effort and love in to it!
Q3 // If you could meet one famous person alive today, who would it be?
It would be a dream to meet the Queen! Can you imagine all of the wonderful things to ask and chat about! In her life she has met so many important people who have come and gone and I think it would be fascinating to listen to her opinion and experiences with them all. Plus she just seems like the most loveliest person to talk to over a cuppa and plate of biccies!
Q4 // What is one thing on your bucket list you absolutely have to do?
Q5 // Describe a beautiful place that you’ve been.
Definitely Fiji!
In February/March, I went on a cruise to Fiji and saw some of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen! Clear sparkling turquoise water, perfectly white sandy beaches, palm trees swaying calmly in the breeze and the most chilled-out, relaxed atmosphere I’ve ever experienced! It was heaven!
Selfishness. Lack of respect. Ignorance. Laziness. Slow Drivers.
Q8 // What song will always cheer you up?
Q9 // Can you play any musical instruments?
No. Although, I did begin piano lessons as a teenager but realised quite quickly that it wasn’t for me!
I also really wanted to play the guitar, but like piano, I gave it up quite quickly as I sucked so bad at it!
Q10 // What does your ideal day off consist of?
Getting cosy on the lounge with a big quilt, a cup of tea, a slice of chocolate cake and watching a favourite film or reading a good book!
Q11 // What is one thing you really like about yourself?
I like the fact that I can see the bigger picture about most things. I’m pretty optimistic but at the same time I think it’s important to strive and achieve the goals and dreams you have.
I also like the fact that I’m a good driver.
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So now comes the more serious side to the Liebster Awards… The rules for accepting and nominating thy fellow bloggers!
Rules for the Liebster Awards:
1. Write a post thanking and linking the person who nominated you.
2. Include an image of the award in your post.
3. Nominate 5 to 10 other bloggers with less than 200 followers who you feel are worthy of this award.
4. Inform them they’ve been nominated by commenting on one of their posts.
5. Answer the 11 questions asked to you by the person who nominated you, then make 11 questions of your own for your nominees (or you may use the same questions).
6. Lastly, copy and paste these rules in your post.
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The five bloggers who I’ve nominated for a Liebster Award are…
3. Are you a cat person or a dog person? Or neither?
4. Where do you hope to be in 10 years time?
5. What is your go-to Karaoke song?
6. Favourite city?
7. What is one thing you wish you were better at?
8. Describe your ideal Summer’s Day?
9. What song always makes you want to get up and dance?
10. Your biggest crafting/sewing disaster to date.
11. What is at the top of your bucket list?
Like I mentioned at the beginning, you can choose to accept your nomination and ‘pass it forward’ or simply ignore it and continue on your way! No biggie.
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A big thanks again to Sharon for the nomination and I look forward to reading some of the answers to the questions I’ve posed to those of you who have been nominated!
3and3quarters 