A Quilt for Daisy

 This is the quilt I made for my grandbaby Daisy's first birthday.....I used lots of pretty colours for her as you can see, with large daisy like flowers appliqued in the centre...and a few butterflies here and there too....

 ....here it is being sewn...after using bondaweb to fix the flower petals in place I sewed round them with blanket stitch in matching thread...I love this method of applique and it means it is quite robust when being used....and I do love the quilts I make to be used a lot....

 .....hanging up with the flowery nine patch quilt top on my small quilt hanger (it's actually a shabby chic victorian towel rail someone gave us)...I like to look at the finished quilt tops for a while and it reminds me to actually get on  and quilt them ....if i put them away somewhere it's easy to forget about them....

 ....folded up and tied with ribbon ready to give to the little chickadee herself.....

                                                   ......we showed it to her and unrolled it...

                                                     ...and she snuggled right in to it :)....

...now it's at my daughter's house and soon it will be on Daisy's little bed when she moves from her cot...

Thanks for popping in to see me today and for keeping in touch with your lovely comments and emails...it's a strange mix of summer and autumn here...with ripening fruits, warm sunny days, then chilly grey and cloudy ones and that autumn nip in the air...

.....this week I am stitching the flowery nine patch, and making a patchwork cushion, as well as sewing work projects...I have lots of new things to show you too so will be back very soon.... enjoy your week till next time  xxxxxxxx

Handmade

 Handmade - I love that word so much, and I love making things by hand and always have...the tactile feel of fabrics and threads, the pleasure of combining textures and colours, the sewing of stitches and beads and buttons, smoothing down and stitching  ribbons in place...something that has always given me such enjoyment and made me forever grateful that I chose to go to art college and become a designer and maker all those years ago...I would have made things anyhow but I know I'm extremely lucky to be able to call it work too..

 Whilst looking for something in my studio the other day I found these applique projects that I made quite a while ago. I'm about to work on some applique pictures for a commission so it was useful to have these to hand again rather then nestling at the bottom of a big basket with lots of other projects....

 I love the immediacy of hand embroidery, how everyone does it slightly differently, and the special individual pieces are often quirky...hand stitched pieces by children are very sweet and it's a good way for them to begin sewing....I always use fusible web to iron on my shapes and then stitch round them with different coloured embroidery threads, sometimes in blanket stitch, sometimes running stitch....

 If I make a little picture I back it with wadding and cotton fabric and bind it with colourful binding, then add a few quilt stitches or French knots here and there....it's such a free and easy way to work...

 I also found this little unfinished embroidery which I'd forgotten about, probably abandoned when more pressing projects took over, and this week I'm hoping to find time to finish it off and make it into something..

 The red plastic embroidery hoop came free with a magazine ....I don't always use them and never do for cross stitch, but sometimes embroidery is easier with the fabric stretched tight...

Flowers in pots are on my mind at the moment, nurturing the ones in my garden each day...we haven't had nearly as much rain here as everyone else in the country seems to have had...though we did get caught in a huge downpour visiting a garden on Saturday...such heavy rain everything was soaked in a moment. Thank you for popping in here to see me, I love your visits and your sweet comments. Have a happy sunny week and enjoy your handmade moments. Back soon. xxxxx

Seaside Stitching

While I'm on a seaside theme I thought I'd show you this little coastal inspired picture. As you can tell, it uses several techniques of a stitched and textile nature, including applique, cross stitch, crewel embroidery and patchwork.

The idea for it came from my Spindrift Cottage Sampler, a cross stitch design inspired by a trip to the remote and beautiful Scottish coast. I produced it as a chart years ago, and a lovely lady once wrote to me and told me it was exactly like the place in Scotland where her daughter lived and she was stitching it for her.

I was experimenting here, trying to make sea pinks, shells, boats and buckets from little scraps of fabric with a tiny bit of stitching. I love how a scrap of fabric in a certain colour and with a certain shape can capture the look of an object - there's such a lot of fascinating serendipity in this kind of work.

The words are from the classic poem Sea Fever by John Masefield, written in 1902 - and slightly misquoted by me for design purposes!

I might just keep this as a picture, what do you think? Or maybe I could use it as a panel in a small seaside quilt?