Hearts for Spring

With the sunshine beaming down, the garden filled with birdsong and the scent of flowers and cut grass....it is very hard to stay in and draw templates and write up projects which is what i've been doing this week....i have made a lot of patchwork projects lately but can't show them until they are published....but i can show these little hearts made from scraps and decorated with chick patches and flower buttons.......

 There are signs of easter appearing now too.....some chickens and some little eggs here and there....

 .....at the weekend we were outdoors all the time enjoying the sun...so hot and unbelievable for march......

 ....we even had to water the plants.....and i planted some seeds and ordered some sweet peas (more about those later).....i had a couple of lucky duck moments again over the last week.....one was winning this sweet fabric in Tricia's giveaway......perfect little prints to make some small projects, perhaps a doll's quilt.......Tricia makes beautiful things, i love her quilts,  her sewing and her crochet...you can find her here and her etsy shop is here..

                      ...........thank you Tricia for your generous sharing of sweet fabrics with me :-)........

 .....one more lucky find was this thrifted embroidered tablecloth, perfect for afternoon tea in the summery garden...............

...............each corner is beautifully stitched in pretty coloured flowers and each one is different  too............

...........back to work now.....drawing and painting illustrations today....might pop out to the garden though in my lunch hour ;-) .........thank you for dropping in to see me, i do love your visits....... i hope you are having a sweet and sunny week wherever you are and enjoying good times...........back soon xxxxxxxxxx

Sewing Things

 Like most creative people, i love the tools of my trade, sometimes it's paints, brushes, thick creamy watercolour paper, fine nib rotring pens, tiny bottles of ink.....but at the moment mostly the tools of my trade are sewing things ....besides the computer of course ;-)......and i love all the little things i use each day.........

 ....the scissors, threads, needles and pins....and of course the pin cushions......and i had an idea to make some new ones as gifts shaped like...gifts!..... this idea was one i used for my crafts beautiful magazine xmas project which was a cushion that looked like an xmas gift tied up with ribbon with a stitched tag.....

 .....i made three little pincushions from some of my favourite fabrics....and tied a bow round them, gift-style....

 .....and then i made some little tags using rubber stamps and bits of cardstock, patterned papers and fabric scraps......i love to do these for fun, and then the ideas are useful for magazine commissions later.....

 ......the china blue card stock is a lovely shade, i think....reminds me a bit of my cornish blue blanket edging...

 .......a little tag makes it look more present-like and it's always nice to write a special message to the recipient....

 ........so after lots of playing with these....well only a short while really as i have been working very hard on the top secret project most of the time and these were very quick to make......i had a play with the button factory set my daughter gave me.....now i've made covered buttons before, often with cross stitch on them, and had one featured as part of a corsage in Sew magazine last year.......but i have never had a whole set of button moulds to play around with at once.....so this was fun to do......and i made lots very quickly (some better than others as some were a bit wonky)....

 ....but i am very pleased with my new collection of covered buttons and will be adding them to my quilts and cushions....and anything else i can think of too......

 ....i have had to order a large amount of fabric lately for the secret project, and have turned into a bit more of a fabric aholic than i already was.....i've found some more ranges that i fell in love with which haven't yet arrived in my sewing room but will be here soon and i can't wait......

.......but this sweet jellyroll  from tanya whelan has appeared already, and before i open it and work with it i decided to have a nice photo or two to put on my blog and enjoy it all rolled up like this.....sew pretty....
Thank you for dropping in today, it's lovely to see you........... I hope you are having a cheery week and if you live in the uk or anywhere else where the temperatures have dropped..............keep cosy!......wishing you a happy new month ...............back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Flowers and Fabrics

 All the flowers in this little jug were picked from the garden today.... unusual November flowers for our garden which is normally rather flowerless by now, but today i found some cornflowers... some cosmos....some lavender.......white geranium....cranesbill.....fuschia.........

some nasturtiums... scabious.... daisies....and some purple flowers that i can't remember the name of....
i went out to put some vegetable peelings in the beehive composter this morning and saw a hyacinth flowering in one of the borders, which made me then go and investigate the rest of the garden to see what the flowers were up to, and that's how i found all these....most unusual but a pretty surprise.....

 This week has been a bit of a fabric fest here as i've been working on some big fabric-y projects......

 ....more about these lovely Liberty fabrics in a future post....how delicious they are......

 and so is this lovely tilda fabric which i've used to back my christmas quilt, and then made a quick pincushion with some of the left over fabric....i can never have too many pincushions and love lots of them around the house....

 ... as you can see this little bundle of squares has the cute name of flurry and though we haven't had any snow flurries here yet, it's been a flurry of fabric and projects in my studio this week.....these squares might become a cushion but i haven't quite decided yet.......

....and yes, there has been a bit of christmas crafting going on too....a few teeny things hidden away as surprises for family and friends....and i am making some little labels to add to my christmas quilt using rubber stamped words...i've been washing them to test for colourfastness and they seem fine, and i thought i might add some of these red and green dotty buttons too....
Thank you very much for dropping by to see me and for your very kind comments....i hope you are all having a wonderful weekend......i'll be back soon with a giveaway!! xxxxx

Spring Things

What a lovely spring-y week we've been having, and I hope you have too! Thank you for all your sweet comments on my last post - I so enjoyed reading them. I've been having a very busy week as well as a spring-y one....

I had a lovely day out with my elder daughter Sarah, for a bit of city centre shopping and browsing. I like to think that it's part of my job to see what's in the shops! I bought some pretty little trinkets that I might use in designs - imexpensive jewellery in pretty colours can be used to decorate collages and toys....

I've spent the rest of the week working on a new magazine project and as it's got to be top secret for now I thought I'd show you a new bunny currently under construction...I love the Lecien Flower Sugar fabrics and have bought a few more recently in lots of colours...

A cardi for the new bunny - designed around her own unique shape...the little moss stitch peplum idea came from a cardi I made myself using a Kim Hargreaves pattern called Dolly - not sure yet if the bunny one will work out....

All the shops were full of Easter things already. For me, mini chocolate eggs are not just for Easter...

Some new fabrics I'm looking forward to making up ready for when it really is Easter! I hope you have a wonderful weekend and the spring sunshine is warming up your days as it is mine...I can hardly keep working in my studio when the weather is so lovely, I keep popping out to the garden with a cup of tea to absorb the fresh air and listen to the newly singing birds. Enjoy your spring things too! xxxxx

Splash of Colour

 The inspiration for today's post was silverpebbles's idea to cheer up the gloomy dark days by sharing colourful pictures. I think it's a lovely idea and I'm sure it will help us get through the dreary days to have our blogs showing this series during the first week of each month for four months (and then it will be spring!) Emma has also set up a flickr site devoted to the splashes of colour pictures.

One of the main things that helps keep me feeling positive and cheerful during the dark winter days is working with colour. It can be paint, threads or fabrics - just the sight of all this colour really lifts my spirits and designing and making things speeds the winter days along. (The little bird applique pincushion above is not quite finshed - I want to add a little more embroidery and maybe some more buttons, but I thought I'd pop it on here anyway.)

These bright storage boxes have been in my studio for a long time and I love the colours. They hide away things like printer cartridges and card blanks so I always know where they are when I need them. The felt is soon to be used for a project, but in the meantime I just like looking at it!
I hope you are having a lovely day and enjoying lots of splashes of colour too. x

ABC

This is a tiny alphabet sampler for a child's room, made up as a small decorative cushion and part of a project I designed for Crafts beautiful magazine earlier this year. On the back of the cushion I used some sweet nursery print fabric from here.

I really enjoy using the huge variety of Japanese prints available on children's themes, they are so pretty and well-designed and because of the small scale they work really well for mini projects and tiny appliques.

My post today has to be quick as I'll soon be looking after Daisy while her parents are at a wedding. She might snooze quite happily in the cot under the storybook quilt...or....she just might not!!

It's been a lovely week, and I've enjoyed having new visitors and visiting new blogs too. I'll be back soon. Have a great weekend. x



Crafty Supplies

This week a few interesting packages arrived from various crafty places - with some new supplies to add to my craft stash. I buy fabrics which catch my eye, often with no definite plan for using them, but if I like them I know they will fit in to a project at some point.

I usually buy small amounts of fabric as most of my work is small scale, and often mix different designers ranges together. If I want large pieces of fabric, say for a quilt backing, I choose these separately after the quilt top is completed. These bright and beautiful fabrics came from here.

Buying new craft papers and other embellishments for magazine projects is essential to the success of this type of work. I need to use new and current crafts materials so readers can get hold of the same ones, if they wish to, and to give the work a fresh look. (Well, that's my excuse anyway!)

It's Christmas designing time in my studio at the moment, so some new papers were ordered in ready to be included in the festive creativity. I love Christmas, fortunately, so I can even get enthusiastic about it in August - or any time of year I need to! These crafty Christmas supplies came from here.

Before I go I'd just like to say a great big thank you to the new visitors to my blog this week, especially those who have left me lovely comments. Please do come back again soon!

Have a wonderful weekend. x