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

Happy Days

The sun  is shining, we have bright spring flowers, there are blackbirds singing outside my studio window.....happy spring days are here.....and before i tell you more about the last few crafty days i would like to announce the winner of my springtime giveaway........a big thank you to everyone who took part i wish you could all be winners but there is only one today, and that is......birdie blue.......a sweet blog that i love to visit! congratulations to you molly...i will be in touch x...........  i've been thinking up more giveaway ideas so will be having another one soon............. so good luck everyone in the next one...............

 .......recently i mentioned that i was making some granny squares with the yarn left over from my spring flowers granny stripe blanket.....i crocheted them together with spring green yarn and then i added.....some flowers...

                                            ............so it became the primrose patch pillow..........

 .............i love making crochet flowers....and on mother's day i was delighted to discover i wasn't the only one in our family making them..........my daughter sarah learnt to crochet a few weeks ago, and i knew she was busy making a gorgeous stripy blanket.....but i didn't know that she was also looking on the internet and learning to make flowers to make me a sweet mother's day brooch...!

 ........happy days....seeing my dearies....having sweet gifts like these......wonderful pip studio jug picked specially for me by rosie ...eton fudge shop deliciousness......pretty cards and flowers........

 ....a delightful mother's day block which my daughter secretly ordered from fee..........and CaKe of course (not made by me).......yummy lemon drizzle cake with vanilla sugar lemon topping.....and there were scrumptious chocolate buns too but i didn't manage to take a picture of those..........the children were very keen on munching those up and daisy loved the squishiness of them and the exciting potential for chocolate-y decorating on everyone and everything ;-)

 .....you can tell it's spring because a little chick flew into my studio last week....master willow is cheeping happily here thanks to jooles.....i missed out on the little robins that jooles made at christmas so i got my order in quickly this time for a spring chick........i was a bit spoilt for choice as there were so many cute little chicks to choose from.....

....this week i am sorting out seeds to plant.....i am planning to have my usual sweet pea wigwam and next to it the beans wigwam, and then a few salad vegetables.......and a little bit of spare ground is going to be a cutting patch (i hope!)....so maybe this year will be the floweriest year ever in our garden...?  
Thank you for visiting me here in my little flower patch of blogland....i love your visits and it's been fun reading your comments on my giveaway and meeting so many lovely new (to me) bloggers....wishing you all sunshine and happy days..........back soon xxxxxxxxxx

Bunny Bliss

 We have some new little bunnies to greet you here today....very tiny little bunnies indeed.....small enough to sit on these delightful bunnie picture blocks in fact..............i made the tiny bunnies a while ago, just after i made the big bunny (Ruby) i decided to make some very small ones next .......

 ......last week Fee and i decided to do a swap....two of her picture blocks for one of my stitched hearts......the fact that the baby bunnies fit so well sitting on the blocks was sheer serendipity :-)......

 ....when Fee's parcel came and i saw the little wooden bunny tag my heart (seriously) skipped a beat ....the tag is two sided too, both sides so sweet......and then inside the package the little Chipper Nelly wooden blocks made with vintage bunny paper.....sooo adorable...

 .....and one side even had a boy and girl bunny illustration, even though Fee didn't know i had just made tiny girl and boy bunnies......

                                  .........this is the postcard-y heart i made as my half of the swap.............

                                                  ....the baby bunnies don't have names yet......

 ......here they are pictured with Flora, one of my spring bunnies from last year, she is doing a bit of babysitting...

              .........one more picture on the newly painted white dresser, tucked into in the greengate cup again......

.........the bunnie blocks are so sweet aren't they, and i can tell the baby bunnies like them as much as i do....the buttons on the bunnie's clothes were also part of our swap, and the tiny ones i received were just perfect to sew onto the teeny clothes.....
Thank you for popping in to visit us here today, it's wonderful to see you.........my giveaway is still open until March 21 if you'd like to enter it and haven't already you are welcome to put your name in the draw..........

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, with spring sunshine and happy times, and to all the mummies out there Happy Mother's Day on Sunday  (we are celebrating it with lots of cake)...........back soon xxxxxxxxxxxx

Crafty Days

 I have some crochet to share with you today.........i finished the spring flowers blanket last week and here it is hanging on the back of a chair in front of my newly (re) painted white dresser...........

 ...........i LoVeD making this granny stripe blanket and will be beginning another one very soon.......

 ..........the colour pallette was inspired by the spring flowers that have been brightening up my window sill over the last few wintry months.........the various shades together in nature work so beautifully...

..and in yarn combinations too........i made a very simple border for this blanket, after all those stripes i decided to just do a plain pink border, very simple indeed but it pulls the whole thing together ..........

 ........here is gorgeous little grandbaby Daisy having a peek at the new blanket and the yarn stash....she is already showing a lot of crafty interest, will play for ages with a basket of ribbons, can remove all the bands off a whole heap of embroidery thread skeins in the wink of an eye and squeals with delight if she discovers a new bunny in my studio.....we have a lot of crafty fun together.......

 ..........my next crochet project is using up the rest of the yarn from the spring flowers blanket to make a cushion....this is the beginning of it and i'm having a bit of a craze on it so hope to have it finished soon....

         .....before i go i must show you my little patchwork project in this month's Crafts Beautiful magazine......

 ......a close up of the selvedge ribbons i made to decorate the top....for more crafty ideas look here......

.......thank you so much for visiting me here in my little bit of blogland and thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway in the last post.....it was wonderful to hear from so many of you and i look forward to visiting lots of lovely new (to me) blogs in the next few days :-)....thank you for dropping by......
.....the giveaway is open until March 21 so there is still time for you to put your name in the hat if you'd like to.....
i am off to do some more crochet now.....i hope you are having a happy crafty week too.....back soon xxxxxxx

Spring Flowers and a Giveaway!!

 I love to put individual flowers in a little container all on their own so you can see the details...when i painted flowers all day i often had lots of small jars and egg cups on my desk with single flowers in to study closely....

 ..........the other day i spied my little crate of mini milk bottles and put some flowers in them.....

....they really brighten up my sewing room, looking so perfect and fresh....i do LoVe flowers ......and i decided to do a flowery themed giveaway for springtime.......as a thank you to my lovely readers and new followers......

....this is my springtime giveaway......a little greengate tin (lots of you liked the one that i showed you a while ago, and i managed to track down another one to give away), one of my gift style pincushions in the gorgeous green flower sugar fabric with a yellow ribbon, a circle of sweet flower head pins, and some pretty flower buttons.......

                                           ........the pincushion has one of my handmade tags...........

 .........of course you don't have to use the tin for sewing things, you could keep anything you liked in it ;)

to enter my springtime giveaway all you have to do is leave me a comment on this post... that's all.....it will be open for two weeks until March 21.......i am happy to send the giveaway anywhere in the world....do please make sure you leave a contact email address if you don't have a blog, so i can get in touch if you win.......

This is quite a short post tonight as i am having a really busy week and have a little toooo much crafty work to do so am hoping to get a few things finished by the weekend and spend a bit of time outdoors......my gardening was held up last weekend by sudden very cold temperatures so i spent a bit of time reading garden books and making plans instead of weeding and mulching....but next weekend should be warmer i'm told....

Thank you for popping in to see me here today it's always a pleasure to have your visits....... wishing you a wonderful rest of the week with sunshine and sweet spring flowers.....and good luck in the giveaway!
Back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Block Party

 These are some of my new farmer's wife quilt blocks spread out on the table.....i am still having fun making these, especially choosing the next one to do.....

.....and slowly but surely there will eventually be a pretty quilt filled with varied blocks at the end of the sewing ....maybe not for quite a while though ;-)......and there are some other (different but lovely) blocks here this week.....i was a bit late to this particular block party, having only just discovered Fee at Chipper Nelly....but i'm making up for lost time now......

              .....the set of wooden ABC nursery blocks is just delightful, i love them as little works of art........

 ....i looked (without success) in vintage shops for years to find some just like these to use in pictures and to simply look at and enjoy......

......i think they are gorgeous, and the bunnies like them too ....i found Fee's blocks through Annie at Knitsofacto who is having a giveaway over on her lovely blog which happens to include a special block from Chipper Nelly...so pop over there and put your name in the draw if you haven't already.......it is open until March 9........

.....this pretty tin is where i keep the farmer's wife quilt templates.......last week i made one of the blocks for a second time....the one called Bouquet (you can't have too many bouquets though can you?)......

....and the one in the front here is called Flock.......(also in this picture is the  LOL bracelet i picked up while shopping with Sarah and Daisy last week).....i liked the colours of the beads here with the fabrics and i always  love things with letters on.....(the other bracelet's word choice was totes amaze)
It's like the first day of spring here today...warm, sunny, blue sky, birds singing, flower petals opening, trees blossoming....a day for a stripy tee shirt and no woolly cardi....a day to drive with the window down and listen to old songs....wonderful springtime....
Thank you for visiting me here in my little space on this beautiful day....i hope you have a wonderful weekend and that it is full of the joys of spring.....i think it's about time i organised a spring giveaway don't you?....i'll be back with one very soon xxxxxxxxxxxx