Garden Bunny

 Today we have a new bunny for you to meet........she is called bea and she is a garden bunny......

 ...............her dress is made with one of my most favourite fabrics ever, which you have seen here before......it is from lakehouse dry goods...............

                                         ................here is bea, being created.............

 ...............her ears are lined with some new lecien basics fabric, a design of little cross stitches or kisses, very cute and useful and i will be using it again soon..........

 ............... i thought that the green ric rac looked just right to decorate the hem of her dress.............

 ................little bea, before she had her dress buttons sewn on (we were waiting for the tiny pink flower buttons to arrive by post)...........

 .....................such sweet flowers in the garden now, more and more opening each day, and roses already, quite a mixture to choose from..............

 ...............i covered a little pen pot with this gorgeous fabric too so i can use it on my desk..........

 .............now we must have some real garden pictures too, so here is the wonderful parterre garden at erdigg, north wales, that we visited with the family recently..........

 .............such beautiful tulips under planted with violas...really pretty effects.....

 ................mellow old brick walls surround the garden.............and there are lovely features like the vintage watering cans and wheel barrow to add to the timeless atmosphere...............

 .............charlie and daisy loved the freedom of all the grass to run around on, and to roll down on too.......we had afternoon tea in the tea garden, and molly the dog was allowed to join us there.....

 ..............daisy, charlie and molly (with her new travel water bowl bought by the children specially for her)..............

............little bea perched on the stool, a bunny favourite place for posing, with a new pillow......

.                     ............and wearing her flowery headband........do you like it??...........

............we have had a very lovely and very busy bank holiday weekend with adorable baby rhys and his mummy and daddy staying with us.........lots of baby bliss to enjoy and lots of pictures to sort out soon too ........i am catching up with some work now as well as writing my blog post...........thank you for dropping in here to see me, dear readers, and for your kind and generous comments, always such a joy to read..................wishing you all a happy week, filled with flowers, sunshine and crafty times.........back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Apple Blossom

 We enjoyed our first picnic of this year a couple of weekends ago, on a sunny saturday.......

...............we went to one of our favourite old houses where the gardens are a delight to visit.....

 .............and you can picnic in the orchard amongst the sweetest apple blossom......

 ..............i took my newly completed pam kitty picnic quilt, which i mentioned here recently....(i found some partly made blocks which i'd forgotten about, so i joined them all together and quilted them simply by hand)..........love the little printed squares in bright colours for the backing fabric from sunrise studio....

 .................for the binding i chose a kona cotton solid in a fresh spring green............

 .............after our picnic we took our little dog molly on a wonderful country walk before we visited the formal gardens and she had a little nap.............i will share some pictures of the gorgeous gardens in another post.......

 ................the lanes were thick with wildflowers and blossom............

 ..............the gentle landscape with lush grass and clouds of cow parsley all around us..............

 ................and then back to the apple blossom..........we look forward to returning here in the autumn for the apple festival too..............

 ...................at home, when daisy visits, she often plays with the honeybake kitchen........

 ................and we have tea parties and picnics with the bunnies..............here is little strawberry taking tea today..............

 ..............besides making some new and exciting projects for a magazine commission this week, i am adding a few more squares to my crochet blanket..........and i'm also still making more of those pretty pink patchwork stars that i showed you last time of course.....i do love this crafty life :)..............

 ...............i love to have plenty of projects on the go, small quick ones that are satisfying to finish and long running large ones too that you can pick up and just do a bit of now and then.......

.................thank you for dropping by to see me here, lovely readers, and thank you for taking the time to leave me your sweet comments too....especially when life is so busy, i do appreciate them :)......thank you too for all your kind comments about my forthcoming book....i look forward to sharing more about it with you soon........wishing you a wonderful week, with blue skies, sweet blossoms and plenty of  happy, crafty times...............back soon xxxxxoooooooxxxxxxxxxxx

Strawberry Stars

 Here is a little peek at my strawberry stars quilt, started on a whim because i fancied making the star quilt again but in pink and white for a light, vintage summery feel.....i am using my original star quilt pattern, shown below........

 .....................lots of readers have kindly asked about this design and i am pleased now to say that the pattern (including all instructions and full-size templates for it) is in my new book....................  'modern vintage gifts'............i don't have a picture of the cover to show you yet, but the book will be out in october and is available for pre-order on amazon already............

 ..............making the english paper pieced diamonds is something i really love to do........

...........it involves lots of stash busting too, of the pink fabrics filling my cupboard............

 .............and i LoVe the pam kitty garden floral on white, it is so pretty, and is the perfect fabric to use to make the big hexagons for joining the stars...........

 .................i like how portable the project is....i can take a few epp pieces with me on an outing and stitch up a star in no time....... sometimes i cut out lots of pieces at once with a rotary cutter, or one at a time with a pair of scissors....very adaptable crafting.......and of course lovely to sew while watching movies or chatting to the family..............

 ...............besides sewing i have been out in the garden too this past week.............

 ................here is our newly painted front door, and newly planted pot next to it............

 ................and below is a quick picture of the potting shed, so bright and sunny now and filled with pots and plants and garden tools all being put to good use again............

 ...............the beans and sweet peas are all planted in the garden now and seem to be doing well, despite strong winds at the weekend............the heavy rain seemed to make them quite happy......

 .............i always plant some beans as seeds and some as plug plants, just to be on the safe side.....

 ...............some pretty nemesia, ready for filling up the pots...............

 ..................another newly painted door.......this is the door to the little shed which is outside the kitchen........it was probably the wash house in victorian times............it has never looked so smart, with its new coat of shiny paint............

................thank you for dropping in here, dear readers, it is always a real pleasure to see you and to hear from you too..........wishing you all a wonderful week filled with happy times, sunny days and crafty inspirations..................back soon xxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sky Blue Pink

 This week i have been enjoying playing with fabrics....making a little quilt for a magazine project which i will reveal when it is published.....and making some sweet sewing notions using the lovely lecien fabrics i received recently.............

 .............the garden is filled with tiny flowers at the moment, perfect to pick for posies to enjoy in the sewing room while i work................

 ..............i made a needle book using random hexagons and new flower sugar fabric......

 .................and i made a pincushion by fussy cutting the flower posies to fit the hexagons in a more intentional way..........quite a different look, and interesting to see what effects fussy cutting creates....

 ............finally i made a little scissor keep using two of the hexagons sewn together and padded with a little bit of toy filling and attached with a long ribbon......i love having a scissor keep on my scissors( it stops them sliding down the side of the sofa)........i used to make cross stitched ones for my sharp little stork scissors, but now i make all kinds with different fabrics......

 ..............this week the apple blossom has opened and looks so pretty...........

 ..............i picked one small sprig to photograph close up.........below is the inside of the needle book, showing the rose print lining and the bright pink felt pages ready to fill with needles.............

 ..............seeing the colours of the photos for this post, and especially the apple blossom on the blue painted background is what gave this post its title......as a child i loved the idea of a colour called sky blue pink, even though i knew it was a joke and a fictitious colour, it just sounded so nice :)............sometimes at sunset the sky above the sea where we live has stripes of beautiful light blues and pinks.........sky blue pink could be a real colour then....

 ............the good news here this week is that the painting of the house outside is all finished :D......so glad.......and it's may now too....one of the most lovely months of the year............when i went up to the attic last week to open windows for 'the men' to paint the frames i found some packets of old cards from granny's attic, still not sorted out.......these lexicon cards were among them.....could be fun for paper crafting and scrap booking, i think.................

 ..............and speaking of paper crafting here is my project for this month's issue of crafts beautiful....a crafter's notebook, with some cross stitch tags and a stitched label..........you can find out more about the magazine online here...............

 ...............today is a bank holiday here in the uk, and we actually have sunny weather........

 ...........the weekend began with a very cold (freezing) and miserable day but now it has blossomed into blue sky and sunshine so we are going to make the most of it........in a little while i will be planting sweetpeas and beans..............and then we will take molly for a long country walk.............

................thank you for dropping in to my crafty blog world, lovely readers, and thank you for your very kind comments and emails too........wishing you a wonderful week ahead with sunny days and crafty times................back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx