Home Sweet Home

 It is no secret that i love houses....and homes....and home making too :).......i feel very lucky that i can work in my studio and sewing room here and it is certainly my happy place.......after a wild week of storm doris whirling round out house it is great that things have calmed down now......the fire is lit in the studio and it is nice and cosy.......

 .............below is my home sweet home quilt which i am happy to say is featured in Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine............it is in the Annual Applique Collector's Edition (Vol. 26 No. 12).............

 .............the lovely magazine arrived here last week and i enjoyed reading it at my kitchen table with a nice cup of tea.............lots of projects to create and inspire............

 ................here is a work in progress shot of my quilt taken in my sewing room before it was quilted....

 ...............i sent the quilt to my lovely longarm machine quilter and as usual she did a lovely job on it......the design is hand sewn applique and patchwork and i loved making this one so much......

 ..............besides placing a big house in the centre there is a little garden on each side filled with trees, flowers, fruits, birds, and a beehive too....

 ..............the backing is a lilac polka dot and the fabrics were all from stash or from my scrap basket....lots of lecien and pam kitty morning in there and that purple background lakehouse floral that i love so much was used for a wide border.......

 ..........each part of this quilt is easy to do as all the different motifs have a template to trace and i used fabric with bondaweb to apply the shapes and then stitched round them with blanket stitch....you could also sew round them with a sewing machine of course...............

 ...............here is one of my little stuffed houses made from some of the quilt fabric.....

 ............and here is one of my favourite mugs of the moment .............

 ...............the sun is peeking out here and there are more spring flowers beginning to bloom each day.........this morning i picked some tiny narcissus, cowslips and primulas from my cutting patch to put in a tiny glass vase on my sewing table......

 ................and while i was out there i took this quick picture too.......my first garden picture this year :)..............looking forward to taking many more......

.................thank you for visiting me here dear readers and for all your lovely comments..........wishing you a happy week ahead with flowers and sunshine and lots of crafty inspirations........back soon xxxx

Summer Stars Quilt

 There is a new quilt to show you here today....the summer stars quilt that i began last summer is finally finished and i am very happy with it :)............it is made with the beautiful colourful strawberry biscuit fabric collection designed by elea lutz for penny rose fabrics.......

 ................here it is on the spare room bed (paired with a painting by janet bell called 'st ives deckchairs'........one of my favourites)................

 .............i bought the bundle of fat quarters of strawberry biscuit fabric from the fat quarter shop as soon as i spied them and first made some smaller projects.............then i decided to make a big star using the patchwork cheater print for the centre........

 ...............this grew into many more stars and i ordered more fabric for the centres, this time from pretty fabrics and trims.............i used kona cotton in white to join the blocks together..........love that fresh look.....

 ................this is a big quilt for me as i usually make much smaller projects.......luckily i could send it to my wonderful quilter who longarm machine quilted it for me........i asked for a swirly curly pattern and that is exactly what she did :)................i love the effect of the quilting on the plain white areas as well as the coloured ones..............and we used plain white on the back too......

 .................here it is hanging on the bed rail...............and below is a crumpled quilt shot....i do love those...

 ..............just one more.......

 ..............and a folded one as well........

 ..............this quilt has brought a lot of summer brightness to our house this week.......very cheery to look at and i will enjoy using this on the bed....or just looking at it......

 .............it has been a big project and i feel so happy to see it completed........still quite a lot of other works in progress to get on with in my sewing room at the moment too ;)............

 ...............how many works-in-progress is too many i wonder?...............maybe better not to count them all up but keep it a bit vague........below are some of my little vintage sewing notions and last week's sweet valentine's flowers...........

 ...............lovely bright colours especially the tulips and anemones.........and delicious scented pure white hyacinths...............this week the weather is warming up and the garden is calling for some weeding to be done............

.................thank you for visiting me here lovely readers and for your kind comments which are always a treat to read...............wishing you all a happy week ahead with flowers, sunshine and plenty of crafty inspirations...................back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hearts and Flowers

 Happy valentine's week everyone ...........here is the happy scrappy hearts mini quilt all finished, bound and quilted that i showed you as a work in progress a couple of posts ago.....

 ............i wanted to make a mini heart quilt to hang on the wall..........

 ..............but it also fits nicely on the little doll bed too............

 ...............i quilted this little design by stitching in the ditch and around each heart shape.......

 ................the effect is very cheerful and i am very tempted to make a much larger version with many more happy scrappy hearts...........

 ................here is bea the garden bunny helping model the mini quilt..........

 ..............the backing fabric is a very pretty one from pam kitty morning.............

 ..............a few more hearts........some of my much loved blocks from chipper nelly............

 ................the little quilt rolled up in a basket with the 'make' heart which was originally a magazine commission.................lots of lovely bright tulips here this week too...............

 ................this is my hearts and flowers cushion from my book pretty patchwork gifts........some of you may remember it and i know that some of you have actually made it too :)...............

 .............this week i have lots of works in progress keeping me busy...quilts, cross stitch, paper crafting to name just a few.......i love all these crafts and it is fun to have a variety of things to work on and to keep interested in...............the sun is out today after a very grey and gloomy weekend..........lots of snowdrops are flowering and the garden tulips have grown another couple of inches since i last looked :)............

.................thank you for visiting me here dear readers........it is always a pleasure to hear from you......wishing you a happy week ahead with plenty of sunshine and crafty inspiration........back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Quilt in Progress: Big Trip

 I have a long (in fact a very looong) 'to make' wish list with a whole lot of quilts on it....the trip around the world shown here is one of them and i have been working on it for quite a while......i love sewing patchwork squares and love how arranging these squares by colour makes a series of expanding diamonds...............this pattern is also sometimes called sunshine and shadows......

 .............here is an earlier picture of the quilt the other way round, like a granny square......

 ..............just a couple of rounds of squares are fussy cut....the flower fussy cut paper pieces shown here are for one of the rounds that you can see below......

 ..............the other is a round of little elephants marching one behind the other...........

 ..............the auditioning of fabrics for each round is both exciting and quite hard to do......striking the right balance between dark and light and colour and pattern takes more thought than i realised......

 ...........i do love the optical effects and am enjoying this work in progress very much while i work on other quilts at the same time (some destined for magazine publication which i will tell you about nearer the time).......

 .................a close up of my big trip quilt..........and below is the vintage printed flour bag i found at treacle market on our recent visit........

 ..............i meant to include a link to treacle market last time so here it is now.....for those who kindly wondered about the name it became known as treacle market after an accident centuries ago when a horse drawn wagon overturned spilling treacle onto the cobbles...............

 .............one more treacle market picture above....love the handwritten labels :).........below is my gorgeous container of tete a tete narcissi in full flower..........

 ...............spring is on its way and i am very glad to see flowers and bulbs appearing indoors and out and on people's blogs too............here is my project in the march issue of crafts beautiful magazine......a happy hoop design of applique flowers and a butterfly to welcome spring........you can read more about crafts beautiful here.......

 .............one more picture of my trip around the world quilt.......a new row is being chosen and i am beginning to turn it into a rectangle now......i might need to order some more fabric very soon ;).....

...............thank you for your visits here dear readers and your lovely comments.........it is always a pleasure to have you drop by and to hear from you..........wishing you a wonderful week ahead with peaceful times and lots of crafty inspirations..............back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx