Sewing Kit Present

It was Venetia's birthday last week. I find girls so much easier to buy and make presents for than boys. There were lots of things racing round my head that I could have made for her, but in the end I decided to make something that would help and encourage her with her own making - a sewing kit.

I found a pretty sewing box in a Charity Shop and then just had to fill it.

I put in a few standard things - some scissors, a tape measure, some thread, a needle threader, some safety pins and a water soluble pen. Then added a couple of home made touches. First off a needlecase book:

I made it with some wool from an old blanket, and I took my new sewing machine out for a bit more of a spin with some embroidery stitches and some letters.

Then a pin cushion. Maria decided it should be an ice cream pin cushion!

Again this was just with wool. The 'flake' (which looks huge in this photo for some reason!) and the ice cream parts were pieces of wool rolled up and hand stitched to keep their shape. The cone is literally a cone of wool with a circle base, and I sewed a curtain weight into the bottom to help it to stand. So now the pins are the sprinkles!

Of course, a sewing kit is not much good unless you have something to sew. So I also set her off with her own little fabric stash.

I have plenty enough to share after all! I knew Venetia was keen to make something Christmassy and I had a few fat quarters of Christmas fabric sitting around that I didn't get round to making anything with last year. And since this year is not looking likely to work out better, I thought they could happily go to another good home instead.

And there were a few pieces of fabric in my stash that Venetia had cajoled me into buying in the past because she loved them, but that I didn't want for any particular project and which have been just sitting there. So they were perfect for her too.

And a few upcycled fabrics buried in there too, I have to start her off along the right lines obviously! There's even a pillow case in there, I thought a pillow case dress might be a perfect project for her some time soon. And another recent charity shop find was a box of lace and trimmings.

She was very happy with her present and straight away started planning her idea for a Christmas make. It's looking good so far...

I'll show it to you when it's finished. And talking of finished, I haven't shown you her Doll's Quilt yet, have I?

She's very proud of it and she's done a great job with it.

Back again soon, Sally.

This Moment

Here's a link to Soulemama's moment and here's mine...

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . . . .

It wasn't too tricky to find a 'moment' this morning after all, I went in to do some cooking with the children at Maria's pre-school today and we had plenty of moments to enjoy, mostly involving icing sugar! We were icing the Christmas cake that we'd made a couple of weeks ago there. Maria decided that her icing had to be yellow, and had to be taste tested! Not the best photo, but ptobably the best moment! (Sorry, I know it's supposed to be no words, I haven't cheated for a while though!)

Lampshade Making

Just a few last things to show you from our recently completed building work today...

I had a go at making some lamp shades for my Mum and Dad's sitting room. They were surprisingly quick and easy to make, and the kits compared reasonably well, price wise, with buying a ready made shade. Only this way you get to tailor make your shade to your taste and decor with your own choice of fabric/paper. I got my kits from Needcraft and I decided to use wall paper rather than fabric. I think fabric would have been slightly more fiddly to use, the wallpaper was incredibly easy, it just lay flat naturally and didn't crinkle up the way I imagine fabric might. There are lots of tutorials to guide you through the making, although the instructions are pretty simple anyway. This Cath Kidson tutorial on Utube seems like quite a clear one.

Anyway, here's my wallpaper that I used:

And here are the finished lampshades:

It's definitely something I'll try again at some point. My own sitting room lamp shades are suddenly looking very boring for a start!

And I don't think I've shown you the finished bedside lights yet either:

These fittings I bought very cheaply from IKEA (here) and they adapted really easily to a jar shade to match the rest of the lighting (here and here).

And I think the last thing to show you from the building work is how lovely my Mum's quilt looks hanging up in the bedroom.

I did originally wonder whether this wall might be a good one to turn into a patchwork wall, but then I looked at how high the ceiling is and decided that there was no way I was wallpapering all the way up there! So a simple curtain rail with a gorgeous quilt hanging over it was a good alternative, much easier! And we can change the quilt whenever we want to as well. For now, my Mum's quilt is obviously the perfect choice.

That's it for the building work. I might be back tomorrow with a photo, but I'm not sure there have been many 'moments to pause and savour' this week! Far too much rushing about instead, I might have to make a big effort to make time tomorrow morning to stop rushing around and see if a 'moment' occurs! Sally.

Kitchen Cupboards

It's been another long day so it'll just be a short post today. I haven't shown you how the kitchen cupboards turned out yet, so I thought I'd give you a quick look, but first a reminder of how they looked a couple of weeks ago:

And now here they are in place, and just starting to be put to use:

The plan was to get a bright, retro look, or it could just be called cheap and cheerful!

For the amount of money it cost (tiddly - the paint cost more than all the cupboards and the sink put together!), I think it looks pretty good. And, obviously, my favourite bit would have to be the wall cupboard - I may not have found a wall I could 'patchwork', but at least I've got a bit of a cupboard patchworked!

You might not remember but I blogged about my patchwork wall envy way back in the Summer - here

Right, that's it, I'm off to bed. Back again tomorrow hopefully, Sally.

Quilt Show

Well, my parents have moved in. It didn't feel like it went particularly smoothly yesterday while it was all happening (removal lorries breaking down on the motorway, stair lifts not being fitted as expected, Maria being poorly...) but looking back after the event it seems a lot smoother already (lorry was repaired, stairlift coming tomorrow now, Maria better...). Things are all a bit chaotic still and I'm sure they will be for quite a while but there are still quilt photos to be shared! Lots of quilt photos in fact, because on Friday I sneaked off to a nearby Quilt Exhibition for a couple of hours and had a good wander around. So here are a few photos of some that caught my eye...

These first two were made by Stuart Hillard who was at the exhibition - for those of you reading this in the UK he was on 'The Great British Sewing Bee' on BBC2 earlier in the year.

Then there was a section of Kaffe Fassett inspired quilts - it wasn't entirely clear but I think they were made with just his fabric and at least some of the designs came straight from his quilting books. This was a gorgeous, colourful patch of the exhibition...

And I think it was a very effective way to get people desperate to buy the fabric, which was for sale just adjacent to the quilts! It was hard to resist going and buying a big bundle of this amazing fabric after seeing the quilt above...

It was really gorgeous fabric, but I was very good and resisted!

Next up was an interesting collection of quilts, by Alicia Merrett, all inspired by mapmaking.

Incredible detail in the quilting...

Then more of a hodge podge of individual quilts. I loved this quilt by Pam Keatinge:

The information read:

'One of my most enjoyable projects. The fabric I dyed in the kitchen, some adresses printed on the computer, others written with fabric pen. It encapsulates my life so far; from rural Hertfordshire to rural Dorset via Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates!'

It's hard to see in the photo but the quilt is arranged in date order and has particular 'years' sewn on different squares - you can just about spot a couple below:

I don't suppose I would ever do it with letters, but it seems such a lovely idea - to make some sort of 'story of my life' quilt, and not just in the more normal way of using fabric which has special memories. Definitely an idea to have in the back of my mind to mull over for some time in the future...

I loved this quilt too. Not the most exciting design ever, but I loved it for the fabric combinations.

You get a much better idea of this in the close ups, which show the colours so much better too...

It was a mixture of beautiful, soft wools and gorgeous, vibrant cottons, and it worked brilliantly.

Here's another eye catching one...

This next quilt had a lovely, soft, faded old feel to it. I'm not sure what the fabric range was but I really liked it.

It had lots of different nursery rhymes...

Here's the 'Owl and the Pussycat'...

Then another Kaffe Fasset design. This was a huge, amazing quilt made by a Quilting group in Bath. It was being raffled to raise money for a charity supporting young carers in the area. The raffle is being drawn later this week and I will be extremely happy if they pull out my ticket!

Each member of the group was asked to make different sized squares using old shirts. They had to be stripey and the colour scheme was blue.

Every join in this quilt seemed to match up perfectly, it really was a gorgeous piece of work, and the fabrics worked so well with the design.

All this time I'd been incredibly good and not bought a sausage - except for my raffle ticket of course. And then I came to 'The African Fabric Shop' and all my good intentions to spend as little as possible disintegrated! There were so many gorgeous fabrics, and all a little bit different to the kind of thing you normally see in a fabric shop. Very hard to resist!

And I'm afraid I didn't manage it! I bought a selection of these fabrics:


And a bundle of strip cloth, a bit like these:


I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with either of them yet but I expect an idea will pop into my head at some point. If you're looking for something a little different then have a browse through their website. The lady who owns the shop is clearly incredibly passionate about what she does, about Africa, and about how she can help the people she buys from over there.
And lastly I'll leave you with a photo of some slightly unusual bunting - knicker bunting! Made by customers at the Quilter's Dream. It made me smiile as I walked past!

Hopefully I'll get a few moments tomorrow, between unpacking boxes and bags, to get back here again, Sally.