Aaah sunshine!

This was taken just the other side of our garden fence on Friday night. I can't wait till the weather warms up properly and we have a few more evenings like this...

Wedding cushions

One of the sewing projects I missed the opportunity to document during my blogging hiatus were my Wedding Cushions. I made three of these last year for various friends who were getting married, tweaking slightly as I went along.

As always I think it took till the third attempt (above) to perfect them. I quilted the front of the first one (extra work, no real gain) and used the red fabric for the reverse on cushion one and two, until I managed to work out what the fabric I'd been using for the front was (it's Essex Linen) and where to get more of it. (The Eternal Maker)

I'm happy with the result (particularly the third one!) but it's always difficult to know how well handmade gifts are received. Even my own sister is guilty of an unintended lackluster response to a handmade gift, which only years later I discovered she had absolutely loved after I stopped making said item due to the lukewarm response she gave! Gah!

Pillow Talk Swap

I've just signed up for the next round of the Pillow Talk Swap on Flickr and this is my inspiration mosaic for my swap partner.

In the last swap I took part in, I received this gorgeous cushion from Lee which now has pride of place in our sitting room.

On that occasion it was a mixed swap where you choose a table runner, mini quilt, cushion or sewing machine cover.

I have to admit the pillow swap seems a lot fairer as you give the same as you receive. I already have a few ideas in my head for my partners pillow (cushion!) I'm just waiting to find out who she is and what she likes...

Neighbourhood quilt

There is nothing quite as satisfying as finally starting a quilt which has been on your to do list for over a year. I first saw the design that inspired this quilt just after Theo was born and immediately bought a half metre of the Alexander Henry fabric that the quilt was based around...

I spent more than 12 months procrastinating and trying to decide whether to use the faces as part of a train design, or as the drivers of cars and every time I took something out of my fabric stash I'd see the Faces Around The World fabric taunting me. In the end I've gone for a very similar design to the original, but I'm incorporating trees and working with a more ordered palette of fabrics.



This is the first row almost complete (I need to add a strip of blue to the top) and I'm working on the houses for the second row as we speak.



I'm intending to make 4 rows in total. Possibly with a border to frame it all and I'm going to experiment with wadding. After years of using only cotton wadding, I fancy something with a bit more loft for this to make it more snuggly, so I've ordered some samples to experiment with.

Rebirth

After a 9 month hiatus, it feels like the time has come to start blogging again. Once again there has been a change of location for us (we're on the Sussex coast now) and so a new name was obligatory. My future posts are likely to focus on photography, quilts and design, they might not be as frequent, but I'll try to keep them interesting.