Little news

I haven't posted much recently, it's been a bit busy.

DD1 came back for the week end a week ago. It takes her 6h30 to travel down from Glasgow. It was great to see her, but too fast .

I've been sewing , and knitting, so I've got lots to show, but I need to take photos first.

First for fun, my friend Fiona just came back from Australia and brought back some goodies:

The small bags are really good to keep parts of projects together, like this 

And the band aids say "quilted" on it.

Thank you again Fiona.

I'm working on some paper piecing as a hand sewing project, inspired by this book 

And this is my project at the moment, to make a baby quilt

I love the idea of using paper clips to hold the fabric on the card before basting. This book is very inspirational.

I put little stickers with numbers when I had decided the position of each star. I made 6 diamonds from each fabric, and used 3 of them for one star.

I have not completely decided on the edges, it will come in its time.

Enjoy your sewing.

Pascale

New book: Mon atelier couture, by Sylvie Blondeau

I forgot to show you the book that inspired my last project. It's in French, sorry if that makes it difficult to understand for you, and offered different projects and fabric choices to what I am finding at the moment.
I am tempted to try something else soon.

Enjoy your sewing.

Pascale.

Crochet holder

 For some time I have followed the blog of Cecile Franconie, she is french and writes in french but don't let that stop you from visiting and having a look. She uses embroidery to the maximum, adding ribbons and beads. Her choice of fabrics is different and opens new doors.
Her blog is "Facile Cecile", and she also has some projects published in magazines, like Magic Patch, which is translated in English, and books like this one "rangements a coudre". Her next one is coming in March.

Let's come back to my crochet holder. I've used some liberty fabric inside, a piece of ribbon to close it, and some crochet along the top edge. This makes all the difference from other crochet holders, and is in the style of Cecile. Why make simple things when you can make beautiful things.

She admits to spending a lot of time sewing, crocheting or knitting, as well as having a big family.

  So I hope to have inspired you to discover somebody new, or maybe you already knew about her work.

 Have a good Sunday.

A rabbit to keep my card

You can see that I had a bit of time during the Easter holidays.

I made this little purse to hold my credit card, and replace the ugly, boring, plastic one I had before.

My only slight worry is that the snap fastener might need to be resewn at some point. Of course I can't use a magnetic fastener because of the nature of the credit card.

The pattern comes from a book I really enjoy at the moment, called "Zakka Sewing, 25 japanese projects for the household" by Therese Laskey and Chika Mori.

The meaning of Zakka is "household good" in Japanese, and the projects were made by 25 different japanese designers. Luckily it is all in english, no need to translate. You will see other projects from this book soon.

The black and white fabrics are a bit different from my usual choices. Interesting. And I'm glad I've made something for myself and am using it. Otherwise I have a tendency to make things that are so nice that I don't use them. Or I use them as presents, hopefully to people who will enjoy them.

I'm trying to change that as I have so much pleasure in using things homemade.

Kath Kidston bag

While we were in Bath we had a look at the Kath Kidston shop. There was this book with enough fabric included to make a bag. I just had to buy the book and make the bag.

The other projects are quite simple, but could be inspirational, depending on what you are looking for. I thought that for £15 I could have a book and a bag, so not bad then.

The pieces of fabric were pre-cut, that's what I call luxury, with little marks to match up the seams. The buttons and label were also provided. I copied the pattern first, on the recommendation from DH. I'm not sure it was included on the pattern sheet provided.

Then I decided to line my bag, and add an inside pocket. It's easy when you have been making bags in a challenge for a year.

So a quick project, which stopped my progress on

the UFO list, but nevermind.

Baby shoes

Julie who lives next door from me had a baby boy last Friday. We are all very excited about this new addition to their family and I made some little shoes from a pattern made by Amy Butler inher book "Little Stitches for little ones".

There are some other projects which are quite tempting. My only regret is that my own children are too old, and I think I didn't have enough time to make all the things I would have liked to make when they were baby girls.

But I'm still making some for the babies around me.

I followed the pattern in the book, done in a size 3 months in this case, but wasn't happy with the space left for the leg of the baby. I then changed the position of the velcro on the shoe, put it higher, and it works much better.

This photo with my hand is just to give you an idea of the size of the shoe. It needs to be roomy enough for the socks as well.

Now should I make another one for my young niece in France, in size 6 months...

Little fabric boxes

I have 3 books written by the author of the Tilda series, Tone Finnanger, and I must say that I have used them quite a lot recently.






This one I bought in France but it is also published in English, it is called "La maison de Tilda" or "Sew Pretty Homestyle". Tone has a new book ready, just waiting for a translation, so far you can buy it in Finnish I believe.



So this project is the fabric boxes. I adapted the size to fit a certain shelf, and made a mistake while doing so, but I am sure you can manage, or just keep to the same size.



They are easy and fast to make, one big rectangle of fabric is needed. This one comes from Ikea, again, but I liked the design and the price is good. One of my boxes is made with wadding, as in the pattern, and the other without (on the right). Because the fabric is thick enough I don't think I would need wadding for the next ones.














































I hope this gives you the desire to try it...

My sister's sewing purse

Now that she has received it I can show you my sister's present. I made her a little purse for all her sewing things. The fabric is from Kaffe Fassett, and I quilted around each little circle, the design of the zippered purse is from this book from Tilda.

Then I made her a little pincushion, 2 circles sewn together and some embroidery thread to perfect the shape.

The needle holder comes from another book from Tilda, and in fact I have made 2 now

One is closed with one of the fimo buttons I made a little while ago, the other is closed with a popper, and is for my niece.

I must explain here that after I prepared all this for Marianne, she rang me to say her daughter, my god-daughter would like to receive a sewing kit, and she thought it would be a good idea if I made her one as she had seen us sewing together. I was just stopping myself from laughing on the phone. So I kept my secret and made another pouch, but it was way too big (I'll keep it for another post or this will be too long).

So there are 2 needle holders, and then I bought some ribbon and with my sewing machine I embroidered their names on it and attached them to the scissors.

You can see the name Aurore on the red scissors. I also bought some very cute felt for her to play with, she is only 7.

They both received some needles, pins and a measuring tape, plus some pink thread, fabric and ribbon for my niece. I think they both loved it, and I had great fun making all this.

Muffin pincushion

I need a present for our quilter's group Christmas party tonight. And so this afternoon, in less than 2 hours I made this muffin pincushion, from the book "Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle", it is the second item I am making from the book.

You only need 2 bits of fabric and some wadding, plus filling.

The button on the top is one I made a few weeks ago from Fimo paste.

And tonight it will be gone for good, but I intend to do some more, maybe the smaller version. They are so cute, I went to pick up the girls from school and told them I had made ONE muffin, they were puzzled about the number.

Sew Pretty Purse

So what do you do when you have several projects on the go, and you receive a new book through the post (it was difficult to obtain as 2 famous websites were out of stock). You start looking at a few pages, and then one strikes you and you have to start right away.

That's what happened yesterday afternoon, and then I was busy with other things and couldn't get on with it, so it was my first thing to do this morning. And it is finished.

The book is one of the Tilda series. They are all very inspiring, in a cute way.

And this is the little purse that I made in an hour and a half. The outside is a bit of japanese fabric bought in April, and the inside was some left over fabric from something else (I can't remember what, honestly). I bought the little snap buttons last week, because I liked the effect on the top, a bit iridescent. You need a hammer to close them down, but it's OK.

The size of the finished purse is about 6" wide by 5"tall. I really enjoyed this small project.