Sewing with my daughter

Over the past few weeks I have had a few great sessions sewing with my daughter.
She has always enjoyed seeing the quilts, cushion and bags I have made but doesn't sew herself.  I was thrilled when she suddenly asked if we could make two cushions together as a "Thank you" gift to the Nursery where our little granddaughter has been a pupil for the past 18 months.  She will be going to "Big School" in September so my daughter wanted to mark that end of an era with a gift the future children at the Nursery could enjoy and came up with the idea of cushions that could be used in the Home Corner or the Reading Corner.

Caroline looked through my stash of fabrics and we came up with two ideas.
One featured a panel I had, a cute Daddy Bunny pushing his babies in a wheelbarrow. This became the centre of a log-cabin design.

Daddy Bunny cushion:

 

 

Then we made an Owl cushion based on a lovely Robert Kaufman Urban Zoologie fabric. 

A piece of this became the centre of the design and we framed it with two borders.

 

And here they are, side by side:

Caroline handed them in to the Nursery staff on Monday and they were thrilled.  Our granddaughter was also delighted, especially with the idea that Mummy and Granny had made them.
Granny was also delighted that Caroline not only suggested the idea but that we did them together.  I even overcame my fear of putting in zips and added zips to the bottom of each cushion as I am sure they will have lots of washes!

 

Ta da. Another Quilt finish

Another Quilt finish for 2013!

This time a quilt based on Gwen Marston's quilt, String Quilt with Sashing and Corner Stones, one of the 20 projects in her lovely book Liberated String Quilts. The first Gwen Marston book I bought after I did a wonderful One Day Workshop with her several years ago in New Zealand.  Such a great quilter, super teacher and full of good humour.

Instead of String blocks I used Crumb blocks which worked very well.
As I said in my previous post this quilt is scraps or re-worked fabrics, apart from the
Green Tea Kona Cotton solid I used for sashing. I hand quilted in the ditch along the sashing lines.

A close up of some of the blocks, showing the Cornerstones, sashing and hand quilting.

And the finished quilt:

It measures 40" square, a nice Baby Quilt size, I think.
Another quilt to stash away in my box of finished quilts.

Retail therapy

Well, no cutting out and machining going on here at present as we have our daughter and family staying with us. An extremely lively 2 and 5 months old little girl (aka Little Beauty!) is not easy to work around so everything is on hold until they move into their house in about ten days' time.

But I did go to John Lewis and treat myself to some gorgeous Amy Butler fabrics in the sale ( a metre of the top 4 and 0.5 metre of the bottom one) and a new sewing machine. My cheap Toyota model finally bit the dust and I have been using my late mother-in-law's old Janome whilst I considered what model to buy.

I decided I didn't need anything fancy or too pricey as I do straightforward sewing for my quilts. Popped into John Lewis about a month ago and saw this model, liked the price and decided to go home and have a think about it.

However when I went back last week I had another look, still liked it, so here is my NEW Janome!
You can see my old Toyota lurking in the background. I wondered if my local sewing machine repair man might like it for spare parts.

As you can see my new machine is still in its box, I haven't even opened it yet let alone tried it out!  Not until Little Beauty is safely in her own house and I can concentrate on the instruction booklet!

I have managed a little hand quilting when Little Beauty is in bed.  I'm making a cot quilt for my daughter's friend Gemma. It is for her 6 month old daughter.  They are also moving house and Gemma requested pinks, blues and yellows so she could base her Baby's Room colour scheme on the quilt.
Gemma wanted a quilt in the same style as my Emerging Butterflies so here are the two versions:

Emerging Butterflies Quilt

and here is Gemma's Quilt, still being hand quilted.

The outer border and backing is Robert Kaufman's Paradise Pareaus fabric in a fabulous Girly Pink and white!

Now off to watch the Tennis!  My hero Roger Federer is in the Final at Wimbledon so I shall be rooting for him........................ I expect the rest of the family will be on Andy Murray's side!