Here's a little peek at a secret Christmas I've been busy stitching for some very special children. I've used my favourite pattern for making Christmas stockings, Waiting for Santa, by the Australian designer Leanne Beasley. I've been making these stockings for several years, and the best part is choosing the fabrics and trimmings. These ones have been made with a selectionof fabrics from the Cool Yule collection by The Henley Studio for Makower UK. The name tags have been hand embroidered using a selection of Cosmo embroidery threads in co-ordinating colours, but I won't share a picture of the tags yet or else it will surprise for the children! Once they were finished, the name tags were stitched in place using these gorgeous turquoise vintage buttons. Obviously it wouldn't be Christmas without a few chocolate treats, so these were filled to the brim with edible goodies!
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A few weeks ago my daughter bought some GORGEOUS fabrics from the Jungle Baby collection by Lisa Whitebutton for Paintbrush Studio, a division of Fabri-Quilt, Inc. as she wanted another quilt for Rory. While we were deliberating over the quilting, she decided to have 2 quilts, each with a soft flannel backing to make them extra snuggly. Teamed with bamboo wadding, snuggly brushed cotton backing, and the amazing Daisy May Quilting in Martlesham for custom quilting, the results are fantastic. The quilt with the rainbow print was custom quilted with clouds, sunshine, kites, balloons and aeroplanes - it really looks fabulous... ...and the quilt with the safari print was custom quilted with elephants, lions, crocodiles, giraffes - there's even a monkey peeking out of a palm tree... ...these are now a fantastic pair of quilts for my little grandson Rory, as they are large enough to cover the top of a single bed. All I had to do was to add the binding. The binding strips were cut at 3.5" wide, and using the double fold method, this gave a lovely wide binding to border the quilts.
I'd initially pieced this quilt top together a couple of years ago, as it was the 2020 I Stitch Club mystery quilt designed by the Australian designer Gail Pan. I'd been deliberating over the quilting, and felt quite overwhelmed at the thought of basting such a large quilt - so I was thrilled when my friend Val, from Daisy May Quilting, told me they could machine baste it for me on their longarm machine. I chose a pretty floral backing fabric and wool wadding, both of which were also supplied by Daisy May Quilting. Just a few weeks after dropping it off it was ready to be collected. This will be a longterm hand quilting project for 2023 - after all, why rush something that's taken so long to get this far!
Way back in 2009 I'd bought this cute little kit from The Fat Quarters Shop in Northumberland. Sadly this shop has since closed down but it was a wonderful source of patterns and kits by one of my favourite Australian designers, Rosalie Quinlan. Hanging for Santa is a sweet festive decoration with a darling Santa hanging between 2 stars. All the fabrics were included with the pattern, however I changed the buttons for some from my tin of vintage ones... ...each star is lightly padded with cotton wadding, and embellished with a bright red button, then tied to Santa's hands. Santa's spotty pantaloons and bright red jacket are trimmed with felt fringing, which has been hand stitched using red embroidery thread... ...I've added a little jingle bell to the top of Santa's hat! Red and white striped twine is used to hang this cute Santa - I can't wait to add him to my festive decorations next month!
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About me...Hi - welcome to my quilting blog! My passions are my family, my dog, my friends and sewing, not necessarily in that order! Archives
July 2023
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