Finish: Fabric memory game

My toddler is a very lucky boy, he gets lots of presents from the whole family, and from Santa Claus! So for Christmas, I wanted to make him something special (from Santa Claus 😉 ) that would also be unique. I like games for children that are fun but also good for development, so I decided to make a fabric memory game.

I made 24 fabric “cards”, using pairs of fussy-cut images from fabric in my stash, added a white border, a lining of batting and light blue backing. (Side note: fussy cutting is such a wasteful use of fabric! It’s the first time I’ve used this technique and I was quite shocked! Oh well, at least I have some new additions for my scraps box.)

To keep everything in order, I made a small drawstring bag from the backing fabric to put the cards in.

By the way, my son loves his game! 🙂

Finish: Friendship star quilt

TA DAAAAAAHHH! This is a finish from late 2014 of which I am very proud. Over the last couple of years, I’ve shared my progress with you all, from the completion of the quilt top, to lessons learned, to its basting. That basting was my first attempt at pin-basting (previously, I only hand-quilted, so I used thread-basting) and after starting to quilt with my sewing machine, I realised that my pins were spaced too far apart! This resulted in ugly puckers on the back of the quilt (and not little ones that I could turn a blind eye to, either!). So, I had to unpick all the teeny tiny quilting stitches I had done, and remove the pins, then re-baste. I was quite discouraged, so I left the quilt aside for several months until I was motivated enough again to finish it. This time, with the pins MUCH closer together, quilting ran a lot smoother – there are now NO puckers on the back of the quilt! It’s heavy work to pull a king-sized quilt through a domestic machine, I can tell you.

For binding, I decided to have a scrappy binding using Pezzy prints from Moda that I had in my stash.

I also added a label which I hand-embroidered myself.

Here are the specs for the quilt:

Quilt size: 250cm x 220cm

Quilt top: English paper pieced diamonds, quilting cotton, poly thread. Fabric: solid white, various cotton prints. Border: Solid white cotton

Batting: Quilter’s dream poly.

Quilt back: Pearl Bracelet in Anchor by Lizzy House for Andover fabrics.

Quilting: Machine quilted with white thread.

Binding: Double-fold bias binding, using 12 different fabrics from the Pezzy line by American Jane for Moda Fabrics.

Bread bag – finished

I finished this project a few weeks before Christmas but I couldn’t post about it because the recipient follows my blog! 🙂 I used this tutorial from L’atelier de Gladys (I’m afraid it’s in French, for some reason, English speakers don’t seem to make too many bags for baguettes! 🙂 ). The fabric is a linen/cotton mix, I love the sort of vintage feel to it. I already showed you the embroidery I made to embellish the bag. I trimmed the patches of embroidery with some lace rick rack (if that’s what you call it).

It fits up to six baguettes, and it’s useful because the bread dries slower than if it’s just left out in the open. The bag now has pride of place in my mother-in-law’s kitchen. It always makes me happy when I see someone else using (and enjoying!) something I’ve made!

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,100 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Giveaway Day winner!

So Giveaway Day (week!) is over! It was lovely to read all your comments about your favourite flowers. I don’t think I can chose just one flower as my favourite, I love them all!

Anyway, without further ado, we have a winner! The lucky winner of the hand-embroidered lavender sachet is: Mary Smith of http://www.quiltgenius.com/! Her favourite flower is the sunflower, I love sunflowers too. Congratulations! I’ll be contacting you for your address so I can get them in the post to you ASAP.

Giveaway Day! Win stuff!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW OVER. PLEASE GO TO THIS POST TO FIND OUT WHO IS THE WINNER!

It’s Sew Mama Sew’s give-away day again – their 13th and my fourth! This time, I’m giving away one of my handmade lavender sachets to one lucky reader. If you don’t win, you can buy one on my Etsy store! 🙂

I’ll ship internationally so everyone can enter. Just leave me a comment telling me your favourite flower is and I’ll pick a random winner from the comments on Friday evening.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT: Make sure you leave an email or a link to a blog so I can contact you if you are the winner! If you don’t, you can’t win! The competition is open from today until Friday at 5pm PST (midnight GMT). Good luck, and don’t forget to check out all the other great giveaways!

WIP: Embroidery for a bread bag

I know I shouldn’t mention the “C” word before Hallowe’en is over, but I’m making a start on Christmas presents. From experience, I know if I don’t start now, they’ll never be finished on time! At the moment, I’m working on a bread bag – it’s something you have in a lot of French houses, hung up in a kitchen, to store baguettes in. I loved the folk flowers embroidery on a tote bag by Nana Company (the tutorial is here on eHow), so I decided to use that as decoration:

I also embroidered “Sac à pain” with stem stitch in green thread:

The fabric is a very light blue linen, which I’ll cut and sew onto a grey linen/cotton fabric, which has a lovely “vintage” feel. I hope to have it finished in the next week, I’ll keep you all updated!

Retro Friday – my grandmother-in-law’s dress patterns

Today I’m not going to show you something I made. My mother-in-law was doing some cleaning out of old drawers, and she found some very interesting and sentimental documents from her mother. One of these was a folder labelled “Coupe et couture” which translates as “Dressmaking”.

There are 22 pages of hand-drawn patterns, with instructions (in French) as to how to make the garments. I thought I had done some super detective work in figuring out when Mamie Paulette (as my OH’s grandmother was affectionately called) made the folder – one of the pages has instructions for “manche gigot” which are leg-of-mutton sleeves – I figured this meant the folder came from the late 30’s or early forties when those sleeves were in fashion. My hunch was confirmed later in the tidying up process, when we found some of Mamie Paulette’s certificated – one was for a dressmaking course she completed in 1940!

There are some patterns that I’d love to try myself, such as her instructions for a simple dress, and a simple blouse. I don’t really know how to follow these sort of patterns as I’ve never done any dressmaking. Do any of you have any experience with these sort of patterns?

Lavender sachets

Here in the south of France, lavender grows really well. In early June, we went on holidays to the Verdon, and here is a picture of me in front of one of the many fields of lavender on the Plateau de Valensole:

We have several plants in the garden here at home too, and this year I harvested the flowers once they started to fade. I dried them, and decided to make some lavender sachets to use up the flowers.

I hand embroider the lavender motif onto squares of cotton fabric and stuff them with some dried lavender flowers and polystuffing. They smell wonderful!

I went a bit crazy, and made enough for my linen closets, as well as for gifts, and I still have some left over, so I decided to sell them in my brand spanking new Etsy shop! Feel free to head on over there if you’d also like some of the lavender goodness! 🙂

Alice’s Garden Embroidery

First off, let me apologise for the radio silence on my blog! I’ve been busy with work and holidays, but I promise I’m back! 🙂

I’m still on an embroidery “kick”, and I decided to complete Little Dorrit’s “Alice’s Garden” embroidery pattern, which was shared on Sew mama sew last year.

I really enjoyed this pattern, I learned lots of new stitches (I LOVE stem stitch!) and it looks so pretty!

I’m going to incorporate the embroidery into a cushion, I’ll keep you all posted on my progress!