Welcome Fat Quarter Shop & Giveaway!

I hope that you are all having a lovely weekend! I am delighted to introduce my newest sponsor on FairyFace Designs, Fat Quarter Shop.

I'm sure I don't need to tell most of you what a great fabric shop it is! It has a HUGE selection of fabric - yardage, precut, kits etc, as well as thread, patterns, sewing notions and lots more, including quilt clubs and Block of the Month programs. It has a brilliant sale section too, I always keep an eye on it because sometimes the deals are just amazing - including their specials which you can always find through following them on Twitter or their Facebook page. And in addition to all that, they have a fantastic reputation for service and delivery.

Fat Quarter Shop was founded by Kimberly Jolly back in 2003, and in 10 years it has grown from a small business that she worked on in the evenings and weekends in addition to her day job, to now being a large full time operation employing a number of staff. In addition to selling all that gorgeous fabric, Fat Quarter Shop is also really immersed in the online sewing community with a great blog, the Jolly Jabber. I love reading the interviews with fabric and quilt designers which are regularly on the blog.

At the moment,  the Jolly Jabber is hosting a great free sew along to celebrate 10 years of Fat Quarter Shop - The Deck-ade the Halls Quilt Along. Every 2 weeks, a free PDF pattern is uploaded for each section, with an accompanying video tutorial and you will have a completed quilt top by mid-September, giving lots of time to get it quilted and finished in time for the holidays. You'll find all the video tutorials here and if you want to use the gorgeous Aspen Frost fabric that the FQS quilt is made of you'll find it here, including kits for the pattern.

Fat Quarter Shop is offering a great giveaway today, a $25 gift voucher for one lucky winner for the shop! What will you use it for? Maybe some Briar Rose, Nordika or Just My Type? Or something else? Leave a comment and let me know for one entry. For a second entry, follow me over on Facebook or Instagram and leave a comment letting me know you do. This giveaway is open until next Friday morning, 2nd August and I will pick a winner then. If I cannot contact the winner, I will redraw. Thanks so much to Fat Quarter Shop!

***Giveaway now closed ***

Are you getting your Swoon on?

I never thought, in my wildest dreams, that we would have over 100 peeps Swooning Along with us over in Swoon 2013. There were so many  people who Swooned last year, I thought if we have 20 or 30 this time it would be brilliant. But no, Swoon has worked its magic yet again and the blocks are popping up all over blogs, Flickr and Instagram (#swoon2013) and they are so BEAUTIFUL! I totally see why everyone falls in love with this pattern, its stunning.

I have been making good progress with mine. I cut and pieced 3 blocks pretty quickly before I took a little break with my family in the past couple of weeks. So despite the fact I haven't touched them for a fortnight I'm still on target for 1 block a week. They are coming together quicker and quicker as I get more familiar with what I'm doing, so I might sneak a couple extra in there if I can.

My colour palette is aqua/duck egg, navy and yellow. I'm really loving playing with the various fabrics I've picked and pairing them off. I've used some of my absolute favourites that I've been stashing for years, along with some new prints.

So far, I'm happy. Another couple of blocks and I'll really be able to get a feel for how the quilt top will come together.

One of the things I love about this pattern is how different it looks depending on the fabric choices. Look at these wonderful blocks from the fabulous ladies in the Flickr group (I managed to mess up the code with the credits for each block but you'll find them in the group):

So, if you've been sitting on the fence about joining us, I hope I might have convinced you, come on over and play! Details of the (rough) schedule, where to get your pattern etc in the original post here:

Q3 FAL Goals

It's time to list the goals for Quarter 3 Finish A Long. I have quite a few things I want to get done this quarter, before I head back to work in October after my maternity leave. This might be a bit of an ambitious list, but fingers crossed I stay on track!

1. Finish the Made to Measure Quilt. Only a couple of borders to go to get this quilt top complete, but the next one is a massive HST border and I'm not quite ready to tackle it yet!

2. Swoon 2013. I have 3 blocks done, and am doing this at a leisurely pace, but really want to have this done for the end of September. If you're still thinking about it, come over and join us on Flickr and on Instagram where we're using the #swoon2013 hashtag - we have almost 90 members Swooning again this year!

3. My crochet cardi for baby R. Not much to do on this now, and I hope to have it finished this week.

4. Placemats for my friend S - just need to quilt and bind these.

5. Liberty drunkards path cushion using these beautiful greys and blues:

6. Hexie Project: think these need to be a cushion (pillow) cover. I have almost all of them basted and need to start piecing.

7. Baby quilt. This has been hanging around unfinished for far too long. Time to move it off the UFO list!

 8. Lastly a carryover from my Q2 list - baste, quilt and bind my Ruby quilt top:

Do you think that's enough? I certainly do! Linking up with Leanne :-)

A little bit of Liberty

A few weeks ago I happened to be browsing through Facebook just as a post popped up by Ali of Very Berry Fabrics looking for people who might be interested in doing a project with some of her gorgeous Liberty fabrics. I reckon I had my email written and sent off to her within about 2 minutes of the post appearing! I've read so much about Liberty fabrics, and admired them in so many projects  but have never worked with them. So I couldn't wait to see if she chose me as one of the lucky people to receive some fabric. I may have done a big happy dance when she emailed me back to say I was!!

And last week this beautiful fabric arrived through my letterbox - 16 little 6" squares of the most beautiful soft Liberty.  Ali picked a fabulous muted palette of greys and blues. I'm going to pair them with some pure white fabrics and I can't wait to get started because I reckon they will be just beautiful against the white. I'm going to be making a cushion (pillow) cover with them. Last year I made this drunkard's path mini-quilt in a swap that I was very sad to send away - I just loved it. I always thought it would make a lovely cushion cover, and that's what I plan to do. I may play around with the layout a little - Drunkard's Path blocks are so versatile - but we'll see what happens when I start piecing!

I will be really interested to see what it is like working with these Liberty fabrics. They are so, SO soft and so fine. I imagine that a larger piece of fabric would have wonderful drape for dressmaking. (Note to self: next dress for the littlest lady may need to be a Liberty one). Ali included a little card with lots of information and tips for sewing with Liberty lawns which was great, as I hadn't realised how fine it was before I got it.

If you haven't already checked out Ali's shop on Folksy, you should pop over and have a look. She has beautiful fabrics and little charm bundles and is so lovely to deal with. She also has a Facebook page where she posts special offers etc so make sure you follow her there too!

Finish-A-Long Quarter 2 - the list!

The kids are on their summer holidays and so is my hubby, so it's a bit like a mad house round at mine at the moment. So I'm going to be brief! I'm really pleased that I have 4 out of a hoped for 6 finishes this quarter - I feel that I got a lot achieved from my list at the start of the quarter and, better still, I was really happy with some of them. Without further ado here's the list:

1. Mr D's Circle's Quilt:

2. A tumbler quilt for Cindy using the Kona charm packs & 1 print FQ she sent me:

3. Some triangular placemats for my brother and his girlfriend:

4. Lastly, I made another peasant dress for baby R using some of the beautiful Little Matryoshka fabrics. This was actually one of my first finishes in the quarter, and although I posted a pic on Instagram at the time, I completely forgot to blog it.

Here is is:

I used the pattern by Sew Much Ado. I love this pattern, and bought it after I made the free infant version and baby R got to wear it only once before growing out of it. This time I made it in the 6-12 month size. R is not a particularly big baby (she's 6 months this week and only moving into 6-9 month clothes in the last couple of weeks) but she is already out of this version! I don't think that my not pre-washing the fabric helped as there has been a bit of shrinkage, but I find the pattern very tight across the chest/arm holes. However, maybe the sizing is different between the USA and Europe as the weight guidelines seem to be a bit different. Anyways, I digress. I did manage to snap a little pic of my beauty in her dress before she grew out of it - this was taken about 10 weeks ago so she is a lot bigger now! (And yes, in case you're wondering, she's a thumb sucker <3)

So there you go - my finishes. Delighted with these and can't wait to get stuck into next quarter's finish! Thanks so much to Leanne for hosting the Finish-A-Long, it definitely helped keep me on track.

I'm linking up to Leanne - pop over there to be inspired by everyone's finishes!