Handmade gifts for big and small girls

 

My charming little niece turned one this weekend, a perfect excuse for a visit home to my parents & a fab afternoon in my sister's house celebrating with family! I've made quite a few little gifts for her in her first year as she's my goddaughter - so I wanted to continue the trend. But I've already made her 2 blankets and lots more so I didn't want to repeat anything I'd done before. I bought this lovely book last year and I've used it to make quite a few fleece monsters for my own kids.

So I took it out last week after entering the One Thing, One Week Challenge over at Amy's Creative Side and flicked through it for a little while and decided, with the help of the kids opinions, to make Dilly. I have gorgeous, high quality fleece that I use for my baby blankets and used this to make Dilly - and she's fabulously soft and will be lovely to hold. She's actually one of the simplest and fastest patterns to make in the book which was a bonus too as I had very little time last week with work demands.

 

I think she was a hit too with the little lady! I would definitely recommend this book - the patterns are very straightforward to make and very, very cute - plus, a little quirky, which I really like! My kids adore the monsters I've made for them - they bring them to bed every night and the fleece has held up very well.

I also made some bunting to decorate her room using some lovely fresh, colourful fabric:

 

As well as my niece's birthday presents, I had some little gifts I wanted to make for bigger girls - my own friends! So I ran up some pincushions in the last few weeks for them. After cutting all the strips and squares for my Its A Hoot quilt, I had lots of lovely scraps left over, many of them conveniently already in small strips. So I pulled out a small piece of coton batting and quilted the strips on as I went.

 

I just love the colour palette in these fabrics. I had some lovely bigger scraps left over and used one of them for the back:

 

 I also made this scrappy pincushion from some Amy Butler scraps I had. Like the first, its quilted onto a scrap of cotton batting in a very simple style, and the blue, orange, brown and cream colours work really nicely together.

 After our lovely weekend, we stopped off in Kildare Village outlet centre on the way back and I popped into the Cath Kidston outlet store and found this lovely sewing basket. I've been looking for a nice sewing box for a long time but so many of them are just hideously old-fashioned! I love the fabric print on this one and have already moved my sewing supplies from the horrible old functional "craft" box I had from a few years back to this pretty one - a perfect gift for me!!

p.s. - I just wish I had a garden like my mum's for taking photos in - I could have such wonderful backdrops!

Pretty and Practical

 Yesterday and today I was off work to get E started in playschool. I really can't believe my baby is so grown up! So yesterday I had 2.5 whole free hours which I sadly had to use to tidy the house. I did a big clearout of my storage / ironing cupboard and was

trying to figure out how to store my shopping bags and the swimming bags better to keep the clutter to a minimum. This morning when I dropped the kids, I thought of some pretty Cath Kidston fabric I had in my stash and decided to try to make some storage bags. I kept it really simple and made one long tube, with elasticated openings at both ends for the shopping bags, and a simple bag for the swim stuff. I found 2 heavy duty hooks and stuck them up and hey presto! I know they are very simple but I am insanely happy every time I open the cupboard. I even got out my ironing board this evening to do some ironing (now that I can actually get to it!)

Me Time!

So last night I decided it was high time I made something nice for myself. I've been making for my kids, gifts for other kids, and stuff for the house for the last couple of months - definitely time for a little quality project for me :-) I cut the fabric for a bag a couple of weeks ago and decided to get it out and sew it up. I've had my eye on it for a long time - the stripey fabric is Cath Kidston which I got reduced in the outlet shop in Kildare Village and I thought it would be perfect for a bag the minute I saw it, its so fresh and colourful and I love the stripes. I picked up some baby pink bubbble cotton on Ebay for the lining and think they work well together. I'm using a pattern from Lotta Jansdotter's book "Simple Sewing" and its not hard, but there is a little bit of work in it. Particularly since I decided at the last minute that the fabric wasn't heavy enough and I needed some interfacing. Luckily I had a heavy sew-in type in my box. I did the outside and the pockets last night, and the lining this morning in my pjs when the kids were running around playing. So here it is, almost finished.  I just need to do the handles and join the lining to the outside and then I will be done apart from the pressing. I just adore bags so its great to make a few (and saves in my pocket too). Fingers crossed I will find another few minutes later on to finish it off.