Win a Rainbow Fabric bundle for Giveaway Day!!!!

Today is Sew Mama Sew giveaway day and I have a really lovely giveaway for you today :-)

If you're visiting my blog for the first time as part of this giveaway, welcome. I'm so happy to meet you! I'm Sarah, I'm a modern Irish quilter living in beautiful Cork in the south west of Ireland. I love making quilts and pretty things. I'm a super busy working mum, with 3 smallies and a lovely hubby to look after, in addition to my job and my quilting addiction. You can find out some more about me here and you can have a quick look at my gallery of lovely projects here. I hope that you will come back and visit me again when the giveaway is over :-) Because my life is so madly busy at the moment, I don't get to blog quite as often as I'd like. But I do post pictures of what I'm working on over on Instagram and on my Facebook page all the time, so do please come and chat with me on one of those places! You'll find the links for all the places I hang out online up on the top right of my sidebar.

I spent a little while thinking about what to give away today for the Sew, Mama, Sew! giveway day. And I thought it should be something I would love to win, if I was entering. So today's prize is a combination of my 2 favourite things - fabric and a quilt book.

First up, I have put together, from my own (rather overflowing at this stage) stash, a lovely bundle of fat eighths in a rainbow of colours. There are 2 FEs of each colour. The fabrics are all gorgeous, designer quilting cottons from designers like Aneela Hoey, Kate Spain, Vanesa Christenson, Lizzy House, Tanya Whelan etc.That's 2 whole yards of fabric!!

The second part of the prize is the lovely quilt book Modern Baby. 

This book is full of lovely patterns for baby quilts, including my one of my own patterns, Modern Shapes Sampler:

I'll keep the entries simple. I'm putting together my Christmas wish list, and of course, quilt books are on it. For your entry, tell me what your favourite quilt pattern/book is. Please ensure that you leave your email address in your comment unless you are absolutely 100% certain you have your Blogger profile set up to receive replies via email.

For a bonus entry, follow me over on Instagram (@sewfairyface) or Facebook (facebook.com/fairyfacedesigns) and let me know you do.

I will ship internationally. This giveaway will close on the evening (Irish time) of December 13th. Winner will be drawn at random. If I cannot contact the winner, I will redraw.

Good luck!

Sew Mama Sew! Giveaway Day

 

Another week, another giveaway! It's December after all! I have put together a little package from my own stash for you today and I hope you like it.

To everyone who is visiting for Sew, Mama, Sew! giveaway day - céad míle fáilte (or, to translate, a huge Irish welcome!) to my little corner of blogland. I hope that you stay and have a look around. This has been the year of quilting for me. I finished my very first quilt on 25th January this year and quickly became obsessed with the whole quilting process. So much so that I have made an average of 1 large quilt a month and lots of minis, table runners, mug rugs and other projects along the way, including jointly hosting the Across the Sea quiltalong with my friend Jennifer. Plus, of course, the 3 quilts that are in my sewing basket waiting to be finished by year end! I love to make colourful, modern quilts - big and small - with gorgeous fabrics and simple, clean design. Here are some of my favourite makes this year:

You'll find more about my finished quilts here. Next year, my plan involves lots of tutes and some quilt patterns so I would love if you came back and visited again when all the madness of the giveaways is over!

Later this week I will be posting a tute for these cute phone/gadget cozies - one for smaller gadgets, one for iPhones. They are super fast, and super easy and you can make them with scraps - perfect, last minute Christmas presents! So do pop back and check it out if you need some gift inspiration!

To all my loyal friends, well, you know how much I love you all :-) But I'll say it again, just so you're sure - you're the BEST!! I love how I have become friends with so  many of you though commenting and chatting via email, and I really, really hope I get to meet lots of you in London in June at the Fat Quarterly retreat, funds and flights permitting (lets talk about that more in the New Year, will we?).

So, let's get to the important parts!  Today's giveaway is all of my own fabric, from my (overflowing) stash baskets. In case you are wondering, my home is smoke free and pet free!

First up, I am giving a way a Fairy Tale Friends honeybun.

 

Nice, right? This honeybun consists of 45 1.5" strips, approx 44" wide. Have a look here for more info.


But that's not all, I'm also including 6 stashbuilding fat quarters. The fabrics are perfect mixer fabrics in a nice range of colours. 

They are, from left to right: Freebird by Momo for Moda, Hideaway by Lauren and Jessi Jung for Moda,  Grand Revival by Tanya Whelan for Free Spirit, Pinfeathers by Carina Gardner for Northcott, Midsummer Magic by Laurie Godin for Northcott, and 1001 Peeps by Lizzy House for Andover.

What do you need to do? I'm keeping this simple... you can have 2 entries. Please leave your email address in your comment in the following format: fairyfacedesigns (at) gmail (dot) com so that I can contact you.

1. Leave a comment telling me where in the world you are spending Christmas/your holidays this year. Mine will be here, at home, just outside Cork city in the very south of Ireland.  (Everyone can enter on this comment, follower or not!)
2. For a bonus entry, let me know if you are a follower, new or old.

Important stuff: I will close the giveaway at 9pm Irish time (GMT) on Friday 16th December. The winner will be drawn using Random Number Generator. Giveaway is open internationally. I will delete duplicate entries. If I cannot get in contact with the winner by Sunday 18th December, I will redraw.

**This giveaway is now closed**

Yippee....I was Featured!!

Can I do it? Yes I can!!!!! Ok, well I think I might have been watching too much of President Obama's Irish visit on tv tonight :-) It was great seeing him addressing all those people in Dublin, so close to where I went to college and to hear that famous campaign slogan in Irish (Gaelic) - he got it pretty correct :-)

Anyway, I'm waffling a bit so on to the main point. When I started quilting first, one of the blogs I completely loved was Quilt Story. I loved seeing all the different quilts featured and I adore their Fabric Tuesday linky each week, I have found so many lovely blogs through it. So I was totally thrilled when Heather and Megan contacted me asking to feature one of my quilts, and over the moon to see my PictureBox Quilt posted on Quilt Story yesterday! If you're new to my blog, you'll find a tutorial for this quilt here. If you make it, please let me know and add it to my Flickr group.

In what amounts to super timing, I got emails from two ladies in the last week who have made quilts to my pattern - here they are:

by Lisa Estrada, California

by Beverly Shenold, Oklahoma

Don't they look great? I love how they look so different from mine and to see how each quilt interpreted the pattern. I'll be back tomorrow with a full update...its been a busy week!

P.S.  If you are visiting from Sew, Mama, Sew! for the May Giveaway, you'll find it here

Giveaway!!

This year, for the first time, I'm taking part in the Sew, Mama, Sew! annual giveaway day.

Funnily enough, this is my 99th blog post - and I know that a lot of bloggers celebrate reaching their 100th post with a giveaway, so think of it as getting in a little early :-)

Here's what I'm giving away:

 An iPhone cozy handmade by me (more photos and details about fabrics etc here):

 

A Moda "Happy" charm pack and a FQ of Moda "It's a Hoot" Owls fabric:

 Four of these pretty buttons:

 2 metres of cerise pink trimming - perfect for edging a little girl's dress!

Some reels of ribbon:

The important stuff .......How to enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post
2. For an extra bonus entry, leave a comment to say you're a follower (new or old). You can find the links to follow me at the top right hand side of my sidebar.

The small print.....

I will ship internationally.
This giveaway will be open until 11:30 pm (GMT) on Wednesday 25th May.
I will draw the winner at random from entries on Thursday 26th May.
I am sorry but I cannot accept entries via email or as comments on my Facebook page - blog comments only will be counted on this one, I hope you understand!

Don't forget to go and check out the giveaway list over at Sew, Mama, Sew! tomorrow 23rd May. I'm hoping I'll be lucky on someone else's giveaway :-)

*******GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED*****************
Thank you to everyone who entered. I will announce the winner in the morning.

Sewing Fun..and a sneak giveaway preview!

This week I just couldn't get into anything big I was working on. I didn't have the mental energy and had lost a little bit of creative spark. But I was panicking slightly, needing to have something ready for my Sew, Mama, Sew! giveaway post on Sunday. So, Wednesday night I sat down with some scraps and an idea I had from my little notebook and decided to just have a bit of fun. By yesterday afternoon, this is what I ended up with:

A cute little cozy for an iPhone!

Now, I'm going to shamelessly post lots of pics of this, not because I love it so much (although I do!) but because my friend Helen is staying with me for a few days, and she's an amazing photographer, and I just love the photos she took. She also gave me a crash course for dummies in how cameras work, light, shutter speed etc, and, even better, where to find all these things on my little camera. She wandered around adjusting things, muttering about depth of field and light and I ended up with about a million fab photos, not just of my stuff, but also, as always, of my kids!

Its made from a natural coloured cotton/linen mix, paired with some tiny red scraps from my basket. I quilted the main fabric using some scraps of cotton backing. This is the front:

It's made to fit a phone with a fitted protective cover as I hate when I have to take mine off, the phone inevitably gets dropped when I remove if for 5 mins! I added a little tab so it can be hung from a handbag or a belt. This is the back:

I debated what to do closure wise but ended up covering a button with one of my last Bliss scraps, and made a fastening loop from the main fabric:

And I lined it with one of my favourite fabrics, Ta Dot in Berry. I think its the most versatile yet striking fabric I've used, works great on its own or blended, can be background or the main feature. It really brings life to anything you put it with, I just love it!

By the time I finished it, I was back to my normal addicted-to-the-sewing-machine self and full of energy again!

This is my handmade item for the giveaway, which I'll post on Sunday {link is here}. I'll be adding some fabric and notions to it too, so be sure to check back in then! I'm also thinking of writing a tute on this one, if you're interested let me know!

Helen and myself had a little bit of a crafty evening yesterday and I showed her how to make a scrappy pincushion:

Of course, she's taking it away with her. I also had this little mini pincushion that I made with some hexies a while ago and kept for her:

Of course, I'm not sure what she's going to do with them...her being a knitter!

I'm linking this up to Fabric Tuesday on Quilt Story, Sew Cute Tuesday, Todays Creative Blog and a bunch of other great blogs, check out my sidebar for the links!