A little bit of free style hand embroidery

I picked up a little embroidery kit from Rowandean. I fell in love with the ones that had been made up and I just had to have one. Their style is to use a free style of embroidery on top of organza to create a lovely colourful background. I adapted the embroidery slightly from the original pattern, it was great fun. I am planning on designing one of these myself, maybe with some poppies next time. It only took a few hours to complete as well. I framed it in a plain white frame so as not to detract from the lovely colours...

Here is how the original patterned looked...

If you would like to pick up a kit for yourself you can order one through the Rowandean website. The pattern I had was called blue Delphiniums. 

Owl quilt for the Linus charity

I just could not resist doing a bit more vermicelli for my latest Linus charity quilt. It is a simple 6 x 6 square patchwork quilt made from the owl themed fabric from my stash. The squares are 6 inches finished so the finished size of the quilt was 36 inches square. As you can see I used a random placement of blocks as I had more of some fabrics than others.

Here is the back... 

I used thick polyester wadding so it really puffs out with the vermicelli quilting. It is so much easier to vermicelli on a smaller size quilt. I must try out some other free motion patterns soon. 

Vintage style bobbin lace doilies

I found this fabulous pattern in a book called Torchon lacemaking, a manuel of techniques by Elizabeth Wade. There are a number of other gorgeous patterns in this book so I highly recommend it, at least to a relative novice to bobbin lace like myself. The thread I used was DMC 100 and I interpreted the fans in three different ways; half stitch, whole stitch and whole stitch with an extra stitch between each row. My favourite is the half stitch doily. Here's how it looked before I mounted it onto fabric.

To mount them onto fabric I cut circles that were about a quarter of an inch bigger than I wanted. I then used a single needle overlock stitch on my overlocker to ensure that the edges would not fray. I then sewed the bobbin lace to the circles, turning the overlocked edges to the underside so that they were hidden. I did not use the tradition end pin stitch to attach them, I used a regular running stitch as I did not want to create more bulk.  Here are the finished items.

In the lower image the half stitch Doily is on the left, the whole stitch doily at the bottom and the whole stitch doily with the extra twist between the rows is on the right. I am now working on a lavender bag, how very vintage!

Kitten cuddles

I love cats, but I don't have any real ones, so I thought I would make some out of fabric! The pattern is from a vintage book I found. I changed the facial features, the original pattern was not to my taste so I tried to make them look cuter. They are going to live in my new craft room (we are moving soon to a house with more space for all my crafty goodies). I just love the fabric, they are all from Tilda. My favourite is the one with the pink flowers.

Strawberry ice cream quilt

I bought a small jelly roll from doughty's and just had to sew it straight away. The colour way is quirky florals by fabric freedom. I used almost every scrap of the jelly roll which I was very pleased about. I used plain white fabric to complement the bright tones. I sewed 3 strips together lengthwise and cut them into 6 1/2 inch blocks. The top strip was the 4 inches I had left over from each of these. I had two jelly roll strips left so I used these to finish the bottom. I used a poly cotton wadding and finished it off with a vermicelli free motion pattern. Lots of fun! I definitely fancy purchasing another jelly roll soon!