Todays exciting presents!

My dad brought round a few things tonight, first of all my belated Christmas present from James which missed the Christmas post.

 After my recent quilting success I decided I wanted my own quilting book. I can't wait to have a look and get some inspiration. I may try a quilted card aswell, we'll see!

 This next thing was inspired by some friends Christmas cards.

 They are both designers, and run Slight http://www.slightnet.co.uk/flash_content.html and their cards are always inspiring. This year they simply stamped Happy Christmas 25th December with one of these desktop printing sets onto plain white card, it was really simple, yet very effective. I contemplated buying a set, but even better my dad found me one that he doesn't use!!!! Keep an eye out for cards featuring this in the future!!

Quilted Cushion

For my sister in law I wanted to make something special this Christmas, and as she and her boyfriend are currently doing up a house - complete with craft room - I decided to make something for the new house. I found out the colour scheme of the craft room and decided to make a quilted cushion. I got a few books out of the library, made my own design - based around a very popular star shape- and set about making it. I found it very satisfying doing this, it was much quicker than the advent calender to put together!

The front has a panel of stars with buttons, a strip of plain fabric, then stripes of varying widths in colour.

The colours remind me of sherbet!

I made the back to be an overlap fastening, and used two odd buttons to close it. I decided on this rather than a zip as it looked a little more classic. I made a small label to put inside with a beehive stamped on it!

I'm really pleased with how the cushion looked, and am quite confident on doing more quilting in the future!

Advent..but no calender!

I'm so disappointed that I haven't been able to post the final advent calender photos yet, but alas, it is not yet finished. I was right on track for finishing it on the 30th Novemeber,but the binding was still causing me issues. It was the mitred corners really that were the problem. They looked fine on the front, but the back was a right mess. I think I hadnt attached the binding quite correctly, so ended up with too much binding over on the back. To try and balance this out I stitched one of the corners of the binding and cut it out (do NOT do this). This was a HUGE mistake, and now I've had to unpick about 8inches of binding, and will have to somehow insert a new section of binding. Thankfully the monkey doesn't understand advent yet, so if we start with the calender a few days late he won't notice. I've also found it difficult sorting out the dowel ends. No where close seems to stock them, and I'm not prepared to pay £4 postage on 80p worth of goods! For the moment the dowel will just have to be rough edged! I have seen some lovely shelf hangers though which would look lovely in a bedroom.
I really have caught the quilting bug!

Quilted Advent Calender Progress

Well today was the day when I was finally able to quilt my advent calender. Its been a long time coming. I actually bought the fabric for this project over 2 years ago, but never got round to doing it. I decided about two months ago that I was determined to get it made this year and cut out all the squares of fabric for the pockets. It then took me another month to get round to starting to hand stitch the pockets on, and now I'm at the stage of doing the quilting. I was a little apprehensive about this, as although I'm good at basic sewing (curtains, cushions etc) I had never done any quilting. The quilting part has gone reasonably well, as I just machine stitched around the main shapes. I'm now worrying about the finishing of the piece, as the quilting book I have from the library isn't that clear about the binding part. I think I may have to google that part or look on youtube for a video!

Anyway, here's a photo so you can see how its looking so far.
Each of the squares is a small pocket for advent gifts. Although the monkey is too young for chocolate in the advent calender this year we've been researching little trinkets to use for each day which tell the Christmas story. I found one set of items listed in Disciplines of a Godly Parent which starts at Creation and goes through to Christ, so I may use those.
Anyway, I'd better be off. Bye!