applique flowers and a golden moment

Continuing the applique theme, today I added some flowers to a onesie for a friend's beautiful newborn daughter. I would like to make her a little quilt or playmat as well, but that will take a bit longer (hopefully before her first birthday though) Two of my friends had babies last weekend, it's been a very busy time.



This is the detail of the applique. I was going to sew buttons in the centres, but decided to keep it simple.




This afternoon Thomas fell asleep on my lap after feeding, and I noticed his eyelashes glinting like spun gold in the afternoon light. Life with Thomas is full of these little moments of wonder.

Australia day and another little bird

We have had a nice relaxing Australia day long weekend, seeing friends, and checking out the sleepy historic town of Gundaroo. Here is Thomas ready to go on one of our trips. He now takes up the whole car capsule which amazes us because he was so very tiny when he first came home.




This afternoon Warren looked after Thomas while I added a little bird applique to a t-shirt - a late birthday present for a favourite two year old. I used fusible web and then just straight stitched around the edges.




I was inspired by this gorgeous applique of little horses.

I'm hoping the applique will survive washing, at least until she grows out of it.

The bird design was adapted from the cute little bird on this tag, but much simplified, to reflect my basic sewing skills. I had intended it to be more subtle, but couldn't resist a touch of Japanese fabric for the wing.

Little quilt in progress

I started this little cot quilt just before Thomas was born six weeks early. I had hoped to finish it before he arrived, but it is still a work in progress. I have done the quilt top, but need to do the backing and quilting part.

I just love Japanese fabrics, traditional ones as well as the cute modern stuff. I tried to design this quilt to be unisex, but don't think I quite succeeded. I'm hoping Thomas will like it for a while before he decides it is too girly.

This is my first quilt so it is taking me a while to figure out how to do everything, as you can see from the patches which don't line up.

I'm hoping it just adds to the handmade charm.

Why hello there!

Well here goes, I've finally got around to starting my own blog! I've been meaning to do this since before the birth of little Thomas late last year. I had to share this photo of him, he has just started smiling, which is such a joy - he is such a cheeky monkey.

I was looking for some creative inspiration, and stumbled across the blog of Molly Chicken which led me into this gorgeous generous world of women who sew and craft and share wonderful glimpses of their lives. I am in awe of these girls, and the projects they finish so effortlessly. I am finding it hard to get much done at all with a three month old, but am hoping that having a blog might help with motivation for the various works in progress.

I am a bit of a dilettante when it comes to arts and crafts, I have a passion for anything to do with colour and pattern, and have tried almost everything to do with textiles (sewing, batik, dyeing, silk painting, screen printing and a recent foray into patchwork) I also love jewelry and actually bought myself a small kiln to do enameling last year, but then got a bit worried about the lead content of enamels while I was pregnant. These are some of my early efforts:

A little rockpool pendant

A maple leaf brooch

A tulip pendant

I am hoping to do some more enameling one day, but will have to wait till the weather here cools down, it is unthinkable to put a kiln on in Canberra at the moment. Tomorrow I will get my act together to photograph a quilt in progress for Thomas. For now I will try to post this - this is all a steep learning curve!