Ethel Owl is Famous!

Homemade With Love is a brand new magazine just out yesterday.
It's absolutely crammed with crafty projects.
But what's this on the contents page? Those owls look very familiar...

Yes it's my 2 pals Ethel and Edmund!

This is my first published project and so it's quite a thrill!

And if that wasn't enough excitement, there's a whole double page spread about me at the back!

I really wasn't expecting that!
I've had a good read through this new mag and I'm really impressed (and not just with page 18!). Not only are there lot's of great sewing/crochet/knitting ideas but there's also baking and cooking recipes, jewellery, gardening and lots of collage and photography projects too. It's going to published every 2 months and you should be able to buy this first edition in your local W H Smiths and big supermarkets now, or you can order a copy online. Here's their website for more info. And they are always looking for new projects for future editions so if any of my fellow bloggers have any tutorials they'd like to share then please get in touch with them.

In other news...
I've just had a wonderful week's holiday in Tenerife, basking under full sun with temperatures in the low twenties. Boy am I cold now!!
For my holiday crafting time I took away my mystery embroidery and my Liberty Star EPP. Here's how big it has grown now. Still a long way to go with this quilt top!

 I managed to complete 11 of these large hexagons. Here's some I made with the lovely new Liberty Tana Lawn I got from Very Berry Fabrics.

This one's my favourite, I just love that centre fabric.
It was so lovely having the time to stitch these together under a warm sun...
Back to reality now, at least we are not snowed in here!

Ethel and Edmund

Meet my 2 new owl friends - Ethel and Edmund!

We just took delivery of a range of flannel (available now on our website) from Robert Kaufman and what better project to try them out on than a few more owls for my collection? That's Ethel above...

...and this is Edmund, giving you a cheeky wink. My dad's name is Edmund so this owl is named after him (not sure what he will make of that!).

These 2 have been made for a particular project which I will tell you more about in the New Year, when hopefully I will produce a pattern and a kit to sell.
Meanwhile I still have some places left on the Fabric Owl half day workshop next Thursday, 15th November, and until Sunday you can get 20% off this class!

Very much influenced by the lovely Kerry, I made this pincushion as a 'finish during the class' project for my Handsewn Patchwork workshop, which was repeated again last week.

Just 2 EPP rosettes joined together, stuffed (I added some rice to the base for weight), and a little embroidery and a button added for detailing.

Christmas shopping is in full swing at our real life shop, Avery Homestore, in Edinburgh. And Sarah and I have been having fun making up a range of gift cases. These mini, patchwork patterned suitcases are filled with lovely crafty goodies. Above is the Embroidery Starter Kit, complete with printed Mini Boris Portrait embroidery pattern.

Here's the Patchwork Giftcase and below is the Liberty Inspiration Giftcase, available in light or dark colourways. There is also a Fabric Lover's Giftcase. All of these are available on our website and make really lovely presents for a crafty friend. Or put them on your wish list!

 I've had our new member of staff, Barbara, helping me make these Kilner Jar gift sets.

 Each one has a combination of buttons, threads, fabric, wool and felt, plus a padded pincushion top!

The larger jar also has fabric and a pack of needles. Unfortunately these won't be available to my online customers (glass is too hard to mail order), but for all my local peeps the larger is £8.99 and the smaller £4.99.  I also sell the kilner jars if you fancy making your own!

Plus I will be taking them to the Country Living Fair in Glasgow in a couple of weeks time, where I will also be doing a demo every day - yikes!
More on this very soon!

Three Little Pigs Quilt

 
Earlier this year I made a version of my Red Riding Hood Quilt as a commission. I was photographing it in the shop when one of my customers came in, saw the quilt and got very excited. Catriona completely fell in love with the wolf and the trees and the next day she was back to ask me to make one for her.

But she wasn't interested in Red Riding Hood, she just wanted the wolf, and also a hot air balloon. She had been wanting to make this cushion for a while. I had put this on as one of my first classes last year, but it was too early in my craft studio's lifetime and I didn't get any takers! But Catriona really wanted a hot air balloon cushion and came along with an idea for a quilt that incorporated it.

I have to say that I have really enjoyed working in collaboration with Catriona on the design for this quilt. We've had lots of meetings in the shop over the last six months, refining the design and deciding on fabric. I have tried to incorporate all her ideas, including her final request - that pile of logs above (which was a bit of a challenge!) for a snake finger puppet she has at home to hide behind.

And in return she has sought and found all the special fabric I needed, such as the Heather Ross gnome fabric which I have always wanted to get my hands on. The winter tree above was machine appliqued and has snow made of white perle cotton 8 French knots, beads and white felt.

The spring/summer tree has French knot blossom all over the Cloud 9 fabric and the tree trunk has my usual ladybird behind it's secret door, one of the features from the original that Catriona wanted to keep. We did think about having 4 trees, one for each season, but it was going to spoil the over all composition and make the quilt too big.

And here's the hot air balloon, it is machine appliqued but the rigging is hand embroidered, so it is a bit of a hybrid of this cushion and this quilt. The pig looks a little out of scale here but at least he is making a swift getaway from the big bad wolf! The felt clouds are topstitched on to the perfect sky fabric that Catriona found.

She also bought this gorgeous David Walker Bear in the Woods fabric (which I am going to try to order for the shop I love it so much!). I machine quilted round the trees, balloon and clouds with my amazing new Pfaff and it's integrated walking foot - I could never have managed this with my old machine!

The autumn tree is another feature Catriona wanted to keep from the original quilt, but she supplied the toadstool fabric for the trunk and found more Kokka Red Riding Hood fabric as I didn't have a whole wolf left on the piece I had.

The pigs can hide from the wolf behind the autumn tree and up in the summer tree, as well as behind the logs. It's a good job because the wolf looks really hungry!

Just before I handed the finished quilt over I realised I hadn't made a label! So this was quite hurriedly drawn and applied. Bailey is Catriona's cute little 2 year old boy who I hope will enjoy playing with this 'activity' quilt.

Catriona made all three pigs after attending a 'felt animal' class with me. She wanted each pig to wear a different coloured, checked neck scarf, but then we realised the pigs didn't actually have necks! The bandanas were a compromise and one of the hardest things to make on the whole quilt!

The gruffalo was made from one of Bailey's old pyjama tops and the owl is from an Alexander Henry home decor fabric that I bought in New York 3 years ago (good job I bought plenty as this owl has been used on all 3 quilts!).

Everyone's back in their places here with the gruffalo ready to fly away in his balloon. This is the third of these Fairytale quilts I have finished. You can see the first here and the second here.

I started this properly in August, and have been working on it in between other projects since then. Luckily Catriona wasn't in a mad hurry and was more concerned to get it the way she wanted it. I am glad to say that she is very happy with the finished quilt!

Sampler Tree Embroidery with extra owls

I have been having a week off work for a wee holiday, just 'staycationing' at beautiful Shangri La Farm. But seeing as I have picked the wettest week of the year for it, I have been inside sewing most of the time!
This has given me time to catch up on ARRR8 and Cherish Circle commitments and also to start and finish 2 projects for classes in the Autumn.

First up a 'Sampler Embroidery'. My Embroidery and Embellishment Workshop has been very popular so I wanted to offer another embroidery class. Because of another project I am involved in at present (that I will write about in a separate post) I have been learning lots of new embroidery stitches and wanted to design a Sampler to show them off. I was very inspired by this beautiful Hot Air Balloon by the extremely talented Nicole (yet another person I didn't get to chat to at FQ London!) and wanted something similar.
So I chose a tree. Anyone who has been paying attention to my previous embroidery designs will have noticed that I love to draw trees, leaves, flowers and anything 'organic'.

So this is a tree full of different 'stitch flowers' and 'stitch leaves'. We have fly, chain, seed and satin stitch leaves, star, daisy and wheel stitch flowers, fly stitch twigs with bullion knot buds and raised roses from an old embroidery leaflet that I found whilst searching the net.
The tree trunk looked a little empty when I'd finished, so I popped a tiny owl into a hole. It was lovely to work on something so colourful and varied. I know I am always saying this but I do really love embroidery.

I have one more class without a photo to advertise it on our website, and that is a half day in the Autumn to make Fabric Owls. Back when this blog first started, over 3 years ago now, I made a fabric owl from a pattern I found here at a blog called Lollychops (I have just been reading over that early post - I didn't even know how to do links!). This was the sort of thing I wanted to do for my class, but I have started from scratch with the pattern.

I wanted to make the owl a cross between my little crocheted owl and this owl doorstop. I've used furnishing fabrics from Romo and Mulberry. We used to do Interior Design when we had a bigger business (before the recession nearly ruined us completely) and I still have loads of scraps and pattern books to use up. These fabrics are all 'dry-clean only' so only good for projects that don't need to be washed (but you wouldn't want to put one of these fellas in to a washing machine would you?).

The fabrics are beautifully soft so they are perfect for a cuddly owl. I love fly stitching so much that I added some to their tummies as feathers. This was the trial one, but I thought he was a bit squat so I decided to stretch the pattern a bit for the next one.

I like him too but I think I prefer the first one now! What do you think? Short or Tall? I think I will offer both options at the class.
If anybody is interested (and local enough) you can find details of these 2 classes here.

One more thing, I was absolutely chuffed to bits when I opened my copy of Mollie Makes on Thursday to discover Tasha's report on FQ London Retreat with yours truly in one of the photos! Fame at last!!

Peekaboo Quilt

I have been desperate to do something with my Porthole Blocks that I made with Lucie Summers at the  FQ Retreat ( I can't believe that was over a month ago now!). So here is my Peekaboo Quilt.

Lucie leaves a 1/4 inch seam around her 'holes' (block on the left) but I preferred the one I made where I top stitched close to the edge (block on the right). So I abandoned the first one to use in something else, and made another 5 blocks, each with somebody peeping out of the middle hole.

Well, I'm hoping it looks like at least a few of them are peeping out so as to justify the name! I like the look of the solids next to the prints, not something I do very often.

Here's some close-ups. This one features the gorgeous new Liberty Lifestyle fabric that I got a freebie of at the retreat. We will be stocking the Liberty Lifestyle cottons on our website and in the Edinburgh store as soon as they are available.

This little owl and the ladybird above are from Suzy Ultman's Critter Community line and the pink print above and the red print below are both from Darlene Zimmerman's Adventures with Alice.

I'm a bit disappointed with my machine quilting. I should have just hand quilted it but I was in a hurry to finish as I am going to give a workshop on this in the autumn and wanted the photo for the website and the quilt to hang in the studio. So I machine quilted in the ditch around the blocks and the border. But my stupid machine is so rubbish that it's just puckered all the borders. Hand quilting with coloured perle cotton has helped a bit, but I really do need to upgrade my machine!

I used more Adventure's with Alice on the border, I think it's sweet 'Toytown' style works really well on a child's quilt. That lovely vintage bluey-greeny-yellow fabric used to be my colleague Sarah's old maternity blouse. I must have stared at it lustfully so often that when she had finished with it she cut it in two and gave me half! Thanks Sarah :)
I found an old vintage sheet that belonged to my Grandad to use for the back.

Overall I think it would make a really sweet cot quilt or wall hanging for a child's room. I really enjoy using Lu's technique and she was very kind and generous when she said she didn't mind me giving a workshop in it. It's really adaptable and I have lots more ideas about how I would like to use it in future quilts. 
One more thing, I discovered a wonderful new blog/website recently called Bustle and Sew. Helen produces an e-magazine every month as well as countless newsletters each one bursting with free patterns and advice about embroidery, patchwork and sewing. I am truly staggered by the quality and quantity of her output! And in this month's magazine she has featured me as her blog of the month, thanks Helen!

I will be the envy of FQ London...

...with my beautiful name tag!! How gorgeous is this little embroidered badge made for me by Emily of Strawberry Patch Blog?! I am participating in a name tag swap for the Fat Quaterly Sewing Retreat in London next month (so excited!!). I hadn't even started mine when this exquisite little thing popped through my mailbox (I still haven't, shh!). I totally agree with Emily that 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery', she saw my latest Woodland Embroidery and recreated part of it here, but in minature! Those stitches are so tiny and beautiful. I love the little bespectacled owl, and the ric rac. I am in awe of your lovely neat embroidery Emily!

 

Even the back is gorgeous! Thank you Emily, I am completely in love with it and have even been wearing it around my shop and will wear it at my workshops too. I just don't want to take it off, it makes me so happy!

I finally got the 2 embroideries that I received in the Hoop Up! Stitch & Send Swap into suitable hoops and photographed together with my original inspiration piece. They look so good together. I must add that they won't stay permanently on my barn door, but it was too dark inside to get a decent picture so I pinned them up here for a bit of (rare) evening sunshine.

This adorable little lion was made for me by Dolores. I just love everything about this design, The felt leaves, the tree bark, the little owl with his chevron feathers and press-stud eyes! And especially the lion with his little heart tattoo. Thank you Dee!

And from Leila came the sweetest little fox clutching a star! He looks so cuddly and cute, and I love the design with those gorgeous leaf wreaths and cute little pink flowers. I did very well in this swap and loved every minute. I still have one piece left but I will be handing that over in person in June so I have a few weeks yet *gulp*. I better get on with that name tag!