Chicken lovingly handmade by my daughter Elsa ♥
This week I have been stitching up a bunch of happy word cushions from vintage fabrics and neon thread. Now I am waiting for Elsa to come home from school, I will take her shopping in the Spring sun. We want to put the winter clothing away soon! And tomorrow we are travelling to see my family, I look forward to the break! Happy Easter holidays everyone!
Today I've been making these keyrings-to-be. My friend Mari asked me to make some for her shop and I was happy to! I love to be able to use the tiniest of my scraps. Mari and I share the dream of (an old) house. I wonder if my obsession with sewing houses will stop when I get a house of my own? Probably not. I so hope the day when I can say that I am married to the bank will come soon :) We're ready to settle down.
Hmm...when I keep staring at that picture I am not only seeing that the colours are a bit off, but also wondering if I should make a quilt with house patches...
Oh, and if you are on flickr, you are welcome to add a note to the picture to tell me in which cottage you would like to live, I am curious!
When I was a kid I used to say that Autumn was my favourite season! Now, I have changed my mind, it is Spring! I love Spring and the sun and how alive it makes me feel after the long winter. Yesterday the Spring sun helped me with a little shop up-date.
I know have a few of these Springy, pastelly houses listed in the shop, all made of vintage or upcycled fabrics with some details from my quilt fabric stash.
This little bunny loves Easter and cannot wait for the snow to melt so that she can poke around all those yummy tulips in the garden...
And a brand new design -- a little coin/card purse! I can't seem to get enough of those leafy wines!
I have to show you the inside, I got to use one of my favourite vintage floral fabrics, it comes from an enormous night-gown, which means there was loads of fabric= lucky me! Love those teeny meadow flowers against the pale pink, so romantic!
This is Magda! She is a one-of-a-kind fairy-angel doll. She will have friends too, just wait!
And the shop? It's here.
I must be under the influence of Spring sun or something, it is after 9 p.m. at night and I am feeling inspired and still up, awake and making things...
I have dug into my vintage/second hand fabric stash to make a collection of word cushions, these are the first two! And, most importantly, I got to use the neon thread the very kind Ulla sent me, I felt foolishly excited to finally try it out :) I hope the sun keeps shining tomorrow so that I can get a better shot of the neon. I also hope that the inspiration intends to stay over night, it would be quite cool to fill the couch with dream, love, laughter and... Which word would you like to have sitting on your couch?
I just got an e-mail that I have been waiting for! The collaborative quilt book We love color (Stashbooks) will be released in May! It is over a year ago since I was asked to contribute to this book project, the assignment was to create a quilt using solely Kona cotton solids from Robert Kaufman. It was very inspiring and I have been so curious to see what the other peeps came up with, you can see a few previews on flickr. The contributing designers are: Lisa Call, Alissa Haight Carlton, Emily Cier, Malka Dubrawsky, Amy Ellis, FunQuilts (Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr), Jacquie Gering, Elizabeth Hartman, Rita Hodge, Cherri House, Kathy Mack, Jennifer Sampou, Valori Wells, Jean Wells, Betz White and me!
And since I am me, I picked up the brightest colours I could find and combined them with white and started playing around. And then spent a couple of very intense days putting my quilt together. Here are some sneak-peeks. I'll show off the whole thing when I have the book in my hands!
It looks quite cosy there on the sofa, I look forward to having it sent back home, but first I think she will take a tour to Spring Quilt Market in Kansas City, I wish I could go to!
I told you previously that I am involved in a lifetsyle/documentary series on TV about creative female bloggers called Blogistania (page in Finnish).
The first programme will be on in a few weeks and last Tuesday we had a meet-up with all the people involved. I very much looked forward to it, but was a bit nervous to meet these gorgeous and fashionable blogging ladies, so Wednesday night I got myself busy making this new skirt.
I have often planned it, but in reality I make myself clothes on very rare occasions. I chose linen (love the wrinkles) and pink hearts...
_______________________follow your heart_______________________
I spent most of the night chatting away with the lovely Karin, planning future joint projects, that will most certainly involve her amazing photograhpy. Do check out her blog (WARNING! it might make you hungry)!
Riikka, who is responsible for the pretty graphics, has her own programme in the series as well, she is an amazing doll house artist.
I wish I would have had the time to talk to each one of these girls, but time went by so quickly! Below you will find the links to all the blogs, I got lazy so I didn't translate the Finnish texts, but click away, these are all visually pleasing places well worth a visit!
This is what I have done today.
It got darkish outside before I was finished, but I am quite impressed with the pictures my new Canon EOS managed to produce in the lightening I have on my sewing table. Except that this black pouch looks more dusty than it actually is :) Ihanaa= lovely in Finnish
The black fabric originates from a pair of old twill trousers :) I enjoyed adding different trims from my stash around the edges of the pouches. I lined them all with second-hand fabric, it feels so good to turn neglected clothes and fabrics into something new! Next week I will try to set up a little photo studio and then when I have new and crisp photos of everything -- update my shop!
Have a great weekend!
I picked a winner from the hat and her name is Katie!.... Tadaah! Congratulations! You will get a scrappy box in the mail soon! This is what Katie intends to do with the scrappy scraps:
How lovely! I would probably frame some in tiny frames and make a dolls quilt out of some of the other pieces - then send you photos! Thanks and thanks for the bloggy inspiration - I love it!
The quilt-to-be above with the important saying was made by Anita aka RhubarbPatch on Flickr, she has added it to the Scandinavian Stitches Flickr group where anyone is very welcome post projects made with inspiration from my book (or my work in general). Happy weekend!
Greetings from the couch! I've been feeling a bit poorly the last days so I'm spending my time on the couch under a warm blanket. Since it is nearly -20 degrees Celsius outside I can't complain... And I have had some valuable time thinking about priorities in my little business, but I won't bore you with that. I've been trying not to do too much, I want to get well soon, but you can always do some office work off the couch, can't you? Like packing cards for my friend Mari's shop. Those stamps are so cute I feel better just looking at them!
I've also enjoyed looking at this quilt top I made last Spring and dreaming about having it finished some day soon... It is good to put projects away for awhile (it doesn't have to be for a whole year...), I really liked this when I found it in a pile of fabrics :) Sorry for the wrinkles, I'm just not up for ironing at the moment.
One of the things I've been thinking about is how much I miss my Etsy shop, so I listed this quilt that came back from my Christmas exhibit. It looks really nice on the wall, but I'm ready to part from it if someone wants to adopt it. I hope to have more up in the shop too! We are finally getting some daylight here so it might be possible to take decent pics again.
I appliquéd the white text. The quilting: "you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one". I'll leave you with that!
I hope you enjoyed the holidays! Earlier this week I had my doubts whether or not I would ever get into the work vibe again, but I can feel it coming now and cannot wait to take the kids back to school on Monday! We had a wonderful holiday at my sisters place in Switzerland and enjoyed ourselves fully, it has been along time since we had a real holiday together as a family! It took some adjusting to get used to Helsinki after 10 days in Zürich, we still have no snow, which means it is dark, wet and windy, which even an optimist like me have a difficult time finding anything positive to say about.
So I've made myself busy playing around with my new Summer card collection for 2012, I hope you like it! I wanted it to reminincence of Summers in the 1950's and 1960's.
This is my personal favourite, I call it "garden party", of course.
The moped comes as a close second, I am always asked for cards for the guys, this should be it? At least my dad used to ride one of these in his teens with his long hair blowing in the wind.
Happy new 2012! I've heard it's going to be a great year :)
Artist, crafter, mother of two, blogger, small business owner... Author of the sewing book Scandinavian Stitches. (Stashbooks)
Recent Comments