Paying it Forward

I survived this weekend's birthday celebrations, the rain, the thunder and the kids!! Thank you all so much for your kind birthday wishes, my boy had a blast.

I even managed to cram some sewing in and made three little gifts for my friends who in turn will pay it forward.

First up is Julianna, she told me she would like a potholder. I'd been wanting to try this potholder from Suzuko Koseki's latest book Natural Patchwork, so I decided to make one for her.

This type of binding was new to me, you just wrap scraps of fabric around the edges and sew them on.  I really enjoyed experimenting with this as it was trickier than I thought at first and you get a less 'clean' result than with normal binding. I so enjoy this type of messy patchwork, it's very liberating!
I imagine that with use this potholder may get some lovely stains for Julianna to patch up again and again. I can only dream of the kinds of wonderfulness in design that may bring!

Shannon said she loves zippered pouches, her favourites showed a love of blue and orange ..oh so tricky for me!!
So I settled on this little zippered coin purse in lovely Ruby Star Rising and Kokka prints.

It's perhaps a little more muted than what I've seen in your faves Shannon, but I hope this still fits the bill!

Suzanne said she would like anything so I thought she might enjoy a set of patchwork coasters. The inspiration for these also came from Suzuko Koseki's book.

As with the potholder I hope these coasters will get stained and patched up by Suzanne over time. Even though this design is quite different from Julianna's potholder I still think the coasters would look just as lovely all patched up!

All three will be in the post tomorrow.
I'm so looking forward to see how these lovely ladies will be paying it forward!!

x Leila

~Tuesday~ Small sewing projects

I have been so busy sewing for other people lately that there's very little time left to sew for myself. So I've been keeping myself happy with small projects. Like this set of circular coasters.

 At first I meant to do a tute for these but then there were bias binding and curved corner tutorials popping up left and right in blogtopia. So I thought if you wanted to make a set of these you would be able to gather up the information needed quite easily. If not let me know and I will do a tutorial anyway :-)
To challenge myself I made the bias binding out of Liberty fabric, I just love the soft silkiness against the coarser linens I used for the main fabric. And it honestly was not as difficult as I anticipated, in fact I found the curves much smoother with Liberty bias binding than with the regular cotton I used to bind this potholder.

I'm not really the potholder type of girl, wich probably explains why I did not have any. So now that I do, I very well may find I am in fact the potholder type of girl ;-)
Oh how I love these liberated log cabin blocks, they're so much fun to sew and so versatile. I've used them on pillows, mug rugs, a wallet  {wich I haven't showed you because I insisted on using it before taking pictures and now it's all grotty and I need to make a new one just so I can use it for a pretty photo and there are just not enough hours in the day! lol}

Inspired by Kerry's stamps I got myself some Versacraft ink and started stamping away. I bought only a few stamps but I really need to get some more now. This is highly addictive don't say I did not warn you!

What I really should be doing is my getting my little garden spring ready, the sun's been shining this week yay! But I'd rather sew than pull out weeds, anyone fancy doing some gardening for me? 


x Leila