Friday Favourites

This week flew buy without much of anything happening here.  Just the everyday little things.

Our early morning bicycle rides to school have gotten less pleasant by the constant autumn rain. There's the piles of laundry that finally got the better of me and demanded my immediate attention. Wiping noses, supermarket trips, cooking dinner, picking up dirty socks around the house, stepping on those pesky bits of Lego - they are everywhere!

Inbetween these pleasures of motherhood, I did manage to sew up some new pouches for the shop. Including my new labels from gutentags Cassie was very fun to work with and I love the look of my new smaller tags. I have a long blog and shop name and it's been difficult for me to find labels the right size, these will do me just fine!

Here are some of my favourites from Flickr to inspire those weekend sewing projects.

1. Double Wedding Ring Basket, 2. Tiny coin purse side 2, 3. for Tasha, 4. Patchwork Pinwheel pillow, 5. Little House Ornaments, 6. the twins..., 7. From Quilter's Studio, 8. autumn collection part 1, 9. clutches3

Have a happy weekend!

x Leila

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

~Sunday~

It's been windy grey and raining here for days. Not very promising with the summer break starting in only a couple of weeks. I'm wearing layers of clothing again and scarfs, it feels more like autumn here, sun come back!

So huddled up inside as I am, let me show you what my highspeed Pfaff and I have been up to this weekend.

vanity winning over the cold wind I had to take the ugly old cardigan off to pose for the photo ;-)

First off I'd like to reveal the mystery item I made for my partner in the Spicing Up the Kitchen Swap

Some of you guessed it already, it's an apron. I'm hoping it fits my partner's bill. I'll make her something to go along with it I just can't make my mind up exactly what. Not for lack of ideas more for an abundance of them I can not choose!

Some sewing for the shop as well..

A small clutch from one of my favorite Yuwa prints. This print has different fabric swatches with little notes scribbled in the margins, I love it! It's like it came straight from an old dressmaker's studio. {my imagination runs away with me sometimes!}

From the old chair... a granny chic pillow cover made with vintage fabric and a doily- fun! I secretly want to keep this one.

And because I felt like I was neglecting the boys a bit, today I made these fun coin purses.

you can find these listed in my shop

arrr arrr! They make me smile, my 5 year old boy thinks pirates are for babies but he does like ninja's.


So tell me how is your weekend treating you? Anything fun happened, did you get some sewing done? I want to hear all about it :-)

x Leila