butterfly buns and more sewing love

Some butterfly studying this week,  led to a butterfly day, with origami butterflies now decorating our  hanging table centre wreath, and butterfly buns for lunch ( along with plenty of drawing and reading and watching and observing.

 And another photo of my love: She needs a name! She feels like an old  maiden aunt or well- worked grandmotherly type, persistent, and just needs to be used and oiled every now and then.

  I've been hemming handkerchiefs, ready to be embroidered for Valentine's day tokens. The handkerchiefs are from old calico from a thrift shop, or another old  cotton tea towel, also thrifted.  The children will get one each too, with their names cross-stitched on. very vintage! I really like that I can hem the hankies like hundreds of other women have done before, then stitched the initials of family members with love. Very simple ( very cheap), but full of sentiment! 

 The cross-stitched alphabet comes from a new book for me: linen, wool, cotton, as does the idea to make hankies. My husband has allergy issues, so always carries one!And he/we can always use more, and its a nice way to be closer when he is at work. As you can tell we don't go in much for the commercial version of valentine's day, and normally don't do anything at all as our anniversary is the very next week!  I do think it's nice to try and remember to show him how much i love him as after  nearly 8 years  of marriage that stuff is often last on the list. Hope you have a  lovely day sharing your love for you families too!

holiday love: sewing

 

Here she is! Well part of her, I've decided to let a man who knows what hes doing to give her a once over and put a new belt on, and i can't wait to use her!

You see, at the moment my sewing stuff is in the garage/shed, which is about 50 metres up the drive, which is great but not so great when i need to be with the kids ( I can't see or hear anything from up there!), so now I can sew down in the house ( well soon), without lugging sewing paraphernalia too and fro. Yay! 

 And so in the holidays while there's been someone else to supervise and stuff I've been up there, hiding and making these: A foxy quilt from the book sew la tea do, by meet me at mike's pip lincolne. I supersized it by making an extra fox head panel and didn't quilt it as such but  used an existing washable duvet inner inside and bound it together with the binding, more a continental bed spread or something I suppose.  I am in love with this book and have made her tunic dress three times for three very different looks too. While i was busy with the quilt I decided to make the pillowcases too and embroidered these creatures from her book too. In fact you'll find them on almost anything now because the kids liked them too and they can be found lurking on clothes and fabric waiting to be clothes... Tobin even knew that he wanted a "blue foxy please mama."

   

And a dump shop find: an embroidered lacy valance that fits our superkingsized bed for a few bucks, wow! (It has to be superking, how else would we fit 5inabed!?)

And a throw pillow for good measure, i got a bit quilting happy! It was my fist time!