The Treehouse

Holiday Lane Blog Hop - Grinch Lane!

Thanks for stopping by to visit me on the Holiday Lane blog hop. I have had such a great time with this lovely pattern. Huge thanks to Mdm Samm and Pauline for their time and work organising this fun event for us and another thank you - to Jill Finley  who designed the pattern and allowed it to be used for the hop. It has been an absolute pleasure from start to finish to make this pillow.

I started out by wondering what fabrics to use. I don't have a huge amount of Christmassy fabrics in my stash. However, one day much earlier in the year I was browsing Fat Quarter Shop's new in category (as I am wont to do in a spare moment) when a little voice piped up "ooh, the Grinch - I love him. Please, please can I have a Grinch quilt." Well, what's a Mother today when faced with a request like that! I secretly ordered the fabric and have been working on a Grinch quilt for Catherine for Christmas. A tricky business as my sewing room is downstairs and we spend a lot of time in there so - I've had to be very tidy with my secret sewing and make sure it's tucked away by school home time. Now, there were quite a few leftovers as I bought a fat quarter bundle so I hit upon the idea of using these to make the pillow and including it in Catherine's Grinch parcel for Christmas. More secret sewing during the day and hiding away at night! While I've been working on the pillow though, progress has halted on the quilt - but I will get it finished in time. 

As it's such a big pillow, it's a bit hard to photograph so I took a few close up pics as I was working on it. I wanted to add some sparkle to it and after some thought I dug out my Bejeweller gadget. I've not played with this for a while and had forgotten how much fun it is. I put red 'baubles' on the Christmas trees and a star on top of them. Then, I put some tiny crystals in the snow to make it glitter a bit, added a jewelled wreath to the door and finally, I put some silver stars in my black sky.

Silver Stars in the Sky

Glittering Snow

Wreath on the door

Blinged Christmas Tree

A flat picture before I turned it into a pillow. I quilted all over in matching colours. All of the applique is fusible web and stitched down at the quilting stage except for the felt which I just used a few dabs of glue to stick down and then stitched down by machine.

The finished pillow. Although I loved the flanges I decided to go with a wider pillow and so didn't do those.

The back of the pillow. There was a lovely panel in my fat quarter bundle which was perfect for the back of the pillow.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I hope my daughter will be too. I may even make another one once time is more freely available as this one was so much fun to make. 

I've been having a great time hopping around and seeing all the various different versions of Jill's pillow - it really is wonderful and inspiring to see everybody's different versions of the same pattern. 

Hope you've got a nice warm brew in your hands as there are plenty more blogs to hop to on today's schedule.

Living Life One Day at a Time

Polka Dot Classic

Sophie Junction

I'm Keeping Busy

Sunshine Quilting

The Treehouse <----- UR Here

Petit Design Co

Nunu's Quilt World

Ellison Lane Quilts

From This to That

Mary on Lake Pulaski

Loose Threads

Till We Quilt Again

13 Woodhouse Road

A Few Things...

First of all - next week is the start of the Holiday Lane blog hop organised by Mdm Samm  and Pauline

The hop starts on Wednesday 21st November (tomorrow) and clicking the link in my sidebar will take you to all of the details and links. I'm posting on Monday 26th November. I've had and am still having (yes, not finished it yet!) a lot of fun with this pattern...nearly there though.

I'm supposed to be stitching like a mad thing on my cottages at the moment but I did spare some time on Friday night to make a new pincushion - it turned out to be ginormous! I spotted the link on a blog and followed it. I thought it would be a nice quick make for a Friday evening - not taking away too much time from the pillow making and cottage stitching. Things were zipping along quite nicely until we had a surprise visit which although very nice took quite a chunk out of the evening. So the quick project extended itself into Saturday - it took me a long time to stuff this pincushion. I'm glad I persevered because it's turned out so pretty but goodness me there is a lot of stuffing inside it!

Wildflower Pincushion designed by Anna Maria Horner

I love pincushions - I think I'll make it my aim to make more of them in 2013 - I have a few in mind but probably no time to make anymore this year - we'll see though :) 

CCN June/July Cottage

I've finally put the last stitches into my current cottage. I've switched this around from June to July as I used the red/white/blue July cottage for my June Jubilee spot. It was a bit tricky with the lettering but I think it's turned out ok. 

Not a brilliant picture as it's too dark to take a nice photo so I used the scanner - quite a job with this size of fabric. I can't say that I love this cottage but I do like the strawberries and the overdyed thread colours are gorgeous again - doesn't really show up properly but they are beautiful in real life.

Moving straight along to the August cottage now :) 

As a quick aside - my quilts have returned from their trip to be quilted and I can't tell you how wonderful the quilting is, absolutely stunning. I'll show some pics once I've got the binding stitched in place.

UR Priceless Blog Hop - My turn!

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog on the UR Priceless blog hop, organised by the wonderful Mdm Samm of Sew We Quilt and chief cheerleader and super helpful Katherine of Sew Me Something Good. This is my first venture into actually taking part in a hop - I am usually quite happy hopping about and leaving comments but I decided to dive in and have a go this time (and next time too for Holiday Lane!). 

The pattern was gifted to hop participants by Mdm Samm who designed it especially for the occasion. If you would like to have a go at making your own then the pattern is available here.

Sew - for my first purse I decided to use some precious Fig Tree fabrics - I love these fabrics. All went well - curve sewing...tick, frame attaching...tick, cute result...tick!

Here's a pic of the inside...some more Fig Tree

Next, I made one for my daughter - she chose her own fabrics in her favourite colours. As none of them were particularly patterned I thought some sort of embellishment for the front panel would be good and decided to machine embroider a monogram for her...

and a pic of the inside using that gorgeous purple...

These were sew much fun to make, I really enjoyed it - and so quick too. I've a few more in mind to make for Christmas gifts. 

Thanks again for stopping by...don't forget to pay a call on the rest of today's purse makers - the links are below and you can find the entire schedule over at Katherine's blog. I'll be enjoying hopping around to all the other blogs with my morning coffee to see all the lovely creativity.

 

The Crafter's Apprentice

Jane's Fabric and Quilts

Rosemary B on That Other Blogg

Why Knot Kwilt

Random Thoughts Do or Di

Mary T on That Other Blogg

SuperMom No Cape

Lilypad Quilting

.Quiltscapes

Stitch Stitch Stitch

Rose Creations

The Treehouse  <------- that's me, UR here!

Gracie Oliver Arts

Quilting Prolifically

Stekje

Grammie Q's

Happy Halloween

I managed to finish my little Halloween quilt just in time. It was a really quick and fun to make, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Here it is below with a little cushion that I made last year - the embroidery was done on my embroidery machine. Also starring in the photo is Bob the Spider - he insisted and a recent painting of me dressed in my Halloween finery!!!

The Halloween quilt was from a pattern in Fons and Porter's Autumn Celebrations magazine - there are several more things in there that I intend to make at some point and I'll definitely be on the look out for more of their magazines in the future. Bob the Spider is on loan from my daughter at his insistence and the embroidery design for the cushion was from Embroidery Designs.com

Favourite Things quilt top - finished!

I am so thrilled to have this quilt top finished - and just before the dealine too :D although I think it should have been quilted and bound by the deadline but as I'm not quilting it myself that's not going to happen. I booked it in with Chris for quilting and my name has just arrived at the top of the list so hopefully it won't be too much longer before I can hang it up on the wall - I have just the spot for it :) 

This isn't a brilliant photo, it doesn't really show off the blocks to their best but what it does show is that the top is complete.

It was a lovely, sunny, blue sky morning here so I took it outside for a photo. It was quite hard for me to hold up as it's actually taller than I am! I'll take some more photos when it's back from quilting.

My Favourite Things quilt from the book Some Kind of Wonderful by Anni Downs. I used various different creams for the backgrounds and the coloured fabrics are from the Buttercup range by Fig Tree and Co - with the exception of the fabric for the cat and I'm not sure at all what that was but it made for a lovely kitty :) All of the applique is needle turned and for embroidery I used DMC threads to match the fabrics.

 

Linking with Lyn's BOM's Away and Sinta's BOM Rehab - it definitely works! I'm going to choose another BOM to work on for next week's Rehab now that this one is finished.