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.

Some Kind of Wonderful progress...

Last week I spent the most time working on my monthly cottages project

Finished this one...

and made a start on the next one.

I did get the chance to finish off a couple more blocks for the SKOW quilt.

The kitty cat...

I enjoyed stitching this and it turned out to be quite easy to needle turn.

The next one I made to replace the shoes block in row 4 as I'm not really a fan of high heels. I am a fan of bees though so I made a beehive with some embroidered buzzy bees...

I enjoyed making this one too!

Not a lot of sewing time over the weekend. On Saturday Catherine and I went to see the new Resident Evil film which we've been looking forward to for ages. Lots of Alice in action but the story was quite lacking I thought. On the way home we detoured via Abakhan fabrics (it was a detour too as it's in completely the opposite direction) so that I could pick up a few supplies. I didn't actually go to buy fabric but really - what stitcher is going to walk into a fabric shop and not even take a peek at the fabric? I came out with this...

because I just couldn't leave without it! I have no idea what to use it for but for now I'm enjoying looking at it :) It was a bit pricey compared with Abakhan's normal fabulous prices but I notice that it's actually made by a New Zealand company so perhaps that's the reason. It's called 'A Stitch in Time' by Nutex. I really like it a lot!

 

I am linking up with Sinta's BOM rehab and Lynn's BOM's Away today.

A few strawberries and a tiny blossom

So - I promised myself to start back working on the SKOW quilt once the June/July cottage was finished. Then I thought that I would just make a little start on the July/June cottage as I had all of the stuff to hand and I had tidied the applique away and I could get that out the next day. Well, the next day - yesterday, both Catherine and I were feeling grotty and not a lot got accomplished. I did however manage to finish off the top border and do the name on the July/June cottage - this is actually the June cottage but I'm using it in my July position. 

 

The red thread is lovely and I have fallen in love with the little strawberries! I've put it to one side now until I've completed some more SKOW blocks.

I was procrastinating a little bit on the SKOW blocks, mainly in part due to the tree. I love the tree and I have quite a bit of the block already appliqued with the exception of this part...

This is the top part of the tree. I had everything prepared for it last week - all of the little bits cut out, ready and waiting to be stitched down. I decided to employ an avoidance technique to see if those little blossoms would stitch themselves down while I was looking the other work. This technique was a failure - I can't recommend it at all. I've decided to employ another technique to get the job done - DIY. It seems to be working so far - let's see how I feel after I've done a few of these flowers, I think there are 11 in total :gulp:

CCN July Cottage redesigned!

When I saw that the July cottage had a red white and blue theme I decided that I would do a bit of changing around on it and use it in my June spot to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. So - this is actually the July cottage, renamed as June and with a few changes to it.

So - the changes that I made are...

Top Border - I left out all of the middle flowers and added in the backstitched years and the crown. The crown is from one of this year's issues of CrossStitcher - either June or July.

Month - - I have changed from July to June

House - I left out the star and backstitched EIIR instead

Flag - I changed it from the Stars and Stripes to a Union flag - the flag was also from an issue of CrossStitcher

Bottom Border - again, I left out the middle flowers and backstitched the words in instead.

I was quite a bit nervous about making so many changes but I'm thrilled with the way it's turned out. Obviously I'm a bit behind - I'm trying to catch up though :) 

Here's a pic of the all of them together - I love the colours of every cottage, the thread choices are fabulous and the colours of the overdyed threads really are gorgeous.

Going to make a little start on the next one this evening but then it's back to work on the SKOW quilt. I'm really pleased to be excited about stitching the cottages again - it had worn off a little bit - I think mostly in part due to my fretting over making changes to the June one!

Some Kind of Wonderful - BOM Rehab

I spent quite a bit of time working on the blocks for my Some Kind of Wonderful quilt last week and really enjoyed it. I picked blocks at random and managed to finish all of the blocks for the final column. I have 3 more 'on the go' that are almost finished which leaves me just 4 more left to make. It's looking promising that I will finish before my deadline - fingers crossed :)

I designed the windmill block myself (with a little help from a colouring page) to replace the chair block. I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.

I'm currently putting some stitches into June's cottage - I've actually used the July cottage which had an Independence Day theme and I'm turning it into a Jubilee cottage for the Diamond Jubilee. I'll post an update on that later on in the week.

 

I'm linking up with Sinta's BOM rehab and also with Lynn's BOM's Away.