Tooth Fairy Coin Purse

Today was an exciting day ... our oldest daughter's first baby tooth fell out - eek, ack, gag - exciting!!!

I started planning this little coin purse the moment she felt her tooth getting wobbly.

My daughter picked out her own fabrics ... Lizzy House as the feature fabric ... what can I say?  The girl is still star struck from our day in Kings Park with Lizzy.  

Some Art Gallery Paperie (designed by Amy Sinibaldi) for the lining.

We decided that the baby teeth needed a safe place in the coin purse so I made a little "tooth pocket" to go inside and embroidered some closed eyes with some DMC thread (two strand thickness)

I purchased the cutest ever Candy Ball purse frame from here

Here's how it was looking before the "frame wrangling" began ...

Front: Outside

Looking inside from the front

Now all I had to do was work out how to sew the frame in ... well I knew how to sew it in, but holding it in place and centred, without using glue was proving to be a bit of a pain in the &^%$## ....

So I did what all frustrated quilters do when stumped ... had a cup of tea ... ate half a pack of chocolate biscuits and ... asked Google for the answer.  

Luckily Google came up with the goods before I managed to stress eat the remaining half pack of chocolate biscuits ... Use basting stitches to secure it first!  Duh! Here's the post that helped with that light bulb moment.

Finally a result!

Front

Back

Inside

I used metallic Aurifil Brillo #517 ... aka tooth fairy dust thread ... to hand sew the frame to the body of the purse ... not my finest moment of hand sewing ... but my daughter loves it all the same!

Advert your eyes if gappy smiles make you squeamish!

Tooth Fairy time!!

Sx

Linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social and Finish it Up Friday

Moby Dick Quilt

There's a little boy I know of ... I've never met him ... but his Aunt is a dear friend of my Mother.

When I heard this little boy was terribly. almost irreversibly. ill ... I did what most quilters do ... I set to making him a quilt.

His name is synonymous with the Ocean, he has bright blue eyes, he constantly wears a smile and (I'm told) has quite the infectious laugh.

A quote from Moby Dick came to mind "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing"

Inspo for the quilt ... source

Inspo for the quilt - source

The parents and doctors of this boy have differing opinions on how he should be treated medically.

Lizzy House's wonderful whales for backing ... along with some Texas Denim for extra backing and binding.

A little detail ... I love the way it looks like the whale is about to swallow a row of boats.  Whale pattern found here

I can neither "treat" him holistically or with medical science but I can "treat" him to a quilt made with love and hope that the love sewn in each and every stitch seeps through to this much deserving, smiling, happy, very sick little boy.

Sx

Info

Improv wording technique from Sarah Fielke's Wordplay Craftsy Class

Photos taken at "Crawley Edge" Boat Shed ...#73

Linking Up with Finish it Up Friday and Scraptastic Tuesday as all the wording is made from fabrics from previous quilts.

Highlight - Lizzy House Down Under

"Dear Future Grandchildren,

Your Mothers, Great Grandma and I have had the most wonderful few days ever with Lizzy House!!  Who's Lizzy House you say?  Go and take a closer look at your quilts (that I'm yet to make you) ... her fabrics WILL have been sewn into them, I guarantee it!

Kings Park Happy Snap :)

We were very fortunate to have the truly lovely Lizzy House come ALL the way to Perth (seriously, no one comes here from the States ... you want me to travel how much further?  No way!  It took me about 20 hours on a plane just to reach the East Coast of your country ... you Aussies are crazy!).  I can't wait until that nanoo-nanoo transporter is invented.

I think that everyone that met Lizzy must have thanked her a bazillion times for making the extra journey to the West.

Hoping to inspire her next line of fabric (we like to aim high) we took Lizzy to explore Kings Park.  The botanical gardens contain some plant life that only exists in Western Australia and being Spring,  all of the wildflowers were in bloom.

Click here to go to Lizzy's IG account

Lizzy must have stopped after every two steps to take a picture of the flora on display.  We were so fortunate to see our park through her fresh eyes.

Of course she was here to share her Meadow quilt with us lucky ducks.

Your Great Grandma and I jumped at the chance to take the workshop.  I knew it was going to be a good day ... but, oh man, it was awesome.

The Meadow quilt has quite a few curved and circle pieces in it ... I was quietly packing my dacks about the curved piecing part (curved piecing and I are not besties) and your Great Grandma is only new to quilting.  Could we ever make this quilt?  Lizzy assured us we could, and you know what?

 After spending just one day with this inspiring lady ... we most certainly will.

Your Great Grandma and I have framed our Meadow Quilt test blocks ... and we'll pass them onto you one day.

Eep!

Please treasure them.  Don't let them gather dust in the attic.  They contain an abundance of positive energy.  It was a very special experience to learn this quilt from such an inspiring, sharing, giving lady ... with a sense of humour that's right up my alley ...

Taking my Quilt holding duties very seriously ...

Lizzy House and my Mum (your Great Grandma also called Lizzy) laughing at the quilt holders (ahem ...) antics :)

I hope you get to experience a day like this is your lifetime!

All my love,

Nan xxx"

Going Off-Piste

Sometimes, just sometimes, I have a flash of an idea.  Everything is glorious on Cloud 9 with my rose tinted glasses on.

Then logic kicks in and I realise that my quilting skill set doesn't quite match my imagination ... does that ever happen to you?

Well it did to me on this occasion ... 
 

What do you mean I have to sew curves? Eep!

You see, I signed up for the Lizzy House Mini Quilt Swap on Instagram (If you've managed to resist this craze of mini making and swapping then my hat goes off to you!).  

My swap partner owns her own fabric store in the US ... no pressure, hey folks? ... but that's OK, we share a common love for the colour "rainbow" set against low volume backgrounds.  

Another fan of rainbows

I dutifully stalked her and saw that she is getting married soon so I thought that a double wedding ring block would be the perfect mini for her!

But, I'm not skilled up on curves just yet ... so I needed to find a way to create this block other than piecing the dreaded curves.

Sorting colour order on the Design Mattress

Then, along came Quiltsmart ...

They've come up with a clever way that still allows you (and scaredy cats like me) to piece the arcs but then appliqué them onto a whole background.  

I was sold, no curved piecing for this little quilter!  But then what's that old saying?  "If it looks too good to be true then it probably ....."

Yes, well.  I did get a bit stung by this method.  Mainly I got tripped up by the template they provided in the kit.  If you know Lizzy House, then you'll know that there are plenty of great fussy cutting opportunities to be had playing with her fabrics and that's just what I wanted to do making this double wedding ring mini.  I pulled out the template and got cutting ... ensuring that I had a good 1/4" seam allowance all the way around so I wouldn't lose any of my fussy cutting when piecing the arcs.

All was going rather smoothly until I had to sew the fabric arcs to the iron on interfacing.  The sew line was much more than 1/4" in from the edge of the template.

The sewing line is the solid line

In fact it was a good 3/4's of an inch!  

That blew my fussy cutting out of the water - especially the pieces that I had added selvedges to - humpf!

I couldn't change direction at this point, I had to keep going ... and keep going I did!  Somewhat off-piste ...  

I could no longer follow the directions for my cornerstones and had to make the sizes up myself with a little bit of thumb sucking and measuring on my cutting mat.

Using my cutting mat to work out the cornerstones

With a bit of trial and pee error I got there in the end ... 

Castle Pee?? Whoops!

... but geez, it felt like hard work.  This was supposed to be easy!  Why would they provide a template ... a see-through one at that ... that encourages fussy cutting and then make the resulting arc so narrow?  Especially as you have to trim to 1/8" seam allowance to allow for a smooth curve when turned anyway.   

Let's just say that this Quiltsmart pattern was not fit for purpose, especially if you want to fussy cut.  But if you're using fabric that you are happy to waste 1.5" per the length of each arc (3/4" at top of arc and 3/4" at the bottom of the arc) of fabric then this is the pattern for you!  Imagine if it was Liberty ... gasp!

So after all that fuss ... here's the finished mini!  

I finished it off with some hand stitching using a red perle cotton to set off the aqua/teal cornerstones.  

My partner has a red and aqua sewing room, so I thought I would add a little nod to that.  

I left the centre of the block empty so that she could embroider her wedding details in the middle as a lasting memory of the special day.

The back is all green and gold ... Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi! and I just had to add some more colour "rainbow" on the back with the leftover selvedges. 

I also sent a little pouch along as an extra ... 

... but I'll do a separate post on that later with a fun selvedge trick for the zip.

Serena xx
PS to find out more about the Lizzy House Mini Quilt Swap .. go to Instagram and search the hashtag #lizzyhouseminiquiltswap  You can find me over there too as @sewgiving