I'm this big!

For Penny's first birthday I wanted to make something she could use for years, and found a rather lovely height chart panel: alphabet, girly colours and pretty pictures.

Hopefully she'll be tall enough for this soon :)

Free-motion stitching

My mother in law bought me a free-motion foot for my sewing machine this Christmas.  

I have been intending to have a play for ages, and had made a sewing machine cover that needed quilting, so figured today was the day to see what it/I could do!

The results:

The verdict: 
It's a lot trickier than I expected.  I have no idea how fast/slow to stitch or how fast/slow to move my fabric, and I kept trying to keep just moving the fabric through front to back and then remembering I could move it any direction!  I would need a LOT more practice before using this on a precious quilt, but I had fun today and my machine cover looks rather snazzy!

Animal tag blankets

A few friends are having babies soon (like in the next few weeks soon), which whilst being very exciting and joyous in itself is also an excellent excuse for some baby-related craft fun!  

I decided to make tag blankets thinking they would be straightforward and pretty, and then got a little bit carried away scrolling through all the gorgeous designs out there...out came my pencil and paper and I started sketching some patterns!

I found a cute elephant blanket on etsy.com and loved the idea of flapping ears that would crinkle for added sensory enjoyment.  I sketched a template, had a false start cutting out two of the same sides instead of one reversed (oops) and three hours later this little fellow was all done!

Lots of bright colours and different textures, plus he's rather adorable.


As I made a teddy themed quilt for my niece last year, I wanted to make a teddy tag blanket to match for her first birthday.  A bit more of a challenge as I wanted the face on the front and the tail on the back so I had to appliqué each side separately before stitching and stuffing, but he's turned out just lovely.

And my niece absolutely loves her bear tag blanket! She spent all day poking her finger through the ribbons, sucking the ears and shaking the bear around with squeals of joy!