Philippa's 2nd Birthday

Happy Birthday my beautiful little girl.

Today was Philippa's 2nd Birthday but we celebrated on Sunday.  At 2 you can still get away with this, although we did have another cake today as well.

We have a few birthday traditions, starting with presents on Mummy and Daddy's bed.  

The made by mummy Birthday Dress.  She also received her quilt, some books, and her very own Barbie Doll.

Then a special breakfast.  Unfortunately for her sisters, Pippi's favourite breakfast is porridge, not a big hit as a special breakfast for her sisters..........

We always celebrate with a party.  For this one Pippi's best friend Eleanor and her family joined us for a BBQ.  Pippi's only requests for her Birthday were balloons and candles.  Pleasing 2 year olds is so simple.  So there were plenty of balloons hanging in the trees and of course candles on the cake.

We made her an ice cream cake with smarties and strawberries mixed through.  Decorated with more smarties and strawberries.  Served with a side of jelly. 

That was Philippa's special day.  We love you Pippi our family would not be the same without you.

xxoo

The Birthday Dress

Those of you that sew my have recognised Alannah's dress in the previous post as the modkid Addison dress.  Every year, since I have been sewing I try to make the girls a new special birthday dress.  The first dress for Alannah was Sandi Henderson's Analise dress.  Sewn in Sandi Henderson fabric from her Farmers Market line of fabric.

The next year was Feliz Party Dress, from the book Sewing Clothes Kids Love (also available as an individual pattern).  As a relatively new sewer at the time, I also found Trillium's sew along fantastic assistance.  While the book has greatly improved instructions over the pattern, extra pictures and instructions never go astray.  Sewn with Flora and Fauna fabric by Patty Young.

Her 5th birthday was just before we moved to Switzerland, the party was at a local fairy venue, and I did not make this dress, it was a Christmas gift from her great grandparents.

This year I made the Addison dress, in more Sandi Henderson fabric, this time from her Secret Garden line of fabric. Yes I do use Sandi Henderson fabric a lot.  A selection of her farmers market line was the first quilting fabric I ever bought and I guess it has cemented a soft spot for her fabrics.  Although I am not completely smitten with all of her Secret Garden line, it is printed on the softest cotton, lovely for sewing clothes (and quilts!).  Alannah's favourite colour is blue.  A blue dress was requested and these were the nicest blue fabrics I could find.  I do really like the Vintage Ironwork fabric, I think if it is printed in more colourways in future lines it could definitely become a popular basic like her Henna Garden.  As for the Addison pattern, it is great, easy to follow, sewed together with no problems.  Having left this till the last minute I changed nothing, I even chanced the length!!  I simply traced and cut out the size 6 pattern and ta da perfect.  That is what I love best about most of the independent patterns out there, almost always they have great instructions with useful pictures and hardly any mistakes plus the size that should fit, fits!!  I have not had the same success with commercial patterns....

Pinwheels on Parade

So here is is the quilt I have been making for Philippa, Pinwheels on Parade.  I was inspired by Four Wise Monkey's pinwheels in the park, I liked the pinwheel design but wanted smaller pinwheels.  Loving all the colourful quilts around the blogs lately I decided on a rainbow colour scheme.  So I downsized the pinwheel block and set to work making pinwheels.  The pinwheels, including the white are made entirely from my scraps.  I had some of the on parade fabric from the children at play line and thought it would be cute with the pinwheels,  building up the rest of the quilt from there.  

I have more pin wheels that didn't quite fit, thought about using them for the back but ended up strip piecing instead.  Most of the strips are pieced, again to use up my scraps.  Possibly I should have made this up at two separate quilts but I love it how it is.  Below are my two little quilt holders showing off the back.  They didn't much like hiding behind the quilt!

 

It is quilted it by hand.  I took a long time to decide to do it this way, because of the doubled sidedness I was quite keen on an overall design and spent sometime working out an all over machine quilt pattern.  But I am not so good at machine quilting and really don't enjoy wrangling with my machine, even with such a small quilt.  So instead I used 7 different perle 8 cottons and ignored the reverse side, quilting to complement the front.  Spirals for each of the pinwheels, straight stitching around the boarders and complementary stitching the panel, with extra ghost balloons to fill in the white space.  I think the quilting works and I do like the look of hand quilting plus the process is very relaxing.

I finished the quilt with a scrappy binding to continue with the theme and as nothing else I had was quite right.  Finished size is 48" x 56".

So there it is.  Philippa has watched it being made and is very possessive of it, as any almost 2 year old is of something that they think is "mine".  But for now it will go away till her birthday.  It has been made to fit her cot which will, sometime in the next 6 months will be converted to her big girl bed!

Oh and I have entered it into Stitched in Color's festival of scrappiness.  Because of the panel I was a bit hesitant to enter, but I think it fits the 60% requirement.  Every bit of fabric except the white and pinwheel boarders and panels of parade fabric were scraps on the front and back.

Zippered Pouches

This weekend we, well at least Alannah has two birthday parties to attend, yep it is a sad day when your 5 year old has a busier social calender than your own.  So we needed presents. When I can, I definitely prefer to make a gift.  Previously I have made skirts, shorts, dolls, and when I don't have the time or inclination its books or art supplies that we tend to gift.  This time I decided to make  personalised zippered pouches.

This is not the first time I have sewed these pouches.  I first came across Toni from Make it Perfect's tutorial for a zippered pouch, before we came to Switzerland.  I made them for my girls as gifts for the plane to have some small presents inside to keep them busy on the long journey.  This time I have made them a little larger, 10" x 6 1/2" finished size.  Plus I like to patch, bat and quilt back and front.

 

After making the first pouches for the girls, I thought the same pattern would make great cases for the headphones the girls use for travel.  So I used the same pattern but just changed the shape of the pattern to look a little more curvy (headphone shapely).  I used denim for the front with my own design owl appliques and on the back I used spotted owl in Blue on one and Natural on the other.  I also used iron on batting back and  front so no quilting on these. 

We also purchased a DVD player for the trip so yep you guessed it I made a matching case to the headphone cases.  I used Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson's tutorial simple laptop sleeve.  Again the applique is of my own design to match the ribbon on the front of the case.  The case is lined with Ta Da Dot in Bubblegum.

So there you have it, isn't amazing how one little bit of sewing spirals into so much more sewing.