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

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.

Annual Photo Album

Over the weekend we recieved a book I ordered through Blurb.  A friend has been making annual family albums for a few years, which are fantastic.  So I decided to give one a go.  I love taking photos of the kids and our adventures but after they are uploaded to the computer I never do anymore with them, which is such a waste.  It took a year but I finally finshed our 2010, 150 page album, 10 days ago.

The girls loved looking through it they spent nearly an hour picking themselves out and reminicing all the places we went that year.  Totally worth all the effort, I have already started on 2011. 

Thanks, you made our day

I visited my local patchwork store today Cotton & Color, as I needed some more pearl thread to finish Philippa's quilt.  Guess who I bumped into Gail Pan and Helen Stubbings of Hugs' n Kisses, quilters from Australia who are running classes here over the weekend.  So nice to meet some quilting "celebrities" from home.  Also I got my thread and as always a few extras....  That is definitely one of the dangers of venturing to the local store (actually ANY sewing store) as I always come away with extras.  But I do like the gems that they hold stock of which have long since sold out online.  Today I spotted a bolt of Girl on a Swing on a pink background, oh how I was tempted to buy a couple of meters just because I could.

Also today, thanks to a lovely little girl clearing out her "baby" toys, I also got to be mum of the day by bringing home a lovely large dolls house home.  The house came complete with wooden furniture and dolls.  Not only were the girls in girlie heaven but I was very happy to get such a great bargain.  So it has a few paint chips, did the girls notice, no way they love it!  I have been looking for a dolls house since Alannah was a baby, but have had this crazy idea of what I was after, massive, wooden, homemade.........by the time I manage to find this or acquire the skills to build it myself my girls will be having kids themselves!  Absolutely no idea why I suddenly decided that this was the dolls house and now was the time, but everyone is happy.

So all in all a great day for the me + the girls!

Cooking Apron

This year Alannah is participating in an after school cooking program.  She loves baking with me but I was a bit nervous to let her loose with a kitchen knife and really cook,  I thought it would be interesting to see what they do and get someone else to teach her some knife skills.  Turns out the teacher to is also not so keen to go there with sharp knives yet, so mostly it has been baking.  But Alannah is loving it and we get a recipe book with all the recipes at the end, which she is very excited about.

You can't do a cooking class without an apron.  The last apron I sewed, was the first thing I sewed as a mum.  Xanthe was maybe two weeks old, my Mum was visiting to help out and I wanted to try out the machine I bought at 39 weeks pregnant (yea pregnant women do crazy things) and see how it worked.  Mum sewed a lot when we were kids and I needed some lessons, I had no idea how to even turn on or thread the machine!  When I look back I can't believe how hard and complicated I thought it all was. This apron has been well worn and is still used but is way to small for Alannah now.

So I decided this was my chance to try and design something myself.  As this was a learning/tinkering exercise for myself I made the apron reversible, which is extra good at protecting Alannah's clothes but also gave me the chance to design two aprons.

The cupcake side is pretty with gathered pockets and I appliqued her name across the top. The spotty side is more traditional with two large square pockets in one piece.  I made a long tie so she could tie it herself in the front.  The frill and curved shape was to give it a pretty feel, it is an apron for a little girl.

The fabric was all from my stash, and definitely not my favourite fabrics. Online purchases where the colours were not quite what I expected, but they worked well together for this apron and it was great to use them! 

I know there are heaps of apron patterns out there, but this is all my own, so if I get 5 comments on this post I am happy to write up a free tutorial.  Xanthe and Philippa would like their own special aprons too, so sometime soon I will be making more.....

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.