Another baby quilt

Another request for a quilt towards the end of last year. Same pattern as the last little elephant quilt I made, and some of the same fabrics. Reds, blues and yellows.

This is how it turned out.

 A little crinkly tag toy thrown in for fun

All rolled up and ready to pass on to the new owner.

Finished Dimensions:
Quilt size 41.5" square
Individual blocks (finished): 7,5"
Blue sashing between blocks (finished): 1.5"
Blue sashing border (finished): 2"
Elephant border (finished): 3"

Does three constitute a herd?

This pattern is just too easy to pass up when needing to make a few softies in a short time.

I added rattles into these ones again - a small plastic canister partially filled with some beads stuffed in amidst all the polyester stuffing.

As these ones were all going to baby babies I also went with felt eyes - & added these on with free motion embroidery before sewing the elephant body together. Super quick & easy!

Addition - last night I saw some of these elephants made from the EXACT SAME pattern for sale...for $44!! Wow.....

Some more elephant softies

I made a felt elephant recently for Little Imp's cousin....  

...and then, perhaps against my better judgement (given the excessive number of soft toys Little Imp already has) I agreed to make her one for Christmas too.  Given she is a bit older now I thought a cotton print fabric for the body would be more fun. And I think I was right! 

Given how much I liked how that one had tuned out I figured I may as well make her other cousin one too.

So now I have 3 elephants waiting to meet their owners.

I have made elephants for friends before from this Woman's Weekly pattern, but this time I also worked out a great way to add a 'jingle'. I've found in the past that when I insert the little metal bells into softies that the bell becomes far too muffled by all of the fibre fill. My solution in this instance was to do away with the bell altogether & instead I put some beads into a small plastic canister about 4cm high x 2cm diameter. The elephant is fat enough that I could stuff the canister into the middle of it's body still not really don't notice it among all the stuffing. Super Jingly too!

A link to some other elephant softies I've made in the past

Another crinkly tag toy....and an elephant!

OneLittleImp has a new cousin! So what have I made for her for Christmas?

A few little things...

First up the tag toy. I think this is the best version I have made, this time in flannel. My felt version was probably a little simpler, but this one does look neater and a bit more 'finished'.  The elephant is an old pattern from a Woman's Weekly, made mostly of felt, and a little bit of left over flannel for the ears.

Tag Toy

Basic Tutorial:

• cut 2x approx 7 inch squares of a flannel fabric
• cut 2x 6.75 inch squares of batting
• cut a 6.5 inch cello square
• cut ribbon of various lengths (between 4 - 12inches)

Fold over approx 1/2 inch along all four edges and iron to crease once square of flannel fabric. I spent a few moments hand stitching each of the four corners so they looked nice and neat. Trim the excess fabric at the corners before you do this if you need. 

Tuck one piece of the  batting the 'frame' that you have now created. Then repeat all of these steps for the second piece of flannel and batting.

 Place both squares together, batting on the inside and iron on a warm (not hot) setting to flatten and ensure their edges match pretty closely.

 Take apart and place the piece of cello on one of the squares.

Close back up to form a sandwich - flannel, batting, cello, batting, flannel - and pin temporarily to hold edges neatly together with a few extra pins in the centre to keep the cello in place. Then start to insert the pieces of ribbon.

Fold most of the ribbon pieces in half and then slip in between each half of the flannel/batting sandwich, with a good inch or so within the sandwich and pin in place. This will ensure the ribbon is well picked up by your finishing edge stitches and less likely to unravel in time. I also doubled over the thinner (teal) ribbon in a few spots for a bit more interest.  Make sure your corners and edges are still aligned before the next step.

• Using a straight stitch, machine stitch the fabric squares together about 1/4inch from the edge,  removing pins as you go & ensuring you catch all the ribbons. Then stitch another line all the way around, close to the first.

Finally stitch a square in the middle (to help hold the cello in place) and you are done!

Recovering an armchair - Part 2

Little Imp's armchair is complete, with little matching pillows.  What fun I've had.  Check back to Recovering an Armchair Part One for the chair used to look like.  I ended up replacing only the bits in green - the front skirt, arm rests and a piece under the main cushion & kept the original white of the old chair cover for the rest.  The embellishing is made up of a combination of free form machine embroidery, Heat-&-Bond iron on adhesive to attach fabric pieces, hand stitching, felt & buttons.

But for now I might just let the pictures do the talking.

Little flowers and bugs hide at the base of the tree under the cushions & Sullfok puff flowers grow on the wings

Fabric embroidered birds on a ribbon wire with bright buttons & flowers

Applique and free form machine embroidery toadstools and flowers on the front skirt

A hand stitched tree & machine embroidered flowers on the armrest 

Felt embroidered circles & fabric owls on ribbon 

A line of elephants

In the time it takes to clean the house...

How I will remember the Summer of 2012...

My feet are still giving me grief.  Moonboot on all my waking hours for the last 3 weeks while we swelter through heat wave after heatwave.  Euugh!

Trying to stay positive, I can come up with 2.5 good things that have come of this boot wearing.
1. My feet are beautifully soft and smooth - no hard, rough or dry skin here.  Husband says they are softer even than Little Imp's baby bottom!
2. I've hired a house cleaner.  This is the winning point.  She started today and I think she might be here to stay, even after the moon boot is no more.

Oh, and the half point of a good thing goes to Little Imp who has well and truly mastered the words 'shoe' and 'boot', and knows the difference between the two.

Look at what I did this morning in the time it took Cleaning Lady to clean the house.  Both productive ventures with good outcomes, but I know which I prefer!