Patterns Galore

First of all: this is not an offical product review, i.e. I have not been asked to review the following products or been offered anything in return for this. In fact I will never use this blog for any official product reviews, because this is not what this blog is for. So the following is purely something I came across and wanted to share.

I am not a huge magazine reader, they often just end up in a big pile beside my bed and eventually with huge delay I manage to get through them. But when I found myself in a newsagent's a couple of weeks ago with a few minutes to spare, I browsed through all the craft magazines that were for sale and two in particular caught my eyes, so I bought them - and have been very pleasantly surprised:

Both magazines offer a great selection of various craft projects, some of them I will be trying out myself soon. And amongst the advertisements I found a link to the Coats Crafts UK website, which features a large selection of free patterns for knitting, crochet, stictching and sewing. I am particulalry interested in all the patchwork patterns as that is next on my list so I can start using up my fabric scraps. What's on your list?

Come And Be A Fan

I have finally gotten round to setting up the frogs+sprogs facebook page - click on the badge on the right and come and join us.


And with all the new fabrics that arrived last week, I now have a lot of new projects on the go that will be in the shop soon:

New apron designs ...

Funky Bibs ...

Mini Counting Bean Bags ...

New Crayon Rolls ...

Extra Large Toddler Blankets ...

Hope you have all had a nice week-end!

Fabric Love

Here is just a glimpse of what arrived this week. Now the task of cutting has begun, lots of new products will be in the shop this spring.

Have a lovely weekend!

P.S. This is the first time I am posting from my phone with a Blogger App - apologies if it looks funny in any way. But if it is good it will make posting a whole lot easier in the future.

Mother's Day Swap

A few months back I also signed up to another swap, organised by the lovely ladies on the Babyledweaning Forum - it was the Secret Mother's Day Swap. The only guideline was that it had to be handmade, cost you no more than £5 and reach the recipient by today. Now I was so much in a rush to get my swap parcel in the post before we left Spain that I completely forgot to take photos, I hope my swap partner will take some. But today I opened my parcel, and it contained this lovely bag:

I am also very pleased to have found a nice spot in our new garden for future product photos, and the sun seems to be on my side at the moment. Speaking of products, this week I spent an obsence amount of money to refill my fabric stash,  I am very excited about the parcels that should be arriving in the next couple of days. I have worked on a lot of new ideas for the shop and am now looking for a few nice craft markets or similar where I can start taking a table and get out there again.

Have a lovely Sunday, and to all the mothers out there,

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Postcards Part 2 Or Meet The Queen of Selvedge

There I was trying to figure out other designs for my postcards when I came across this blog where a lovely lady called Karen gives you all sorts of ideas about quilting and also what to do with selvedge, and she has a fabulous tuorial on how to make selvedge postcards. So now I have turned into the Queen of Selvedge ...

But I had great fun finishing my postcard project. I'm quite sure I will be making many more of these in the future.

Time to get them to the post office and start working on my next project.

P.S. This post has been edited - there seems to be conflicting opinion as to how to spell selvedge and I have now adopted the latter version. I'm sure every version is a little bit right.

Four Down, Six To Go ...

Here's a sneak preview of my postcards for the 2011 Postcards Swap. I finished four within the last 24 hours so should have no problems finishing the remaining six until next Wednesday.

For a few days I played around with my fabric stash and scraps, browsed the web for inspiration, emptied out my large basket of ribbons, purchased some stick-on gems .... until I finally found the right combinations.

I also, for the first time, started sewing on paper and gave the postcards a decorative stitch on the reverse.

I'm quite pleased with the result so far... I'd love to keep them myself I think! I hope the person who receives them will be just as pleased.

The Race To The Finishing Line

It's been a bit of a mad month - first I decided to re-open my frogs+sprogs shop and on Dawanda. I didn't really expect very much to happen, but how wrong was I ... several of the lovely snuggly blankets are now in the post, as well as a few of the funky crayon rolls. I hope their new owners will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Then there was the advent calendar project .... and since I had now dusted off the sewing machine, I decided to go for option no.1 and voila ....

I am quite pleased with the end result - I know it still has a number missing, but the little man hasn't noticed so far, and to be honest I doubt he will. I'm planning to stock these in my shop for next year so I'll soon start working on them.

And last but certainly not least there was the Christmas Swap organised by the lovely Louise over at Sew Scrumptious. I was lucky to be paired up with Louise herself, and the directive was one christmas card, at least one handmade christmas decoration and some Christmas chocolate. Her parcel arrived a few days ago and look what got: (apologies for the poor photo quality, it was evening time and I managed to get photos done just before other half launched himself onto the chocolate):

 

The cutest little christmas stockings with my sons' initials:

A gorgeous fabric wreath:

And some more chocolate ... but that was gone by the time I finished the photos.

My parcel is now on it's way over to her, here's a little preview.

I now have one project to finish before Christmas and am also working on lots of new product ideas for the shop. Surely an excuse for some more fabric buying?

Time To Get Sewing Again

I was going to call this post 'Time To Get Sewious Again' but Other Half thinks it looks like a spelling mistake so I won't give you that but you get the idea - holidays are over and it's time to get busy again. Since my last fair I have done very little apart from working on orders but I now have three, yes that's THREE, fairs looming between the end of October and the end of November. Oh and I might throw in a little Christmas event in my local area just because I haven't got anything better to do - ha!


So on the 25th of October I'll be at the Southern Baby Event at Fontwell Race Course, West Sussex. Then two weeks later on the 16th of November at The Designer Baby Show in Berkshire and finally November 20-22 it's the Life Crafts & Gifts for Christmas Fair near Guildford, Surrey. If you're in the area come along, say hi, buy me a cup of tea.

I still have a bit of stock from my last fair so don't need to go too mad, but it's still a little daunting to be having three of them and not too much time in between to get new stock ready. Also at my last fair I had an open space whereas the next three are in a shell space so I've got to rethink my stand layout again. Well only for the first one, after that it should be easier.


I enjoyed the last fair so much, I'm really looking forward to these. But at the end of the year I'll be reviewing my 'fair experience' and deciding which ones to do next year.


On the sewing side I have found a lovely fabric called Velboa, I didn't even know it existed in the UK but it's similar to what the Americans call Minky and it's super soft, perfect for baby blankets. But oh this morning I had a quick try at a small blanket ..... it felt like a snake trying to do ice skating under the needle, the fabric is so stretchy it doesn't stop moving. Not a good moment! So if anyone has any tips and hints how to make this easier fire away, I'm all ears. Right now the fabric is in the washer/dryer but I can't wait to get going again in the next days.

On the blanket front I have been making more, they're not yet in the shop though.

I also finally got round to making one of my crayon rolls as a pencil roll.

It was only afterwards though that I realised that I haven't got any of this fabric left so that'll be one off then. Duh .... holiday brain!

5 Things .... And My First Free Give-Away

Today I feel a bit like this:

Because ...


5 Things I Am Doing At The Moment

- filing bills, invoices, bank statements
- tidying my desk and slowly trying to reduce the number of messages in my inbox
- emptying the suitcase from a week-end away, washing + folding laundry
- tidying the house
- emptying the garage of all items for this week-ends car boot sale

A-List-Of-Things-That-Could-Go-On Forever Of Things I'D Rather Like To Do

- make more baby blankets
- make a new nappy bag since we've lost ours
- make a wallet/organiser for my bag
- think about new curtains for Luca's room or amending the current ones
- work on my webshop
- look at fabrics
- watch a nice movie
- read blogs

I think I should have my own reward chart where for every task accomplished I'm allowed 30 minutes with my sewing machine - the problem is only that once I start it's hard to stop. Last week I was all set to go for a run and just quickly went upstairs to check on a fabric and before you know it, I came out an hour or so later with this:

My first baby blanket. And because I wasn't really supposed to be there doing just that, I've decided that this will be my first free giveaway. If you think that you should be the lucky receiver of this gorgeous soft blanket, post a comment with the reason by Thursday 17 September, the winner will be chosen at random by myself at 13.00pm UK time. The blanket has a cute owl design with pale pink, blue, yellow and blue owls on a white background, and a super soft pink fleece on the other side. It measures 31x39 inches.