Colour Burst

 Hi :) 

late last year I was asked to design another quilt for Prima Homespun solids range

to be showcased in the "Project Patchwork 2" book by Spotlight Australia.

I had to quickly pop into Spotlight today for press studs and lining and voila! there it was the new Spotlight book on the cutting counter catching my eye.

For now the pattern is only available from Spotlight - in the Project Patchwork 2 book

Here are some pretty pictures I took before I shipped it off to Melbourne

I do love this quilt, I'd love to make another when I get a bit of time.......

I hope you like it !?

and I'd love you to show me if you make it!

Xx Siobhan R

Paper making & a glue gun

Howdy

I had to pop in and post this fun little crafty paper idea.

I made some recently for my daughters 12th birthday party as name tags for the girls.

on Instagram I promised to write a post with the birthday cake.... I will! 

but

Yesterday was a rainy blah kinda day and I fished out the leftover papers and the kids and I made some more rosettes.

The original tutorial and idea is from The HOUSE that LARS BUILT

Very cute and clever tutorial.

I added in some ribbons to the back.

If you wanted to make wider rosettes as hanging decorations - all you need to do is use a wider piece of paper but make sure it is still the same length as stated in the original tutorial.

The kids also made some Chatter boxes

I bought my papers from bespoke letter press

Happy paper crafting 

Siobhan Xx

Where do you get your Inspiration from?

Sometimes things on pinterest and magazines catch my eye and they get filed in my head for a rainy day.

Reading one of my favourite French crafty magazines, Marie Claire Idees - October 2012  I saw a cute little black board map of France.

and all the vintage school maps started popping up everywhere - which I really liked too

and I cant forget to mention Pip Lincoln who made an embroidery version of an Australian Map

and then I meet Annabel Wrigley at Portland Quiltmarket this year and saw online her awesome patchwork map of the USA that she was doing with kids.....

and then I jumped on the map bandwagon and made my own Australian version!

and...

Its now happily hanging in my studio 

Xx Siobhan 



 - EDIT - NEWS - 
after lovely Florence's comment - I decided to create a flickr group

Patchwork Maps

Please Join in and make a patchwork map - I would love to see lots of Maps from all over the world :) 

Xx Siobhan 

All in the bag

Hope you all enjoyed your Easter long weekend - It was beautiful Autumn weather in Sydney, perfect for eating :) 

I've been making bags again.....

I'm waiting on the go ahead on some quilts and happily making myself some smaller projects and testing out some skills in the mean time.

I loved the green corduroy bag I made in my previous post and whilst admiring it I was wishing it was leather...

Then thought to myself - how cool would a leather version be with Liberty lining!

and so a week later here we have it

a leather bag with Liberty of London lining made by me - I'm a little bit over excited about this project!

I used the Amy Butler Nappy bag pattern again.

and sourced my leather from 

NSW Leather Co in Sydney, Australia

with their advice I bought some really soft sheep skins ($25 each) - I needed two to complete this bag. I went for a nubuck feel with a ostrich finish effect.

The Nappy bag pattern is cut in two whole pieces and the strap is included, If you wanted you could have more cuts/ joins to use less material. 

I was a bit impatient and dove straight into my leather sewing - I did buy a leather needle and upholstery thread. The needle was great but the thicker thread kept getting gobbled up by my machine so I switched to a polyester sewing thread instead. 

I used my standard plastic foot on my machine which seemed to work fine (although did struggle at times) and had my walking foot engaged.I own a PFAFF Expression 4, which has a built in walking foot.If you own a different type of machine it might be worth using a walking foot?

I read somewhere that a teflon foot is good for sewing leather? If I make another bag I'll look into that a little more.

I had to adjust my stitch length all the way up to 6 - I usually sew on 2.5 for piecing and around 3.5/ 4 for quilting.

Make sure you do a few practice runs on the leather off cuts first.

The lining is Liberty of London Tana Lawn - the red Liberty Fabric was bought last October 2012 in London at the Liberty store its from the seasonal Tana Lawn range.

For the inside pockets and the outside pocket I used the off cuts of Liberty Tana Lawn that I had used in the Green Corduroy bag from the last post.

Leather and Liberty!

I LOVE it :)

Have you ever sewn with Leather?

Any advice or links to your projects?

I'd love to hear from you and see what you made

Xx Siobhan