Look !

Lately all I do on here is tell you about stuff that is in Magazines

I'm hoping soon after a few big jobs are out of the way I can start playing with the blog again. I kinda miss it.

The Latest Australian Homespun Magazine is out and has one of my creations on the cover.

you can buy it here

Please note Ms 7's placement of the lego horse....... I think she has watched me set up photo shoots far too many times.

I used a Aurifil variegated blue cotton thread on my Bernina 710 to quilt it in an echo pattern. Have a look at the mag for more detailed pictures and the pattern. 

I'm off to finish writing up some patterns for more magazine stories which you should see in a few months time.......

Siobhan  Xx

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 

Corduroy and Liberty

I'm on a roll!

Today I whipped together another one of Amy Butler's Nappy bag pattern (no I don't need nappy bags anymore or ever again  - I just like the pattern)

Its actually a really good camera bag and holds my SLR nicely when I'm out and about.

I used a green corduroy for the outside bought from Purl Soho and the feature fabric on the outside is a Liberty of London Tana Lawn.

I looked everywhere locally for corduroy fabric (I was actually after an olive type colour) but couldn't find any!

I also wanted the wider more heavy corduroy but this stuff worked out nicely.Its very fine, thin and soft.

The lining on the inside is two prints of Liberty of London Tana Lawn and a little bit of the green corduroy.

below you can see a picture of the bag turned inside out and the liberty fabric as the lining and the pockets.

The bag is completely reversible so I could have it any way I wanted - really it doesn't matter.

I used wadding as a lining for the pockets to help stiffen it up

 Very happy with my new bag!

I bought a few more colours of corduroy and I might make a few more variations...

Xx Siobhan 

Sydney Spring time with Linen & Liberty

Big week here

Its getting to that crazy time of year, school is wrapping up and lots of parties & gatherings.

 The weather has been perfect for my flowers. I've had a bumper crop of roses and now the hydrangeas and gardenias are out. 

The star jasmine is in full bloom and the Jacarandas in Sydney look amazing. Stone fruits, mangos and watermelon are making their way into fruit shops - Its a Beautiful time of year. 

I finally received my wooden star buttons and they are now on the liberty triangles and finally look like trees!

Original post and tutorial back here

I still have a comp going over HERE to win a Liberty of London scrap packet of 2.5 inch squares & I might even throw in some of my scraps too.

Im having so much fun with all the spring time lovely-ness. 

 I still want to add the date and maybe some more wooden buttons - I'll see how I go

I've baked several more batches of my flourless chocolate cakes - life saver recipe. Incredibly easy just melt, mix and bake.

I'm off to the local school spring fair - pretty sure I'll be taking pics on Instagram @beaspokequilts

Have a lovely Weekend

Xx Siobhan

Liberty Scrap Challenge - Christmas Special

I was told today that it is 6 weeks till christmas!!

The next two months are going to be incredibly busy & I'm so glad Nova asked me to do this challenge because its gotten me all christmassy and crafty just a little bit before the mayhem starts.

This year for a change I might actually get all the stuff I want to do done & on time! Thanks Nova :)

I have watched Nova & Jo's Liberty Scrap challenge and loved it. I love Liberty of London fabrics and use it alot - a little goes a long way. 

I was very excited to be asked to participate in the Christmas 2012 special. Thanks Guys! and I look forward to seeing what the other challengers have made

have a look at Nova from A Cuppa and a Catch up to see what else has been made this year & what other Liberty Christmassy things have been made.

and Jo from A Life in Lists

who has supplied the Liberty Fabrics from her etsy shop.

If your after the mini scrap pack take a look at The Organic Stitch Co etsy store.

Find out below how you can win a Liberty Scrap pack 

My Liberty scrap pack from Jo contained a pile of 2.5 inch squares and I also received a fat eighth remnant of Liberty fabric.

I added in some natural linen and white gauze to begin with.

I cut some linen into 2.5 inch squares & then cut the linen and liberty squares in half to form Half Square Triangles.
The Linen squares for the outer edge of the tree block are 2 1/8th inch square. The white gauze fabric is for the tree pot.

The top picture is all of the liberty that I received in my package. I decided to go a little bit bigger and added in some of my own pink paisley Liberty Scraps from previous projects here & here.

Once the patchwork top was all together and basted I sketched my text on - that I wanted to embroider. I decided on Merry Christmas in French & names.

Our house is currently all things french - My father spends a fair bit of time over in Paris and my eldest is studying french in high school. French seemed a bit cute - I contemplated Gaelic considering thats my heritage and my father can actually speak and read Gaelic. but French won.

I also have a thing for names - when I was a child growing up in Australia, no one was called Siobhan and no one had key rings/cups/ notebooks etc with my name on it!

I was so jealous of the Kylie's and Rebecca's of the time. They had names on everything....

I wanted the panel to look very rustic & naive.  

In another project I recently did I made a boarder with curved tabs, I wanted to do something similar with this one.
I cut 4 inch squares of linen & Liberty fabrics and then cut them in half  to make HST. They were sewn together on three sides right sides facing together. I then turned them inside out and ironed them flat.

The tabs were then sewn onto the patchwork front with a 1/4 inch seam - with the liberty print facing the patchwork top.


To finish the patchwork panel
 I wanted to use a no binding quilt method

this entails putting the backing fabric down with right sides facing together and sewing 1/4 inch seam all the way around - leaving a hole big enough to put your hand through. Similar to making a cushion or pillow cover.

I then pulled the fabric through the hole and ironed it flat. stitch up the hole by hand.

I'm waiting on some wooden star buttons to put on the top of my Tree's - they will probably arrive the second I hit publish on my post...

I also want to embroider the year on the bottom corner. I like the idea of making things that my kids will treasure in many years to come. I love having my mums christmas boxes full to the brim with christmas treasures.

Last year for Christmas I made the kids some Stockings and star ornaments with Liberty & Linen.

I'll post a picture when I have the wooden star buttons on the tree! 

and the Lovely Jo has offered a mini scrap pack of Liberty to one of my lucky blog readers.

Make a comment

I'd love to know what you make for christmas - Food/ craft/ presents ? 

 and I will pick some one at random - when you comment please make sure I have your email address!  

Xx Siobhan 

Spring time colours & Liberty Advice

I can feel spring in the air!

I'm a big fan of the in-between seasons.

I usually find that when the weather starts to change so does my fabric buying habit - take for example the linen that was delivered today (pictured below)

Yellow - Pink - Sand

all Linen/Cotton blends

all happy spring time colours

On the subject of Fabric buying

I had an email asking about Liberty of London Fabrics. Liberty of London Tana Lawn is a lovely soft fabric that can be on the $$$ side. I have made a few quilts in the last year or so with Liberty of London fabric - one being a queen bed sized that was in Down Under Quilts Magazine #151.

I had been collecting my fabrics for a really long time - buying 1/2 yards at a time. Some from shops in Paris, London, online from Purl soho and in person from Sydney Shop Calico & Ivy. It is beautiful and does make a lovely quilt. If your using the Tana Lawn Fabrics it can be a little slippery to sew with, I recommend using a spray starch to help make it stable and easy to handle. 

If anyone has a "Go To" shop to buy Liberty of London I'm sure everyone would love to see, leave a link and everyone can have a look.

I hope the weather keeps up in Sydney over the coming week - and the weather in New York City is lovely for my trip next week!

Xx Siobhan

little packages tied up with string

One thing on my list to do today is drop this little package off to a local family - baby number 4 arrived a few weeks ago and this little liberty quilt will be lovely for the upcoming spring weather.

This picture has almost all my favourite things in it

Owls, Butterflys, Liberty, String, Stamps & handmade tags!

Its the little things that keep me happy.

This week is a busy one, I suppose they all are aren't they?!

I have to finish a stack of work - Get the kids/ house ready for me going away/ me getting ready for going away & think of a good fathers day present.....

Thats a tricky one?! 

Hope everyone has a great Week!

& if your looking for any of my stuff - I have added links on the left hand side of the blog under Find me - to my fabrics, instagram & pinterest!

Xx Siobhan 

Liberty Strips - Part two

A few days later and here we have the finished baby quilt

Here is the original post where I talk about how & why I made this quilt.

The general gist is that I had some liberty fabric strips from a previous project and I wanted to make a baby quilt, this is what I came up with.

I wanted to do something different for the quilting, I'm really enjoying the look of circular quilting and I felt that it would make it just a little bit more interesting than straight lines.

I was also seeing a lot of love hearts everywhere!

apparently valentines day is soon....

so a heart shape it was!

I started with my heart shape in the middle, I then echoed around the heart in a 1/4 inch distance until I came to the edge of the basted quilt. 

for the binding I had some pre made liberty of london bias binding which I bought in London last September when I was at the Liberty of London store. It was really nice to sew on.

Here we have the complete front and back!

the back is also a piece of Liberty of London tana lawn. 

I love how the heart echo's out

It took a while to machine quilt the heart echo, but well worth the effort.

all ready to swaddle the baby to be

Xx Siobhan Rogers