Swap goodies

I owe a huge thank-you and apology to Rebecca at An Irish Craftworker's Good Life. She sent me some lovely fabric as part of Flib's January swap, and I am very, very late in posting about it.

Along with the fabric, she sent me a sweet print from a linocut she blogged about, and a delicate felt star. Thanks Rebecca!

Excuses for not blogging

Erm, so, like, it's been a while. I have lots of things I want to blog about, but I also have many excuses as to why I haven't. A nasty bout of flu, visits from in-laws, sorting out childcare for return to work this summer, feeling blah and frumpy and the need for a bit of a break.

Not that I haven't been sewing, or reading your blogs, or dreaming up more things to make.

I've made another cushion cover, with some Amy Butler fabric from my stash. And I slipped some browny-aubergine fabric behind the cotton lace on the small cushion cover, thrifted from Value Village, to bring out the detail.



With some dotty flannel and jumbo rickrack, I'm making a baby blanket for a friend whose baby is due at the end of the month. I think I first saw the ricrac used that way on etsy, but my bookmark to the shop's page isn't working. I got the rickrack from Ribbon Mad.



Unfortunately, the trimming isn't straight, so it's waiting on my WIP pile, to be ripped and resewn.

To make up for the loss of stash fabric, I've had two new arrivals. One is the first of my swaps from Flibbertygibbet's swap, from Carole, who doesn't have a blog.



The strips are very sweet, and will find their way into a project for another baby, due in April. My second swap parcel has been delayed and is due soon! You can see what other people got - and what I sent - here.

I'm quite broke, but stretched to five pounds for some Liberty fabric strips from ebay, for a quilt project I'm mulling over.

Inspirational books

Things have slowed down a bit on the crafting front, to make time for socialising and playing, and some inspiration.

I found a great book in a second-hand bookshop near us, called Creating Fashion by Betty Foster. It's a kind of pattern cutting course in book format, with lots of historical pattern blocks, and while the diagrams look confusion now, I'm hoping that soon it will all make sense.







We're going to a wedding in March, with Moot, and I've been having fun dreaming up an outfit for her to wear. I'm taking as starting points a pattern from old needlework book and a scrap of Liberty fabric I got at the sale.



Can't show you the print, because someone is getting a bit of it as part of Flib's January Strip swap.

And I made some more trousers for Moot, my first fully reversible ones.



Oh, and I found this site, Caramel Baby and Child, through Port2Port . So very, very inspiring... and so very, very expensive.

Now it's sunny, and I'm off to do some very overdue gardening.